Cautious optimism in the Middle East

We've heard all the promises before. But this time, maybe peace really will break out.

By Aluf Benn

Topics:Middle East

The scenery is very familiar to any reporter who has covered the Arab-Israeli peace process. The marvelous Red Sea vistas under the everlasting sun. The courteous but unmistakably tough security guards. The endless but dull live broadcasts about “new hope.” The rosy speeches of leaders, pledging a better future to “our children and grandchildren,” cut and pasted from similar statements in the past. We’ve all been there and heard these promises time and again, only to return, after several days or weeks, to reporting on another round of violence, hatred and bloodshed.

“The four-way summit” convened last Tuesday at the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, followed the same old script. The host, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and his distinguished guests — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and King Abdullah of Jordan — played their roles exactly as planned. Abbas and Sharon declared a cease-fire after more than four years of Palestinian-Israeli fighting, which cost the lives of thousands, but ended in a draw. They shook hands for the photographers to show the end of the intifada, and spoke about a new chapter in their two peoples’ troubled relations. Sharon put security on top of his agenda, demanding an active Palestinian fight against terrorist groups. Abbas called for movement on the “road map,” the plan for Palestinian statehood, asking Sharon to support him by releasing old prisoners serving life sentences in Israel for their past involvement in deadly terror attacks.

Returning home from Sharm El-Sheikh, I looked back at my records from the first “four-way summit,” convened in Cairo exactly 10 years ago, in February 1995. Among its participants, only Mubarak remains alive and in power. Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and King Hussein are all dead. It was a chilling experience: The texts are virtually identical. It’s as if nothing happened in the last decade. After all the agreements, and negotiations, and attacks and counterattacks, we came back to the same point. Then, as now, the summit was called to “save the peace process” following a violent derailing. Now, as then, the Palestinian side demands political progress, while Israel responds with “stop terror first.” And once again, the Israeli leader boasts to reporters about how he convinced Arab leaders of the paramount importance of security.

There were more similarities with past events. The hall where Sharon, Abbas and Mubarak gave their televised speeches was the same one where Arafat and Ehud Barak signed the Sharm El-Sheikh memorandum of 1999, the last political Israeli-Palestinian agreement. All but forgotten now, that old document carried the same Israeli pledges of prisoner release and building a seaport in Gaza.

And yet, I am cautiously more optimistic this time.

Professional skepticism notwithstanding, there are several key differences between the Sharm El-Sheikh summit and its predecessors — differences that give it a better chance of success.

First, its composition. Arafat is dead and buried. His heir, Abbas, is leading a different policy of diplomacy and negotiations, rather than glorifying the “armed struggle” like his predecessor. Arafat’s trademark fatigues and kaffiyeh (head scarf) and his theatrical gestures, always prone to steal the show, have been replaced by an unremarkable blue suit and soft voice. Three months after Arafat’s disappearance from the show, Israelis have better justification for their long-standing position that he was “not a partner” for peace. In his first days in office, Abbas deployed Palestinian Authority forces in Gaza to halt rocket firing against Israel. This move was previously unthinkable, and it showed that the forces were always there, waiting for orders that were never given.

Since hearing of Arafat’s terminal illness, Abbas returned from his self-imposed political exile and made zero mistakes. He took power smoothly, holding and winning presidential elections, and moved swiftly to rein all Palestinian factions behind his cease-fire. Having learned a lesson from his short, ill-fated tenure as P.A. premier under Arafat, in 2003, this time Abbas distanced himself from American and Israeli embraces. Instead, he paid more attention to gaining legitimacy among the Palestinians and in the Arab world.

The United States, while supporting Abbas as promising peace and stability, agreed to step aside. New Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who visited Jerusalem and Ramallah on her first international tour, stayed away from the Sharm El-Sheikh summit. In the previous peacemaking attempt at the June 2003 Aqaba summit, President George W. Bush came to the region, and his staffers drafted the leaders’ speeches. But Aqaba quickly collapsed, as Abbas proved too weak to deliver with Arafat undermining him from behind and Sharon not offering needed concessions. This time, the White House allowed Sharon and Abbas’ negotiation teams to draft the speeches on their own. The results were less impressive, but somehow more convincing.

The Sharon who came to Sharm El-Sheikh is also different. He is not the stubborn leader who was dragged to Aqaba by an overenthusiastic Bush, but a newborn moderate who has undergone a sea change. The former builder of settlements, who vowed not to withdraw an inch except if the Palestinians surrendered, is now calling for Israel’s evacuation of its settlements and forces from the Gaza strip and the northern West Bank. His disengagement plan is slated for implementation in the summer, and Sharon appears determined to push it through, despite considerable domestic resistance.

Even if he launched the pullout idea to fend off sinking popularity and legal threats, which jeopardized his job in late 2003, it has now passed the point of no return. Sharon has committed himself to Bush, his main international backer, and is standing firm against threats of violent opposition from his former settler allies. Sharon’s ruling party, Likud, is torn; 13 of its 40-member parliamentary faction are outright “rebels” who are voting against Sharon, while others are trying to have it both ways and have called for a national referendum — a euphemism for a long postponement, and possibly the political and legal burial, of the withdrawal plan. When Rice came to Jerusalem, she told her interlocutors that disengagement should be carried out as planned, according to the original, summer-bound schedule. From Sharon’s, and America’s, perspective, the approval of Israel’s Cabinet and Knesset is politically sufficient, and no referendum is needed.

Sharon’s disengagement plan is the second, and more profound, difference in the process. Unlike the past, when leaders’ positions were the mere opening for tough bargaining at negotiation sessions, this time the direction has already been set by the Israeli decision. Sharon suggested coordinating the Gaza withdrawal with the P.A., to enable proper hand-over of the settlement assets, and to provide better security for the evacuation itself. But the scope of withdrawal and its timetable are not negotiable. While this may appear to be a humiliating Israeli dictum to the Palestinians, it has great advantages for both sides. It frees them from costly give-and-take, bound to inevitable disputes and crises, at this fragile stage.

Since Abbas took office, Israeli and Palestinian ministers, officers and negotiators have met almost daily to discuss mutual demands. They are talking about security arrangements, prisoner releases, and the hand-over of West Bank cities reoccupied by Israel in 2002 following a wave of Palestinian suicide attacks. But with all their importance, these are only minor issues. The looming “Gaza plus” withdrawal spares the negotiators from dealing with the more sensitive issues separating Israelis and Palestinians, like borders, refugees and Jerusalem, all touching the rawest nerves of their national identities. The disengagement timetable allows both sides to deal with their domestic challenges first, while rebuilding trust through tackling less volatile issues.

The coming months will not be easy for either Abbas or Sharon. Both face enormous leadership challenges. The Palestinian leader must consolidate his power and rebuild the P.A.’s political system and security apparatus, while maintaining the cease-fire. At the same time, Sharon is facing a showdown with the settlers, which may turn violent. Personal attacks against him have become nastier. A decade after Rabin’s assassination by a right-wing zealot, threats to the prime minister’s life are taken very seriously in Israel.

According to the current timetable, only next year — after Israel’s disengagement and possibly another Israeli election — will the two sides start meaningful negotiations over the fate of the West Bank and the establishment of a Palestinian state (albeit in interim borders). If mutual trust is built in the meantime, backed by a stable cease-fire and visible change on the ground, it may be easier to reach a deal.

The third “optimism factor” is the behavior of the international community, which appears more responsive to both sides’ needs and constraints. International support is essential for both sides. It strengthens the Palestinian stance vis-`-vis Israel, and rewards Israeli concessions with diplomatic legitimacy and global acceptance. With Arafat gone, Washington reopened its channels to Ramallah. Rice’s visit was far more successful than Colin Powell’s disappointing trips to the region. She pledged money and security assistance, and received a commitment from Abbas to catch the murderers of three American security guards in a Gaza diplomatic convoy, in October 2003. Since then, American officials have refused to enter the Gaza strip.

Sharon, on his part, has convinced foreign leaders of his sincerity over the Gaza pullout. European and Arab governments, which previously viewed Sharon as a die-hard obstacle for peace, are now pinning their hopes on his leadership and determination. Egypt’s Mubarak, who previously cursed Sharon as a brutal warmonger, is now hailing him as a man of peace. Sharon’s invitation to Egypt, after 23 years of being treated as persona non grata there, is a public rehabilitation from the leader of the Arab world. The unprecedented withdrawal pledge has given Sharon clemency for his past sins against the Palestinians.

Mubarak, who is aiming for his fifth six-year presidential term in an unchallenged October referendum, was undoubtedly prodded by Bush’s call in his State of the Union address for democracy in Egypt, and by the images of the Iraqi elections. Being nice to Israel is an old Egyptian trick to hold off American grudges. But the outcome has brought new life to regional ditente, which has all but stopped since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian hostilities in September 2000.

For all these reasons, I am cautiously optimistic that the year 2005 could bring positive change to Israeli-Palestinian relations. The rifts and disagreements have not disappeared, and will undoubtedly come back to the surface. But under the leadership of the anti-violence Abbas, and the more compromising Sharon, there may be a better chance for a more peaceful resolution of the dispute over the Holy Land, or at least for a period of quiet and rehabilitation, as both leaders tackle their rivals at home.

: Aluf Benn is the diplomatic editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz and has been a regular contributor to Salon since 2001. More Aluf Benn

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Inside Syria’s whirlwind of war

The most complex and dangerous conflict on the planet keeps getting worse. Will the U.S. intervene?

By Paul Mutter

Welcome to a nightmare (Credit: Reuters/Ahmed Jadallah)

Topics:Middle East, Syria

The situation in Syria is deteriorating.

On Sunday, the Arab League announced that it had formally decided to “open channels of communication with the Syrian opposition and offer full political and financial support, urging (the opposition) to unify its ranks” and to “ask the UN Security Council to issue a decision on the formation of a joint UN-Arab peacekeeping force to oversee the implementation of a ceasefire.”

This is the strongest call for foreign military intervention that has yet come from the international community regarding Syria, as more and more Syrians are getting caught up in government crackdowns and increased fighting between the Syrian army and a growing armed opposition movement. Yet questions about the nature and timing of such an intervention are far more complex than in Libya.

As Rania Abouzeid put it simply in Time, “Syria is at war.” A leaked report from the Arab League’s now-defunct fact-finding mission to Syria notes that the situation is rapidly degenerating into a contest between government forces and a growing, determined guerrilla movement (simply called the “armed entity”) that formed due to “excessive use of force by Syrian Government forces, in response to protests that occurred before the deployment of the Mission demanding the fall of the regime.”

“In some zones, this armed entity reacted by attacking Syrian security forces and citizens, causing the Government to respond with further violence,” wrote the observers. “In the end, innocent citizens pay the price for those actions with life and limb.”

This is what makes the newest argument for intervention advanced in the United States so troubling. The prospect of heavily armed militias fighting the government (and perhaps each other) is known. But for some U.S. politicians, this is acknowledged and seen as an acceptable risk. Some members of Congress are now advocating arming the anti-regime militias, suggesting that if better equipped, the militias could hold back (perhaps even defeat) Assad’s forces. The U.S., EU, Turkey, Libya and Saudi Arabia are looking for Assad’s departure (Israel’s interests are still unclear), while Russia, Lebanon and Iran appear willing to provide support for Assad. In short, the potential for proxy intervention has definitely increased since the UN failed to pass a resolution against Assad last week.

Joseph Lieberman and John McCain were the first to make such calls, and have been joined by other members of Congress in the past few days. Now a bipartisan group of senators is advancing a resolution calling for “the President to support an effective transition to democracy in Syria by identifying and providing substantial material and technical support, upon request, to Syrian organizations that are representative of the people of Syria.” It does not elaborate on who these groups are, or what constitutes material and technical support, but at the very least, it would mean financial assistance (which the militias could use to purchase arms on the black market) and intelligence dissemination, which would almost certainly result in the dispatch of military observers or advisors.

This approach is a gamble. So too are suggestions for creating no-fly zones over northern Syria, or counting on sanctions and brokerage by the Russian foreign minister to achieve a political solution. Any form of intervention or non-intervention will cost lives – lives that could have been saved, lives that might not have been lost. But of those options, the call to arm militias, or cooperate with them by providing Western funds and intelligence (which would likely be channeled through the Turks and Saudis), is more likely to become a reality since the United States could act without relying on the UN.

If this is just talk meant to encourage the opposition and scare Assad, then it runs the risk of achieving one, but not the other (and of falsely raising the hopes of the groups we’re ostensibly supporting, as happened in Iraq in 1991). If implemented, there are risks that the disbursement of arms will bring stalemate, not solution. Writes Syrian blogger Maysaloon, “we might see a drastic arming of the Free Syrian Army, and an escalation of the conflict to a fully blown civil war. If that happens I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if the Russians (and Iran) continue to arm Assad to the gills.”

“I don’t think anybody, apart from Assad, would want to see that happen,” Maysaloon believes. “Of course Assad would prefer this solution because it would justify his oppression and use of violence, and also extend the period of his rule.”

The program could actually lead to more direct foreign military intervention. Even should the militias succeed and Assad falls, nothing suggests that all of these now well-armed groups would lay down their arms. And who would secure the Syrian Army’s depots to prevent a militia from grabbing a few truckloads of munitions from an unguarded arms cache, as has happened in post-Saddam Iraq and post-Gadhafi Libya?

Additionally, the Alawites of Syria, as the Economist notes, have their own militias with access to the regime’s weapons stockpiles. Alawites and Christians are overrepresented in the officer corps, so even if many do abandon their posts, they are not likely to abandon their arms – especially given what happened next door in Iraq and Lebanon since the 1980s. They would be loath to do so; and so too would the victors fearful of an insurgency by unrepentant Baathists. It is worth remembering that the first insurgents the US faced in Iraq were ex-Iraqi army guerrilla cells, and soon Sunni and Shia communities were taking advantage of unsecured weapons to arm themselves, both in self-defense and for reasons of revenge.

Whether one supports intervention or not, past experience suggests that an international peacekeeping force would be required to secure these depots, which essentially defeats the purpose of arming the militias as an alternative to direct intervention. Such a force would also be necessary to ensure that the militias – including the pro-Assad ones – are turning in their arms and keeping to cease-fire agreements. Otherwise, Syria might end up in a scenario where many in the officer corps retain their arms, the arms depots are thrown open to everyone, and community self-defense becomes blurred with ethnosectarian revanchism.

And then there is the matter of border control, especially with respect to Lebanon and Turkey, as it’s clear that arms smugglers, refugees and militiamen are already easily moving across these borders. An enclave of militias and refugees has formed on the northern Syria-Lebanon border, and clashes between pro- and anti-Assad militias have reportedly occurred on the Lebanese side of that border.

The armed opposition is gaining, but also losing, ground throughout the country. The government’s brutal crackdowns have produced groups taking up arms to defend themselves, and also to take the fight to Assad. Paul Wood of the BBC says that the country is witnessing “an escalating guerrilla campaign” – one echoing the struggle between the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood between 1976 and 1982 – and that the “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) claims to be planning a “general offensive” in response to the government’s siege of Homs, even though the government is closing its iron ring around the city.

Nic Robertson at CNN reports that in Homs, the epicenter of the opposition, the local opposition council “is not the only show in town. Salafists are moving in too, Islamic radicals … Reports abound of infighting both inside and outside Syria, the hard-liners already jockeying for post-al-Assad power.” Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), now allegedly operating in Syria to provoke further strife between Assad and the Syrian opposition, views Syria as a prize to be won, as do other jihadists throughout the region.

A split remains between the Syrian National Council (SNC), the most visible Syrian opposition group, and the FSA, the umbrella name for the various anti-regime militias that are now active in Syria. And while the SNC is increasingly recognized as the international voice of the opposition, it too has struggled to reach a consensus on foreign military intervention. The SNC is conspicuously absent from a “dialogue” with Assad that the Russians are trying to promote as an alternative to the UN resolutions they’ve vetoed. The SNC says it has been excluded on purpose. The Russian Foreign Ministry, for its part, has shown disdain for the SNC and a clear preference for Assad retaining power.

The Economist presents an overview of the domestic forces still supporting Assad, which shows that for the most part, “support” means acquiescence to his rule out of fear. Syria’s sectarian divides are sharpening in response to such fears of “Sunni triumphalism,” says the Economist – and Assad’s propaganda machine is playing these fault lines up. According to Patrick Seale, many poor Sunni youths were at the forefront of the nonviolent demonstrations that were suppressed. After years of limited opportunities, and in response to the government’s actions, they are now taking up arms against the regime.

As the violence mounts, pent-up grievances are coming to the fore and the unarmed majority is losing patience – but with whom, the government, or the emerging militias? No one can say for sure, or predict how more and more unarmed people in communities targeted by the government for repression (and by the opposition for liberation) will react as the violence continues. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that geopolitical maneuvering is rapidly eliminating any prospect of a “third way” that does not end in a proxy war, or a regional conflagration.

: Paul Mutter is a fellow at Truthout.org, as well as a contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus, Mondoweiss, and The Arabist. He is currently on leave from NYU's graduate program in journalism and international affairs. More Paul Mutter

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Syria’s bloody turning point

Heavy bombing in Homs stirs memories of a decades-old massacre and marks a new phase of extreme violence

By Hugh Macleod and Annasofie Flamand, GlobalPost

In this Saturday, Feb. 4, 2012 photo anti-government protesters carry the coffin of a slain proteste in Idlib, north Syria (Credit: AP)

Topics:GlobalPost, Syria, Middle East

This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Abu Yaman used to work at the oil refinery in Homs, where production helped Syria maintain cheap subsidized heating oil and fuel, as well as free health care and 24-hour electricity.

Today, Abu Yaman’s refinery has become a military base, its main pipelines destroyed, state hospitals stormed by secret police, electricity cut and makeshift home clinics overwhelmed with casualties as Homs endures an onslaught of rockets and mortars in the regime’s worst massacre of civilians since the uprising began 11 months ago.

With rights group Avaaz reporting at least 258 people killed — including 72 children and 42 women — in a single night of shelling just hours before Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the government of President Bashar al-Assad, analysts warn the onslaught in Syria marks a new chapter in which further bloodshed appears inevitable.

In shelling by tanks, artillery and what several sources inside Homs said were multiple rocket launchers, Syrian security forces have killed at least 350 people since late Friday, prompting the U.S. to close its embassy in Damascus and withdraw its ambassador and remaining staff.

“Its own supporters believe the regime has shown too much restraint and they have been increasingly vocal in calling for a crackdown,” Peter Harling, the Damascus-based Syria Project Director at the International Crisis Group, told GlobalPost.

“The situation in Syria is now entering a phase of extreme violence. The regime has not until now made use of all the fire power at its disposal. Now that Russia torpedoed the one political mechanism on the table, the armed struggle will take greater importance.”

An activist from Khaldiyye, the first opposition-held neighborhood of Homs to be targeted in the onslaught that began Friday around 10 p.m., gave a graphic account of an almost apocalyptic night of terror in the city that is already the hardest hit by the government crackdown.

“We are used to shelling so when it started we thought it would only last a few minutes, so everyone stayed indoors,” said Waleed Fares. “But then we heard a terrible, loud sound.”

The sound was from a local apartment block, home to 36 flats, Fares said, collapsing after being hit repeatedly by rockets and shells.

Rushing outside to help recover the injured and dead, Fares said the sound of mosques calling out “God is great” mixed with the explosion of shells and the cries of those in pain.

“There were children crying, women screaming, standing in their nightclothes because they had not had time to dress,” Fares said.

“We took the bodies and the injured to a nearby park. I counted around 40 bodies from the building collapse. The injuries were appalling: People missing limbs; people crushed so badly you couldn’t recognize them; people pierced by metal.”

Even in the park, terrified residents said they were not safe. “Three bombs fell on the park and killed around 30 people,” Fares said, one of them his friend, Omar Zarour, who was also trying to rescue trapped neighbors.

Omar Shakir, an activist in Bab Amr, another Sunni-majority neighborhood in Homs, said the shelling was like, “random machine gun fire, only much, much heavier.”

“The bombs fell like rain,” said Shakir, whose best friend, 23-year-old Madher Tayyara, a student turned volunteer medic died on Friday at home from shrapnel in his chest and head. “You didn’t know where they would fall. You can only pray.”

Several hospitals treating the dead and dying were raided by security forces, according to reporting from activists in Homs gathered by Avaaz, which described the humanitarian situation inside the city as appalling.

Small field hospitals set up to treat protesters were suddenly overwhelmed with hundreds of injured, according to activists. With security forces laying siege to neighborhoods and preventing medical supplies from reaching the area, activists feared many of the up to 1,000 people injured would die because there was no way to treat them.

One of the hospitals targeted was the Hikmat in Homs’ Inshaat neighborhood, where a video uploaded to YouTube yesterday appeared to show a doctor walking through a hospital whose roof was leaking and and bloodstains on the floor.

“Fifth of February, the Hikmat hospital,” says the voice on the video. “The surgery room was hit by shells. Here is one injured person,” he says, lifting covers to reveal a man unconscious from anesthetic, apparently left mid operation.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), medical staff and patients were gunned down when two field hospitals were targeted by Syrian forces Monday in Bab Amr, leaving three patients killed and a doctor needing an amputation.

“The hospitals were specifically targeted,” SOHR spokesman, Sami Ibrahim, told GlobalPost from close by Bab Amr.

“It’s a disastrous situation. People are losing their minds. When the bombing ceases we can hear them crying out for help.”

Interviewed by a GlobalPost reporter in Damascus on the day he fled with his family from Homs, Abu Yaman said his neighborhood of Inshaat had come under heavy fire, with no phone or mobile coverage for 11 days and no electricity and water for a week.

“We cannot walk in the streets so we made holes in the walls between each flat to reach a small shop at the end of the block open every day for just two hours,” he said.

“We are 10 families in the building and we all moved to the basement flat to use it like a shelter: 10 families living in a 150 square meter space underground.”

Abu Yaman said residents had begun to burn tables, chairs and other household wood to try and stay warm through winter nights without heating oil or electricity and that corpses were being buried in private gardens because graveyards were either full or impossible to access.

“My two children haven’t slept well for months,” he said. “My wife was pregnant but she lost the baby after she was shocked by a bomb hitting our building. No one in the world can imagine what Assad’s forces are doing in Homs since Friday.”

The Assad regime denied the assault on Homs, with state-run Syria TV claiming corpses shown in video footage — said by activists to be victims of the bombardment — had been people kidnapped and killed by “terrorist armed groups.”

The assault with heavy weapons initially appeared to have been triggered by the capture of more than a dozen soldiers by members of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), which attacked a checkpoint and an airbase on Friday.

In a video released on YouTube and broadcast by Arab satellite channels, a man identifying himself as from the Farouq Battalion of the FSA is heard taunting the captured soldiers.

“How did we capture you and you have everything, arms and ammunition, at this checkpoint?” he asks. “If we had captured women it would have been more difficult. It did not even take us 10 minutes to capture you.”

The taunting takes a sectarian turn when each man is forced to admit he is from the minority Allawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam from which the Assad family and much of the regime and loyalist security forces are drawn. Around three quarters of Syria’s population, and the overwhelming majority of the opposition, including the FSA, are Sunni Muslims.

A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army told GlobalPost the armed rebels had lost 27 soldiers in four days of fighting with Assad’s troops up to Friday, saying the regime had planned an assault on Homs before the capture and video of its soldiers.

“The regime is a killing machine. Four days ago the regime said it would finish the revolution but the revolution will not end,” said the FSA commander, known as Abu Ali. “We capture soldiers to show how weak the regime is. Their soldiers fight for one person, Bashar al-Assad. We fight for a cause: the nation.”

In interviews with half a dozen different residents and activists in Homs since Friday, it appeared the majority of Assad’s forces remain, for now, deployed around restive neighbourhoods, while heavy artillery and rockets pound the city from afar.

The fear of many though, is that a full scale ground assault is imminent, with dark memories of the massacre of up to 30,000 civilians in Hama after that nearby Sunni-majority city rose up three decades ago to challenge Assad’s father, Hafez.

“The Assad regime wants to finish us,” Abu Yaman said. “We fear the president wants to make Homs another Hama. We are living in a very hard situation and we need help from the world.”

: More Hugh Macleod
: More Annasofie Flamand

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The Syrian Army’s campaign of terror

When we returned to the site of a protest, the military had already been there -- and committed mass murder

By GlobalPost

A Syrian forces tank moves along a road during clashes with the Syrian army defectors, in the Rastan area in Homs province, central Syria, on Monday Jan. 30, 2012. (Credit: AP)

Topics:GlobalPost, Syria, Middle East, Arab Spring

This article originally appeared on GlobalPost. It was written and reported by a GlobalPost correspondent in Damascus, whose name has been withheld for security reasons.

SAQBA, Syria — When a team of foreign journalists entered the eastern Damascus suburb of Saqba last Friday, they were greeted by a sight that did not bode well for the Syrian regime.

Rebel fighters from the so-called Free Syrian Army were protecting about 5,000 demonstrators calling for the fall of President Bashar al-Assad. One was hoisted onto the shoulders of the protesters. Victory, it seemed, was approaching. Several other neighborhoods nearby saw rebels set up checkpoints and essentially take control.

Four days later, however, GlobalPost returned to the area and encountered a very different scene.

The Syrian army had returned.

Turning off the Damascus highway east of the city, we were stopped by several soldiers manning a checkpoint of sorts. Our driver said we were foreign journalists. He looked in and waved us on. The same incident happened twice more. The soldiers had a yellow plastic ribbon tied to their jackets that clearly indicated they were on the side of the regime.

There was little sign of life other than a line of people waiting for bread outside a bakery. Parked next to them were an ambulance, a military jeep and an armored vehicle. Two men stared with open mouths as a truck laden with gas canisters entered the area, surprised they would now finally have gas with which to cook.

We continued on in search of Municipal square, where the anti-regime protesters had gathered with such hope only days before.

When we arrived, we found a scene of devastation. Whole sides of homes had caved in, exposing the everyday household items inside. An electricity pole was smashed in half close to the ground, splinters standing vertical high into the air. Only a tank shell could have caused such damage. Local men held up large shell casings for us to see.

“They arrived Saturday and blew us away. There were Hezbollah soldiers with them,” said one man, when asked about the nationality of the soldiers. He said he knew this because he recognized their accents.

We were taken to a mosque just off the square. A gaping hole had been blasted in the side of the mosque’s minaret. I asked if the rebels had been inside.

“There was no one there — if they [the rebels] were inside they would have been at the top,” said one man. The hole was about halfway down the minaret.

A man carrying a bag of fruit whistled to get my attention and gestured for me to follow him. I hesitated, more concerned with the crowds of men gathering around us. I warned them to disperse. Military vehicles were close by. Machine-gun fire crackled in the distance. It was cold. Several angry men asked if we were from Russia, one of a dwindling number of countries that still supports the Assad government.

The streets were almost empty. A carpet of glass, rubble and metal covered the wet concrete. Fear gripped me — the area was clearly under government control once more, and there may have been snipers looking out for any remnants of the rebels.

We walked briskly, one by one, down a side street and through narrow passages dividing houses. We came to a clearing and the man with us called to another now close by.

“Do you have the keys?” he asked the second man. He then opened a large metal door that appeared to me to be the entrance to a hospital. It was, in fact, a school, long closed down. In the corner were a half dozen pine trees. Under them was an uneven lump on the ground, covered in plastic. Another man joined us and began to peel back the plastic sheeting.

It was difficult to look at the disfigured, swollen faces. One body had its eyes missing. Another was blackened.

“They killed him as he was lighting a fire in his house. Then they threw him into it,” said one of our guides.

“There are six men here, they were all killed in the last few days,” said another.

“We are hiding them here so that we can bury them ourselves. If we go to a hospital [the security] will take them and we won’t even get a burial. They already took one body,” he added, anger deep in his voice.

There was no real smell — it was too cold. Their hands were bound, as is tradition with the dead here in order to avoid the effect of rigger mortis. Photos were taken and questions asked. There were several other sites where locals were holding their dead relatives in a state of limbo, they said.

“People are burying their dead under their houses — there is nowhere else to take them,” said one man. After about 10 minutes we left the communal grave. If the army or security found us we were likely to be shot too. We were now witnesses to the regime’s death squads.

We headed back in the direction of the square and our waiting car. On the way we walked over glass and mangled metal, shops without window fronts, televisions exposed to the rain. There were no people in these destroyed homes.

We jumped back into the car where our driver was waiting for us.

“Who will pay for all of this?” asked a young man passing by in his car, pointing at the destroyed buildings around us. “We will pay. I hate the Free Army — they brought death and destruction to our homes.”

“When the army comes and they see people on the streets with guns and shooting of course they will try to kill them. They think this is their job,” he added.

Through the square, a government convoy rolled by, made up of multi-purpose vehicles painted blue to give the impression they were police, as opposed to military. In a 32-seater bus sat dozens of soldiers, guns sitting on their laps. The young man crouched next to the car out of their view.

On the way out of the town, I spotted the green of the free Syria flag painted on a wall. We stopped at each checkpoint, and at one a soldier opened the glove compartment of the car. But he let us go. The soldier guarding the next checkpoint was Alawite, said our driver, able to tell from his accent. Alawite is a minority Shiite sect in Syria to which the ruling elites belong.

“Come over here and see what the fighters did here,” the Alawite soldier urged us. We declined, keen to get out of this fresh and bloody war zone. The bizarreness of returning to the center of Damascus, where life continued in apparent normalcy, was astounding.

The men I met in Saqba were not freedom fighters, and they were not political. But the death and violence brought on by Syria’s now civil conflict have tied them up in a struggle between life and death. For them to even be seen talking to journalists would in all likelihood lead them to a tortuous end. The other districts east of the capital, which were celebrated as new centers free from Assad last week, have also now fallen.

With the withdrawal of the Arab League monitors and most foreign journalists, Syrians are again on their own. Tanks and checkpoints have returned to several other towns around the capital. Locals fear the army is gearing up for more assaults, something it can now do uninterrupted and out of sight.

: More GlobalPost

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Congress protests Obama on Bahrain arms sale

18 representatives and three senators point to continued human rights abuses in letter to Hillary Clinton

VIDEO

By Justin Elliott

U.S. Secretary of State Clinton (Credit: Reuters)

Topics:Bahrain, Middle East

Here’s a quick update on the Obama administration’s recent decision to sell arms to the regime in Bahrain, which has been accused of widespread human rights abuses in suppressing a protest movement in the Gulf nation.

Three senators and and 18 representatives — all Democrats — have signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemning the deal (and remember, the administration still isn’t saying what equipment, exactly, it’s sending to Bahrain). Here’s the key section of the letter:

: Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott

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What to expect from Egypt’s elections

As the first round of voting begins, we look at who's running and whether the military will actually step down

By Jon Jensen, GlobalPost

Advertisements for parliamentary candidates hang from scaffolding in Cairo in October 2011 (Credit: Lauren E. Bohn/GlobalPost)

Topics:GlobalPost, Egypt, Middle East

This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

CAIRO – In the aftermath of a week of violent protests in Tahrir Square, Egyptians head to the polls Monday hoping to take a step closer to establishing a new democracy.

A protest movement in January may have led to the ouster of former president Hosni Mubarak, but most Egyptians are left wondering how much has actually changed. Were the heady days of street demonstrations truly a revolution or a popular uprising that has resulted in a military takeover?

Political reform has moved at a snail’s pace. Some of the most brutal hallmarks of Mubarak’s autocratic regime have returned, including arbitrary detention, military trials and torture.

And an already stagnating economy is deteriorating amid ongoing workers’ strikes and sporadic violence.

Many now blame the country’s ruling military leaders, the once revered Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which assumed power in the transition following Mubarak’s departure.

“We are all united with one hand against the military,” said Ahmed Gheith, a 22-year-old Muslim Brotherhood member who was at a recent protest in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. “Egyptians should be able to choose whomever they want to lead our country.”

For the most part, Egyptians are optimistic that the final stage of their revolution will take place at the ballot box. The hope is that these elections will be a departure from the Mubarak-era, when voting was often marred with violence, ballot box stuffing, and other fraudulent activities.

But at the first polls on November 28, they will encounter a new electoral process that observers have called convoluted, confusing and mismanaged.

Election Basics

About half of Egypt’s population of more than 80 million residents are eligible to vote in the upcoming elections.

Voter turnout is expected to be much higher than in any election during the Mubarak regime. Earlier this year, a record 40 percent of Egyptians over the age of 18 voted in a referendum on amendments to the nation’s current interim constitution.

There will be elections for both houses of Egyptian Parliament in 2011 and early next year — the People’s Assembly, or lower house parliament, and the Shura Council, or upper house.

Egypt’s next parliament will nominate a constituent assembly that will one day write the nation’s new constitution.

The People’s Assembly (PA) election will consist of three phases across Egypt’s 27 governorates, and will take nearly two months to complete.

The first round begins on Nov. 28, and will take place in Cairo, the Fayoum oasis, Alexandria, Damietta, Kafr El Sheikh, Port Said, Assiut, the Red Sea in Sinai, and Luxor.

The second phase is scheduled to take place on Dec. 14 in Giza, Beni Suef, Ismailia, Sharqia, Menoufiya, Suez, Beheira, Aswan, and Sohag.

On Jan. 3, the remaining governorates will vote – Qaloubia, Gharbia, Dakhliya, North and South Sinai, Marsa Matrouh, Qena, Minya, and the New Valley in Egypt’s Western Desert.

Each round of voting will take place over two days, according to new rules implemented by Egypt’s transitional government only this weekend.

Voting for the Shura Council will begin shortly after the three rounds of PA have been completed.

The Electoral Process

A total of 498 seats are up for grabs in the upcoming PA election.

How the seats will be chosen has changed substantially since the Mubarak era, and has been the subject of much debate and confusion among political parties since the departure of the former president this year.

In past elections, individual candidates were elected from their parliamentary districts.

This year will feature a mixed-system election, including proportional representation party lists as well as individual candidates. Two-thirds of the PA’s seats will be chosen by party list plurality. The remaining third will come from independent candidates in a so-called ‘first-past-the-post system.’

Political parties are required to field at least one woman. From the individual candidates, at least half of the PA will be filled by “farmers and workers,” a throwback to a 1950s-era quota law.

The complex election laws of 2011 were implemented by SCAF, based mostly on recommendations from Egypt’s civil society and political groups as a way of leveling the playing field by reducing the likelihood of a sweep by remnants of Mubarak’s disbanded National Democratic Party (NDP). Mubarak’s former ruling political party maintains a large grassroots movement that was left mostly intact following the uprising.

But the result is a confusing system that will require each voter to submit multiple ballots on election day, possibly with long waiting periods in between for runoffs, according to the Washington, D.C.-based International Foundation for Electoral Systems.

“These issues also pose great and unknown challenges to the legitimate and successful administration of the new election system,” stated the IFES in a briefing paper on November 1. “There is a significant need to educate voters and administrators about the new election system and limited available time to accomplish this important task.”

Who is running?

The days of one-party victories swept by Mubarak’s NDP are over.

This election, over 6,500 candidates are running from more than 45 political parties, many which were launched this year following the uprising. The entire political spectrum will be represented, from liberal seculars to Islamists to socialists.

The formidable parties include the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, with its large grassroots base from years of charitable work in communities throughout the country.

Although the NDP has been dismantled, several remnants from Mubarak’s old party will be running as independents and as part of new parties.

A recent lawsuit attempted to directly bar the participation of former NDP members, one of the major goals of protesters in Tahrir Square.

Following the violent clashes in Cairo last week, SCAF issued a long-awaited “politcal corruption” law that bans anyone convicted of corruption from running for office.

The move, however, did not appease protesters. Most criticized the law for being too vague and coming too late.

Some members of Mubarak’s former party are still on the ballots for at least the first round of voting, according to reports.

Judge Ahmed Abdel Rahman, a member of Egypt’s Supreme Elections Commission, told GlobalPost that condemning members from the former ruling party would be unconstitutional.

“As a people that made a revolution, we should be able to differentiate between the good and the bad; who is a regime remnant and so,” said Abdel Rahman, “we are demanding freedom, we are choosing our representatives in the parliament, and we have the freedom to choose.”

Currently, most experts predict substantial victories for both the MB and the NDP.

Ziad Akl, a researcher at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a state-funded think tank, said that remnants of the NDP could win a large plurality in the upcoming election.

Egypt’s revolutionary activists have made little headway with voters in the rural north and south of the country, according to Akl.

“My biggest fear is that these elections would result in a parliament that is 30 or 40 percent NDP,” said Akl. “And that would not be a parliament reflective of revolution, yet it will be legitimate. Then we could have a real problem because you would have a state claiming legitimacy and a public claiming that this is not what we signed up for.”

Administering the election

When Egypt’s military rulers took power, they promised to hold “free and fair” elections within 6 months — one of the biggest demands of the protest movement in Tahrir Square.

But weeks before the once-delayed elections, several candidates have already come forward with evidence that Mubarak-era fraud is still present among some in the country. An “election market” of people who will rig votes, sell voting blocs, and even thugs-for-hire are all still present in Egypt, according to many observers.

Attempting to guarantee the legitimacy of the 2011 elections will be the judicial branch, one of the few institutions to maintain credibility among a majority of Egyptians.

Around 10,000 judges and other officials will be dispatched across the country to administer the vote.

Several local non-governmental organizations will also send members to polling stations to observe the vote. But many of these groups have criticized SCAF for limiting transparency in the voting process by denying them any real authority to report fraud.

Most foreign poll monitors have been barred from supervising the election. Shortly after taking power, SCAF denied all foreign observers except for one, citing the need to protect Egypt’s sovereignty.

“There is very bad management of this entire electoral process. It has been going on ever since the government released the legislation pertaining to how the elections would be run,” said Ghada Shahbandar, a former poll monitor and activist working at the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights.

The Expatriate Wildcard

Just over a month before the start of the PA elections, an Egyptian court ruled that its citizens living overseas should have the right to vote — a first for the country’s millions of expatriates, and a key demand of protesters in Tahrir.

But with so little time to prepare before the election, and with basic information about the methods of expat voting still undeclared, very few are confident that that the system will work.

The government does not maintain statistics on the number of Egyptians living abroad. Official figures place the number of expatriates at seven million, while some independent estimates are as high as 10 million.

“If Egyptians abroad are not given their chance to vote, it means that at least six percent of Egypt’s population is deprived from their basic political rights,” said Ahmed Ragheb, a lawyer and human rights activist.

Already, there have been numerous complaints about the electronic registration process for expatriates and the Egyptian government’s capacity to monitor and organize millions of potential votes overseas.

Even the government does not seem confident in the process. Just weeks before the historic court ruling, Judge Abdel Rahman told GlobalPost that it would be “impossible for Egyptians abroad to vote.”

He said the preparations would be too complicated and time consuming with such a short period before the elections.

Will the army ever leave power?

SCAF has already delayed the parliamentary elections once this year. Logistical preparations by both candidates and administrators only started earlier this month. With the shortened process, and signs pointing to a desired lack of transparency, many critics believe that Egypt’s military will be unwilling to transfer power to a civilian government.

On November 18, with less than ten days before the election, tens of thousands of Egyptians returned to the streets of Tahrir Square to criticize military rule in Egypt.

More than nine months after the unfinished revolution, various political elements — mostly led by Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood — all raised “one hand” to say no to the once-vaunted army.

The protesters’ immediate concern was the so-called supra-constitutional document set forth by various political groups and SCAF, several months before the election. The document was meant to solidify certain principles “above” the constitution, in other words, certain inalienable rights that Egyptians would have regardless of which people from which parties come to power.

But the masses in Cairo’s city center were challenging a SCAF amendment to the supra-constitional document that would cement the army’s budgetary immunity into the future constitution, essentially bypassing oversight and accountability to the Egyptian people.

Loai Nagati was one of the protesters in Tahrir.

Nagati knows the perils of military rule better than most. The 22-year-old was one of more than 12,000 Egyptians who have been jailed and tried under secret military courts since the ouster of Mubarak. He said he was abused and tortured during the eight-day detention earlier this year.

“We want an end to military rule in Egypt, finally. In this election, hopefully we can show them that the country is refusing to give the army the ultimate power,” said Nagati.

(GlobalPost-Open Hands Initiative reporting fellows Ahmed Ateyya, Reem Abdellatif and Stephanie Rice contributed reporting to this story.)

: More Jon Jensen

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