Thursday 18 December 2014

This Saturday: Syria vigils in London, Manchester, and online



In the past year, press attention on Syria largely shifted from Assad’s campaign of terror to the terror of ISIS as they first expanded their reach from eastern Syria into northern Iraq, and then went on to lay siege to the largely Kurdish town of Kobane in north Syria, a battle that ranged within sight of Western media across the border in Turkey.

The TV crews have mostly moved on, but the battle for Kobane continues, with Kurdish and Free Syrian Army forces still fighting together to beat back ISIS. And Kobane is not alone: Across Syria towns and villages are fighting for their lives – against ISIS, against the Assad regime, and in some cases against both at the same time.

And while ISIS adopts the Assad regime’s methods of torture and oppression*, the regime goes on killing Syrians on a scale that ISIS still only dreams of**.

In the past few weeks, the Syria’s Forgotten Cities campaign has aimed to raise awareness of the many other Kobanes: focusing on Aleppo, Homs, Raqqa, and remembering the many more, Daraa, Daraya, Deir Ez-Zour, Douma, Hama, Jobar, Idlib, Yarmouk, Zamalka – places battered but not beaten, cities and towns where the fight for freedom and dignity goes on.

As Syrians face another winter of bombing, siege, starvation, and terror, we must resist the temptation to turn away in despair, so we are holding vigils in London and Manchester this Saturday, and we invite you to join us.

LONDON
Saturday 20th December, 6 to 8:00 pm in Trafalgar Square.
Facebook event page.

MANCHESTER
Saturday 20th December, 5 to 6:00 pm in Piccadilly Gardens.
Facebook event page.

Press release PDF.

For anyone unable to be present in either of these two cities, we are also holding an online vigil. Please help show solidarity with Syrians in this fourth winter of war by lighting a candle wherever you are and posting a picture of it on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, with the hashtag #SyriasForgottenCities. More details here.


* See: Islamic State adopts Assad’s methods of torture, Richard Spencer, The Telegraph, 13 December 2014.
** See: Syrian Network for Human Rights on civilian deaths since the start of the US-led intervention against ISIS in Syria.

Friday 4 July 2014

Gilbert Achcar on Syria and the Arab Uprising



Gilbert Achcar was one of the speakers at last month’s conference (mentioned in an earlier post) Syria – Correcting the Narrative, Building Solidarity. This video is from a few weeks earlier. From the YouTube description:
Gilbert Achcar, author of The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising and Professor of Development and International Relations at SOAS, sat down with Danny Postel, Associate Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver for a discussion of the Syrian Civil War in the context of the Arab Uprisings.

The interview was filmed at the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver on May 12, 2014.
He talks here about the nature of the Syrian regime and why it wasn’t susceptible to overthrow by peaceful protest in the same way as those in Tunisia and Egypt. He also explains why Syria’s regime can’t counter Islamist extremism, how in fact it fosters such extremism and depends on it to survive. On Syrians working for a democratic and peaceful alternative, those activists squeezed between the regime and Islamist extremists, Gilbert Achcar says the first condition required for them to thrive is for the regime to be brought to an end.

Read more at PULSE.

Monday 30 June 2014

Comfort For Kids, with illustrations by Lina Safar



Art by Lina Safar

Comfort For Kids is a project by Mercy Corps to help children recover from psychological trauma following major disasters. The methodology has previously been used by them following the September 11 attacks in 2001, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, wars in Gaza and Libya, and earthquakes in Peru, China, Haiti, Chile and Japan. Now that Mercy Corps are working with Syrian refugee children in Jordan and Lebanon, they’ve worked with illustrator Lina Safar to produce tailor-made children’s workbooks, as well as illustrated manuals for adults working with the children.

Read what Lina Safar has to say about the project on her website. There’s also a version on the Mercy Corps site.

AP has a story on the project, Syrian-born artist now helps child war refugees, by Tamara Lush. Below is a video to go with the story.



Mercy Corps was recently forced to close its aid operation in Damascus when the Assad regime demanded it stop cross-border aid shipments to areas outside regime control.

From The Guardian: Aid group Mercy Corps forced to close Damascus operations, by Martin Chulov and Emma Beals.

Mercy Corps statement: Closure of Mercy Corps’ humanitarian aid operations in Damascus.

See also this story at Syria Deeply: Underfunded Aid Organizations Battle Donor Fatigue, Revise Delivery Plans.
Katarina Montgomery and Karen Leigh talk to Cassandra Nelson, a director at Mercy Corps; Andy Baker, regional program manager, Syria Crisis at Oxfam; and Juliette Touma, regional spokeswoman at Unicef.

More at Mercy Corps, and Mercy Corps UK.
Mercy Corps Facebook page.
Mercy Corps on Twitter: @mercycorps and @mercycorps_uk.

Sunday 29 June 2014

Campaign to save Atareb Hospital, Aleppo



Photo: Nurse at Atareb Hospital, via the Hand in Hand For Syria Facebook page.

From today’s issue of the Observer, Syria charity blames red tape for closure of Aleppo hospital, by Tracy McVeigh:
All staff at a hospital serving the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo have been given a month's notice after a British medical charity blamed red tape for its closure.

Half a million people in the war-torn country will lose access to desperately needed healthcare when Atareb hospital, operated by the British-based aid agency Hand in Hand for Syria (HIHS), closes within the next few days.

It would be a disaster for local people as well as for the medical staff, who included some of the last remaining doctors in Syria, and their families, said the charity’s head of logistics, Fadi al-Dairi, speaking from the Syrian-Turkish border.

He said the charity has enough money from donors to keep the hospital running, but cannot get it into the country, because it needs a partner to channel the funding, and established charities are pulling out of Syria.

“It's because of bureaucracy, red tape,” he added. “We have the expertise, but not the experience.”

Al-Dairi said the charity was unable to apply for help from the UK’s Department for International Development or a UN agency because it had not been running for three years. “We only set up to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, so of course we are not yet three years old. We have been begging for help, but have had no firm commitment from any of the bigger aid agencies, whom we need to get the money we have to where it needs to be.

“Already all the aid agencies are only meeting 20% of the need within Syria. The loss of this hospital is a tragedy, especially when hospitals inside Syria are being bombed every day.”

The EU reported in May that since the crisis began, 200,000 people have died in Syria because of the lack of healthcare, far more than the 164,000 thought to have been killed in fighting.

The hospital is just 20 miles from Aleppo, one of the hardest-hit areas of Syria. It provides free care to anyone, regardless of political or faith affiliation. The hospital became well-known to British audiences after a BBC Panorama programme, Saving Syria’s Children, was screened last September, and showed the hospital treating casualties from an incendiary bomb attack on a school.

Omar Gabbar, an NHS consultant from Leicester who leads the British medical team for HIHS and has worked at Atareb, said the consequences of the hospital’s closure would be dire: “About half of all Syrian hospitals have already been damaged or destroyed, and Aleppo only has 143 doctors remaining out of a pre-conflict 2,500. Around half a million people, over a huge area, will have no access to treatment for conflict injuries or ongoing normal medical conditions…”
Read the rest.

Hand in Hand for Syria’s campaign page for Atareb Hospital.

From 12th June at Syria Deeply, Syria ER: Out of Cash, a Hospital Is Forced to Close, Dr. Rola Hallam, one of Hand in Hand’s British-Syrian volunteers, talks to Karen Leigh. An excerpt:
Our health care has all but been totally destroyed except for pockets in areas under government control in Aleppo and Damascus. It’s been almost annihilated. The main reason for that has been the specific systematic targeting by the Syrian government of hospitals, health-care facilities and health-care workers. We as Syrian doctors have been saying for nearly three years now that health care is being used as a weapon of war and that the very people meant to be protected by all warring parties are being sought out and targeted.

We’re closing because of a lack of funding. The hospital costs between $60,000 and $70,000 a month to operate, depending on our field costs. This is quite cheap for three operating theaters, an emergency room and 55 inpatient beds, but it’s a lot for a small charity. It has massive repercussions for our Syrian medical staff and for the approximately 5,000 patients we see every month. And, of course, for the greater population around us that knew it had access to our services.

In terms of geography, it’s in an opposition area and there’s no aid going into that area. It’s under daily shelling from the air, and it’s an area that has a lot of casualties. It’s also highly populated because there’s a high level of displacement into these [rural] areas. That’s why we set up the hospital there to begin with. And in addition, a [large] hospital in Bab al-Hawa was damaged a couple of days ago. [With the closure] the options will be even more limited. People will have to go to the border areas, or Turkey, or back into Aleppo, to seek treatment.

The services we provide at this hospital in particular are very important. Lots of the health care has been shifted from proper hospitals to field hospitals, where we can’t do inpatient treatment, mother and baby health care or most surgery. There’s war-related surgery, and then there’s non-war-related surgery. People still need to have an appendectomy. Our hospital has a dialysis unit. It’s one of only a few such units still functioning in Syria, and so its closure has huge repercussions.
Read the rest.

And again, the campaign page is here.

Hand in Hand For Syria, on Twitter as @hands4Syr, and on Facebook here.

Saturday 28 June 2014

Towards a free press in Syria



Above: demonstrators yesterday in Kafranbel, Syria, showing solidarity with the Al-Jazeera journalists imprisoned in Egypt. Via @kafrev.

At the Free Word Centre’s blog, Malu Halasa writes on The news in Syria. Here’s an excerpt:
At the onset of the uprising in spring 2011, the news wasn’t so much how a story was covered but by whom. Once the major Arabic-language news-networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya were expelled from the country and international journalists were banned from going inside, news from Syria relied on a legion of citizen journalists. These mainly young Syrians, some with information-gathering experience, many with none, were responsible for posting literally thousands of written reports on the Internet and more than 300,000 videos on YouTube.

Their considerable numbers could be seen as defiance of and resistance to government propaganda, which blamed the killings and massacres on ‘terrorists’. In the beginning, the mobile phones and the digital cameras at the disposal of citizen journalists weren’t broadcast quality. So the Local Coordinating Committees (LCC), a network of nonviolent activists across Syria, started giving people access to better equipment and training.

[…]

Verifying the news was not the only impetus behind the stories by citizen journalists. They were also documenting human rights abuses and continue to do so today for evidence to be used in Syrian war crime trials – if and when these ever take place. However, according to Alachi, citizen journalists became increasingly disenchanted with the direction of the revolution whether armed or jihadi. After the chemical attacks on East Ghouta in August 2013 when no international action was taken, they felt the world was deaf to their stories. As a result, their numbers sadly dropped.

Interestingly, inside the country, a home-grown alternative media scene has developed. New Internet radio and four (basic) opposition television satellite channels have been established. But for those in rebel-held areas, continual power outages and the high costs of obtaining and running electricity generators make the printed word a reliable source of news dissemination. Even districts under siege have been publishing at the last count 57 weekly or bi-monthly A4 printed newspapers and pamphlets covering local and opposition news and revolutionary culture.

Within the LCC, there has been some discussion whether the shape the news takes has added to the obfuscation for Western audiences. In the past, the LCC, which publishes its own bi-monthly newspaper, operated a Reuters-type constant news-feed wire service. It is now planning to move into reporting stories on civil disobedience not just against the regime but any group attempting to take control.

Read the rest.

The Local Coordinating Committees are on Twitter as @LccSy, and on Facebook here.

Amnesty’s support for Syrians working towards transition

This day last week a conference took place at SOAS, London, titled Syria – Correcting the Narrative, Building Solidarity. A number of speakers had interesting and inspiring things to say on issues relevant to the theme of this blog, and I look forward to video of the event going online.

Kristyan Benedict of Amnesty has provided an edited version of his remarks, with the title Building solidarity – what concrete forms of action can we take to support the Syrian People?

In his presentation he talked of some of the implications of Amnesty’s human rights focus, and of the difficulty in building solidarity under a dictatorship that uses violence and terror to disrupt any attempt by dissenters to organise. He outlined four key areas of work for Amnesty: accountability; humanitarian action; solidarity and support for imprisoned activists; and transition. On this Kristyan Benedict said:
We’re helping to empower, equip and mobilise Syrian activists to help them develop an independent civil society, take human rights messages out to a wider audience and be better enabled to use non-violent means to defend their own and others rights.

This last point on transition is crucial – across Syria and outside the country, there are still many thousands of brave people who continue to stand up for their rights to demand an end to poverty, corruption, impunity and repression. Those were key drivers of the uprisings and over three years on, the poverty is worse, the corruption is worse, the impunity is worse and the repression is worse. The regime arrested or killed a lot of peaceful activists in 2011 but there are still many who remain and many new activists imbued with a revolutionary spirit. Those that call themselves progressive should be supporting these activists.

These activists are calling for a future where human rights are respected and protected. If you truly believe in social justice you will make an effort to get to know this beautiful reality.

So many self described progressives have been disgracefully ignorant, maybe on purpose, of this reality – confront them, in a positive way, with the reality of Syria’s many progressive activists campaigning for a better Syria and being repressed by a tyrannical regime – ask them to make a decision – who is more deserving of support and solidarity?
Read the rest at Amnesty, or at EA WorldView.

Report from Qaboun, Dasmascus



The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen and cameraman Nik Millard recently visited Qaboun, a Damascus suburb outside regime control, 20 minutes’ drive from the city centre. Their report showed a resilience amongst the opposition that is built on more than guns and bullets. As well as interviewing residents and fighters from the Free Syria Army, they filmed an underground hospital, a kitchen providing residents free meals, and the carefully tended war cemetery.
We stood in a battered street about 500ft (150 metres) from the Syrian army’s positions. A man stood outside his home with three small children. He did not want to give his name.

“Life’s very difficult here, not easy at all,” he said. “There’s shelling, mortars, shooting. It’s a very difficult life here. But where else can we go?

“This is our home, our country. We have no other place. God willing, the rebels are going to win. The regime is unjust and unfair. History shows that injustice doesn’t last.”

Qaboun has organised itself effectively. A network of surgical clinics are dispersed around the neighbourhood. An underground kitchen provides about 3,000 free meals every day.

When we were there, they were preparing bulgur wheat, stewed with tomatoes, stirring big pots simmering on gas rings with long two-handed spoons, like thin metal oars.
Watch the film and read the accompanying story at BBC News.

Thursday 26 June 2014

Syria Civil Defence: in training and in action



The above film, Digging For Life, shows recruits to the Syria Civil Defence service in training to respond to aerial bombing attacks. You can find out more about Syria Civil Defence by following @SyriaCivilDef on Twitter, or by visiting their Facebook page.

The film is by the activist media network Basma Syria, on Twitter as @Basma4Syria, and also on Facebook. You can read more about Basma’s part in collecting evidence of war crimes here, and of the role of UK and US governments in supporting them here.

The film below, A City Left in Ruins: The Battle For Aleppo, is by Medyan Dairieh, Vice News. While it features interviews with fighters in Aleppo, the greater part of the documentary is spent following Syria Civil Defence volunteers risking their lives to save fellow civilians under bombardment. Read more here. Medyan Dairieh is on Twitter: @MedyanDairieh

Ulfah House


From Post TV, a short film about Ulfah House in Gaziantep, Turkey; a project run for and by Syrian refugee women, started by Dima Haj Darwish.

Video by Zoeann Murphy, The Washington Post. Via @sams_usa.