Homs Opposition: Al Farouq Battalion is Killing Us Sunday, May 13 2012 

Arab Awakening and Human Rights and Media and Middle East and Syria and United Nations , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 6:30 pm


By Sharmine Narwani

It is extremely rare to have a direct peephole into events on the ground in Syria. The hard-fought battle over narratives often leaves truth in the dust. But among the cache of recently leaked emails (exclusive to Al Akhbar) from Syrian National Council (SNC) President Burhan Ghalioun’s inbox, comes this gem – important information that further highlights the glaring loophole in UN Envoy Kofi Annan’s demilitarization plans for Syria: rogue fighters.

The email sent to Ghalioun on March 25 summarizes a meeting held by members of various armed opposition groups operating in Homs – chiefly to address the pressing problem of the rogue al-Farouq Battalion.

The email’s author “Abu Majd” claims that 24 different armed groups in Homs started to work together in part because of the behavior of the Farouq Battalion, some of whose members are shown in this video from a few days ago. The problem with al-Farouq, says the email, is:

“Its monopoly over decision-making in its areas, its attempts to subjugate whoever is outside its command by force, and adopting what they call a “big stick policy” in dealing with other fighters.”

Confirming occasional Arab media accounts of fighters turning on each other inside opposition-dominated neighborhoods, Abu Majd accuses the Farouq Battalion of:

Unjustified violence against their adversaries and other anti-regime groups that are not subsumed under the rubric of al-Farouq Battalion resulting in a heavy human toll. For example, al-Farouq’s mild punishment/warning to fighters in Bab al-Sibaa led to the death of five martyrs.

One wonders how these deaths were characterized in the daily “casualty counts” disseminated by Homs activists and reported widely by foreign media. (more…)

 

Hollywood in Homs and Idlib? Tuesday, Mar 13 2012 

Arab Awakening and Media and Middle East and Syria , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 11:00 pm

By Sharmine Narwani

Last October I was asked to write an article on the direction of the crisis in Syria – a month later, I had still not made it beyond an introductory paragraph. Syria was confusing. The public discourse about events in the country appeared to be more hyperbole than fact. But even behind the scene, sources strained to provide informed analyses, and it was fairly evident that a lot of guesswork was being employed.

By December, it occurred to me that a big part of the problem was the external-based opposition and their disproportionately loud voices. If you were actually in the business of digging for “verified” information on Syria last year, you would have also quickly copped on to the fact that this wing of the Syrian opposition lies – and lies big.

This discovery coincided with a new report by US intelligence analyst Stratfor that claimed: “most of the opposition’s more serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply untrue, thereby revealing more about the opposition’s weaknesses than the level of instability inside the Syrian regime.”

I had another niggling feeling that just wouldn’t quit: given the amount of regime-initiated violence and widespread popular dissent being reported in the mainstream media, why was the Syrian death toll so low after 10 months of alleged brutality?

Because, if the regime was not engaging in the kind of reckless slaughter suggested by activists, it would appear that they were, in fact, exercising considerable restraint.

Stratfor said that too. The risk analysis group argues that allegations of massacres against civilians were unlikely because the “regime has calibrated its crackdowns to avoid just such a scenario. Regime forces,” Stratfor argues, “have been careful to avoid the high casualty numbers that could lead to an intervention based on humanitarian grounds.”

For me, the events in Homs in February confirmed rather than contradicted this view. The general media narrative was very certain: there was a widescale civilian massacre in Baba Amr caused by relentless, indiscriminate shelling by government forces that pounded the neighborhood for weeks.

The videos pouring out of the besieged city were incriminating in the extreme. Black smoke plumes from shelling choked the city, piled up bodies spoke of brutal slaughter; the sound of mass wailing was only interrupted by explosions, gunfire and cries of “Allahu Akbar.”

But when it was over, we learned a few things. Contrary to reports during the “siege,” there were only a few thousand civilians in Baba Amr at the time – all others had already evacuated the area. The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) and its local partner, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), had been administering assistance at nine separate points in Homs for the duration. They would not enter the neighborhoods of Baba Amr and Insha’at because of continuing violence on “both sides.”

The armed opposition fighters holed up in Homs during that month were, therefore, unlikely to be there in a purely “protective” capacity. As American journalist Nir Rosen points out, what happened in Homs on February 3 was a government response to direct and repeated “provocation:”

“Yesterday opposition fighters defeated the regime checkpoint at the Qahira roundabout and they seized a tank or armored personnel carrier. This followed similar successes against the Bab Dreib checkpoint and the Bustan al Diwan checkpoint. In response to this last provocation yesterday the regime started shelling with mortars from the Qalaa on the high ground and the State Security headquarters in Ghota.” (more…)

 

Questioning the Syrian “Casualty List” Tuesday, Feb 28 2012 

Arab Awakening and Foreign Affairs and Human Rights and Middle East and Syria and United Nations , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 11:28 pm

By Sharmine Narwani

“Perception is 100 percent of politics,” the old adage goes. Say something three, five, seven times, and you start to believe it in the same way you “know” aspirin is good for the heart.

Sometimes though, perception is a dangerous thing. In the dirty game of politics, it is the perception – not the facts of an issue – that invariably wins the day.

In the case of the raging conflict over Syria, the one fundamental issue that motors the entire international debate on the crisis is the death toll and its corollary: the Syrian casualty list.

The “list” has become widely recognized – if not specifically, then certainly when the numbers are bandied about: 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 – sometimes more. These are not mere numbers; they represent dead Syrians.

But this is where the dangers of perception begin. There are many competing Syrian casualty lists with different counts – how does one, for instance gauge if X is an accurate number of deaths? How have the deaths been verified? Who verifies them and do they have a vested interest? Are the dead all civilians? Are they pro-regime or anti-regime civilians? Do these lists include the approximately 2,000 dead Syrian security forces? Do they include members of armed groups? How does the list-aggregator tell the difference between a civilian and a plain-clothes militia member?

Even the logistics baffle. How do they make accurate counts across Syria every single day? A member of the Lebanese fact-finding team investigating the 15 May 2011 shooting deaths of Palestinian protesters by Israelis at the Lebanese border told me that it took them three weeks to discover there were only six fatalities, and not the 11 counted on the day of the incident. And in that case, the entire confrontation lasted a mere few hours.

How then does one count 20, 40, or 200 casualties in a few hours while conflict continues to rage around them?

My first port of call in trying to answer these questions about the casualty list was the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which seemed likely to be the most reliable source of information on the Syrian death toll – until it stopped keeping track last month.

The UN began its effort to provide a Syrian casualty count in September 2011, based primarily on lists provided by five different sources. Three of their sources were named: The Violations Documenting Center (VDC), the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and the Syrian Shuhada website. At that time, the lists varied in number from around 2,400 to 3,800 victims.

The non-UN casualty list most frequently quoted in the general media is the one from the Syrian Observatory – or SOHR.

Last month, SOHR made some headlines of its own when news of a rift over political viewpoints and body counts erupted. Two competing SOHRs claimed authenticity, but the group headed by Rami Abdul Rahman is the one recognized by Amnesty International.

OHCHR spokesman Rupert Colville stated during a phone interview that the UN evaluates its sources to check “whether they are reliable,” but appeared to create distance from SOHR later – during the group’s public spat – by saying: “The (UN) colleague most involved with the lists…had no direct contact with the Syrian Observatory, though we did look at their numbers. This was not a group we had any prior knowledge of, and it was not based in the region, so we were somewhat wary of it.” (more…)

 

High-Tech Trickery in Homs? Tuesday, Feb 14 2012 

Arab Awakening and Media and Middle East and Syria and US Foreign Policy , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 6:17 pm

What was surely meant to be a clever display of media-friendly visuals to illustrate Syrian regime violence in Homs, has instead raised more questions than answers.

US State Department satellite images of the embattled city were posted on Facebook last Friday by US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who complains: “A terrible and tragic development in Syria is the use of heavy weaponry by the Assad regime against residential neighborhoods.”

The “satellite photos,” says Ford, “have captured both the carnage and those causing it — the artillery is clearly there, it is clearly bombing entire neighborhoods…We are intent on exposing the regime’s brutal tactics for the world to see.”

But within 24 hours, the blog Moon of Alabama had taken a hammer to the ambassador’s claims. A detailed examination of satellite imagery by the bloggers revealed numerous discrepancies in Washington’s allegations. Mainly, their investigations point to the fact that Ford’s satellite images were “of guns training within military barracks or well known training areas and not in active deployment.”

Moon of Alabama posts its own satellite images, graphics and diagrams to bolster its argument – and these are well worth a look.

The US envoy’s questionable claims don’t stop at satellite images, however. In his Facebook post, Ford insists: “There is no evidence that the opposition — even those opposition members who have defected from the military — has access to or has employed such heavy weapons. “ By this, he means the “artillery” used “to pound civilian apartment buildings and homes from a distance.”

Then why is there satellite photo evidence of destruction in pro-regime Alawi areas?

Fast-forward to CNN’s very own Jonathan King, who broadcast satellite images of Homs on February 9, the day before the State Department loaded their photos on the web. King’s images of Homs are dated February 5, two days after violence erupted in the city, focusing heavily in the Baba Amr neighborhood where opposition gunmen are allegedly present:

(more…)

 

Foolishly Ignoring the Arab League Report on Syria Friday, Feb 3 2012 

Arab Awakening and Foreign Affairs and Media and Middle East and Syria and United Nations , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 9:20 pm

Arab League observers in Syria don orange vests for identification

By Sharmine Narwani

On December 19, 2011 the Syrian Arab Republic and the Arab League signed a protocol establishing an Observer Mission that would lead efforts to resolve the conflict in Syria and protect civilians in the process.

Almost immediately afterward, once-staunch advocates of this Arab League “intervention” in Syria began efforts instead to undermine the Mission’s efforts.

Before inking the final deal, an Arab League official had warned me that certain member states – Qatar, most prominently – were setting up conditions that would preclude the participation of the Syrian government. But intense shuttle diplomacy at the eleventh hour produced a breakthrough: the Mission was approved by the two parties, and the disappointed spoilers launched a public relations blitz to cast doubt on the Mission’s participants, the Arab League’s capabilities and the investigation’s discoveries.

For the last month, we have heard allegations fly riotously about the Sudanese Head of Mission Lieutenant General Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa Al-Dabi, now suddenly accused of war crimes. Rumors abounded about Mission Observers quitting their posts because of the “horrific” nature of the Syrian government’s onslaught against its civilians. International NGOs and a slew of western politicians even offered to “train” the mission observers – implicitly suggesting that Arabs lack observation and negotiation capabilities, or worse perhaps, that the observers need to be taught to view the Syrian conflict through external lenses.

It was hard to doubt these rumors entirely – the Arab League have, after all, refused to make the final Monitors’ report available to the general media. But the Report has suddenly popped up as an annex to the UN Resolution on Syria currently being hotly debated at the Security Council. Most puzzling though, is that few Western or Arab journalists congregated at the United Nations this week are drawing attention to this critical document that provides insight into the very events contested at Council sessions.

Mission Report: The Good, Bad and Ugly
The full Monitor’s Report of the Arab League, revealed here, refers in several instances to efforts aimed at undermining the Mission and its activities:

“Since it began its work, the Mission has been the target of a vicious media campaign…that increased in intensity after the observers’ deployment. Some media outlets have published unfounded statements, which they attributed to the Head of the Mission. They have also grossly exaggerated events…Such contrived reports have helped to increase tensions among the Syrian people and undermined the observers’ work. Some media organizations were exploited in order to defame the Mission and its Head and cause the Mission to fail.” (more…)

 

Syrian Snaphot: A View From The Capital Wednesday, Jan 25 2012 

Arab Awakening and Foreign Affairs and Middle East and Syria , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Sandboxer 11:07 am

By Sharmine Narwani

Aftermath of the Midan bombing that left 26 dead and dozens more wounded

January 2012:

Crossing over the Lebanese border into Syria was anticlimactic. The lines of people waiting to have their papers checked did not look markedly shorter than during my two previous visits, both having taken place well before popular Arab revolts broke out across the Middle East.

Even security checks — looking into the trunk of our car and the kinds of questions asked by immigration personnel — appeared, if anything, less probing than my earlier experiences.

But two things caught my notice. Posters vilifying certain media networks — Al Jazeera, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya, and the BBC — dotted the walls of the border crossing. One to the right of the counter for “foreigners” hovered over the head of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) crew in line in front of me. Ah, I thought — the rumors that foreign journalists are now trickling into Syria may be accurate.

The second noteworthy detail was the whispers among border personnel that a busload of Syrian soldiers being transported from their barracks had been bombed by a roadside IED — near Zabadani, a town now claimed by the armed opposition. I have no confirmation of this.

I was worried about my stay in Damascus in the Christian quarter of the Old City. Just four days earlier, on a Friday, a suicide bomber had detonated explosives in a crowded area in Midan — inside the capital — apparently targeting a bus of policemen, although the casualties were mostly civilians.

I was keen to see if there were tangible ramifications of this act of terror in the heart of Damascus — 10 months into the protests, the city is still largely viewed as being supportive of the government. Damascus counts. No uprising will be complete unless this city of 2.6 million shifts that balance. The capitol will eventually have to be a battlefield for any revolt to succeed, even if only a political one.

Syria is icy cold this time of year, which may account for some of the empty streets that are normally bustling with humanity. But the Friday after the suicide bombing, the streets were noticeably devoid of people, cars were minimal — the city, quiet. Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, is usually spent with family, so it wasn’t altogether clear if the stillness was due to the previous week’s violence.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s voice greeted us on the radio as my friend and I drove into the country a few days earlier. He was delivering his fifth speech since protests broke out in March last year. It was long-winded and my companion translated every so often. I waited impatiently for these tidbits which lasted well after we were sipping tea in a Damascus hotel lobby — guests and conference attendees crowding around the TV screens to pass their judgments.

Later that day I met with the first on my list of regime opponents, most of whom had served prison terms at some point in their lives. I will write in more detail about these men and women later, but they varied from those who desired an overhaul of the regime while keeping Assad’s presidency intact, to those who would not consider dialogue with any part of the existing government. There were some commonalities. All rejected any foreign military intervention and the militarization of the protests. The majority were scathing about the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and external opposition groups like the Syrian National Council (SNC), so liberally quoted by the Western media as the definitive voice of the Syrian “opposition.”

“Their decisions are made in America and Turkey,” said one regime critic about the foreign-based Syrian opposition. “I want decisions made in Syria.” (more…)

 

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