Obama blocks ICC war crimes prosecution of Assad

Confirming what I wrote a year ago in Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar al-Assad, the Obama Administration is now joining with Russia and China in blocking the International Criminal Court prosecution of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for war crimes.

UN watchdog, Innercity Press posed this question on Monday:

Do the US, France and the UK want to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court in the Security Council resolution they are proposing? And if so, why didn't the US negotiate for that in its Geneva deal with Russia?

They also said that in the UN Q&A session following the Secretary General's report on the 21 August chemical weapons attack, although a majority of the countries favor bringing Syria before the ICC:

[US Ambassador Samantha] Power did not answer the question, does the US want an ICC referral for Syria?

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times gave a more definitive answer:

A day after United Nations inspectors confirmed a nerve gas attack in Syria, the European Union's foreign policy chief joined many of America's closest allies in demanding that Syria's leaders be brought to justice for what U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called a war crime.

That isn't likely to happen, however. In addition to Russian and Chinese objections, the Obama administration has withheld support, partly because it doesn't want to jeopardize any deal that might end the bloodshed in Syria.

Of course everybody says they want to end the bloodshed in Syria. The country's that favor bringing the matter to the ICC are doing so because they think that might help to end the bloodshed in Syria.

Russia says it wants to end the bloodshed in Syria even as it continues to send the Assad Regime weapons. The Chinese say that they want to end the bloodshed in Syria and they have joined with Russia to veto any effective UN action to stop Assad's aerial bombardment of civilians.

And now the Obama Administration, in the name of stopping the bloodshed in Syria, is joining with Russia and China to block the prosecution of Bashar al-Assad in the Hague.

So we can see that the courtship continues.

Like I've been saying:
The Courtship Continues: Obama's New Gift to Assad
How Obama Helped Assad Kill with Poison Gas in Syria
Win-Win for Assad as Obama Response to CW Mass Murder Put on Hold
Obama's Dilemma and Assad's Opportunity
Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar al-Assad
Obama Denied Gas Masks to Assad's Victims
Barack Obama's Courtship of Bashar al-Assad Exposed!
Obama "green lights" Assad's slaughter in Syria
Assad's Redline and Obama's Greenlight!
Chemical weapons use in Syria, Has Obama's red-line has been crossed?
AP weighs in on Obama's Green Light for Assad's slaughter in Syria
Syria: Obama's moves Assad's "red line" back as SOHR reports 42,000 dead!
SecState John Kerry and his "dear friend" Bashar al-Assad
How Obama's 'No MANPADS for you' policy in Syria is backfiring
More thoughts on Obama's 'No MANPADS for you!' policy
Obama: Did the CIA betray Assad's opposition in Syria?

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UN hints Assad used Russian rockets in sarin gas attack

The United Nations has this day released a report on its investigation into the attack that took place in the Damascus suburbs in Syria on 21 August 2013. The investigation found that sarin gas rockets were used to kill hundreds while they slept. While the report was not allowed to name the perpetrator, all the evidence points to the Assad Regime. Furthermore, it would appear that the source of some of the rockets used in the chemical attack is the very country that is expected to oversee Assad disarmament of chemical weapons, Russia!

The Secretary General gave the report's main conclusions in his introduction, saying that the investigation found that:

chemical weapons were used on a relatively large scale, resulting in
numerous casualties, particularly among civilians and including many children.

In the language of international law, he declared:

this act is a war crime and grave violation of the 1925 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases

In summing up the results of the on-site investigation and the laboratory testing, the UNGS concluded:

the environmental, chemical and medical samples. we have collected, provide clear and convincing evidence that surface-to-surface rockets containing the nerve agent sarin were used in Ein Tanna. Moadamiyah and Zamalka in the Ghouta area of Damascus.

A No-Fault Investigation
The UN investigation was a bit of an oddly as criminal investigations go because they had already agreed, as a condition to be allowed into Syria and investigate, that no responsible party would be named. They could determine if a chemical agent was used and various details, such as the exact type and method of delivery, but not who used them. No culprit would be named.

In spite of these limitations, the UN investigation and report provide a wealth of details and information, all of which point to the Assad regime as the source of what we can now definitively say was a sarin gas attack.

Most of these details point to a very large scale and professional attack. Al Qaeda or other jhidist groups have never carried out a sarin gas attack, even a little amateur one, anywhere in the world and the Syrian opposition has no known chemical weapons capabilities, but the Assad Regime does. Bashar al-Assad has Republican Guard units with a chemical weapons speciality and the facts of the report point to them as the culprits.

That unit would know just the right time and weather conditions to kill the most, as the UN reported:

22. Weather information from Damascus on the morning of 21 August shows a falling temperature between 0200h and 0500h in the morning (Worldweatheronline.com). This means that the air is not moving from the ground upwards, but rather the opposite. Chemical weapons use in such meteorological conditions maximizes their potential impact as the heavy gas can stay close to the ground and penetrate into lower levels of buildings and constructions where many people were seeking shelter.

What the report didn't say was that the people had already been trained to run to the lower levels of buildings and constructions whenever they heard incoming rockets by weeks of Assad Regime bombardment with conventional high-explosives, a bombardment that continued even after the gas attack.

They also determined the method of delivery:

21. Information gathered about the delivery systems used was essential for the investigation. Indeed, several surface to surface rockets capable of delivering significant chemical payloads were identified and recorded at the investigated sites. These were carefully measured, photographed and sampled. Samples later confirmed to contain Sarin were recovered from a majority of the rockets or rocket fragments. For more detailed information and assessments see Appendix 5.

And we will be skipping ahead to some of those very interesting details in Appendix 5 shortly, but before we get to that, it should be noted that the UN report found that the sarin was of an exceptionally high quality. One might be tempted to call it "Breaking Bad" quality. In anycase, it put the stuff Saddam Hussein used to shame.

It also comments on the delicate question of stabilizers, saying:

According to the reports received from the OPCW-designated laboratories, the presence of Sarin, its degradation and/or production by-products were observed in a majority of the samples. In addition, other relevant chemicals, such as stabilizers are indicated and discussed in Appendix 7.

The question of stabilizers rises to the fore when it comes to fixing blame. The presence of certain chemicals such as stabilizers typically separates somebody's "homebrew" sarin from the military grade stuff. Wikipedia has this to say on the question of sarin and stabilizers:

Its otherwise-short shelf life can be extended by increasing the purity of the precursor and intermediates and incorporating stabilizers such as tributylamine. In some formulations, tributylamine is replaced by diisopropylcarbodiimide (DIC), allowing sarin to be stored in aluminium casings.

Like rocket tubes.

In Appendix 7, under the heading of "Other Interesting Chemicals" found in their tests, is listed, along with a lot of other long names, one identified as Diisopropyl. I will leave it to the chemists to ID this and the others but I would say that the implications of this aspect of the UN report is that the attack was done with a military grade of sarin gas and that points to the Assad Regime.

There is also the matter of trajectory. In the case of two of the rocket landings they examined, the UN investigator were able to make a determination as to which direction they came from. Unsurprisingly, they appear to have come from regime controlled territory.

Trajectory of rocket that hit Ein Tarma. Showing exact location of Rep Guard base

Human Rights Watch Map

Russian rockets carried the sarin gas
Moving right along to Appendix 5, we have a discussion of one of the two types of rockets used in this attack. The other type appears to be Syrian made:

Appendix 5
Munitions recovered in Moadarniyah and Zamalka/Ein Tarma
Observations and assessments from Moadamiyah findings:
The team began the investigation of an alleged impact site which was initially located in the backyard terrace of an apartment building. The information given to the Mission was that, in and around this building, persons either died or were affected by a toxic material after coming under attack via barrage on the 21 August 2013. The members of the Mission discovered, at this location, a small crater/impact point in the stone tiles which formed the floor of the terrace. Stone and earth debris were scattered outside of the crater as well as small metal fragments were visible in the locality. Of primary interest was the intact rocket motor found coincident to the impact crater. This rocket motor was noted to have stone and earth debris impacted in the front section of the motor identical to that found in the crater. There was no indication of damage around the crater area having been caused by blast or explosives. This implies that the warhead was not present upon final impact. Noting the location of the impact crater and other damage to the upper parts of existing knee/trellis work, the inspectors followed the trajectory of the rocket and determined that it initially impacted the corner of the second floor of an adjacent apartment building to the east, with either the warhead functioning or shearing off from the body at that point and the motor section having sufficient kinetic energy to continue along its path to its terminal impact location.

Following an overall reconnaissance of the area, the members of the Mission took samples, made detector readings (no detection indications on the LCD 3.3) and took measurements of the area and the discovered munition. The scene was photographed and video was recorded throughout the entire activity.

Upon further discussion with alleged witnesses, the team moved to the adjacent apartment
building where the initial debris from the first impact/functioning of the rocket was found. The Mission was told that the inhabitants of this location were also injured or killed by a `gas'. This location was also surveyed and no intact identifiable munitions fragments were located. Masonry debris and smaller metal fragments were noted and relevant samples were taken both inside the apartment where victims were alleged to have been as well as from the debris field.

The ordnance identified had the following characteristics:

Color: light gray painting

Markings:
1. Black numbers on the outside: 97-179
2. Engravings on the bottom ring of the engine: Г И Ш 4 25 - 6 7- 179 K Dimensions:
Length — 630 mm
Width — 140 mm

The engine had 10 jet nozzles ordered in a circle at the end of the rocket with a metal electrical contact plate in the middle.

Limitations:
The time necessary to conduct a detailed survey of both locations as well as take samples was very limited. The sites have been well travelled by other individuals both before and during the investigation. Fragments and other possible evidence have clearly been handled/moved prior to the arrival of the investigation team.

Graphic from UN Report

The United Nations report doesn't tell us where this rocket was made, for that we must turn to other sources. They do give us a hint by pointing out the Cyrillic script on the bottom of the engine casings.

Dr. Igor Sutyagin, Research Fellow, Russian Studies, with the Royal United Services Institute, has a video report on-line that identifies the very Siberian plant that the rocket body was made in. I have transcribed the part of his talk that relates to the rocket's source below the video clip. I'm sure "sheep-shin-moss" is not the correct spelling of the plant. My Russian ain't too good, so if you can help out, please leave a comment. [Thank You Brian O.]

[0:04:50] And the final piece is that marking "179." The Russian technical manuals on the M14 rocket says that is the marking of the plant which produced the rocket section body and that is located on the same part of the rocket body as was found in Damascus.

The American sources agree that. They also show this marking although they do not specify the meaning of the marking. That is very interesting to notice that the Russian armed forces still possesses the artillery rocket of the M14 type based on the M14 rocket body. Still possess it and just recently the Russian Ministry of Defence displayed them for journalists. I can show you the picture from the journalist tour on the Russian cruiser Moska in the Black Sea Fleet on a stopover on the 21st July of 2011. You can see the rockets PSP47 which utilizes the same rocket part as the M14 and I'd like to attract your attention to the fact that one of these rockets carry the very same marking - 179. So that is the same marking, actual marking, it is not false.

And the interesting fact about these markings on these rockets is that it was designed and assembled in CIS by the Institute of Applied Physics and nearby there is the plant called Sibselmash that is the Siberian Agriculture Machinery Plant, which is known to be the largest in Europe artillery/munitions plant but the most interesting part about that is that since 1936 Sibselmash plant had another coded name and that name was Combine No.179. So it seems that the rocket found on the Russian cruiser, as well as the rocket in the Damascus in was at some time produced in Sibselmash.

Conclusions
Lost in this focus on chemical weapons is the fact that Bashar al-Assad has done, and continues to do, the vast majority of his civilian slaughter without chemical weapons. He deserves to be overthrown for his many crimes against humanity even before his slaughter of over a thousand in Ghouta with sarin. This is the demand of the Syrian people.

But instead of increasing support for his ouster, the Obama administration is now partnering with the Assad Regime in a deal with the practical implications that if the regime gives up chemical weapons, the weapons of greatest concern to Israel, Obama won't trouble it with military strikes while it continues to slaughter its own people with the more acceptable weapons he used to kill the first hundred thousand.

This is the deal with the devil that Obama is making, with Russia as the guarantor of Assad's performance. And what has been the Russian performance?

When, for three days, the Assad Regime denied that a chemical weapons attack had even happened in Ghouta, the Russian media said the video tapes of the dead and dying were all studio fabrications.

After the Assad regime was forced to admit that the attack had taken place, it blamed the attack on the opposition and the Russians have been saying the same thing.

The Russians are also partners in this toothless deal to rid Syria of its chemical weapons and even after this damning UN report, they still maintain that the Assad Regime didn't do it.

Meanwhile, Assad's conventional rockets keep falling on Ghouta without missing a clip, or making the news.

And now we know that the rockets that carried the sarin gas, although not necessarily the gas itself, came from Russia.

Putin is in to this deeper than I thought.

UPDATE 18 Sept 2013: The Siberian Times carries a piece today validation that this rocket body was made in Russia but also claiming 'The code 4-67-179 means the 4th batch in 1967 by factory 179'. The Russian source says that the Syrian government would never use something this old but blogger Brown Moses, who closely tracks weapons on both sides of the Syrian conflict, notes "They're still using cluster munitions from the early 70s, so 1967 isn't much more of a stretch."

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Sleeping with the Enemy: The Global Left and the 'No to War' Discourse

First Published on Jadaliyya, 15 Sept 2013:

The threat of a military strike on Syria has not aroused the enthusiasm of many. It has succeeded, however, in bringing the Syrian revolution to the discussion table. Until now, Syria has been notably absent from the list of priorities on the Western agenda, apparently a matter of little interest to governments and public opinion alike, to both the left and the right.

For the past two and a half years, the Syrian revolution did not manage to entice Western governments to push for an end to the tragic spiral of events. As long as each of the opposed parties in the Syrian conflict lack the capability and volition to ensure Western interests in the region, why make the investment of interference? Such was the gist of General Martin Dempsey’s remarks on the Syrian situation two days before the Ghouta massacre. Such indifference, however, was not exclusive to the governments of United States and European countries. Public opinion similarly lacked interest in the tens of thousands of deaths as well as the destruction of cities and villages. It was not until death in Syria crossed one of the West’s red lines—by showing evidence of the use of chemical weapons—that the people in Syria became a matter deserving of interest. At that point, the warships moved into position. Meanwhile, antiwar sentiments and commentary opposed to Western military intervention moved against them.

I am not concerned here with sorting out those who supported the strike from those who protested it. I am also unconcerned with the right-wing arguments put forward in this context that combined hatred for the Democratic Party with Islamophobia to end up with what is practically a defense of the Syrian regime. Rather, I am concerned with the debacle that came to painful light through the positions taken and discussions had by those on the left side of the political spectrum in reaction to the threat of a Western military strike on Syria.

Among the first to throw this debacle into sharp relief were the political activists who participated in anti-war protests and, in doing so, received a double blow. On one side, they saw themselves standing side-by-side with people holding up pictures of Syrian President Bashar al-Asad and, on the other side, they were surrounded by general anti-imperialism slogans without any particular relation to the Syrian people. The real tragedy, however, does not lie here. The sight of anti-war demonstrations drawing together sections of the far right and far left is familiar. The real tragedy emerged through the discourse that came, in the end, to dominate the left-wing opposition to the military strike. This discourse took its vocabulary from the tracts of the far right and, instead of turning its guns on imperialism, turned them on the Syrian people.

Indeed, a kind of role reversal happened between imperialism and its enemies. President Barack Obama did not exactly wear himself out designing an ideological banner for his next war. This time, there would be no “battle for democracy” or war in the name of “freedom for Afghan women.” Not even “freedom for the Syrian people.” This would be a war, rather, about American “red lines” and “national security.” Here, imperialism appeared totally bare, stripped of its characteristic self-presentation as the gate of redemption for the peoples of the world. To find a discourse singing this familiar refrain, one must move to the opposite side, where important anti-war left wing activists and thinkers have taken it upon themselves to promote the “white man’s” ideology, having paradoxically borrowed and redeployed an imperialist discourse in the name of fighting imperialism. They do not object to the idea of using the military strike to redeem the Syrian people. Rather, they object to it on another basis: the revolutionary Syrians do not deserve to be redeemed because they have not proven their radical qualifications and secular-democratic orientation, so we should not interfere on their behalf. In making its case against military intervention, the discourse of opposition to the military strike thus fell into the trap of cultural imperialism when it thought it was standing against military imperialism.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, some have attempted to “apply” the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the Syrian situation, or at least read the latter through the lens of the former. It has evidently escaped this group that the very same discourse at the core of George W. Bush’s ideological mantra has been reconstructed to the letter by the Syrian regime and its allies. It has gotten to the point that you can find a full sentence from one of Bush’s speeches on the war against terror in the mouth of either Hizbollah’s Secretary-General (who, at long last, is obsessed with the “takfiris”), or select leaders of the secular Arab left. In the name of resistance to the military strike, the Bush discourse thus flutters between lines spoken by leftists who fought the Iraqi invasion tooth and nail. Perhaps the neoconservatives’ spirit has finally possessed them.

It was the same imperialist trap that pushed other leftists to switch over to the call for peace. Theirs is an auspicious call, yet surprising in that it comes directly after the moment chemical weapons were used, as if whoever wielded them is asking the victims to embrace Sarin gas after inhaling it. The sense of surprise does not last long upon realizing that these are peaceful calls of despair from all that moves on Syrian soil. Perhaps those who sounded this call do not see a need for a conflict to begin with, so long as those fighting in it do not match the profile according to the imperialist catalog, itself.

The danger of the global left’s discourse in its many permutations is not only that it dons imperialist garb in making its supposedly anti-imperialist argument, but that its logic betrays its opposition to any sort of interference whatsoever—whether imperialist or otherwise, under UN auspices or not, in or out of line with international law. Those who have built this discourse oppose military intervention not because of the intervening power’s identity, but because of the people on whose behalf that power would be intervening. They oppose intervention not because of the objectives of the former, but because of the lacking qualifications of the latter.

The issue here is not one of sorting the “good leftists” from the “bad leftists.” I do not think that such a categorization is possible, anyway. However, I am haunted by a question: What makes a sincere leftist discourse slip into becoming a retouched version of the Islamophobic right? It seems that there is an elephant in the room. Is it the ghost of the Soviet Union? Eurocentrism? Priorities of geostrategy?

I do not know what the elephant is. But I know the ant. I know that the Arab revolutions, since their beginnings, were revolutions without specific promises and claims. They were revolutions against oppression and injustice more than they were revolutions aimed at implementing premeditated programs and ideas. To borrow from Walter Benjamin, these are “revolutions nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than that of liberated grandchildren.”* Perhaps, in this meaning, a revolution like that which has emerged in Syria has not emerged in the other Arab countries. The revolutionaries of Syria appear in this game to be effective subalterns: those who do not have a voice and who can't speak to Western academic circles, even the left-wing ones among them. Mount Qasyun alone hears their voice and awaits their arrival, no matter how long it takes.

* Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, trans. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968): 260.

[This article was originally published in Arabic on Jadaliyya. It was translated into English by Angela Giordani]

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Inside the Syrian Revolution and what the Left must do

Republished from International Viewpoint:

Radio interview of Yasser Munif
Tuesday 10 September 2013

Dr. Yasser Munif, professor at Emerson College, has recently visited Syria, witnessed the revolution there, and spoken and written about it (including an interview with scholar Nigel Gibson at Jadaliyya.) He talks about what he saw, the troubles facing revolutionaries in Syria, the very oppositional distinction between revolutionaries and jihadists, and more. And he talked about the Left’s perception of what’s going on, and how so many are getting it wrong on Syria.

Yasser Munif: This summer I actually spent two months in Syria, in northern Syria, the liberated area, and it was a very humbling experience. I learned a lot and I saw a popular revolution, an ongoing popular revolution. People are rebuilding institutions, they are managing their cities after the fall of the state and the regime, and it is a very challenging task to do because there are no resources, there is no funding, and there are permanent attacks by the regime. Those areas I’m talking about in the north are liberated: there are no clashes on the ground. But there are constant airstrikes and missiles are launched on these cities.

So people are coming up with creative solutions: they are creating political institutions. There are local councils in each one of those cities and they meet on a weekly basis. They discuss everything in the city and they try to solve their problems.

And so there are millions of people who hear the media in the West and elsewhere talking about civil war and so on, and most of these people reject those labels. They believe there is a popular revolution in Syria. It’s true that it’s at a critical period and there are challenging tasks ahead of them, and there are jihadists who are trying to undermine their work, and obviously the regime.

Jeff Napolitano: And the jihadists are often sort of clustered in or considered part of the “rebels” but they are, as you say, quite distinct from the revolution itself.

YM: Right. It’s been about three or four months now. The revolutionaries are actually fighting on two fronts. On the one hand there is the regime, on the other hand there is the Al-Nusra and Al-Qaeda-created groups, the jihadists. And the jihadists are actually arresting, torturing, killing many activists — people who have been resisting since day one. Most of the Al-Qaeda-created groups are not really fighting the regime. They are staying in those northern parts. They are letting the Free Syrian Army and other factions to fight the regime and they come behind them and take over whatever liberated cities or villages there are. So they’re very vicious. As I said, they’re arresting activists. Anyone who criticizes them is arrested, tortured, sometimes killed. Right now they have more than 1,500 activists in their prisons.

So as you can see, there are two fronts in Syria right now: the jihadists on the one hand, and the regime on the other. And that’s why many people believe that the jihadists are in some way or another actually allied to the Syrian regime. Al-Qaeda is actually selling oil to the regime. The pipeline has to go through the region controlled [inaudible] between Al-Qaeda-created groups and the regime to get that oil to reach the coast.

So things are much more complex than they seem here in the U.S. where most of the time you read articles about “Al-Qaeda” and “Al-Qaeda,” and Al-Qaeda is actually not part of the revolution. It is anti-revolutionary.

JN: Right, the dominant debate in Congress it seems is, “Well, if we bomb Syria (and the fear isn’t actually bombing Syria) the fear is who is going to come to power if we bomb Syria.” So that’s sort of what the dialogue is. There are apparently many people in Congress, Republicans particularly, who seem to think that the problem with bombing Syria is just that Al-Qaeda is going to take over the country, as opposed to the fact that bombing the country is just not a good idea.

One of the popular myths (or I don’t know if it’s a myth, but you tell me), or impressions is that the rebels or revolutionaries (they’re not referred to as “revolutionaries,” they’re referred to as “rebels”) is that the folks that oppose Asad and the regime are in favor of a strike on Syria. Is that the case?

YM: You know, from far away I can’t really tell. I think that the population is split, many people are against. I think that some people, because of the destruction and the violence and the killing, they’re seeing the strike as a “way out,” but I don’t think that they are necessarily the majority. People have learned in the past 30 months that no one is really allied to their cause or cares about the Syrian population, that the Syrian people don’t really have any friends (because some people talk about the “Friends of Syria” and so on) and they understood that the West — Europe and the U.S. — are not necessarily in favor of the victory of the revolution. Actually, people know that — you know, when you talk to the average person in Syria in those liberated areas — they tell you that whenever they’re losing any territory or region when they’re fighting against the regime, they receive weapons; whenever they are winning, the weapons stop coming. And the reason why this is, is because the West and the U.S. want to see this war go on as a stalemate because that’s in their interest. They’re not necessarily in favor of the regime, and they’re not necessarily very favorable for the revolutionaries, or what they call “Al-Qaeda” to win. So the best thing for the U.S. has been so far to keep this conflict going. And that’s also in the interest of Israel, they don’t necessarily want to see the revolutionaries to win. And actually, for many Israeli politicians and U.S. politicians, they are in favor of a weakened Bashar in power.

JN: I’m really curious because nobody ever talks about this, or at least not in popular media in the United States, in fact most of the stuff that I read on the Left is about why it’s a bad idea to bomb Syria, but they don’t actually talk about what the revolution actually looks like.

And you’re talking about rebuilding institutions, and I’m sort of reminded the thing that I studied when I was in graduate school was the Spanish Revolution — the republican revolution that was fueled by the anarchists and the socialists in the 1930s — and they, too, were also struggling on sort of a war with two fronts: one being the fascists, and one the Communists, but that’s a different story. But what I was struck by are the descriptions of what the Revolution actually looked like in Spain, and sort of the egalitarian society that sort of just sprouted there. What does the revolution look like on the ground in Syria?

YM: The revolution is very complex, it’s very multi-layered, there are actually different things happening and going on. The most dominant part, let’s say, is the popular revolution, but there is also an ongoing semi-Cold War between the U.S. and its allies on the one hand, and Russia and its allies on the other. There is also a conflict between Iran and its allies on the one hand, and Israel and the Gulf on the other. So there are all these different layers of this conflict, but the most dominant one — and that’s what many Syrians believe — is the popular revolution. And I think this is very important to understand.

And another reason to compare the Syrian revolution to the Spanish War as you were saying is that every leftist, every progressive has an opinion about what is happening in Syria, as was the case with the Spanish Revolution many years ago. And most of the left, unfortunately, is taking the wrong position. They’re understanding the Syrian revolution in a very binary and reductive way—-

JN: Is this the U.S. left or even the left in Syria?

YM: Even the left in Syria, the Arab left, and the U.S. and European left is split. For the most part, they are understanding this conflict as a war between, on the one hand, the U.S. and [on the other hand] people who are against the U.S.: “anti-imperialists” according to some people, so that would include Hizballah, Iran, Syria, and they believe that Syria has been helping Palestinians and so on. They have a very ignorant understanding of Syrian history and how violent the Syrian regime has been for the past 40 years, and how many times they betrayed the Palestinian struggle, and so on. And so in some ways those leftists or progressives are actually embracing the Bush doctrine: the either/or, where you don’t have any kind of complexity in your position—-

JN: The “either you’re with us or against us?”

YM: Yes, the binary, the reductive way of thinking about the revolution. And I think this is very detrimental. It’s sending the wrong message to the Syrian people. Many Syrians believe that the left by default is for the regime. Recently we have seen demonstrations in New York and other cities with people demonstrating against the war, but also holding and carrying pictures of Asad.

JN: In Boston, for example, just the other day I saw pictures. There was a prominent picture in the Boston Globe in an article against the protests and they focused on a group of people in the crowd who were waving Syrian flags that had Asad’s picture emblazoned in the middle of it, and portrayed the entire march as not just being against the strike on Syria, but being in favor of Asad. But I know from inside knowledge from some of the organizations that sponsored it, that that was antithetical to the message of what they were trying to get across.

YM: Right, right. And the left is — *that* left (I don’t want to generalize) — that part of the left is losing its credibility. People either in the U.S. or in the Arab world or in Syria won’t necessarily get the message that this is really a message against the war. They’re going to see the pictures of Asad and understand that this is really propaganda, it’s not really against the war.

I think that the left has a real task ahead of it. It has to really formulate a new position, a more coherent position. A position where one can be at the same time against the war and also against dictatorship. And as long as they don’t do that, I think that they won’t have any kind of credibility. People in Syria will see that as almost a license to kill because the Syrian regime has been actually broadcasting those demonstrations on Syrian State TV, showing how much it is popular in the West and that people are demonstrating in the streets of New York and other cities showing those pictures of Asad. Actually the Syrian regime is not even able to organize such demonstrations or rallies in Syria, so it was very happy to see that emerging in many parts. And many of the people who are demonstrating actually don’t know anything about the reality that Syrians are living, and their struggles, and their fights, and their everyday resistance, and what they’re trying to build, and the creativity in what they’re doing.

I think that one is very humbled when you go to Syria and see what people are doing. And I think there is also racism, and just denying any kind of agency to the Syrians and saying, “this is all a conspiracy, the U.S. has been planning this since the beginning, it is conspiring against Asad,” and so on. And that means that the Syrians don’t have any agency, they can’t really think for themselves, they can’t really make a revolution, and so on. And I think that this is a big mistake that the left is doing.

JN: So I have the prescription that the General Secretary of the American Friends Services Committee put out in a letter to the President and to Congress, and what she calls for — and you let me know what you think of this — but what she calls for is a comprehensive arms embargo to all parties of the conflict, that the only solution in Syria is a political solution, and that we urge (“we” being the AFSC, “we” being the population of the United States), urge to provide full support to the efforts of Lakhdar Ibrahimi, the joint UN-Arab League envoy, into press for a rapid convening of a Geneva II Conference, and that the U.S. should seek a transition that builds on existing institutions rather than replacing them, and does not alienate those people who have served the government or the army. So that is the top of my organization that prescribes those as what we should do from here. What would you think about that, and what do you think that we should do? “We” being the U.S. population, the left in the U.S.

YM: I think the most important thing to do (for the progressive movement and for people who really care about the Arab revolution and they want to see them go somewhere, and support them, and show their solidarity) is basically move away from the alliances with different states, and build a social movement that supports the Syrian population.

And that solidarity of support can take many different forms. It can be through reporting: actually a responsible journalist who goes to Syria and sees what is happening on the ground, and try to take their job seriously. And not only report the in-fighting and the military aspect of the revolution because I think that’s only the tip of the iceberg and that’s the most visible part, but this is not the most important part. I think what is happening in Syria is much more than that. There are many revolutions going on in every field: the political, the cultural, the social, the economic. People are really creating new institutions with new ideas, they are trying to tackle the most difficult problems and try to solve them. And so I think that’s part of what could be done.

People need doctors, they need engineers, they need any type of activist that could help them. All this type of solidarity, basically trying to replicate what people have been doing in Palestine: trying to build a global solidarity movement that transcends the state-centric kind of politics that has been taking place in the past 30 months only revolving around governments, and states, and armies, and so on. I think that’s the most powerful message that we can send to the Syrian population: building an alternative social movement that’s global, and that really understands the complexity of the Syrian revolution and doesn’t reduce it to “jihadists” and “Al-Qaeda,” and understand that there are these different layers. Progressives and leftists should really push for the revolutionary part, and not just repeat this narrative of the “conspiracy” that just reduces it to what we’ve been seeing in the media.

Listen to the interview on the following link

Interview transcribed by Linda Quiquivix

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Syria Doc "Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution" Released

The Syria documentary film "Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution" by Matthew VanDyke

Published on Sep 12, 2013

The award-winning documentary film about Syria, Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution, directed by Matthew VanDyke. Keep reading to learn how YOU can help Syria NOW:

This film has won more than a dozen awards and is an official selection in more than 60 film festivals around the world - http://www.syrianrevolutionfilm.com

Director Matthew VanDyke has released the film online for free and without any ads on it weeks ahead of schedule because NOW is the critical time for YOU to take action in support of Syria.
This is YOUR film.

NOW is the time to mobilize and tell your country's leaders that you want intervention in Syria to stop the bloodshed and bring freedom to 20 million people.

If you support freedom in Syria then do your part each day this week:

1. This page will soon be attacked by supporters of the Assad regime who will post negative and defamatory comments so that when people around the world read those comments they will believe there is little support for the Syrian revolution. If you support the cause of freedom in Syria please leave YOUR comments below the video and be heard. People around the world will be reading them!

2. Each day, mobilize on social media to make this film go viral. Tweet, post, share it everywhere you can think of. Use Reddit, LinkedIn, blogs, email lists, everything possible to use this film to help move public opinion in favor of supporting the Syrian revolution. This is a critical time for the revolution - world leaders are listening to the public and Congress has been flooded with phone calls about Syria. We must change public opinion and this film is a powerful way to do that.

3. Each day, tweet and email the link for this film to members of Congress, the White House, and leaders around the world. They should see this film and hear the words of Nour and Mowya before making their decisions on Syria. A DVD of "Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution" has been sent to each of the 535 members of the United States Congress, but they are far more likely to watch the film if you tweet the link to them and encourage them to watch the film online, or to watch "the disc on their desk"!

Subscribe to this channel for more videos from Syria coming soon, and possibly another film in the future. This is YOUR film and YOUR channel. Be a part of the movement for a Free Syria.

Get updates about the film and Matthew VanDyke's continuing work in Syria by following him on his website: http://www.matthewvandyke.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Matt_VanDyke
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Matthe...
Google+: https://plus.google.com/1047939858539...

"Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution" is a 15 minute documentary film about the war in Syria, directed by American Matthew VanDyke (a former prisoner of war and combat veteran of the Libyan Revolution in 2011 - http://www.matthewvandyke.com), and produced by Matthew VanDyke and Nour Kelze (a Syrian journalist who is also the star of the film).

The film tells the story of the Syrian struggle for freedom as experienced by a 32 year old rebel commander, Mowya, and a 24 year old female journalist, Nour Kelze, in Aleppo, Syria.

The film clearly and concisely shows why the Syrian people are fighting for their freedom, told through the emotional words of two powerful characters whose lives have been turned upside down and torn apart by war.

This documentary film was a very personal project for director Matthew VanDyke. Having fought in the Libyan Revolution in 2011, he identified with Syrian Revolution and was compelled to make a film that would show the world who the Syrian rebels are and what they are fighting for. In this spirit, he hopes to eventually release the film in 20 languages so that people around the world can truly understand the fight for freedom in Syria.

Filming in Syria was dangerous and difficult. VanDyke and Kelze faced aerial bombardment, artillery, mortars, snipers, and the persistent threat of kidnapping. In addition, VanDyke was branded a terrorist by the Assad regime on the Syrian State TV channels.

This will take a continuous effort. Please step up and join the team. Each of you must do your part each day to spread this film and its message if it is going to have the impact it was created to have.
If you care about Syria, about humanity, about the right of men and women to choose their own leaders and destiny, about liberty and justice for ALL, then this is YOUR film.

Use it to make your impact on this revolution!

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria