Reports say Iran sending more arms to Assad as he prepares chemical weapons

Hezbollah has begun to speak openly and has admitted that its militias are crossing the border and fighting in Syria

I warned yesterday that President Obama's pledge to actually do something about President Assad's slaughter in Syria if he used chemical weapons might soon be tested. If this report from AP is true, Obama's pledge may be tested sooner rather than later:

Israel says Syria's Assad preparing chemical weapons
Ian Deitch
Thu Mar 14 2013 09:13:00
JERUSALEM - Israel's military intelligence chief says Syria's embattled president, Bashar Assad, is preparing to use chemical weapons.

Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi told a security conference in the coastal town of Herzliya that Assad is stepping up his offensive against rebels trying to oust him.

Kochavi claims Assad is making advanced preparations to use chemical weapons, but has not yet given the order to deploy them.

He did not disclose information about why he thinks Assad is preparing to use them. More...

Judging from their protests, the anti-interventions in the US Left and anti-war movements only object to intervention on the side of the revolution, but there is a growing body of evidence that the Assad regime is getting a lot of military support from Russia, and the active involvement of foreign troops from Iran, Iraq and Hezbollah. Newser is reporting this today:

Iran Shipping More Weapons to Assad
By Kevin Spa
Mar 14, 2013 8:35 AM CDT
Iran has drastically increased its arms shipments to Syria in recent months, sending weapons to Bashar al-Assad's regime, and to its Hezbollah supporters, in what is increasingly becoming a Shiite-vs-Sunni conflict, Western diplomats tell Reuters. The weapons are flowing primarily through Iraq—despite Iraqi protestations to the contrary—but some are also reportedly taking routes through Turkey and Lebanon. "The Iranians really are supporting massively the regime," one senior diplomat said. "And the Iraqis really are looking the other way." More...

AAWSAT thinks Lebanon has also been intervening on the side of Assad:

Will Lebanon be Held Accountable for its Pro-Assad Bias?
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed
2 Mar, 2013
Lebanese foreign minister Adnan Mansour confused everyone at the Arab League because while the league itself was trying to offer Syria’s empty seat to the Syrian National Coalition, Mansour requested the reinstatement of the Assad regime’s representatives. What happened to the dissociation policy, whereby Lebanon pledged to be neutral with regards to the Syrian conflict? And why did Mansour also choose to ignite a battle with Saudi Arabia, souring relations between the two countries?

Lebanon is now in the firing line because of the war in neighboring Syria. The domestic atmosphere is also tense because of the forthcoming parliamentary elections, which may not even be held. These two reasons alone are suffice to explain why certain individuals are intent upon stirring up problems between Lebanon and the Gulf. The reports of Lebanese employees being deported from the Gulf states, and the rumors of their financial deposits being withdrawn, are all part of psychological warfare. Lebanon now seems like a country awaiting its turn on death row.

The only ones who stand to benefit from pushing Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states towards a dispute with Lebanon are the regime in Syria and its allies in Lebanon. For example, Hezbollah believes that the fall of Assad in Damascus is almost inevitable, and one alternative is to expand the party’s role in Lebanon and further impose its dominance on Lebanese soil, as well as on nearby Syrian towns and areas that are mainly Shi ‘ite or Christian.

As the final hours are ticking away for Assad’s regime in Syria, ridding Lebanon of Saudi influence will make it easier for parties like Hezbollah and Aoun’s Christian movement to expand and fill the developing vacuum.

The controversy over Syria that exists among Lebanese parties has now taken root within local affairs, especially with regards to any involvement with Assad’s regime. Hezbollah has begun to speak openly and has admitted that its militias are crossing the border and fighting in Syria, responding to the call to protect nearby Syrian Shi ‘ ite towns. The situation has been made even more dangerous with the withdrawal of Syrian troops from border areas with Lebanon, in an attempt to allow Hezbollah militias to occupy these areas and impose a new reality.

Samir Geagea, one of Hezbollah’s prominent rivals and head of the Lebanese Forces, has publicly sought to confront Hezbollah, which claims to be fighting the Jabhat Al-Nusra in Homs so as not to fight it in Beirut. Geagea said that the Lebanese state is responsible for fighting against the Jabhat Al-Nusra, or any other extremist group, in Beirut, Hermel, Nabatieh, Zahle, Akkar or any other area of Lebanon. In doing so, the state would be supported by the Lebanese people, with the exception of Hezbollah, as was the case with the confrontation against Fatah Al-Islam in Nahr Al-Bared.

Geagea also warned that “Hezbollah’s actions in Syria will drag the Jabhat Al-Nusra into Lebanon.”

Leaving Lebanon to the desires of one party means only one thing: a remapping of western Syria in the interests of Assad, Iran, and Hezbollah.

This article tells of just one way that Lebanon is helping Assad, by looking the other way as the illegal oil trade flourishes. From the Lebanon Daily Star

Syria back on the oil trading map as deliveries boom
March 12, 2013 01:25 PM
By Jessica Donati
Reuters
LONDON: Syria is back on the oil trading map this year with more than a dozen shipments of gasoil reaching a government-controlled port in February, ending months of isolation as foreign sellers and officials say it is not their job to monitor private deals.

The sales are worth over $100 million at current prices and are the clearest sign yet that oil dealers' reluctance to supply the war-ravaged country is waning. More...

Also on Sunday the Guardian turned in a fine piece of investigative reporting on a question that has been hotly debated at the Daily Kos and other places where political differences have developed between those that support the Syrian people's effort to overthrow the Assad regime and those that claim to be neutral, namely, who was responsible for over a hundred bodies that came floating down the river in Aleppo six weeks ago. I'll give you the executive summary: The Assad regime murdered these men, just as it is behind ninety plus percent of the violent deaths now happening in Syria.

Syria: the story behind one of the most shocking images of the war
Why did the bodies of 110 men suddenly wash up in the river running through Aleppo city six weeks ago? A Guardian investigation found out
Sunday 10 March 2013

Martin Chulov with photographs and video by Ben Solomon and Noah Payne-Frank

It is already one of the defining images of the Syrian civil war: a line of bodies at neatly spaced intervals lying on a river bed in the heart of Syria’s second city Aleppo. All 110 victims have been shot in the head, their hands bound with plastic ties behind their back. Their brutal execution only became apparent when the winter high waters of the Queiq river, which courses through the no man’s land between the opposition-held east of the city and the regime-held west, subsided in January.

It’s a picture that raises so many questions: who were these men? How did they die? Why? What does their story tell us about the wretched disintegration of Syria? A Guardian investigation has established a grisly narrative behind the worst - and most visible - massacre to have taken place here. All the men were from neighbourhoods in the eastern rebel-held part of Aleppo. Most were men of working age. Many disappeared at regime checkpoints. They may not be the last to be found. Locals have since dropped a grate from a bridge, directly over an eddy in the river. Corpses were still arriving 10 days after the original discovery on January 29, washed downstream by currents flushed by winter rains. More...

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

The children of Syria have been abandoned by the world powers

"Rape is being used to deliberately punish people...This is a war where women and children are the biggest casualty."
-- Justin Forsyth, Chief Executive, Save the Children, on condition is Syria

"Changing Assad’s calculations rather than overthrowing him is Washington’s policy, according to Secretary of State Kerry."
-- Barak Barfi, Research Fellow, New America Foundation, noting US won't arm opposition

"International law does not permit the supply of arms to non-governmental actors...it is a violation of international law."
-- FM Sergei Lavrov, while Russia continues to supply Syria with cluster bombs and ballistic missiles to use on its own people.

The Russians would have objected to French support for the American Revolution.

This is how the international law is being written on what a state can legally do to suppress its own people, and it is being written in Syria today. The answer is that it can do just about anything.

That is to say, anything short of using WMD on them, if the Obama prohibition actually has any teeth to it, which I doubt.

Obama's word is likely to be tested soon, because beyond all the talk of "stalemate", Assad's position is folding in on him fast and he is turning to more lethal methods. Scuds are only the latest.

Nevertheless, he is losing. Just today, we've received word of a whole new crop of high level defections and the loss of more military bases.

Assad has been allowed to use both artillery and air power, without practical limits, on civilian targets because they are his civilian targets. The result is 75,000 dead, a million Syrians have fled their country and another 3 million have fled their home towns.

It does not surprise me that the world's governments haven't put a halt to the use of such power. Do they reserve it for themselves?

However, I find it very sad that so many people tolerate it and I think silence is entirely unacceptable for those that make any claim on leadership, especially from the Left.

Since none of the so-called world powers have had an interest in putting an end to it, it is now moving into a third horrific year. The macabre logic of what we are sold as "International Law" works like this:

1) Non-interference in the internal affairs of a member state is a basic principle, i.e. you don't question what Big Daddy does with his own family.

2) It is entirely legal to provide any state with any weapons, provided no specific prohibits have been put in place by the unanimous consent of the five UNSC members who makes the most weapons. What they do with them inside of their own borders is their business.

3) It is entirely illegal to provide weapons to any grouping of the people organized for self-defense against their government.

To put it in a family way, only Big Daddy can have a gun and nobody's going to stop him from killing the whole family if that's what he decides to do. Of course, they may always try him in the Hague later.

This is the "International Law" that is being written today about what a state actor can get away with doing to its own people. It is being written in a rather timid way with Obama's "kill list" and it is being written in big red letters by Assad's "war on terrorists" policies.

It should surprise no one that these state actors are striving to create a world where people have no effective right of self-defense against their government, and no intervention is possible if one of the Big Five objects, but it should, at a minimum, cause all of us great concern.

The US Declaration of Independence is a revolutionary document, and as such, it notes that sometimes "regime change" is in order:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The Assad Regime is a government that, without a doubt, deserves to be abolished. It clearly is not attempting to provide either Safety or Happiness to its people.

Today's world governments, with the US playing "good cop" to Russia's "bad cop", are presently trying to throttle that right in Syria and show all the world what can happen to any people who try to abolish their government in the future.



Now on to the headlines:

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From Reuters we have this report from Save the Children:

Syria's children shot at, tortured, raped: charity report
By Oliver Holmes
BEIRUT | Wed Mar 13, 2013 6:38am EDT

A boy of 12 sees his best friend shot through the heart. Another of 15 is held in a cell with 150 other people, and taken out every day to be put in a giant wheel and burnt with cigarettes.

Syria's children are perhaps the greatest victims of their country's conflict, suffering "layers and layers of emotional trauma", Save the Children's chief executive told Reuters.

Syrian children have been shot at, tortured and raped during two years of unrest and civil war, the London-based international charity said in a report released on Wednesday.

Two million children, it said, face malnutrition, disease, early marriage and severe trauma, becoming innocent victims of a bloody conflict that has already claimed 70,000 lives.

"This is a war where women and children are the biggest casualty," chief executive Justin Forsyth told Reuters during a visit to Lebanon, where 340,000 Syrians have fled.

Forsyth said he met a Syrian refugee boy, 12, who saw his best friend killed outside a bakery. "His friend was shot through the heart. But initially, he thought he was joking because there was no blood. They didn't realize he had been killed until they took his shirt off," he said.

The Save the Children report cited new research carried out among refugee children by Bahcesehir University in Turkey which found that one in three reported having been punched, kicked or shot at.

It said two thirds of children surveyed said that they had been separated from members of their families due to the conflict and a third said they had experienced the death of a close friend or family member. More...

UNICEF also issued a report on what is happening to the children of Syria.:

A generation of Syrian children at risk as conflict enters third year - UNICEF
NEW YORK (March 12, 2013) – The unrelenting violence, massive population displacement, and damage to infrastructure and essential services caused by the Syrian conflict risk leaving an entire generation of children scarred for life, according to a UNICEF report issued today.

“As millions of children inside Syria and across the region witness their past and their futures disappear amidst the rubble and destruction of this prolonged conflict, the risk of them becoming a lost generation grows every day,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake.

The report – marking the two-year point in the Syria crisis -- says that in areas where the fighting is most intense access to water has fallen by two-thirds resulting in increased skin and respiratory diseases, while one in five schools has been destroyed, damaged, or is being used to shelter displaced families. In Aleppo, for example, only 6 percent of children are currently attending school. Classes that still function are sometimes crammed with as many as 100 children.

Hospitals and health centers have been wrecked and their skilled staff has fled.

Meanwhile children are suffering the trauma of seeing family members and friends killed, while being terrified by the sounds and scenes of conflict. More...

This writer for Syria Deeply thinks that the aid now being promised by Kerry is a joke. He also thinks Obama's so-called shift on Syria is more show than go:

Why the U.S.’s Syria Aid Package is Too Little, Too Late
Barak Barfi
March 12, 2013
New Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement that the United States will provide aid to the rebel-led Free Syrian Army heralds Washington’s official entrance into a conflict that has already cost more than 60,000 lives. For more than a year, the administration’s critics have castigated its refusal to arm the organization or provide anything more than what they say amounts to sideline cheering for an opposition bent on toppling President Bashar al-Assad.

Yet for all its pomp, Kerry’s decision does little to change this position. And Washington’s largesse might be a case of ‘too little, too late’ to affect the outcome on a battlefield increasingly dominated by jihadists whose ideology stands for everything Western values oppose.

Washington has billed its $60 million aid promise as non-lethal assistance to the FSA. But according to a senior State Department official who explained the support package in a background briefing, part of the money will go to the National Coalition, the rebels’ political umbrella organization, whose chief role is to interface with Western nations.
...
Aid earmarked for the FSA will not do much to shift the fight in its favor. Washington is only offering the organization military rations and medical supplies, items Syrian activists can procure without the help of the world’s only superpower.
...
Washington’s aid is bound to disappoint FSA leaders who were hoping for a significant arms package. Their chief dilemma is the regime’s supremacy in air combat. By controlling the skies, Assad can re-supply isolated bases in provinces such as Aleppo and Idlib that are essentially islands in a sea of rebel-held territory. Providing the FSA with surface to air missiles (SAMs) would allow them to bring down the regime fighter jets and helicopters that bombard them daily. This would change the government’s calculations, forcing it to relinquish a number of these remote bases and thus accelerating the FSA’s advances.

Changing Assad’s calculations rather than overthrowing him is Washington’s policy, according to Secretary of State Kerry. In several interviews this week he has said that the purpose of the new American aid is to persuade Assad to negotiate a settlement to the conflict. More...

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Vigils for Children of Syria planned around the world tomorrow.
Egypt Daily News reports on the vigil planned in Cairo:

Candlelight vigil for Syria in CairoBasil El-Dabh
March 13, 2013
Egyptians will participate in a global candlelight vigil on Thursday demanding a peaceful resolution to ongoing mass bloodshed in Syria, two years after the conflict erupted.

The initiative was created by children’s charity Save the Children with support from Oxfam. Egypt is one of 20 countries set to participate in the vigil, and the group has designated Mostafa Mahmoud Square in Mohandessin as the site at which people will gather at 5 pm on Thursday night with candles.

The group intends to utilise software called Thunderclap to store tweets from participants and release them simultaneously with other tweets calling for an end to bloodshed in Syria across time zones in an effort to spread awareness about the cause.

Save the Children is calling for worldwide vigils for Syria on Friday:

Global Vigil for Syria

For two years Syria's children have endured appalling suffering. Young lives torn apart, bereaved, brutalised, tormented, lost.

On 14 March 2013 we're mobilising people around the world to highlight the terrible plight of Syria’s children.

We're also urging the world's five most powerful leaders to unite, put aside their differences, and help bring a peaceful end to the suffering in Syria.

We need you to play your part.

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Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Why the Daily Kos and everyone else who think that Syria is not their problem are tragically wrong

Since the title is so long, I will make this blog short and to the point.

The most common refrain in the Daily Kos community on Syria is that it is not their problem. It is also President Obama's public position and most US citizens support him in this. I was told at Jay & Rachel's progressive film showing in Santa Monica last week that there were enough lives to save right here in the US, and earlier at Jerry Rubin's Activist Support Circle, that plenty of people were dying in VA hospitals, I didn't need to go to Syria to find them.

I have heard a million reasons for doing nothing about Syria and the Syrian people have reaped the awful, frightful consequences.

All of these voices, if they are human, and tragically, fatally, wrong.

The reason is simple:

We will either survive and strive on this planet Earth, or be consumed by our own destruction as one human people. Anybody that still hasn't grasp that at this late date is a fucking idiot.

It should also be clear that going forward we will face any number of catastrophes. Going forward, global warming, wars, ethnic tensions, natural and manmade disasters are likely to fall upon one people after another until, hopefully, we get things sorted out in the next hundred years or so. Or we don't?

Yesterday was the second anniversary of a major disaster in Japan that took 20,000 lives and still threatens the health of the whole planet. In Syria, a despot's desperate attempts to cling to power in those same two years has cost 75,000 lives and counting.

These and many other such catastrophes are likely to be beyond the ability of the people most immediately affected to deal with.

If the people that say "it's not our problem" rule the day, they'll be nobody left to help when it is our problem.



Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

More on the slaughter in Syria with NATO, UN & Daily Kos acquiescence

NewsClips from the Syrian War:

BREAKING: EU fails to relax arms embargo for Assad's opposition today!
More items in the news:

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Reuters is reporting on a new UN report on Syria released by the United Nations this afternoon:

Deadly abuses intensify in Syria as war worsens: U.N.
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA | Mon Mar 11, 2013 3:57pm EDT
The Syrian government has stepped up indiscriminate, heavy bombardments of cities while rebels are executing prisoners condemned in their own makeshift courts without due process, U.N. investigators said on Monday.

The independent investigators said they were looking into 20 massacres committed by one or the other side and hundreds of "unlawful killings", cases of torture and arbitrary arrests since September in the two-year-old conflict.

"Indiscriminate and widespread shelling, the regular bombardment of cities, mass killing and the deliberate firing on civilian targets have come to characterize the daily lives of civilians in Syria," Paulo Pinheiro, chairman of the commission of inquiry on Syria, told the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The uprising in Syria erupted in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests but escalated into a civil war pitting mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against President Bashar al-Assad, whose minority Alawite faith is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

"In a disturbing and dangerous trend, mass killings allegedly perpetrated by Popular Committees have at times taken on sectarian overtones," the 10-page U.N. report said. "Some appear to have been trained and armed by the government."

Pro-Assad Popular Committee militiamen have been documented as operating across Syria, "where at times they are alleged to be participating in house-to-house searches, identity checks, mass arrests, looting and acting as informants", it said.
More...

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The NY Times is reporting that most UN aid to Syria is helping the Assad regime stay in power:

In Parts of Syria, Lack of Assistance ‘Is a Catastrophe’By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: March 8, 2013
SAWRAN, Syria — The United States and other international donors are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on humanitarian aid for Syrians afflicted by the civil war. But here in the rebel-controlled north, where the deprivation is most acute, that money has bought mostly anger and resentment: the vast majority of aid is going to territory controlled by President Bashar al-Assad, and the small amount reaching opposition-held areas is all but invisible.

Rebels argue that the humanitarian assistance is in effect helping Mr. Assad survive the war of attrition. “Aid is a weapon,” said Omar Baylasani, a rebel commander from Idlib, speaking during a visit to a Turkish border town. “Food supply is the winning card in the hands of the regime.”

The biggest obstacle blocking aid from rebel-held areas is the United Nations requirement that its relief agencies follow Mr. Assad’s rules — which limit access to opposition territory — as long as the international assembly recognizes his government. The United Nations agencies are the main conduit for international aid, including most of the total of $385 million that Washington has directed to the cause in 2012 and 2013.

That means that while internally displaced Syrians living in government-controlled areas are cared for in United Nations-run camps, with standard shelter and basic utilities, the many who have fled into opposition territory are plagued by shortages of food, fuel, blankets and medicine. At a civilian medical clinic here in the rebel-held countryside north of Aleppo, the 15 doctors kick out their hundreds of patients each day at 4 p.m. because there is no fuel or power to keep the lights on.

The lack of foreign aid “is a catastrophe,” said Saed Bakur Abu Yahia, the clinic’s director. “We get nothing,” he said, bundled in a winter jacket and rubbing his hands for warmth as he sat in his office.
...
In interviews, dozens of Syrians living in rebel-held territory in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib insisted that their towns had received no Western aid and groused about “empty promises.” Only a few most directly involved in aid distribution acknowledged recent visits from international nonprofit groups, and those with knowledge of the meetings insisted that the names of the aid groups remain confidential.

Even the Syrians most involved in the Western effort expressed frustration. “We believe we are owed an explanation over where this money is going, but every time we ask, we can’t get an answer,” said Ghassan Hitto, who runs the aid coordination arm of the Western-backed Syrian national coalition. He estimated that as much as 60 percent of the Syrian population lives outside the Assad government’s control and thus beyond the reach of most aid. It is an assessment that is impossible to confirm but feasible because of the heavy population of the rebel-controlled north.
...
Among other obstructions, Mr. Assad has blocked any United Nations agencies from the shortest and safest route into rebel territory, across the opposition-controlled border with Turkey. “We do not have the government’s consent,” Mr. Laerke said. “So we cannot, as the United Nations, do that.” More...

Two months ago, when I wrote a blog at the Daily Kos about the UN aid that was going to Syria, saying:

The very idea that the United Nations was planning to give to the government of Syria, and you know who that means, over $500 million dollars with no real control, meaning really no strings attached, was to me so incredible that at first I didn't believe it.

I have been saying for a long time that that world body, and even the United States, was in reality in Assad's corner, but this bold contribution to his war effort surprised even me.

I got this response from the Daily Kos community:

Claudius Bombarnac

This diary is nonsense. Keep your politics out of things you know nothing about. The OCHA is not allowed to take sides nor make moral judgements in a conflict.

InAntalya

Your ignorance and maliciousness are breathtaking.

Claudius Bombarnac

Yes. The more I read it the more it comes across as a steaming pile of propaganda to further Claiborne's agenda. Now he's trying to politicize and weaponize humanitarian aid. It's a new low for Claiborne.

Blue Wind

Another terrible diary of lies and distortion of facts... As bad as the Assad regime is, an islamic fundamentalist regime in Syria would be worse.

Rusty Pipes

Thank you, IA and CB for your service to the reality-based community

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And of the "new" NATO support for Assad's opposition. the National out of Australia had this to say:

America's 'shift' towards Syria's rebels is a dangerous illusion
Radwan Ziadeh
Mar 9, 2013
It's often said that the longer a conflict lasts, the more complicated and difficult it is to find a solution to the conflict. Such a scenario applies completely to the Syrian revolution.

In the past few days, western media outlets have devoted much space to coverage of the supposedly major policy shift the United States has taken with the announcement that the US government will begin directly supporting Syrian rebels with non-lethal aid and training.

This "shift" would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. This change in position will do nothing to accomplish the original goal for which the Friends of Syria group was formed: hasten the end of the Syria conflict. Rather, it will only serve to maintain the horrible, bloody stalemate already established across the country. More...

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Whatever their differences with the Islamic fundamentalist opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra, most supporters of the struggle to overthrow Assad, including this writer, found it most unhelpfull that US President Obama decided to the declare them a terrorist organization while they are joined with others in this desperate struggle to put an end to Assad's slaughter. In that context, I found this interview revealing.

On 9 March 2013, Rima Marrouch and Kelly McEvers of NPR got a rare interview with a Jabhat al-Nusra fighter.

NPR: But today you were a bit upset that the media didn't publicize your demonstration.

BH: The problem is that the media has lost its credibility. The media's role is to convey what is happening on the ground without exaggeration. And it isn't the case. It's opposite. Especially when Jabhat al-Nusra was classified as a terrorist organization. It did not commit any terrorist acts outside Syria, and it doesn't have any links to al-Qaida, but it was classified as a terrorist organization. Why? Because it resisted [Syrian president] Bashar al Assad.

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Also today the BBC revisited a controversial massacre that took place in January:

Syria massacre: What happened in the village of Haswiya?
11 March 2013 Last updated at 02:44 ET
After news spread of a massacre in the village of Haswiya in central Syria on 15 January 2013, two accounts of what happened emerged.

Syrian security forces who escorted the BBC team to the site of the killings insisted the 100 deaths were the work of the al-Nusra Front - Islamist militants fighting alongside the rebels.

However, activists said pro-government gangs, known as Shabiha, were to blame.

Since then, the BBC has been trying to piece together the two narratives. Was this sectarian bloodletting by the state-sponsored militia or was it an attack by militants on a village that was supporting the government?
...
Another villager told how more than 100 people lost their lives.

"There were houses that were burnt with whole families inside them. There are children who were burnt in the arms of their mothers - down in the fields," one couple said.

According to the army, soldiers only entered the village later in the afternoon after villagers raised the alarm. They told the BBC it was then that they cleared the area and took away the bodies.

One woman, who spoke to the BBC off-camera, out of earshot of military minders, said Syrian soldiers were in the village that day, and that some had apologised that "others acted without orders".

Asked why the soldiers didn't protect the villagers, she said: "They were together, they are dressed in the same uniform. They were mixed."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based activist group, blames pro-government gangs, often referred to as Shabiha.

It described how some victims were "burnt inside their homes while others were killed with knives" and other weapons wielded by gunmen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

SOHR said it had also received reports that whole families were executed - one of them made up of 32 members.

Although accounts of the sequence of events vary, a number of sources describe how security forces entered the village around midday.

They describe how buses carrying the military drove to the outskirts of the village before soldiers disembarked and blocked all routes in and out.

It is claimed that soldiers then went from house to house conducting what appeared to be arrest operations and took a number of people away for questioning on the outskirts of the village. Some were later released.

Some sources tell how gunmen then came back into the village an hour or so later and began killing - executing people and burning their bodies. More...

When I reported on this horrific massacre two days after it happen in my blog at the Daily Kos, this was the response it got from some members of that community. Daily Kos management has since banned me from their site:

protectspice

Dude you are becoming a parody of...something. Here's an antidote for those who are still interested in reality.

He links to "Syria: Reuters Spreads Another 'Massacre' Lie - Debunked" which claims that Assad's opposition did the massacre at Haswiya
.
angry marmot

Clay mines any/all sources to justify his warped narrative.

Fire bad tree pretty

Hard to lift the fog when you've got the facts wrong.

Fire bad tree pretty

there are many theories, rumours and speculation but lots of doubt as to the perpetrators. Which is what should be reported rather than the partial and partisan dreck we get from this diarist.

Claudius Bombarnac

Villagers in Huwaisa don't appear to be afraid of the army. They came out of hiding when Bill Neely entered the town accompanied with them. It appears the rebels wanted to use the town as cover for an attack on a nearby military base.

Claudius Bombarnac

Getting very tired of Claiborne's 'hit and run'diaries. He makes unsubstantiated claims based mainly on unreliable tweets and unconfirmed reports as soon as there is a whiff of something in his desperate attempts of making "BREAKING NEWS". By the time his stories are debunked and the facts ascertained, he has moved on and produced another.

But don't you dare call these people pro-Assad. Don't you dare!

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

What Amy didn't say on International Women's Day

Amongst the litany of abuses that characterize the Syrian conflict, rape has emerged as a defining element of the displacement crisis.

Yesterday, 8 March 2013, was International Women's Day and Amy Goodman quite correctly dedicated her entire show, Democracy Now, to the topic of violence against women, but she said very little about the plight of women in Syria where more than two millions Syrians have been displaced in their own country and another million have been forced to flee to the relative safety of neighbouring countries, and rape is being systemically used as a weapon of war by the Assad regime.

In fact she said nothing. Zero! Nada! The Syrian women didn't exist as far as her show was concerned. Syria was never even mentioned!

Now, Monsanto's tonic seeds may indeed be a form of violence against women, as one of Amy's guests complained, but it is nothing when compared with murder by shoving a live rat up a women's vagina.

So while I lack the resources and staff of Democracy Now, this is something I feel strongly about while apparently this is not the case with Amy Goodman, who AFAIK has never done a segment on this question, or for many other organizations on the Left, so having just finished my first blog on my new site, I feel a great need to fill you in on some of what Amy, out of ignorance or indifference, failed to raise in her International Women's Day program focused on violence against women.

So here are some of the latest writings from those who are reporting on it:

Salon, this morning, asked the same question I am posing to Democracy Now except they asked it of all US media. My question is why is the so-called progressive Amy Goodman no better than the rest on this question:

Why is the U.S. media ignoring rape in Syria? Saturday, Mar 9, 2013 3:30 PM UTC
By Soraya Chemaly
There's plenty of American news coverage about the Syrian refugee crisis. But most of it is missing the real horror
The past several weeks have been filled with news reports about the catastrophic proportions of the Syrian refugee crisis. One news report after another describes disintegrating communities, lack of water and electricity, and the multidimensional hardships refugees face as they struggle to survive. With very few exceptions, however, these reports ignore rape and sexualized violence as a component of the crisis.

An International Rescue Committee report issued in January included surveys of Syrians in Lebanon and Jordan identifying “rape as a primary reason their families fled the country.” Less than two weeks ago, Erika Feller, assistant high commissioner for protection of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, explained while reporting to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, “This displacement is not only about loss of homes and economic security. It is also accompanied by gender-based crimes, deliberate victimization of women and children, and a frightening array of assaults on human dignity.” She specifically added, “Reports are revealing that the conflict in Syria is increasingly marked by rape and sexual violence employed as a weapon of war to intimidate parties to the conflict destroying identity, dignity and the social fabrics of families and communities.”

The IRC, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Amnesty International, and the Syrian Human Rights Committee consistently report that the role that rape and sexual assault play in this evolving disaster is significant; however, you would never know this by reading most mainstream U.S. media reporting. Despite the difficulties of gathering and verifying data regarding sexualized violence, there is no shortage of available data.

The Women Under Siege Project, which tracks the incidence of rape in militarized zones, has been collecting and mapping incidents of rape and sexualized violence taking place in Syria since April 2012. Women Under Siege is not suggesting that rapes have been ordered by the Assad regime (although the Syrian Human Rights Committee has documented rapes being ordered), but documenting rape and sexualized violence via detailed submissions gathered by journalists, researchers, doctors and activists. According to Lauren Wolfe, director of the Women Under Siege Project and an award-winning investigative journalist, victims range in age from toddlers to men in their 50s. Eighty percent of them are girls and women – many of whom are attacked in homes, at checkpoints and elsewhere in public. Men and boys are more likely to be assaulted in detention. One report describes the treatment for rape of more than 2,000 Syrian girls and women in Damascus, including some as young as 7. While anecdotal, stories like these are corroborated by first-person refugee accounts made to the International Rescue Committee, the Syrian Human Rights Committee and Human Rights Watch. More...

Forceable rape is one form of violence against women that is a camp follower in every war, prostitution is another. While I have written about rape in Syria a number of times before, I didn't realize that a large number of Syrian women were also being forced to prostitute themselves because of the circumstances that have been forced upon them by an uncaring world until I saw this AP piece yesterday.

From AP on International Women's Day:

Desperate, some fleeing Syria turn to prostitution8 Mar 2013
Jamal Halaby
ZAATARI, Jordan (AP) - Walk among the plastic tents in one corner of this sprawling, dust-swept desert camp packed with Syrian refugees, and a young woman in a white headscarf signals.

"Come in, you'll have a good time," suggests Nada, 19, who escaped from the southern border town of Daraa into Jordan several months ago. Her father, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard and a traditional red-checkered headscarf, sits outside under the scorching sun, watching silently.

Nada prices her body at $7, negotiable. She says she averages $70 a day.

Several tents away, a clean-shaven, tattooed young Syrian man, who says he was a barber back in the city of Idlib, offers his wife. "You can have her all day for $70," he promises. He says he never imagined he would be selling his own wife, but he needs to send money back to his parents and in-laws in Syria, about $200 a month. More...

Brookings published this on International Women's Day:

Syria's Unseen Crisis: Displaced Women Face Rape, Insecurity, PovertyMarch 8, 2013
By: Megan Bradley
In the past week, the Syrian refugee crisis has grabbed headlines around the world as the number of Syrians who have had to seek asylum abroad reached one million. But there is another, less-discussed displacement crisis unfolding inside Syria. Syria’s internally displaced population passed the two million-mark months ago – by some estimates, there are more than three million Syrians uprooted within their country, most out of reach of international aid and media attention. The consequences of this crisis have been catastrophic for all displaced persons, but particularly for women and girls. International Women’s Day is a chance to give these consequences the attention they deserve, but have lacked so far.

In a bleak irony, today – International Women’s Day – is also a public holiday in Syria, commemorating the 1963 coup that brought the Baathist party to power and saw Hafez al-Assad take over as commander of the Syrian air force. Assad eventually became president of Syria and, for all his sins, was a proponent of equal rights for women. Under the rule of his son, Bashar al-Assad, however, Syria has become a living hell for its women, particularly for the millions who have had to flee their homes since the country’s crisis began two years ago.

Amongst the litany of abuses that characterize the Syrian conflict, rape has emerged as a defining element of the displacement crisis. The International Rescue Committee, a leading aid agency, reports that among Syrian refugees in Jordan and Lebanon, rape was a primary motive for their flight. Inside Syria, increasing incidents of sexual violence suggest that rape is being used as a weapon of war. As the Assistant UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported recently to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the displacement crisis is “accompanied by gender-based crimes, deliberate victimization of women and children and a frightening array of assaults on human dignity.” Attacks are often carried out in public, compounding the humiliation and stigma endured by those who survive More...

Here is another report from the Daily Beast back in August:

Syrian Army Accused of Vicious, Systematic RapeAug 13, 2012 2:58 PM EDT
Jamie Dettmer reports from inside Syria on allegations of vicious sexual violence by the Syrian Army.

She speaks haltingly. Telling the story isn’t easy for the 38-year-old Syrian Sunni Muslim, and she won’t be explicit about the physical details that suggest her friend had been raped before dying. Coaxed by her husband, and with her 4-year-old daughter fidgeting by her side, Saima talks quietly of the slaughter of her husband’s first wife, of her own near-death, and of the rape of a friend in their hometown of Homs in west Syria.

Her story adds to mounting allegations that Syrian forces—most especially the pro-government Shabiha civilian militia, the ultraloyal enforcers of embattled President Bashar al-Assad’s regime—are using sexual violence and rape to terrify and punish rebels, adding to the cruelty of an 18-month-long conflict that has seen the government shoot unarmed civilians, including children, and shell populated areas, and has seen the rebels torture and execute captured Shabiha militiamen.

“Syrian government forces have used sexual violence to torture men, women, and boys,” says Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Soldiers and pro-government armed militias have sexually abused women and girls as young as 12 during home raids and military sweeps of residential areas.”

The stigma of sexual assault runs deep in Syrian culture as it does across the Middle East; rape is shaming and casts dishonor, and it is especially difficult for Salma to speak of such things with a male stranger, making her testimony that much more significant and plausible. Dressed in black, her head covered by a hijab, Saima displays her scarred hand. She’d raised it instinctively as bullets were flying to shield her daughter when the Shabiha stormed their home and started shooting randomly. More...

Here are some other blogs I written about violence against women in Syria:
Rape in Syria: Woman dies after encounter with rodent
Assad's systematic use of Rape in Syria
Why did this Syrian mother try to kill her own child?

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria
UPDATE: 10 March 2013: Rape is an ongoing problem in Syria. The Daily Beast published this piece today, so I'm adding it as an update to yesterday's blog:

Teen Activist Speaks Out On Rape In Syria’s Prisonsby Kristin Deasy
Mar 10, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
A teen activist speaks out about the abuse she saw in Assad’s prisons.
At 2 in the morning in a Syrian prison, teen detainee Khetam Bneyan woke to the sound of summons from President Bashar al-Assad’s security guards. But they had not come for her. Instead, they led away a fellow prisoner whose subsequent treatment, Bneyan said, embodied her worst nightmare: Rape.

Bneyan’s fellow prisoner was tied down and forcibly penetrated during questioning that night, according to the 19-year-old, whose “biggest fear” during detainment was, she later said, similar treatment at the hands of her jailers.

It is not clear how often rape occurs behind bars or elsewhere in Syria, but Bneyan’s story testifies to its use as a weapon of intimidation. Bneyan was paranoid about it but had become “less worried” after surviving nearly three weeks in jail without being threatened or seeing anyone else threatened, she said--that is, until she glimpsed the “yellow” face of her fellow prisoner, a young woman believed married to a man working for the anti-government rebel forces.

“You could tell that something had happened to her,” Bneyan told me through an interpreter over Skype, saying the woman came back from questioning wearing different clothing and then spent hours in the bathroom, which she said was against protocol. Bneyan said that the woman told her she was raped by a Syrian army military captain, who forced her onto a bed and tied her arms and legs to keep her down. “When he started to rape her, she started to scream,” Bneyan said, detailing the conversation she said she had with the woman and one other detainee hours after the alleged crime:

“He said, ‘no one will help you.’ And then he opened the door, so everyone [other prison guards] could hear. He said, ‘See? No one's going to help you.’ He then said, ‘let the FSA [rebel Free Syria Army] help you.’ He then said, ‘you must confess and you must help us. Confess.’ This was after the first time." Bneyan said the 25-year-old woman described being raped twice, but “when she got to this point [in describing the first rape] in the story, the girl broke down." More...

Al Arabia has this piece on violence against women in Syria:

Thousands of Syrian women are detained, kidnapped and tortured: watchdogSaturday, 9 March 2013
The Syrian Human rights network has found that 4257 women have been killed by the Syrian regime security forces since the start of the revolution in March 2011.

As for female detainees, there are at least 6400 women, including 1000 university students.

However, authorities continue to refuse handing out or revealing any information on the fate of the detained women or their locations.

In addition to this, 1200 women were kidnapped by members of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, according to the watchdog network.

Most of the women who disappeared were in the areas of Homs, Latakia and Damascus.

The Syrian network has also said, those kidnapped were subject to systemic torture and ill-treatment during their capture.

The network mentioned more than 700 women were raped inside the security branches.

Women in Syria were subject to other types of sexualized violence, ranging from verbal abuse to direct sexual harassment.

This would take place while regime forces were strip searching them at the checkpoints within cities that were still under the regime’s control, or during raids executed by Assad’s forces.

The Syrian human rights network stated in its report that the fear around sexualized violence is one of the main reasons why hundreds of thousands of Syrian women have sought refuge in neighboring countries.

Plz join Syrian Women Conference: empowering , impacting and shaping the future. Washington, D.C. 3-17-2013 #Syria twitter.com/mannoush/statu…

— Mouna Hashem منى ☪† (@mannoush) March 10, 2013