.
Four Syrian women tired of the ongoing violence in Syria decided to stand against the Assad regime in an act of defiance marching through Medhat Basha market in the middle of Damascus two weeks ago. Dressed in their white gowns, the ‘brides of peace’ were arrested by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s security forces. Despite the violent crackdown on the Syrian revolution, the armed response, and the threat of chemical weapons attack, hope still exists for a nonviolent movement to resist the Assad regime’s brutality although not enough to topple it alone.
This nonviolent act is an example of a largely ignored peaceful movement against a brutal regime that is responsible for the murder of over 40,000 people since March 2011. While some argue that the revolution should have remained nonviolent, the violent response to pro-democracy protesters dragged a largely nonviolent uprising to its current state of what is described as a civil war. In addition, regional powers seeking to influence the outcome of the revolution exploited the situation using Syrian territory as a battlefield to fight their own proxy wars. In the midst of it all, Syrian men, women and children are paying a high price.
For months, Syrians have been calling for an internationally-imposed no-fly zone similar to operations conducted in Libya, especially after the regime used its air force when it lost control on the ground. The rebels’ calls for outside assistance fell on deaf ears.
At this stage, Syrians have given up on a no-fly zone. In fact, if the idea is entertained, many Syrians would reject it. It was desirable at the beginning of the violent crack down, around six months into the revolution. Today, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has made many advances and is closer to bringing down the regime. A direct intervention at this point is too late in the game and will be regarded by many Syrians as an attempt by Western powers to hijack the revolution.
However, current developments should not restrict urgently-needed constructive US involvement.
My colleague Mohammed Ghanem of the Syrian American Council (SAC) recently returned from Aleppo, Syria, a city controlled in part by the FSA.
According to Ghanem, who was interviewed on CNN last week:
In those areas that have been liberated, people are coming together, they’re forming local administrative councils, providing basic assistance, goods and services, trying to enhance the rule of law in their localities, but they are severely underfunded. What needs to happen is for the U.S. instead of going through third-party organizations such as the World Food Program and Save the Children, that aid needs to go directly through the councils in Syria.
About 70% of the city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and industrial capital, is under opposition control after it has been liberated by the FSA. Areas controlled by the FSA include its most densely populated neighborhoods. Providing funds to those local civilian councils are necessary, not only because they serve the basic needs of the people in a desperate situation, but it’ll also strengthen civil society, create democratic institutions, enhance the rule of law, and help set the stage for a more orderly transition in a post-Assad Syria.
However, supporting the civilian councils is not enough.
Moderate and liberal FSA elements are in desperate need of support, but running short of funds and anti-aircraft weapons to keep up with the regime’s indiscriminate violence and aerial bombardment. With the lack of support, well-funded extremist groups have emerged. The most prominent example is Jabhat Al-Nusra, a groups with an ideology close to al-Qaeda’s.
The most shocking part of JAN’s membership is that many of them are in it for the money. Although they remain a fringe group with very little public support, JAN was able to provide what moderate groups couldn’t: salaries and weapons.
In a nutshell, there are three steps the Obama administration should take to help finish the Assad regime:
- fund efforts by the civilian local governance councils operating in liberated areas;
- increase the supply of key defensive arms – including anti-aircraft weapons – and providing support to carefully vetted elements of the FSA;
- recognize the newly-formed National Coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people
How can Orange County help Syria?
The OC is home for a large Syrian-American community with organized and active groups working tirelessly to support a revolution that started peacefully, dragged into its current state of violence by the regime. The local chapter of the SAC has held various humanitarian fundraisers, town hall meetings, rallies, and much more. Most recently, a campaign to raise awareness about the situation and a call to action included the SAC-sponsored Save Syrian Children campaign – an ad campaign in the DC Metro system that calls for action to help Syria with a grassroots element to it organized in various US cities including locally.
On November 17, local Syrians joined communities in the US and various country at the Global Walk for the Children of Syria. Hundreds of Syrian-Americans walked in Santa Ana to raise awareness about the mass atrocities in Syria shouting slogans demanding action from the Obama administration.
Hundreds marched in Santa Ana displaying the ‘Save Syrian Children’ sign.
Beyond the efforts of Syrian-American groups, what is missing is a tangible solution to help finish off Assad and assist with an orderly transition to a stable democracy.
With the recent appointment of Rep. Ed Royce as chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, residents of the 40th district have the moral obligation to exert pressure on him to do the right thing in Syria.
For the sake of the Brides of Peace, the suffering children, and the 40,000+ martyrs of the revolution, the world should quit watching, and start acting to save Syria.
CONTACT INFO from Editor Vern:
It may be distasteful but the best guy we can contact is Ed Royce, who is OUR Congressman, is – as Rashad noted – now the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, AND has always been obsessed with Islamic extremism. We should emphasize to him that supporting these moderate, secular, democratic councils is the best way to sideline Al Qaeda type extremist groups in Syria before it’s too late. Call Ed at (714) 744-4130!
Our Loretta Sanchez is powerful too, as the most senior female member of the House Committee on Homeland Security and the House Armed Services Committee; between she and Ed they represent all of Anaheim and most of our Arab population. She and Ed can get bipartisan support going for supporting these Syrian councils. (I agree with Greg that we probably won’t arm them, but as Rashad explains they can really use funding to compete with the Islamist groups, and they deserve our recognition.) Call Loretta at (714) 621-0102.
Finally our junior Senator Barbara Boxer has long been a stalwart foe of Syria’s tyrannical leadership – for her own Zionist reasons, but still, this is the time we can use her – if Al Qaeda type groups prevail things’ll be even more dangerous for Israel as under Assad. Call Senator Barbara at (202) 224-3553, and tell her you think we should recognize, and fund, the local governance councils in Syria!
Thanks for posting this article, and the links to what we can do to help. Are the supporters of Assad, an ethnic minority, afraid of being exterminated, and the awful threat of using chemical weapons an attempt to get attention to their fate?
I accept the advisability of staying out of Syria so long as they don’t use their apparent cache of chemical weapons, but if they do bring out the sarin and mustard gas then it would seem to change your analysis.
I don’t think that we’ll give the FSA anti-aircraft weapons because it invites casting of blame, rightly or wrongly, when a U.S.-allied plane is eventually shot down and anyone can assert that this was why. (It’s sort of like the problem of pardoning people after the Willie Horton ad — it’s mostly potential downside.) The rest I think makes sense. Anti-aircraft weaponry isn’t going to shoot down gas-bearing rockets anyway.
One concern I have is the focus on Assad himself. Bashir Assad is not Hafez Assad — probably not as intrinsically rotten, but in any event not as essential to the armed forces. I get the sense that the motivating force behind the possible insanely heinous use of poison gas comes from the upper echelons of the military who had worked under his father’s regime. Bashir and his family could probably leave and get asylum somewhere; his generals can’t do so as easily — for them the fight is to the death.
At this point most Syrians agree that intervening is unacceptable. To quote a Syrian activist’s facebook post today: “Unless Assad really ,not allegedly, uses chemical weapons against his own people, Syrians no longer need an international intervention. The country has already been destroyed with about 45,000 documented deaths and counting, millions of IDPs, hundreds of thousands of refugees, millions of homes destroyed, and the list goes on and on. Now, Syrians are about to conclude the first stage of their revolution, that is toppling the dictatorship. For 20 long bloody months, Syrians called on the international community to help stop the insane massacres against innocent civilians but politicians made it very clear to us that they’re not even going even supply anti-aircraft weapons so that Syrians can fend off the non-stopping aerial bombings against cities and towns. “We’re not gonna do it” was one of the phrases Ambassador Ford used to hurt my ears with every time I would meet with him. Now suddenly there’s a spike in interest (not surprising a bit for me as I know what’s going on for them) and a chemical weapon scare (I’m not saying Assad wouldn’t use CWs. In fact, today, naval mines were dropped on Daraya, a suburb in Damascus), but an intervention now would only serve the interests of the US and its ally Israel and not the interests of the Syrians people. The US and Israel are seriously looking into this scenario at least to “secure” the chemical weapons Assad has lest they would “fall into the wrong hands” like they’re in the rights hands now!”
Regardless of what one thinks of Bashar as an individual is not the point. Many Syrians had high hopes in him but the regime largely stayed the same and under his watch he repeated the massacres his dad committed in the early 80’s.
I’m fine with not intervening unless Assad (or rather his military leaders) “actually” use chemical weapons against his own people.
My concern is that he will, relatively soon, “actually” use chemical weapons against his own people. We can’t wait until that happens to prepare for that possibility — and we should fail to threaten him with consequences now in the hope of deterring it.
If there is no catastrophe, we’ll never know if such threats helped to prevent it or whether it was not going to happen anyway. So, some people will hate us for making the threats. Let them hate us. It’s more important to deter the catastrophe — not with an unjustified intervention, but with the promise of one if it ever does become justified by “actual” use.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) took to the floor of the House, on Nov. 29, to blast U.S. policy on Syria, which, he said, is following the same playbook as that used in Libya, and will have the same results.
http://larouchepac.com/node/24665
Robert, that article about Kucinich was very critical about our U.S. Administration,but did not say exactly what the intentions of our U.S. government are. What are the intentions? to promote more war or de-escalate? Where is the proof of intention? Is liberal Kucinich really a fan of dictators such as the guy from Libya and the guy from Syria (who may be worse at the moment) because they represent more stability?
That does not sound like the usual stance of a humanitarian liberal.
So what is the solution?
I don’t understand your confusion concerning Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s one minute speech? The article quotes Kucinich as saying: “the pro-US Libyan government” and that the unconstitutional U.S. war against Libya “opened the door for radical fundamentalists to run roughshod over Libya.”
Kucinich asks the questions: (1) “Apparently, flush from the ‘success’ in Libya, the Administration is preparing to ratchet up the war in Syria. Why?” (2) “Would Qatar, our partner in Libya, be supplying surface-to-air missiles to rebels in Syria without the support of this Administration?”
(3) “NATO, meaning the U.S., discusses putting missiles in Turkey which could create a de facto no-fly zone over northwestern Syria, expanding the war.”
It’s quite clear that Kucinich believes that Obama’s intentions are to create more war and more instability.
Kucinich is the humanitarian; Barack Hussein Obama is the warmonger who in my opinion is working to make Syria safe for the Muslim Brotherhood.
http://larouchepac.com/node/24665
A Preliminary Fact Sheet: President Obama Is in Bed With al-Qaeda in Libya and Syria
December 9, 2012 • 8:32AM
http://larouchepac.com/node/24760
Back in the early 80’s I had a friend who owned a lunch shop and bar in Santa Ana.
I would eat lunch there and have lots of beer after work. (I walked to work and home, no DUI here)
This was the time of the Lebanon revolution. (Similar to Syria and others)
He sold his business and moved back to Lebanon to fight for freedom in his homeland.
Absolutely NO to weapons going into Syria from the US.
I love Obama!
Not approved due to approval of content, but due to absence of objectionable material.
I don’t know, I don’t feel very good about Fiala loving Obama. Something’s rotten here…
Well you have sated that you admire the bohemian Jew Kavka.
Thing that I am reincarnated Kavka you moron mongoloids!
I didn’t edit this one — Vern, did you take away or change some of the letters? (I kid, I kid!)
“Obama decries right-to-work proposal during trip to Michigan”…….. Hmmmmm
Michigan passes anti-union ‘right to work’ measure over protests of thousands.
Poor Obamito.