Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Syria

  • Syrian Factions Fight Proxy War in Neighboring Lebanon

    If one needed any evidence that the violence engulfing Syria was seriously affecting its neighbors, Wednesday’s double suicide attack in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, would be enough to support the theory.

    The small country meshed between Israel, Syria and the Mediterranean has seen its fair share of turbulence over the past several decades, including a civil war among Lebanon’s multiple religious communities that lasted for fifteen years. Yet as bad as that violence was, Lebanese from all religious denominations are increasingly concerned that their country is once again on the cusp of another bloody conflict — this time emanating from the war next door.

    In addition to the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees who have fled their homeland for Lebanon’s border towns, the violence that is tearing Syria apart is having a more deadly affect for thousands of Lebanese. The war is slowly seeping into Lebanon’s own neighborhoods. (more…)

  • Report Accuses Assad of Detaining, Torturing Children

    In times of crisis or violence, children are often the most vulnerable members of society — psychologically scarred by the acts of brutality that occur around them, susceptible to manipulation and in many instances forced to fend for themselves if their families are displaced by fighting.

    In Syria, children are put in even greater jeopardy by the deliberate actions of their government — acts that include widespread arrests, detention under horrendous conditions and outright torture for their confessions.

    These are some of the grave and disturbing findings published last week by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his team of field researchers. The report was delivered and briefed to members of the Security Council in the hope that the chamber would at least be able to come together and issue a clear statement of condemnation against the crimes that have been perpetrated. (more…)

  • Defying Sanctions, Iran, North Korea Help Syria Build Missiles

    According to a recent report in Jane’s Defence Weekly, Syria, despite being prohibited by sanctions for producing medium to long range missiles, is “accelerating its production of missiles and rockets effectively” at a pace similar to March 2011 — before the start of the uprising.

    Iran and North Korea are reportedly helping Syria overcome the international sanctions which make it harder to ship weapons components to the country.

    Cooperation in missile development between North Korea and Syria dates back to the 1980s. It is currently focused on improving Syria’s Scud-D missiles which are known to be fairly inaccurate but have a range of up to seven hundred kilometers — more than the distance between Damascus and Cairo.

    Iran is also helping Syria develop the Khaibar-1 missiles which has a range of up to one hundred kilometers and has been used by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which supports the regime in Damascus, against Israel. (more…)

  • Kerry Said to Express Doubts About Syria Strategy

    For the past two and a half years, the Obama Administration has projected an aura of confidence to the public about its policy on Syria. Despite clamors from some members of Congress for more active military engagement in the conflict, officials have resisted the temptation to intervene on a mass scale, with a certain private assurance that the policy they have been following is the most responsible course of action the United States can take.

    That confidence seemed to pay off when Bashar al-Assad agreed to dismantle and destroy his chemical weapons stockpile in order to avert the use of military force — an event that President Barack Obama brought up himself during his State of the Union address this week as an example of his administration’s foreign policy achievements.

    But it appears much of that confidence is now being tossed aside by some of the Obama Administration’s most senior members. According to reporters Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg, Josh Rogan of the The Daily Beast and Fred Hiatt of The Washington Post, Secretary of State John Kerry is one of the officials beginning to doubt whether America’s policy in Syria is doing anything to push the Assad regime out of power. (more…)

  • “Industrial Scale” Syrian War Crimes: Report

    The Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad is known for many things: the indiscriminate and purposeful targeting of civilian neighborhoods, mass executions of rebel sympathizers, the use of crude and deadly barrel bombs as well as chemical weapons and the withholding of food and aid to areas that are held by the opposition. Courtesy of three top international human rights lawyers, the systematic torture, killing and starvation of Syrian detainees can be added to the list of its grievous human rights.

    According to a bombshell report (PDF) released to The Guardian newspaper and CNN, approximately 11,000 Syrian prisoners have been brutalized and killed in the past two and half years in what is described as a highly orchestrated campaign of retribution and punishment. Sir Desmond Lorenz de Silva, the former chief prosecutor of the special tribunal for Sierra Leone and one of the authors of the report, bluntly labeled the actions depicted in the study as “documented industrial scale killing.”

    Since the Syrian uprising began nearly three years ago, human rights lawyers from around the world have repeatedly called on the United Nations Security Council to refer officials in the Assad regime to the International Criminal Court. Navi Pillay, the United Nations’ top human rights official, has been at the forefront of this drive, pushing the council to hold human rights violators to account. (more…)

  • West Sees Syria’s Islamists as Too Powerful to Ignore

    Eighteen months ago, when the supporters and opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s regime met in Geneva, Switzerland to negotiate a common policy on Syria, the civil war in that country was starting to intensify in lethality and geographic scope. China, European countries, Russia, the United States and Syria’s neighbors all understood that the war was going to get worse. And their predictions came true: over the next two months, Syria experienced the most destructive days of the conflict during that time.

    Yet just as the war was raging and spreading to new areas of the country, the civil war in Syria was at least relatively uncomplicated in terms of who was fighting. Assad, financed and armed by Iran and Russia, was on one side of the dispute. A fractious but seemingly pro-democratic opposition was assumed to be on the other — men who had either taken up arms in defense of their communities or deserted their posts in the Syrian army and switched sides.

    One a half year later, the conflict in Syria is far deadlier and more complicated with few areas still spared from the violence. The alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad’s regime almost pushed the United States to intervene militarily. The manpower and considerable resources of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement have been devoted to the defense of his government, resulting in a string of military victories of loyalist forces in the west of the country and near Aleppo, the second biggest city. (more…)

  • Condemnations of Syrian War Crimes Have Little Impact

    While much of the world is focused on the dismantling of Syria’s chemical weapons program, the United Nations Human Rights Council is devoting serious resources to another major issue in the Syrian Civil War: the lack of accountability for those who are engaged in atrocities.

    In a speech to reporters in Geneva, Switzerland, the international body’s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, disclosed that her colleagues had uncovered numerous incidents in the fighting that amounted to war crimes or crimes against humanity.

    Observers of the Syrian Civil War, which is now in its third years, might not be surprised. Reports of what can well be considered crimes against humanity have regularly surfaced. Syrian military forces deliberately bomb densely populated areas, regardless of how many civilians are in the vicinity. Entire neighborhoods have been destroyed by the regime’s use of fighter aircraft, heavy artillery and helicopter gunships. Cluster munitions and barrel bombs that explode on impact, covering wider areas than regular munitions, have been used throughout the year. Bakeries, schools and power stations have all been targeted — if not to destroy rebel supplies and command centers, than to frighten civilians into thinking twice about supporting the opposition.

    But in a twist that could potentially add renewed urgency to the humanitarian crisis in the country, Pillay singled out President Bashar Assad for either ordering or condoning these abuses. (more…)

  • Syrian Regime Withholding Food, Medicine from Rebel Areas

    When the United Nations Security Council united last month and passed a resolution authorizing the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, the reaction among Syrians was a mix of highs and lows, of jubilation and dismay.

    For the survivors of a sarin gas attack that killed hundreds of civilians on the outskirts of Damascus in August, the news that those very weapons would be dismantled was a breath of fresh air.

    But for those who are still trapped in besieged neighborhoods as well as the millions who have had to flee their homes, getting rid of the country’s large chemical weapons arsenal was the least the international community could do.

    Indeed, as the war stretches closer to its fourth year with every passing month, more and more Syrians have resigned to the fact that the bloodshed and wholesale slaughter of entire families will continue for a long time, whether or not poison gasses are destroyed. (more…)

  • Dictator’s Fall Could Further Destabilize Syria

    President Barack Obama this week presented his case for intervening in Syria’s civil war in a televised address. Whether or not his arguments were persuasive is becoming clearer as analysts and congressmen debate the issue. One particular statement the president made about the Syrian opposition is exploring in more depth.

    Obama admitted in his speech on Tuesday that some of the rebels in the Middle Eastern country are extremists. But, he argued, terrorist groups like Al Qaeda “will only draw strength in a more chaotic Syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death.”

    A chemical weapons attack that allegedly killed hundreds of civilians in the suburbs of Damascus last month prompted the United States to start considering military action against the regime of President Bashar Assad.

    At least half of Obama’s statement had much truth to it. (more…)

  • Intense Diplomacy Required to Disarm Assad’s Chemical Arsenal

    When asked by a CBS reporter during a press conference if there was anything Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad could do to avert a military strike, Secretary of State John Kerry casually suggested that his regime could hand over all of its chemical weapons to international monitors.

    “Sure,” Kerry said. “He could turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week. Turn it over, all of it, without delay and allow a full and total accounting for that.” To demonstrate just how unrealistic he deemed the possibility, Kerry quickly added that Assad was unlikely to even consider the idea. “He isn’t about to do it and it can’t be done, obviously.”

    Forty-eight hours later, Kerry’s offhand remark has turned into a major diplomatic initiative led by the Russians to postpone or cancel outright an American airstrike on Assad’s military bases. (more…)

  • Obama’s Time Running Out for Syria Strike Authorization

    If President Barack Obama has any chance of winning congressional approval for using limited military force in Syria, his national-security team will need to make a better case for action in the next several days. That seems to be the collective judgment of millions of Americans and dozens of members of Congress, most of whom are still on the fence as to whether they should allow the resolution to pass.

    constitutionally, the president has the power to act militarily against the regime of his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad without Congress’ approval. Yet in a sign that Obama does not want to plunge his nation into yet another Middle Eastern war without some support at home, he decided to bring the matter up to the legislature last weekend. However, Congress has often disappointed his administration by underachieving or failing to come together to get legislation through. (more…)

  • Obama to Face Skeptical Congress Before Launching Syria Strikes

    More than a week after hundreds of Syrian civilians were allegedly gassed by their own government in a suburb of the capital Damascus, it looked as if the United States were finally about to respond to the crisis in a determined and forceful manner. Five warships were deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean, stocked with dozens of cruise missiles in the event President Barack Obama ordered retaliatory strikes. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to the American public and the world twice in a week, arguing for a resolute response to a savage attack that he called a “crime against conscience.”

    An American attack against Syrian regime targets seemed a foregone conclusion. So much so that Syrian commanders ordered their troops to evacuate their bases and head into the dense, civilian areas of Damascus.

    But almost as soon as the Obama Administration declassified its assessment of the Syrian regime’s responsibility for the chemical weapons attack, President Obama held a news conference to tell the nation he would bring the manner before the United States Congress. “While I believe I have the authority to carry out this military action without specific congressional authorization,” the president said, “I know that the country will be stronger if we take this course and our actions will be even more effective.” (more…)

  • America Condemns Syrian Gas Attack, Seen Preparing Strikes

    After nearly a week of internal deliberations and international debate over what appeared to be a chemical weapons attack in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry made it clear on Monday where America stands — and where it believes the blame rests.

    In a short statement at the State Department in front of reporters, Kerry delivered by far the most forceful message that has come out of the Obama Administration since the Syrian regime allegedly gassed hundreds of civilians in a suburb of the capital Damascus.

    “Let me be clear,” he Kerry. “The indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the killing of women and children and innocent bystanders, by chemical weapons is a moral obscenity. There is a reason that President Obama has made clear to the Assad regime that this international norm cannot be violated without consequences.” (more…)

  • Middle East Embroiled in Its Own Thirty Years’ War

    Istanbul Turkey
    Istanbul, Turkey at dawn, November 11, 2012 (Brendan Corey Benson)

    The Middle East is in turmoil as the third act of the post-Ottoman period — the colonial period and the nationalist regimes like Gamal Abdel Nasser’s that succeeded it being the first two — moves forward in an unstable and bloody fashion.

    The events should remind observers of an extremely devastating conflict that once embroiled Europe called the Thirty Years’ War. That massive, and complex, conflict began with the notorious “Defenestration of Prague” in 1618 and was largely a religious conflict between Protestant German princes jealous of their autonomy and faith arrayed against the power of the Catholic Hapsburg rulers of Austria.

    The conflict metastasized into a great power conflict between the ruling dynasties of Catholic France led by the famous practitioner of realpolitik, Cardinal Richelieu, and the Hapsburgs of both Austria and Spain. (more…)

  • Obama to Consider Deeper Involvement in Syria’s Civil War

    Steady military advances by loyalist forces against rebel units across Syria have once again forced the Obama Administration and its European allies to consider arming an insurgency that is desperate for reinforcements.

    Senior American national-security officials are scheduled to meet with the president at the White House in Washington DC on Wednesday to discuss the Syrian crisis, a meeting advocates for intervention hope will result in a mass supply of arms and ammunition to those seeking to topple Bashar Assad’s government.

    Members of the administration will reportedly consider a range of options to bolster the rebel forces, from providing more sophisticated weaponry to moderate opposition factions to launching a discriminate campaign of airstrikes that would target Syria’s fleet of fighter jets and helicopters. A no-fly zone over territory that is controlled by the opposition is still being viewed as a distant option, given the amount of risk that American pilots would face from Syria’s relatively modern, Russian air defenses. (more…)