Can't believe there wasn't something posted about this. Only thing I saw was the "hacking" which really does the situation no justice.
"More than 5,400 Syrians killed, thousands missing, 25,000 refugees in other countries and more than 70,000 internally displaced, according to the United Nations."
Tanks in cities, snipers taking down civilians, shelling of cities. Some serious human rights violations going down, and will be a bigger issue soon, and someone will intervene soon. I wish I knew the rationale of the big wigs in this country when they decide where and where not to intervene. This situation involves mostly civilian deaths and civilian targets with a small revolutionary force.
Article is long, but gives a lot of information about whats going on.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Syria.
Anwar Amro/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesUpdated: Feb. 23, 2012
The wave of Arab unrest that started with the Tunisian revolution reached Syria in mid-March 2011, when residents of a small southern city took to the streets to protest the torture of students who had put up anti-government graffiti. The government responded with heavy-handed force, and demonstrations quickly spread across much of the country.
President Bashar al-Assad, who inherited Syria’s harsh dictatorship from his father, Hafez al-Assad, at first wavered between force and hints of reform. But in April, just days after lifting the country’s decades-old state of emergency, he set off the first of what became a series of withering crackdowns, sending tanks into restive cities as security forces opened fire on demonstrators.
Neither the violence nor Mr. Assad’s offers of political reform — rejected as shams by protest leaders — brought an end to the unrest. Similarly, the protesters have not been able to withstand direct assault by the military’s armored forces.
But as the crackdown dragged on into the summer and fall, thousands of soldiers defected and began launching attacks against the government, bringing the country to what the United Nations in December called the verge of civil war. A government in exile was formed, the Syrian National Council.
The conflict is complicated by Syria’s ethnic divisions. The Assads and much of the nation’s elite, especially the military, belong to the Alawite sect, a small minority in a mostly Sunni country. Mr. Assad has consistently denounced the protests as a foreign plot. And even if he were interested in reform, any moves in that direction would mean rejecting the tight-knit, Allawite-dominated circle of government, military and business leaders that is the core of his support.
Syria’s crackdown has been condemned by the United Nations and countries around the world, as has President Assad, a British-trained doctor who many had hoped would soften his father’s iron-handed regime. Criticism has come from unlikely quarters, like Syria’s close neighbors, Jordan and Turkey, and the Arab League.
Syria was expelled from the Arab League after it agreed to a peace plan only to step up attacks on protesters. In November, the league applied wide-ranging sanctions. In December 2011 and late January 2012, Syria agreed to allow league observers into the country. But their presence did nothing to slow the violence. In January, the league floated a proposal under which Mr. Assad would relinquish power to a deputy and start negotiations with opponents within two weeks. It was promptly rejected by Syria.
As the violence in Syria has escalated, several analysts said, Sunni extremists with links to the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda in Syria were seeking to exploit the turmoil. The precise role of the Qaeda branch is unclear. Some intelligence officials and diplomats in Washington, Baghdad and Beirut said the Qaeda franchise was responsible for deadly bombings in Aleppo and in Damascus, in December and January, which killed scores of people. But they acknowledged that they did not have the forensic or electronic intercept evidence to prove it.
U.N. Report and Resolution Condemns Assad’s Government
On Feb. 23, 2012, a United Nations report concluded that “gross human rights violations” had been ordered by the Syrian government as state policy at “the highest levels of the armed forces and the government,” amounting to crimes against humanity.
The 72-page document said that the insurgent Free Syrian Army, made up of defectors from forces loyal to President Assad, had also committed abuses, but those were “not comparable in scale and organization to those carried out by the state.”
The panel of three investigators who compiled the report said it was based on 369 interviews with victims, witnesses, defectors and other people with “inside knowledge” of the situation in Syria. They also examined photographs, video recordings and satellite imagery to corroborate some witness accounts. The investigators said they were not allowed to enter Syria to conduct inquiries at first hand.
The report, delivered to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was published as security forces continued to bombard areas of Homs, a city in central Syria, for a 20th successive day, despite a growing outcry and international calls for the creation of humanitarian corridors to reach the sick, the wounded and the frail.
A week earlier, in a powerful rebuke to Syria’s government, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution condemning President Assad’s unbridled crackdown on the uprising and called for adoption of an Arab League proposal to resolve the conflict.
The resolution called for Mr. Assad to relinquish powers to a vice president; negotiations among the antagonists; and the formation of a new government.
The 137-12 vote, with 17 abstentions, was a nonbinding action with no power of enforcement, but it represented a significant humiliation for Mr. Assad, whose government had sought to block the vote on procedural grounds and severely criticized the sponsors, including Syria’s brethren in the Arab League. Bashar Jafari, Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, called it a “biased resolution that has nothing to do with events in Syria.”
A handful of countries that opposed the resolution, most notably Russia, Venezuela and North Korea, condemned it as an unwarranted interference in Syria’s internal politics. But the wide range of countries that voted approval signified the deep anger and frustration at the United Nations over its diplomatic inability to halt a deadly conflict.
More than 5,400 Syrians killed, thousands missing, 25,000 refugees in other countries and more than 70,000 internally displaced, according to the United Nations.
A previous effort to pass a resolution collapsed in acrimony in early February with a double veto by Russia and China, despite having been watered down to omit a call for Mr. Assad to step down. After the vetoes, Mr. Assad’s government brazenly carried out a violent assault on the city of Homs on the day that the Security Council had planned to vote. It came, too, around the anniversary of its crackdown in 1982 on another Syrian city, Hama, by Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez, in which at least 10,000 people were killed in one of the bloodiest episodes in modern Arab history.
Protest Timeline
Feb. 23 Security forces continued to bombard areas of Homs, for a 20th successive day, despite a growing outcry and international calls for the creation of humanitarian corridors to reach the sick and the wounded. The newest shelling came on the eve of a major international gathering in Tunisia to seek a way out of the crisis. On the same day, a United Nations report, delivered in Geneva, concluded that “gross human rights violations” had been ordered by the Syrian government at “the highest levels of the armed forces and the government,” amounting to crimes against humanity.
Feb. 22 Syrian forces shelled the city of Homs, the 19th day of a bombardment that activists say has claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians in one of the deadliest campaigns in nearly a year of repression by President Assad’s government. Among the 20 people reported killed were two Western journalists, the American war correspondent Marie Colvin, who had been working for The Sunday Times of London, and a French photographer, Rémi Ochlik. The journalists’ deaths occurred less than a week after Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died in Syria of an apparent asthma attack.
Feb. 21 China, Russia and Iran all made declarations of support for the Syrian government, reaffirming their alliances in the face of broad, intense international lobbying for unity against President Assad. The worst violence was reported in Homs, which has been under sustained assault for more than two weeks.
Read More...
Feb. 20 Activist groups reported intensified attacks in the central city of Homs. The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was trying to negotiate a pause in the violence to deliver aid to Homs and other devastated areas. Also, two Iranian warships docked in a Syrian port as a senior Iranian lawmaker denounced the possibility that the Americans might arm the Syrian opposition.
Feb. 19 At least 14 people were reported killed around the country, some by the government and some by armed opposition forces, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group that operates out of Britain. Also, Egypt said that its ambassador would leave Syria in answer to a call by the Arab League for its members to break ties with Damascus.
Feb. 18 A funeral was held for the men killed by security forces in the previous day’s demonstration in the middle-class neighborhood of Mezze in Damascus. It set off the biggest demonstration witnessed close to the heart of the capital since the country’s uprising started 11 months ago. Security forces opened fire, killing at least one person.
Feb. 17 A demonstration was held after the Friday Prayer sermon at the largest neighborhood mosque in Mezze, a middle-class neighborhood in Damascus that skirts the hill on which the presidential palace sits. Three men were shot dead by security forces.
Feb. 16 The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to approve a resolution condemning President Assad’s crackdown on the uprising and called for adoption of an Arab League proposal to resolve the conflict. The resolution, which called for Mr. Assad to relinquish powers to a vice president, was a nonbinding action with no power of enforcement at the world body. On the same day, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died in Syria of an apparent asthma attack, while on a reporting assignment.
Feb. 15 President Bashar al-Assad set a date later this month for a referendum on a new constitution, a gesture apparently designed to offer some kind of government-controlled change even as fighting continued in Damascus and elsewhere.
Feb. 14 Syrian government forces brushed aside a stern castigation from the top United Nations human rights official about its deadly attacks on civilians, resuming what one activist described as the “brutal shelling” of the city of Homs.
Feb. 13 Syrian forces were reported to have resumed their bombardment of the embattled city of Homs for a 10th day after the authorities in Damascus rejected efforts by the Arab League to seek a United Nations peacekeeping mission.
Feb. 12 The Arab League asked the United Nations Security Council to send a peacekeeping mission to Syria and called on Arab nations to sever diplomatic relations with Damascus in an effort to pressure the government to end the violence there.
Feb. 11 Three gunmen ambushed a military general on a residential street in Damascus, in an assassination of a government stalwart that was the first of its kind in the Syrian capital and another step away from the nonviolent roots of the antigovernment protests.
Feb. 10 Explosions in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo struck two targets associated with the military and police, according to Syrian state television, which said that 28 people were killed and 235 were injured. An American military official acknowledged that the Pentagon has begun to review potential military options for dealing with the upheaval in Syria, but said discussions were in the hypothetical phase.
Background to Protests
The country’s last serious stirrings of public discontent had come in 1982, when increasingly violent skirmishes with the Muslim Brotherhood prompted Hafez al-Assad to move against them, sending troops to kill at least 10,000 people and smashing the old city of Hama. Hundreds of fundamentalist leaders were jailed, many never seen alive again.
Syria has a liability not found in the successful uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt — it is a majority Sunni nation that is ruled by a religious minority, the Alawite sect of Shiite Islam. Hafez Assad forged his power base through fear, cooption and sect loyalty. He built an alliance with an elite Sunni business community, and created multiple security services staffed primarily by Alawites. Those security forces have a great deal to lose if the government falls, experts said, because they are part of a widely despised minority, and so have the incentive of self-preservation.
In July, the Obama administration, in a shift that was weeks in the making, turned against Mr. Assad but stopped short of demanding that he step down. By early Aqgust, the American ambassador was talking of a “post-Assad” Syria.
In October, Syrian dissidents formally established the Syrian National Council in what seemed to be the most serious attempt to bring together a fragmented opposition. The group’s stated goal was to overthrow President Assad’s government. Members said the council included representatives from the Damascus Declaration group, a pro-democracy network; the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamic political party; various Kurdish factions; the Local Coordination Committees, a group that helps organize and document protests; and other independent and tribal figures.
In the U.S.: Different Views on Intervention
The Obama administration has made a point of working through the Arab League and the United Nations rather than giving the appearance that the United States is trying to intervene in Syria. This is partly to avoid giving Iran any excuse to get involved on behalf of its regional ally, analysts say.
However, some politicians favor more direct intervention. On Feb. 19, two senior American senators spoke out strongly in favor of arming the Syrian opposition forces.
The senators, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both Republicans, laid out a series of diplomatic, humanitarian and military aid proposals that would put the United States squarely behind the effort to topple President Assad. Mr. McCain and Mr. Graham, both of whom are on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that rebel fighters deserved to be armed and that helping them take on the Syrian government would aid Washington’s effort to weaken Iran.
The next day, two Iranian warships docked in the Syrian port of Tartous as a senior Iranian lawmaker denounced the possibility that the Americans might arm the Syrian opposition. Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency called the ships “a serious warning” to the United States.
“The presence of Iran and Russia’s flotillas along the Syrian coast has a clear message against the United States’ possible adventurism,” said Hossein Ebrahimi, a vice chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission, Fars reported.
Syria relies on Iran for financial and military support, and the governments in Damascus and Tehran have sectarian ties as well: Iran has strongly backed the Syrian Shiite minority and the offshoot Alawite sect that makes up Syria’s ruling class.
Arms Anchor the Relationship With Russia
As the violence has worsened throughout Syria, amateur video has shown government troops rolling through the besieged city of Homs in vintage Soviet battle tanks. Seemingly undeterred by an international outcry, Moscow has worked frantically to preserve its relationship with the increasingly isolated government of Mr. Assad, even as the Syrian leader turns his guns on his own citizens, and the death toll mounts.
Russia has praised Mr. Assad’s call for a constitutional referendum, a step that the United States and other governments have dismissed as meaningless. On Feb. 16, Russia was one of just a dozen countries, among them China, Iran and North Korea, to vote against a General Assembly resolution urging Mr. Assad to step down.
And many analysts say that without Russia’s backing, including a steady supply of weapons, food, medical supplies and other aid, the Assad government will crumble within a matter of months if not sooner.
While Moscow has a number of reasons to guard its relations with Damascus, the most concrete, many analysts say, is the longstanding arms sales to Syria. Arms exports have long anchored the relationship between Moscow and Damascus, including sales over the years of MIG fighter jets, attack helicopters and high-tech air defense systems.
While the ouster and death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya and the imposition of sanctions on Iran have sharply curtailed other formerly lucrative arms markets for Russia, Syria has increased its weapons purchases.
Regional political events have also played a part. The Arab Spring and the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have dissipated Russia’s once-powerful influence in the region, transforming the relationship into one of critical importance to Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who is running for president and wants to expand Russia’s role as a global powerbroker.
Foreign Policy
Under the administration of President George W. Bush, Syria was once again vilified as a dangerous pariah. It was linked to the 2005 killing of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. In 2007, Israeli jets destroyed buildings in Syria that intelligence officials said might have been the first stage in a nuclear weapons program. And the United States and its Arab allies mounted a vigorous campaign to isolate Damascus, which they accused of sowing chaos and violence throughout the middle east through its support for militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
President Obama came into office pledging to engage with Syria, arguing that the Bush administration’s efforts to isolate Syria had done nothing to wean it from Iran or encourage Middle East peace efforts. So far, however, the engagement has been limited. American diplomats have visited Damascus, but have reiterated the same priorities as the Bush administration: protesting Syria’s military support to Hezbollah and Hamas, and its strong ties with Iran.
Secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations show that arms transactions involving Syria and Hezbollah continue to greatly concern the Obama administration. Hezbollah’s arsenal now includes up to 50,000 rockets and missiles, including some 40 to 50 Fateh-110 missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and most of Israel, and 10 Scud-D missiles.
“Syria’s determined support of Hizballah’s military build-up, particularly the steady supply of longer-range rockets and the introduction of guided missiles could change the military balance and produce a scenario significantly more destructive than the July-August 2006 war,” said a November 2009 cable from the American chargé d’affaires in Damascus.
According to cables, Syrian leaders appeared to believe that the weapons shipments increased their political leverage with the Israelis. But they made Lebanon even more of a tinderbox and increased the prospect that a future conflict might include Syria.
The Hariri Case
Also looming is potential new trouble in Lebanon, where a United Nations-backed international tribunal is expected to indict members of Hezbollah in the death of Mr. Hariri. Hezbollah and its allies — including high-ranking Syrian officials — have warned that an indictment could set off civil conflict.
The United States withdrew its ambassador in 2005 after Mr. Hariri was killed in a car bombing in Beirut along with 22 others. Syria was widely accused of having orchestrated the killing, though it has vehemently denied involvement. The Bush administration imposed economic sanctions on Syria, as part of a broader effort to isolate the government of Mr. Assad.
The current chill is a significant change from the situation a few years ago, when Mr. Assad showed signs of wanting warmer relations with the West than his father, Hafez al-Assad, had ever pursued. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France led the way with a visit in September 2008. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was said to be furious at Mr. Assad, welcomed him warmly in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in March 2009. And Prime Minster Ehud Olmert of Israel hinted at a revival of talks on the Golan Heights — a prospect that faded when Mr. Olmert was succeeded by the more conservative Benjamin Netanyahu.
Turkish Opposition to Assad
Once one of Syria’s closest allies, Turkey is hosting an armed opposition group waging an insurgency against the government of President Assad, providing shelter to the commander and dozens of members of the group, the Free Syrian Army, and allowing them to orchestrate attacks across the border from inside a camp guarded by the Turkish military.
Turkish support for the insurgents comes amid a broader campaign to undermine Mr. Assad’s government. Turkey is expected to impose sanctions on Syria, and it has deepened its support for the Syrian National Council. But its harboring of leaders in the Free Syrian Army, a militia composed of defectors from the Syrian armed forces, may be its most striking challenge so far to Damascus.
On Oct. 26, 2011, the Free Syrian Army, living in a heavily guarded refugee camp in Turkey, claimed responsibility for killing nine Syrian soldiers, including one uniformed officer, in an attack in restive central Syria.
The group is too small to pose any real challenge to Mr. Assad’s government but support from Turkey underlines how combustible, and resilient, Syria’s uprising has proven. The country sits at the intersection of influences in the region — with Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Israel — and Turkey’s involvement will be closely watched by Syria’s friends and foes.
Turkish officials say that their government has not provided weapons or military support to the insurgent group, nor has the group directly requested such assistance.
web page
