Two Syrians
April 12th, 2011 § 2 Comments
Here are two slightly differing takes on accusations that the protests in Syria have an overly Sunni and anti-minority character. First, from someone in Damascus:
There are claims that the Ismailis weren’t part of these protests but actually al-Salamiya was one of the first towns in Syria to protest after Daraa, then other areas followed.
In Banias last Friday, the Sheikhs invited an Alawite speaker to address the protesters.
I find the word “Islamist” quite problematic. I mean, in Syria many are religious, but Islamists? what does that even mean? They want to impose an Islamic state? Doesn’t that mean that the Syrian people would be supportive of the Ikhwan’s ideology? What’s interesting is that many disapprove of the regime AND the Ikhwan’s ideology, so we’re talking about conservative Muslims not Islamists, conservative when it comes to their daily lives and when it comes to their daughters, but when we talk about Islamists, we’re talking about a political discourse that wants to turn Syria into an Islamic state, a discourse that we haven’t heard thus far in any of these protests, nor from Sheikhs of Banias, Douma and Homs, who addressed the president with a statement and clear demands.
Libyan revolution and more infantile leftism
April 11th, 2011 § 40 Comments
The asinine commentary issuing from some leftist quarters, the wild-conspiratorial ramblings, the incapacity to handle dilemmas — all of this would be amusing if it weren’t for the slanders and falsehoods which have so quickly ossified into conventional wisdom. Over half a century after Richard Hofstadter wrote his famous essay it appears the paranoid style still thrives in the politics of both the left and right. The western leftists’ answer to liberation struggles elsewhere is to project their own impotence and assume that there must be a grand conspiracy at play. How else could ordinary people take charge of their own lives and refuse to be silenced and repressed? No, they must be Al Qaeda, or CIA agents, or both — as figures such as Alexander Cockburn, Edward Herman and John Pilger have imperiously declared (relying on a report by West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center no less–never mind that it is a dubious outfit run by neoconservative terrorologists). What better way to divest yourself of moral dilemmas? Blame the victims!
There is a good reason why radicals of the left often find it so easy to turn into radicals of the right. Both are possessed of a Manichean worldview governed by absolutes, free of moral dilemmas, disdainful of ambiguity. This kind of simple-mindedness is the prerogative of those who are either completely powerless and thus free of responsibility, since their actions are of no consequence, or of the absolutely powerful, whose actions are beyond accountability. The rest of us, alas, are doomed to a world where the choices are rarely as simple as between ‘good’ and ‘bad.’
Jeffrey Blankfort has some apt comments:
Also, check out Stephen Shalom’s commentary on Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s speech on Libya.
Who Will Survive in the End
April 11th, 2011 § 23 Comments
By Nafissa Assed
free Benghazi
As the 17th February commemorates the memory of the fallen victims of the Abu Salim prison massacre, when over 1200 prisoners were brutally executed, the 7th April is also known as one of those days that witnessed some of the worst abuses of human rights in Libyan history. On 7th April 1976, Qaddafi ordered the persecution and public execution of Libyan university students who were suspected of opposing the regime. The same month of the same year also commemorates Qaddafi’s physical liquidation campaign against Libyan dissidents inside and outside Libya.
Today I called a family member in Libya and she told me that the living conditions and the level of terror in Tripoli are indescribable. People go to the gas stations, wait for hours, and when their turn comes, they may be unlucky and find none left. There is no money in banks anymore. Every time she goes to the bank, they keep telling her the same thing: that there is no money. People barely go out, and what’s worse is that there are many elderly and babies who must receive weekly treatment in clinics. The critical living conditions of Tripoli are disrupting its economic life gravely, as Malta stopped a fuel ship on its way to west Libya, preventing it from making its delivery in accordance with the UN blockade.
Gaza children caught in the crossfire
April 10th, 2011 § 5 Comments
In three days of fighting 18 Palestinians have been killed and dozens injured, while two Israelis have been wounded.
Syrian Protests and Bullets
April 9th, 2011 § 2 Comments
Three films from demonstrations in Syria yesterday. People protested in the suburbs of Damascus, Hama, Dera’a, the Kurdish north east, the desert town Raqqa and elsewhere. The first film shows a large crowd in Lattakia chanting ash-sha’ab yureed isqaat al-nizam – The People Want the Fall of the Regime. No reservations there. The second film shows security forces firing live ammunition at protestors in Homs. The third is Tartus. They’re chanting bi-rooh bi-dam nafdeek ya Dara’a – With Our Souls and Blood We Sacrifice for you, O Dara’a.
Cage and Wave
April 9th, 2011 § 4 Comments
Picture by Ali Farzat
This interview with Syria Comment’s Joshua Landis is well worth watching for background on Syria’s sectarian divisions and their influence on current events. I agree with most of what he says but I differ with his interpretation.
Two basic points of Syrian history come through very clearly. Firstly, Syria is not a unified nation in the way that Egypt is. There has been some form or other of centralised control in the Nile valley for thousands of years. Syria’s geography and demography – it’s a country of mountains, competing market cities and desert oases – means that power in Syria has always been much more divided, and that Syrians would feel more at home in an all-encompassing nation larger than the borders drawn by imperialists. Landis points out that in Syria’s brief democracy (the late 40s and early 50s) not one political party accepted the country’s borders. They sought instead either a unified pan-Arab state or a restitution of Bilad ash-Sham, the zone of enormous diversity between the Taurus mountains, the southern desert and the Euphrates river which nevertheless constitutes one market area and enjoys a common Levantine culture. Bilad ash-Sham is sliced today into Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine-Israel, and a sliver of Turkey.
Secondly, Landis identifies the crucial power division determining politics in contemporary Syria. The pre-police state parliament was dominated by the urban Sunni merchant class, the traditional elite. The army which would soon make the parliament irrelevant was inherited from the French occupation. Partly because the wealthier classes shied away from the army, but mainly for the usual divide-and-rule reasons, the French built a military of minorities – Alawis, Christians, Druze, and marginalised rural Sunnis. The victory of the military over the parliament, and of the military wing of the Ba’ath party over all other parties, was a victory of the countryside over the city, of the periphery over the centre, of sectarian minorities over the Sunni majority. The Ba’ath years therefore oversaw a social revolution in the sense that previously distanced and despised rural classes moved to the cities and entered elites.
A Call from Home
April 8th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
By Majid Maqbool
“Card chukha seath thavaan?”
(Do you carry the ID card with you?)
Mother worries over frequent phone calls
Away from home, home enters questions
‘Identity’ printed on a piece of paper
cuts through her voice; a discomforting lullaby:
“Card gase hamashe seath thavun”
(always carry the ID card with you)
Home leaves a permanent imprint…
On scattered notes, stamped on memories
At home, mother would tiptoe after me
At the door, before endless blessings, she always asked -
That question mothers have for their sons -
Protesting Kashmiri Women al (Yawar Nazir, IMOW)
“Card tultha seath?”
From Delhi now, your question settles on my unrest
Identity – detached from the card – hangs heavy
This is not Kashmir, mother
“Toete gase card seath thavun…”
(Still you must carry the card with you…)
The line dropped on this insistence
I kept redialing, to rest her concerns,
her unfinished questions, unanswered
Hello..helloo… mother
Can you hear me?
I left the card at home, mother
In the back pocket of my worn-out jeans
Interrogating Identity in Kashmir
Find: a fading photograph, scrutinized edges
And no trace of those unrecognized questions
forever inked on my memory
For troops to question my absence
The proof I left behind is not enough
That frisked ID card remains
like a festering wound, pocketed pain
I carry everywhere
Majid Maqbool is a young journalist/writer from Kashmir. Some of his writings can be found on his blog maqboolvoice.blogspot.com.
Israel’s new assault on Gaza
April 8th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed five and injured dozens more on Thursday, 7 April. (Ismael Mohamad/UPI)
The densely populated Gaza enclave is once again under Israeli aerial attack. Five people have been killed and over 30 injured already. Max Blumenthal calls the assault ‘Operation Goldstone,’ since Israel seems to be taking encouragement from the Judge’s partial retraction of his earlier report. Over at the Electronic Intifada Rami Almeghari reports:
As Palestinians were preparing for their weekend this Thursday afternoon, all of a sudden barrages of Israeli artillery fire and air raids by warplanes struck several regions of the Gaza Strip. Five Palestinians were killed and about thirty more injured.
Israeli shells struck farm land, homes, a mosque and an ambulance, and the injured were evacuated to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza and the Abu Yousif al-Najjar hospital in southern Gaza…
Sources at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City said that they received six injuries earlier this afternoon; among them were two women and several children.
Lion of the Desert
April 8th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Link TV profiles the great Libyan revolutionary Omar al-Mukhtar.
