Syria News Wire

A day after an Arab League monitor quit Syria in disgust, another one is apparently threatening to resign. Yesterday, Anwar Malek left the mission in Syria, appearing on Al Jazeera English to call it a ‘farce’:

The Algerian (although some sources call him Tunisian) said:

“What I saw was a humanitarian disaster. The regime is not just committing one war crime, but a series of crimes against its people. The snipers are everywhere, shooting at civilians. People are being kidnapped. Prisoners are being tortured and none were released.”

The Arab League, though, seriously undermined this man’s statements, saying he hadn’t even been out on the streets.

He was ill and bedridden at his Syria hotel. So how could he make those claims?

Another monitor has apparently threatened to quit today, although he has chosen to remain anonymous and the claims remain impossible to verify.

The Syrian authorities have exploited the weakness in the performance of the delegation to not respond. There is no real response on the ground.

The military gear is still present even in the mosques. We asked that military equipment be withdrawn from the Abu Bakr al-Siddiq mosque in Deraa and until today they have not withdrawn.

Bashar, wasn’t fazed. In fact, he seems positively glowing. The Arab League mission is in disarray, they can’t even agree among themselves. Unannounced, he made his first public appearance since the start of the violence 10 months ago.

The interesting thing about his speech was not the content – for there was nothing new – but the fact that Bashar’s wife and kids appeared alongside him. There have been many rumours that British-born Asma Al-Assad may have fled to her home in London. Also, note the weird people in puffer jackets in the colours of the Syrian flag.

Before the party in Damascus had even ended, there was tragic news from Homs. Two groups of international journalists were taken up there, when there was a mortar and RPG attack on a pro-government crowd. Some of the journalists ran over to see what was happening, and celebrated French documentary maker Gilles Jacquier was killed. 8 Syrians also died in the attack.

Ian Black, who was in the other group sums it up with his headline: ‘If the regime wanted to prove Homs was safe, it failed’.

Joseph Eid, a photographer with the AFP news agency, said the attack had come without warning. “We were expecting there to be violence, yes, but we never expected there to be an attack. They had warned us that the two districts attack each other in the evening, they said that after three o’clock in the afternoon it’s dangerous, we were there at three, and it started, it kicked off.”

The French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has accused the Syrian government of not doing its job by protecting him properly. Which is interesting, considering that the Syrian government can’t even protect its own troops.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague was more careful with his statement:

I condemn the incident in Homs today which caused the death of at least eight civilians including a French journalist, Gilles Jacquier. These deaths highlight once again the terrible price being paid by the people of Homs, as well as the courage of journalists who take great personal risks to bring to light what is happening to the people of Syria.

David Kenner, Associate Editor of Foreign Policy magazine, summed up the predictable responses with this tweet:

The who-committed-a-senseless-act-of-violence debate after every Syria attack is the Middle East’s version of a Rorschach test.

— DavidKenner (@DavidKenner) January 11, 2012

He was referring to the ink blot test: look at the pattern and tell us what you see. What you see reveals something about your inner character. And in the same way, how you interpret the latest massacre tells us who you support in this deadly race to the bottom.

The French ambassador is now accompanying Jacquier’s body from Homs back to Damascus. There’s no international official to accompany the bodies of the eight nameless civilians who were killed alongside him.

At least a dozen people are thought to have died in a bomb targeting a police bus in Medan, southern Damascus.

It comes exactly two weeks after explosions killed at least 44 people outside security buildings in the west of the city.

No-one yet knows who is to blame. We may never know. But within minutes, the twitterati had made their minds up. Pro-regimers slavishly towed the state TV line that ‘terrorists’ were to blame. Armchair revolutionaries knew it was the government’s fault.

Twitter is at its most ugly when people die and net activists dogmatically use the deaths to further their own argument. People have died. There is blood on the streets of Damascus. This isn’t the time for point scoring.

Whoever did it and wherever it was, civilian deaths are immoral, you don’t get to nitpick which ones are ok and which ones aren’t. #Syria

— Nader (@DarthNader) January 6, 2012

Syria is polarised. Someone lacked so much humanity that they felt it right to place a bomb on a bus, knowing the consequences. Surely this is a sign that Syria needs less aggression, division and polarisation – and more reconciliation.

It’s one thing when tweeps are inappropriate or tactless. It’s another when Riad Al-Assad is.

Col. Alasad of FSA must shut up. His threats of attacks, read against the backdrop of today’s events exposes his immaturity #Syria

— Nadim Koteich (@NadimKoteich) January 6, 2012

When Christopher Hitchens died, there was renewed debate about the power his pen wielded. When he wrote in defence of Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, he crossed the line. He crossed over from the bubble that observers and commentators inhabit into the political arena. He had become a player.

Now, one of his friends, Nick Cohen, is doing the same with Syria. He wants war, and who cares what Syrians want.

Actually, he does care. He asks a London-based Syrian journalist, who now works as a PR manager for a lobby group (shorthand: “pro-democracy activist”) and he asks a US-based campaigner, Ammar Abdulhamid. Both of them give him vivid accounts of life in Syria, but neither calls for war.

Well, if they won’t do it, Cohen will put the words into their mouths:

“The Syrian incarnation of the “Arab Street” we used to hear so much about now wants Nato planes in the skies.”

It’s a barefaced lie. And it follows a simple recipe. Find a Syrian in Britain plus a Syrian in America. Refer to them as the “Arab Street”. Make it look like they said things they didn’t actually say.

But that’s not enough for Cohen. He feels the need to put a bit of meat on his fairly weak defence. I give you the Syrian National Council:

“The ferocity of the regime’s violence has pushed the Syrian National Council, an umbrella group for much of the opposition, from calling for civil disobedience and passive resistance to begging for outside help.”

Except that they didn’t. Here’s the very first point they made in a statement three days ago:

Following talks lasting for more than a month involving the leadership of the NCB and the SNC, the parties agreed on the following:

1 – Rejection of any foreign military intervention that affects the sovereignty and independence of the country. The Arab intervention is not considered to be foreign.

Nick Cohen claims to care about human rights, but Amnesty’s Campaigns Manager Kristyan Benedict, who has been involved in the campaign against Syrian repression, isn’t so sure.

“Cohen serves an agenda which doesn’t have the human rights of Syrians at its heart – plus he is an ignorant Orientalist tool,” he told me.

At some point, the Syrian people – inside Syria – may indeed call for “Nato planes in the skies”. Until that moment comes, we in our comfortable homes in London and Washington, should refrain from pretending to speak on behalf of Syrians.

Two pieces of interesting reading today. The first from the unmissable Qifa Nabki, who notes that the blogosphere’s support for Bashar has made a remarkable u-turn.

From this:

For the first decade of Assad’s presidency, most Syrian blogs I read were fairly supportive of the regime

To this:

Several bloggers have defected from the regime’s side in disgust, and a number of them have written compelling mea culpas

Health warning, Elias does mention me. Read the rest of Syria’s Defecting Bloggers at the New York Times Latitude blog.

And the second article is truly essential reading. It’s by a Syrian called Yazan (not that Yazan) who argues that although support for the regime is crumbling, that doesn’t mean we should jump on the Syrian National Council bandwagon. It’s called What Syria Deserves, and it’s at KabobFest.

I, and members of my family, had high, high hopes for Burhan Ghalioun. Yet, his statements and actions over the last few months have utterly burnt him.

It is neither for him nor the SNC to decide what political alliances Syria makes. It is for the Syrian public to make that decision. His, and the SNC’s position, on negotiating for the liberation of the Golan, for example, are no different for the Asad regime’s position vis-a-vis the Zionist State.

When activists like Maysaloon and Ammar Abdulhamid and ‘opposition’ figures in the SNC speak about the desperate need ‘to make deals with the devil’ in order to topple the regime, it is sheer senselessness. They are damning the soul of the nation, the intifada, by repeating the cycle of foreign dependency and will ensure a façade of liberty.

Moreover, the groveling and praises of gratitude towards Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries for their ‘support’ of the intifada are vomit-inducing. These are countries that have worked to crush the courageous Bahrain protesters, have ignored the sentiments of the awe-inspiring Yemeni protesters, and have horrible track records in regards to how they treat their own population, among numerous other faults. If this is a true uprising about liberty and dignity, we cannot accept to deal with those that flaunt this and have worked as counter-revolutionary forces in this region during this volatile time of ours. They are not our allies.

When organizations like SNC and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights grossly exaggerate the deaths that are happening or fabricate certain incidents, which they have done, in order to garner more sympathy, it is no different from what the regime has done in its existence.

When human rights-activist organizations, like the Human Rights Watch and Avaaz, and media agencies, like Al Jazeera and the Guardian, regurgitate these distortions without scrutiny (from the Gay Girl in Damascus scandal to the over estimation of deserters), it empowers the regime and its supporters. Worse, it ignores the real victims, the thousands imprisoned, tortured, or dead, who are nameless, and do not ever become convenient, easy-to-sell, symbols.

An arrest has already been made. Not sure how that fits in with the suicide bomb narrative.

And from what I can see on Syrian state TV, it looks like one of the cars that exploded has already been towed away. Destroying crucial evidence. As Karl Sharro points out, this has echoes of the aftermath of the Hariri bombing in Beirut in 2005, when evidence was swept up almost immediately.

UPDATE: At least 30 dead, 55 dead (via Al Manar)

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Damascus has been hit by twin car bombs this morning. The first suicide bombs since the uprising began.

The explosions happened outside a security building early this morning. An unknown number have been killed – Syrian state TV is showing gruesome pictures of the bodies that have been ripped apart. The government says military personnel and civilians were killed, and is blaming Al Qaeda.

The opposition Free Syrian Army has denied responsibility, but has targeted military installations in the capital in recent weeks. In past attacks, however, they have been quick to claim responsibility.

What is unusual in this case is that the government is blaming Al Qaeda, rather than unknown ‘terrorists’ and ‘armed gangs’ (code for unarmed civilian demonstrators).

As usual, expect regime apologists to blame the opposition, because they must be blamed for every death. And expect hysterical twitter activists to blame the government and their conspiracy.

The bombings come just hours after the Arab League’s monitors arrive in Damascus, and a day after a series of car bombs killed dozens in Baghdad.

Health warning: these pictures are from Syrian state TV.

The Syrian uprising, more than any of this year’s Arab revolutions, is being fought online as well as on the ground. Supporters of both the revolution and the regime are using increasingly vicious methods to embarrass and threaten their opponents online.

By me, for the Near East Quarterly. Read the full piece here.

Razan Ghazzawi has apparently been freed, exactly two weeks after she was detained at the Syrian-Jordanian border.

Now let’s hope the other tens of thousands of detainees, who have committed no crime, are released too.

In his first English-language TV interview since the uprising began, Bashar Al-Assad has been speaking to ABC’s Barbara Walters.

A lot of headline writers have focussed on his statement that he doesn’t ‘own the country,’ and that he wasn’t in command of the army. This is taken out of context – watch the video, he was simply correcting Walter’s question where she seemed to imply that the army was his private militia. Rightly or wrongly, he wanted to make clear that the army wasn’t a personal institution, but a state one.

Here’s my transcription of the most important parts:

“It’s important how the Syrian people look at you, not how you look at yourself,” he says. “So I don’t have to look at myself.”

Confronted with the death of Hamzeh Al-Khateb, Al-Assad says: “No, no, no, I met with his father and he says he wasn’t tortured.”

“Many people criticised me, did they kill all of them? Who killed who? Most of the people that have been killed are supporters of the government, not vice versa.”

When asked about the death of singer Ibrahim Qashoush: “I don’t think he’s famous, I don’t know about him.”

On the army’s brutality: “They are not my forces, they are military forces belonging to the government. I don’t own them [laughing], I’m president. I don’t own the country.”

“There was no command to kill or to be brutal.”

“We don’t kill our people, no government in the world kills its people unless it’s lead by a crazy person.”

On UN allegations of crimes against humanity: “I would say send us the documents and the concrete evidence that you have, and we’ll see if they are true or not. [The UN has sent us] nothing at all.”

“Who said the UN is a credible institution. [Having an ambassador there] is a game we play, it doesn’t mean we believe in it [laughing].”

On being a president for life: “It’s about public support, so when I feel that the public support has declined, I won’t be here [as president]. That’s conclusive.”

Do you feel guilty? “[Laughs] I did my best to protect the people, so you can’t feel guilty when you do your best.”

She was sitting in her favourite spot in Damascus, a table under the tree in the cafe in the grounds of the National Museum of Damascus. That was the first time I met Razan. It was 12 October 2007, although we’d been emailing and commenting on each other’s blogs for a few months before that. Now she’s in prison.

I can’t claim to be a friend of Razan. In fact, I think she’ll be quite furious that I am posting about her. We fell out over politics at the start of the uprising, and we haven’t talked since. It was in the days when I still believed in the regime’s promises of reform, and still held out hope that Bashar could turn the situation around.

Razan never believed that. That first day we met, we walked through the streets of the Old City, talking quite loudly and openly about democracy, about repression, about the post-Assad era. She did the talking, I played the looking-scared role.

But unlike me, Razan is courageous. She has firm beliefs, and she doesn’t let friendship get in the way of them. She dedicated a year of her life to the aftermath of the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006 and another year to helping victims of the Nahr Al-Bared conflict and then threw herself into the campaign against the Gaza massacre in January 2009.

Razan was one of a handful of activists who dared to turn up at candlelit vigils outside the Tunisian and Egyptian embassies in Damascus in January. And even when the group was met with beatings, threats and detentions, she continued to attend.

She was anti-Bashar at a time when the rest of us believed in the promises. She is outspoken. But she still refuses to countenance a Nato attack while others beg for American jets to fly over Damascus.

Razan combines the fearsome intellect of an academic with the tireless passion of an activist. Now she’s another number. Another one of the thousands of prisoners of conscience – people detained because they believe in something different to those in power.

Free Razan Ghazzawi.