A forced breakthrough in the Middle East

If Obama can get Israel to agree to stop building new settlements, there may be a new opportunity for peace

Battling against the occupier: Young Palestinian protesters hurl stones towards Israeli soldiers during a protest against Israel's controversial separation barrier in the West Bank village of Bilin near Ramallah.

Topics:Middle East

Cell 28, block 3, Hadarim Prison, 30 kilometers (19 miles) northeast of Tel Aviv: This is where one of the two men who could play an important role in the Middle East in the coming months is currently incarcerated. The other man sits in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington.

In 2004, an Israeli court sentenced Marwan Barghouti, 50, to life in prison for his role in the planning of several murders. At the time, Barghouti called it a “show trial” and insisted that it would not deter him from sticking to his position. Even behind bars, the charismatic Palestinian leader stressed the need to “fight the occupying power.” At the same time, however, he argued the case for peaceful coexistence with the Israelis and advocated a two-state solution. Three weeks ago, at the convention in Bethlehem of Fatah, which governs the West Bank, the prisoner received the third-largest number of votes for a spot on the group’s central committee.

There had been persistent rumors that the Israelis wanted to release Barghouti from prison, hoping to pave the way for him to become a potential “Palestinian Nelson Mandela.” But when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist right-wing government came into power five months ago, the chances of that experiment coming to fruition seemed reduced to almost nothing. But now Israel’s hawkish premier has the opportunity to release the man from cell 28 without losing face among his supporters. In exchange for turning over Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier abducted three years ago, radical Islamist Hamas is demanding the release of 450 Palestinians it has listed by name.

Somewhat surprisingly, Barghouti is on the list. The Fatah leader has been a vocal critic of what he calls Hamas radicals’ “coup” in the Gaza Strip, and he has also called for reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, which have clashed violently in the past. If Palestinian unification is even conceivable, it will require Barghouti’s participation. With German mediation, the Shalit deal, long in the making and hampered several times by various details, could be completed successfully in the coming weeks.

Watching from Washington

Officials in Washington are also keeping a close eye on — and apparently taking a favorable view of — the potential prisoner exchange deal and the prospect of changing the face of the Middle East. U.S. President Barack Obama is pursuing ambitious goals in the Middle East, and the comprehensive peace plan he has been developing is now taking shape. Obama is tying together the region’s two main problems, which are widely viewed as intractable: the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and the threat of Iran becoming a nuclear power. At the same time, he is applying tremendous pressure to all sides to achieve simultaneous progress on both fronts, progress that could lead to an overall solution.

But isn’t it naïve for the U.S. president to hold out the prospect of a peace treaty in two years, in a region where radical Islamists remain determined to destroy Israel and radical Zionists create new provocations every day by expanding the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories? Can the Iranian leadership still be dissuaded from pursuing its nuclear ambitions? “The explicit linkage is, in any case, a dangerous gambit,” concludes the British daily the Guardian.

The way Obama’s new approach works was in evidence during the Israeli premier’s trip to Europe last week. Although Obama was not physically present, his presence was nonetheless felt, as were his demands. On the one hand, he wants the Israelis to halt settlement construction in the occupied territories and negotiate with the Fatah leadership. On the other hand, Obama’s plans call for tougher sanctions on the Iranians, beginning this autumn, if they do not accept Washington’s offer of comprehensive nuclear talks by the end of September. Netanyahu was intent on preventing the parallel treatment of these two sets of demands — and, above all, the establishment of a link between the two subjects — but failed to do so during his European trip.

When the Israeli prime minister stood next to his British counterpart, Gordon Brown, at No. 10 Downing Street on Tuesday, there was a palpable distance between the two men. The construction of Jewish settlements, Brown said, is an ” obstacle” and must be stopped. At the same time, Brown threatened Tehran with tougher sanctions. In Paris, French President Nicolas Sarkozy seconded Brown’s demands and, in addition to agreeing with his call for a tougher approach, fundamentally questioned Tehran’s reliability and willingness to compromise. “These are the same leaders, in Iran, who tell us that the nuclear program is peaceful and that the elections were honest. Frankly, who believes them?”

On Wednesday, also in London, Netanyahu met with Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East. For weeks, George Mitchell has been repeating Washington’s call for a “complete halt to settlements” like a mantra. Behind the scenes, there was apparently even talk of Washington suspending its deliveries of military equipment and its billions in aid if Israel refused to cooperate.

Western action bears fruit

Probably the biggest disappointment for Netanyahu came on Wednesday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom Netanyahu’s predecessor Ehud Olmert had called Israel’s “best friend in Europe,” and who has taken an extremely mild stance toward Israel’s occupation policy in the past, joined the chorus of critics when she said unambiguously that a halt to settlement construction was a “key condition” of comprehensive peace, and that “substantial changes” on the part of the Israelis were needed on this issue. “Time is the essence,” the chancellor cautioned her guest, while at the same time stressing the need to increase pressure on Tehran. But Netanyahu did not address Merkel’s demands in Berlin, and instead limited himself to emphasizing Israel’s good relations with Germany.

The West’s concerted action seems to be bearing fruit. The stalemate, which is the status quo in the Middle East, is beginning to change. Apparently all it takes is a lot of pressure for politicians on all sides to react.

In May Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ Damascus-based political leader who is known for his uncompromising demands, surprisingly declared that his “goal” was the establishment of a Palestinian nation in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This cautious overture is unlikely to be enough to convince the West to enter into talks with Hamas. However, if Mashaal meant what he said, it would amount to a de facto recognition of the existence of Israel. Even Fatah, with which both the West and Israel are negotiating, has not gone much further.

Could ultra-conservatives derail the peace talk plan?

There are signals coming from Iran that at least nourish vague hope that even the Iranians have grasped the signs of the times. According to information from diplomatic circles, a group of Iranian politicians in the “pragmatists’ camp” has proposed a “limited suspension of uranium enrichment” that would approximate United Nations demands. The government has rejected such proposals, but because it was previously assumed that Iranians are united on the nuclear issue, Western observers believe that the episode is at least noteworthy.

Besides, Iran has just told the weapons inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it is willing to allow more thorough inspections of a few particularly “suspicious” nuclear facilities, such as the plant in Natanz, which is being used to make fuel, and the heavy-water reactor in Arak, which is capable of producing plutonium. In its latest, not-yet-published report, the IAEA notes that Iran hasn’t increased the number of centrifuges used to enrich uranium since May. Of course, experts believe that an Iranian change of heart is highly unlikely. Tehran has reduced its pace of development several times in the past and made concessions to the UN inspectors when it seemed tactically opportune. To date, Iran has weathered three rounds of UN sanctions relatively unscathed. However, a possible fourth round of sanctions in October that would entail a ban on fuel imports would deal a heavy blow to the economy.

A new round of peace negotiations

Netanyahu is already believed to have quietly agreed to some of Obama’s demands, albeit with great reluctance. He now plans to impose a nine-month moratorium on new construction in the settlements, with the exception of East Jerusalem. Although this falls short of Obama’s expectations, it is probably sufficient as the basis for a new round of Mideast peace negotiations the U.S. president plans to launch, and attend, in the fall — especially since Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, responding to pressure from Washington, is believed to be willing to meet with Netanyahu. Obama plans to explain details of the revival of the peace process to leaders of other major nations and as many representatives of the Arab world as possible on the sidelines of the next session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Netanyahu’s cabinet of unpredictable ultra-conservatives could thwart these efforts to achieve rapprochement. One of those conservatives is Minister of Science and Technology Daniel Hershkowitz, who has described Obama’s positions as “borderline anti-Semitic.” The national security advisor, known for his irascibility and his peculiar understanding of democracy, has also triggered alarm. Before Netanyahu’s European visit, Uzi Arad called upon Merkel not to openly discuss the issue of settlement construction. He also insisted that steps should be taken to prevent journalists from asking related questions.

Sadly, another politician can be counted on to stir the pot in times of crumbling convictions or at least shifting political positions: Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. The agitator, who repeatedly draws attention to himself with his racist comments, said early last week that he did not believe in peace with the Palestinians, and that Obama’s ideas were “unrealistic.” Referring to the Oslo Accords, he said: “Sixteen years have passed since then. Even in another 16 years, we won’t have an agreement.”

The Lieberman problem could very well resolve itself soon. The Israeli judiciary is investigating the foreign minister for money laundering, embezzlement and corruption, charges he denies. Nevertheless, Lieberman has promised that, if indicted, he will resign.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

This article has been provided by Der Spiegel through a special arrangement with Salon. For more from Europe’s most-read newsmagazine, visit Spiegel Online or subscribe to the daily newsletter.

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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.”

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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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