Mon. 11 July. 2011 CRISIS GROUP The Syrian People’s Slow-motion Revolution ………...…….1 WASHINGTON TIMES U.S. investigates Syrian diplomats for spying on protesters ...5 NINE MSN Syria's cyber war against dissidents ……………………...….9 FACEBOOK A Note from Ambassador Robert Ford …………………….13 WALL st. JOURNAL Syria Government Draws Vocal Critics in Public Forum ….14 Syria: Bloggers Rally for Anas Maarawi ………………..…18 KHALEEJ TIMES Dialogue in Damascus ……………………………………...18
Transcript
Mon. 11 July. 2011
CRISIS GROUP The Syrian People’s Slow-motion Revolution ………...…….1
WASHINGTON TIMES U.S. investigates Syrian diplomats for spying on protesters ...5
NINE MSN Syria's cyber war against dissidents ……………………...….9
FACEBOOK A Note from Ambassador Robert Ford …………………….13
WALL st. JOURNAL Syria Government Draws Vocal Critics in Public Forum ….14 Syria: Bloggers Rally for Anas Maarawi ………………..…18
KHALEEJ TIMES Dialogue in Damascus ……………………………………...18
NYTIMES Syrian Opposition Leaders Boycott a Government Dialogue
Opening…………………………………………………….20RUDAU
Syrian Kurdish Parties Form Coalition in Europe …………22
INDEPENDENT Robert Fisk: Why I had to leave The Times ……………….25
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HOME PAGEPopular Protest in North Africa and the Middle East (VI): The Syrian People’s Slow-motion RevolutionPeter Harling,The Crisis Group6 July 2011,
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Syrian uprising has defied conventional expectations and patterns established elsewhere in the region from the outset. It happened, first of all, and to many that in itself was surprising enough. The regime was not alone in believing in a form of Syrian exceptionalism that would shield it from serious popular unrest. Once the uprising began, it did not develop quickly, as in Egypt or Tunisia. Although it did not remain peaceful, it did not descend into a violent civil war, as in Libya, or sectarian affair, as in Bahrain. To this day, the outcome remains in doubt. Demonstrations have been growing in impressive fashion but have yet to attain critical mass. Regime support has been declining as the security services’ brutality has intensified, but many constituents still prefer the status quo to an uncertain and potentially chaotic future. What is clear, however, is the degree to which a wide array of social groups, many once pillars of the regime, have turned against it and how relations between state and society have been forever altered.
The regime’s first mistake in dealing with the protests was to misdiagnose them. It is not fair to say that, in response to the initial signs of unrest, the regime did nothing. It decreed an amnesty and released several prominent critics; officials were instructed to pay greater attention to citizen complaints; and in a number of localities steps were taken to pacify restive populations. But the regime acted as if each and every disturbance was an isolated case requiring a pin-point reaction rather than part of a national crisis that would only deepen short of radical change.
Over the past decade, conditions significantly worsened virtually across the board. Salaries largely stagnated even as the cost of
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living sharply increased. Cheap imported goods wreaked havoc on small manufacturers, notably in the capital’s working-class outskirts. In rural areas, hardship caused by economic liberalisation was compounded by the drought. Neglect and pauperisation of the countryside prompted an exodus of underprivileged Syrians to rare hubs of economic activity. Cities such as Damascus, Aleppo and Homs witnessed the development of sprawling suburbs that absorbed rural migrants. Members of the state-employed middle class, caught between, on the one hand, low salaries, shrinking subsidies and services and, on the other, rising expenses, have been pushed out of the city centre toward the underdeveloped belt that surrounds Damascus. The ruling elite’s arrogance and greed made this predicament more intolerable. Meanwhile, promises of political reform essentially had come to naught.
Much of this has been true for a while, but the regional context made all the difference. That the Syrian public’s outlook was changing in reaction to events elsewhere might not have been manifest, but telltale signs were there. Well ahead of the mid-March 2011 commencement of serious disturbances, the impact of regional turmoil could be felt in the behaviour of ordinary Syrians. In what had long been – or forced to become – a depoliticised society, casual discussions suddenly assumed a surprisingly political tone. What the regime used to do and get away with came under intense and critical public scrutiny. Subtle expressions of insubordination surfaced. Previously routine – and unchallenged – forms of harassment and extortion by civil servants met unusual resistance on the part of ordinary citizens, emboldened by what they had seen in Tunisia, Egypt and beyond. More broadly, Syrians – who like to imagine themselves as the Arab vanguard – increasingly were frustrated at being left on the sidelines of history at a time when much of the region was rising up.
Taking small steps to coax the population, the regime also repressed, often brutally and indiscriminately. That might have worked in the past. This time, it guaranteed the movement’s nationwide extension. Wherever protests broke out, excessive use
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of force broadened the movement’s reach as relatives, friends, colleagues and other citizens outraged by the regime’s conduct joined in. Worse still, the regime’s strategy of denial and repression meant that it could not come to terms with the self-defeating social and political consequences of its actions.
The regime also got it wrong when it tried to characterise its foes. Syrian authorities claim they are fighting a foreign-sponsored, Islamist conspiracy, when for the most part they have been waging war against their original social constituency. When it first came to power, the Assad regime embodied the neglected countryside, its peasants and exploited underclass. Today’s ruling elite has forgotten its roots. It has inherited power rather than fought for it, grown up in Damascus, mingled with and mimicked the ways of the urban upper class and led a process of economic liberalisation that has benefited large cities at the provinces’ expense. The state abandoned vast areas of the nation, increasingly handling them through corrupt and arrogant security forces. There is an Islamist undercurrent to the uprising, no doubt. But it is a product of the regime’s decades of socio-economic neglect far more than it reflects an outside conspiracy by religious fundamentalists.
True, areas with strong minority concentrations have been slow to rise up; likewise, Damascus and Aleppo have been relatively quiescent, and the business community has remained circumspect. But the loyalty these groups once felt for the regime has been under threat for some time. Most, in one form or another, have suffered from the predatory practices of a ruling class that, increasingly, has treated the country as private property. Even Allawites, a minority group to which the ruling family and a disproportionate share of the security services belong, long have had reason to complain, chafing at the sight of an ever-narrowing elite that does not even bother to redistribute wealth to its own community.
That leaves the security apparatus, which many observers believe constitute the regime’s ultimate card – not the regular army, distrusted, hollowed out and long demoralised, but praetorian units
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such as the Republican Guard and various strands of the secret police generically known as the Mukhabarat and disproportionately composed of Allawites. The regime seems to believe so, too, and has dispatched its forces to engage in ruthless displays of muscle, sometimes amounting to collective punishment. Over the years, these forces undoubtedly have served the regime well; in recent months, too, they have shown no mercy in efforts to crush the protest movement.
But here as well appearances can be deceiving. From the outset of the crisis, many among the security forces were dissatisfied and eager for change; most are underpaid, overworked and repelled by high-level corruption. They have closed ranks behind the regime, though it has been less out of loyalty than a result of the sectarian prism through which they view the protest movement and of an ensuing communal defence mechanism. The brutality to which many among them have resorted arguably further encourages them to stand behind the regime for fear of likely retaliation were it to collapse.
Yet, the sectarian survival instinct upon which the regime relies could backfire. The most die-hard within the security apparatus might well be prepared to fight till the bitter end. But the majority will find it hard to keep this up. After enough of this mindless violence, this same sectarian survival instinct could push them the other way. After centuries of discrimination and persecution at the hands of the Sunni majority, Allawites and other religious minorities concluded that their villages within relatively inaccessible mountainous areas offered the only genuine sanctuary. They are unlikely to believe their safety is ensured in the capital (where they feel like transient guests), by the Assad regime (which they view as a temporary, historical anomaly), or through state institutions (which they do not trust). When they begin to feel that the end is near, Allawites might not fight to the last man. They might well return to the mountains. They might well go home.
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This report, part of a series on the popular movements in North Africa and the Middle East, is the first of two that will look in detail at Syria’s uprising. It focuses chiefly on the inception and makeup of the protest movement. The second, to be published shortly, will focus on the regime’s response.
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U.S. investigates Syrian diplomats for spying on protesters State Department may limit their travelWashington Times,11 July 2011,
The State Department is investigating charges that Syrian diplomats are spying on Syrian anti-government demonstrators in Washington and other U.S. cities in order to intimidate their relatives in the restive Middle Eastern nation.
Eric Boswell, assistant secretary for diplomatic security, last week summoned Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha to air “concerns with the reported actions of certain Syrian Embassy staff in the United States,” the State Department said Friday evening.
“We received reports that Syrian mission personnel under Ambassador Moustapha’s authority have been conducting video and photographic surveillance of people participating in peaceful demonstrations in the United States,” the department said.
The charges could spur the State Department to restrict the travel of the ambassador and other Syrian diplomats.
Hamdi Rifai, director of Arab Americans for Democracy in Syria, said he filed a complaint with the State Department in June about reports of the ambassador’s attempted intimidation and surveillance of Syrian-Americans.
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“I was told they were actively considering placing restrictions on the movement of Ambassador Moustapha amongst other remedies to the situation,” Mr. Rifai said.
Radwan Ziadeh, the director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights who is in close touch with Syria’s liberal opposition, said he first noticed Syrian diplomats monitoring demonstrations in Washington last month.
“What I know is, we have had demonstrations in front of the White House last month and, for the first time, we were confronted by some supporters of the Assad regime. When we took pictures and looked for their names, some of them worked for the embassy,” he said.
“This happened also in Michigan, New Jersey and Los Angeles, where there is a large Syrian community. We started asking the State Department to follow up on this issue.”
Mr. Ziadeh said he was worried that the activities from the embassy personnel were part of a campaign to intimidate the families of Syrian-Americans.
“All the Syrian exiles who are activists are afraid to go back to Syria,” he said. “My mother is in Damascus. She has been told she cannot travel, and my brothers and sisters have been told they cannot travel. They called my brother to issue statements to discredit and attack me. This is because of what I am doing outside of the country.”
Mr. Rifai said he received a note to his Facebook account from the Syrian Interior Ministry asking him to end his opposition activities and obey Syrian law.
Mr. Ziadeh talked to The Washington Times from Johannesburg, where he was lobbying the South African government to vote in favor of a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Syria’s crackdown on nonviolent protests.
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Syrian President Bashar Assad, has been fighting widespread non-violent demonstrations for about 14 weeks. Human rights groups accuse his security forces of killing as many as 1,600 protesters.
In its response last week to the allegations against Mr. Moustapha, the State Department said: “The United States government takes very seriously reports of any foreign government actions attempting to intimidate individuals in the United States who are exercising their lawful right to freedom of speech as protected by the U.S. Constitution.
“We are also investigating reports that the Syrian government has sought retribution against Syrian family members for the actions of their relatives in the United States exercising their lawful rights in this country, and will respond accordingly.”
In Syria, main opposition groups boycotted talks with the government on Sunday and said they would not negotiate until Mr. Assad stops the violent crackdown and frees thousands of political prisoners.
Even many of the intellectuals, independent parliamentarians and minor opposition figures who did attend the conference, aimed at setting the framework for national dialogue, were critical of the government crackdown.
Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa called for a transition to democracy in a country ruled for four decades by the Assad family dynasty. He credited mass protests with forcing the regime to consider reforms while warning against further demonstrations.
A senior State Department official said in response to the meeting: “We and the Syrian people are looking for positive and genuine action from the Syrian government that leads to a transition. This transition must meet the aspirations of the Syrian people. The Syrian government will be judged by its concrete actions, not its words.”
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The public allegations against Mr. Moustapha could signal the fall in stature for an ambassador who became a fixture of the diplomatic cocktail-party circuit in Washington in the first years of the Obama administration.
Mr. Moustapha, unlike many of his predecessors, is accessible to reporters and even kept up a personal blog. An entry from Jan. 31, 2009, discusses recent dinner parties that the ambassador threw under the title “Friends and More Friends.”
His dinner guests have included journalists Seymour Hersh and Helene Cooper of the New York Times and members of Congress.
“Common sense says that given what has happened inside Syria, Moustapha is in a complicated and tense situation in Washington,” said Steve Clemons, Washington editor-at-large for the Atlantic magazine, who has included the ambassador among his guests at parties.
“I would be highly surprised if the embassy served as a base for intimidation of Syrian-American families but have no sense of this one way or another. I think that Moustapha believes in engagement and supports broad economic liberalization,” Mr. Clemons said.
He added, “Just as ambassadors of the United States need to obey the dictates of policy whether conservative, liberal or neoconservative - Moustapha must follow the instructions of his home base or resign.”
Mr. Clemons said he last saw the ambassador at a dinner he hosted for Robert Ford, who was appointed last year as U.S. ambassador to Syria.
Michael Singh, managing director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the allegations against Mr. Moustapha are “beyond the pale.” He said the Obama administration should kick
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the ambassador out of the country or at the very least restrict his movement.
“It would be outrageous for any foreign government to do this in the United States. But the fact that this is the Syrian regime that is doing this and is reportedly using the information against families or associates of people here in the United States makes it even worse,” Mr. Singh said.
Mr. Singh served as senior director for the Middle East on the National Security Council staff under President George W. Bush.
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Syria's cyber war against dissidents Syrian security forces use tanks, bullets and tear gas against anti-regime protesters by day, but by night they are more stealthy, targeting dissent using the opposition's own weapon, the Internet.Nine msn(Australian)11 July 2011,
Demonstrators use social networking sites, notably Facebook and YouTube, to whip up support for protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, and also to broadcast footage they say is of the authorities' ensuing crackdown.
But the regime is also using the Internet to strike back, and the government has deployed a special unit — the Syrian Electronic Army — to post pro-Assad comments on anti-regime websites.
"Many websites and Facebook pages have been targeted by al-Assad supporters," said US-based Ahed Al Hendi, Arabic programme coordinator for Cyberdissidents.org.
"Many of these comments were death threats and curses and accusations of treason."
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In his most recent speech on June 20, Assad spoke of the key role of young people, singling out "the electronic army which has created a real army in a virtual reality."
The Syrian Electronic Army has its own media arm and a Facebook page listing its "latest attacks" by pro-regime hackers.
"They send thousands of reports against the page or profile until Facebook administration shuts it down," said political activist Rami Nakhleh.
The Beirut-based 28-year-old, who goes by the pseudonym Malath Aumran, is part of a growing army of cyber dissidents tapping into social networks to cover events in Syria.
Rights groups say that security forces have killed more than 1,300 civilians and arrested at least 12,000 since anti-government protests began in mid-March.
The Syrian Revolution 2011 — a Facebook group that has amassed nearly 225,000 "likes" — has played a vital role in spreading uprising news and videos.
Similar pages have mushroomed to monitor events inside Syria, spread the news and link opposition groups both at home and abroad.
Some "carry out counter attacks against any attempts to hack revolt pages," said Azher, a Syrian online activist who fled to an Arab country in March.
"The electronic army was hacked 26 times" by online dissidents, Azher said.
Assad opponents created the "coalition of Free Syrian Hackers in support of the Syrian revolt," that said it also hacked more than 140 government websites on June 3 alone.
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Azher said regime "thugs" post messages on revolt pages "calling for violence and sectarianism" which they then screen grab and post on their Facebook page as "evidence" of opposition incitement to hatred and violence.
They also post links to articles considered anti-Assad and ask their Facebook fans to comment, resulting in pro-regime mantras.
When asked who is waging the regime's online guerrilla warfare, all three activists who spoke to AFP responded: regime "thugs."
-- 'Thugs by day, thugs by night' --
"The thugs who beat up protesters during the day are the same people recruited to disrupt their online activities at night," Nakhleh said.
Most pages "taking the lead are by people who are close to the Assad regime," said Hendi.
He cited Haidara Suleiman, the son of powerful intelligence officer and current Syrian ambassador in Amman, Bahjat Suleiman.
Suleiman runs the main Bashar al-Assad page on Facebook and is also in the Syrian Electronic Army.
He told AFP that "the official media is unfortunately weak... This is why we use electronic media to show people what's going on."
Asked why Syria bans the international media, Suleiman said: "Journalists refused to enter" the country.
The authorities accuse international satellite channels of exaggerating protests and broadcasting unauthenticated footage.
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Damascus's tight grip on information has compelled international media to rely on video clips filmed by the protesters themselves and broadcast on websites such as YouTube.
In an attempt at self-authentication, protesters now carry banners stating the date and neighbourhood where the demonstration is taking place, in addition to taking shots of recognisable local landmarks.
Nakhleh said it can take activists a whole night to upload a two-minute video using a dial-up connection.
"They feel that this is our only weapon against the regime's propaganda machine that fabricates lies against us," he said.
"A young man who goes down to protest while recording footage with his phone is well aware that he will be the first target for any rooftop sniper. When this person goes home, he will certainly not fear uploading this video."
One YouTube video dated July 1 showed a young man apparently being shot dead after he was caught filming troops opening fire in the flashpoint central city of Homs.
Suleiman dismissed "most of these stories about people getting killed while filming" as "just fairy tales."
"They are going out and protesting daily and no one is doing anything to them," he said.
Nakhleh said Syria's intelligence services "do not have the expertise needed to wage an electronic war" and are helped by their ally Iran.
"I know this from the many emails I receive from people who claim they are Iranian activists. They contact us and send us viruses," Nakhleh said.
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He said the Assad regime recruits online agents both to track activists and to hack opposition websites and shut down their Facebook pages.
It is "psychological war," Nakhleh said, with neither side gaining information of strategic value.
"Each side wants to prove that the other side is lying. This is the problem," said Suleiman.
The Internet stealth war may be raging, but for Azher "the real battle is the one taking place on the ground."
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A Note from Ambassador Robert Ford Facebook,10 July 2011,
Outside the Embassy demonstrators complained about U.S. policy towards the Syrian government and my trip to Hama.
As I have said before, we respect the right of all Syrians – and people in all countries - to express their opinions freely and in a climate of mutual respect. We wish the Syrian government would do the same – and stop beating and shooting peaceful demonstrators. I have not seen the police assault a “mnhebak” demonstration yet. I am glad – I want all Syrians to enjoy the right to demonstrate peacefully. On July 9 a “mnhebak” group threw rocks at our embassy, causing some damage. They resorted to violence, unlike the people in Hama, who have stayed peaceful. Go look at the Ba’ath or police headquarters in Hama – no damage that I saw.
Other protesters threw eggs and tomatoes at our embassy. If they cared about their fellow Syrians the protesters would stop throwing this food at us and donate it to those Syrians who don’t
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have enough to eat. And how ironic that the Syrian Government lets an anti-U.S. demonstration proceed freely while their security thugs beat down olive branch-carrying peaceful protesters elsewhere.
The people in Hama have been demonstrating peacefully for weeks. Yes, there is a general strike, but what caused it? The government security measures that killed protesters in Hama. In addition, the government began arresting people at night and without any kind of judicial warrant. Assad had promised in his last speech that there would be no more arrests without judicial process. Families in Hama told me of repeated cases where this was not the reality. And I saw no signs of armed gangs anywhere – not at any of the civilian street barricades we passed.
Hama and the Syrian crisis is not about the U.S. at all. This is a crisis the Syrian people are in the process of solving. It is a crisis about dignity, human rights, and the rule of law. We regret the loss of life of all Syrians killed, civilians and security members both, and hope that the Syrian people will be able to find their way out of this crisis soon. Respect for basic human rights is a key element of the solution.
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Syria Government Draws Vocal Critics in Public Forum Nour Malas,Wall Street Journal,10 July 2011,
Syria's government on Sunday opened a first meeting for talks with the opposition as most opposition figures boycotted the event and some of those attending unleashed criticisms of the regime unusual in a government-sponsored setting.
In a vast Damascus hall, a few writers and academics slammed the government's security apparatus and its violence against
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protesters, which has killed an estimated 1,700 people since protests erupted in Syria in mid-March.
But an equal number of speakers carried the government line that has infuriated protesters, alluding to complex foreign plots to destabilize Syria and rejecting foreign intervention in the country's affairs above all.
As the meeting, which was broadcast on state television, took place, Syria's state news agency said the foreign ministry had summoned the U.S. and French ambassadors in the country to object to their visit to the city of Hama.
U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford and French Ambassador Eric Chevallier visited Hama on Thursday and Friday in a bold diplomatic warning to President Bashar al-Assad against escalating violence in a restive city that has seen some of the largest antiregime protests and has been surrounded by tanks for a week.
Syrian officials said the trips were unauthorized, and accused the U.S. in particular of inciting violence with the visit.
However, a senior U.S. State Department official said Mr. Ford was not summoned by Syria's government, but rather met with Foreign Minister Walid Moallem in a prescheduled meeting on Sunday.
The ambassador expressed his displeasure at a 31-hour protest outside the U.S. Embassy in Damascus on Friday and Saturday calling for his departure as a response to his trip to Hama, in which protesters threw tomatoes, eggs, and later glass and rocks, the official said. Mr. Moallem also filed an official complaint with the Ambassador regarding the Hama trip.
Mr. Ford, in a letter posed on the embassy's Facebook page, said the protesters outside the embassy "resorted to violence, unlike the people in Hama, who have stayed peaceful."
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"I saw no signs of armed gangs anywhere," Mr. Ford said. Syria's government has often said it is sending the army into cities to pursue armed gangs and criminals.
Mr. Assad also on Sunday appointed Anas Abdul Razzaq Na'em, a medical doctor little known among activists, as the new governor for Hama, after last week sacking a governor whom city residents said appeared to sympathize with protesters.
The appointment came after a meeting late Saturday between Hama city representatives—including heads of prominent families and religious figures—and state authorities, which activists said failed to agree on a way out of Hama's security dilemma.
Despite being surrounded by military since July 3, and a security raid that has killed at least two dozen people over that period, residents in Hama are still running security checkpoints and guarding their homes against a fresh offensive, residents say. One resident said many families had sent their women and children to neighboring villages. The city, which saw a brutal attack in 1982 that serves as a historic reminder of the Assad regime's intolerance for dissent, has been in limbo of being besieged by, and free from, security oversight.
In Damascus, the national dialogue meeting—like a rare opposition meeting held in the capital last month—appeared to show a widened scope for political exchange as businessmen, journalists and intellectuals took scheduled turns giving speeches.
Mohammad Habash, a member of Syria's Parliament, even urged constitutional amendments that would pave the way for presidential elections.
Tayeb Tizini, a philosopher and one of the better-known opposition figures attending the meeting, called for an immediate "dismantling of the security state."
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"The shooting must stop," said Mr. Tizini, who was detained briefly in March for attending a protest in Damascus. Growing frustration was also evident.
Mohammad al-Khatib, a younger man who asked to have two additional turns for his friends to speak, urged the government to stop diverting attention from the relentless violence against protesters by referring to foreign plots. "I beg of you, there is an internal problem," Mr. Khatib said.
Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, who headed the meeting as chairman of the National Dialogue Committee, conceded "a great deal of mistakes" had been made. "We used to sweep them under the carpet without thinking about them," Mr. Sharaa said, pushing the national dialogue as an opportunity to turn the page in Syria's unprecedented crisis.
But the succession of speeches also appeared to show a hardened divide between Syrians who—for the first time—acknowledge that the 41-year rule of the Assad family under an essentially one-party system has become untenable, and those opposition figures who now view any reforms short of Mr. Assad stepping down as inadequate.
"They very well may end up conducting the whole [national dialogue] without us," said Radwan Ziadeh, a U.S.-based opposition activist who declined an invitation to attend the meeting.
Other opposition groups that have come to represent different streams of Syria's antigovernment protests have also rejected the meeting, and any talks with the government over reforms, as long as tanks continue to besiege cities and protesters are shot. At least 12 people were killed in nationwide protests on Friday.
Bouthaina Shaaban, an advisor to President Assad, said it was "their historic responsibility" to join the dialogue.
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"This is the only way to move Syria out of the crisis into a political transition," Ms. Shaaban said. She said the two-day meeting is meant to set objectives for a national dialogue and "the basis for a transition to a democratic and new Syria," repeating pledges by the president in a speech last month for wide-ranging political reforms.
Mr. Assad hung his promise for sweeping political changes on the national dialogue process.
He said the talks would discuss constitutional amendments that could end the Ba'ath Party's monopoly over state and society in Syria and pave the way for multi-party elections—significant concessions if implemented—but stressed that they had to be born out of discussions and left vague how the actual dialogue process would work.
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Syria: Bloggers Rally for Anas Maarawi Wall Street Journal,10 July 2011,
Anas Maarawi is the latest Syrian blogger to have been imprisoned. He was detained on Friday July 1, 2011, in his neighborhood of Kafarsouseh in Damascus, and nothing has been heard of him since.
Anas is a well known blogger in Syria and beyond. Apart from his personal blog, Anas Online, he ran a number of tech-blogs and projects, most prominently, Ardroid, which was the first Arabic-language blog to focus on Google’s Android OS.
His arrest prompted a campaign for his release. A dedicated blog was set-up, as well as a Facebook page and a Twitter hash tag,
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#FreeAnas. Many Arabic tech-blogs participated in the campaign, starting with his own pet-project, Ardroid...
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Dialogue in Damascus Khaleej Times,11 July 2011
Bashar Al Assad is still experimenting with ideas. The Syrian president’s initiative to hold a ‘national dialogue’ seems to have fizzled out even before it could take off. The reason being the apparent inconsistent approach on the part of governmental authorities, who one way or the other failed to bring on board people across the political divide, and assure them of a real change in the making.
This is why many of the dissident voices have kept themselves aloof from the brainstorming session that Assad wants in Damascus, and believe that nothing could change for good until and unless repression comes to an end and a new social contract is evolved for people under the yoke of Baath regime for the last five decades.
The government, however, has its own tale to tell. Assad, who had earlier talked of sharing power with the elected representatives and had even promulgated a couple of executive orders in this regard, including announcement of amnesty, has now hinted at extending the scope to multi-party elections and a new media law. This sounds promising provided it is genuinely executed, and power is devolved in the centralised society that Syria is today into a pluralistic one. But the very fact that international media is barred from covering socio-political upheavals in Syria, and a very stringent espionage system is at work against political opponents goes on to question the credibility of such claims by the ruling elite.
The reconciliation exercise that is underway in Damascus should be result-oriented. There is no point in just indulging in the
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academics of the issue, and then just putting it at the backburner for reasons of expediency. One thing is quite clear: Syrians are vying for a change and the least that the Baath Party and Assad’s administration could do is to channelise the momentum for the collective good of its people. Any arm-twisting of the opposition and trying to elicit concessions would hardly work, as the opposition is already leaning ?with the wall.
More than 1,700 deaths in a military operation spanning just less than four months is a telling tale of human rights excesses and lawlessness that has come to grip the geostrategic Middle ?Eastern country.
Though it is unclear as to who’s who of the political divide are attending the government-sponsored dialogue in Damascus, it has to be credible enough to send the right overtures to the opposition members. Getting across the table with much fanfare only to indulge in rhetoric of national security and looking for a foreign hand in the unrest would be a sheer wastage of time.
Assad is reminded that the pandemonium on the streets is not without a cause, and there is no point in dubbing it as anti-state in substance on the part of so-called infiltrators. The dialogue should bridge the divide. It shouldn’t push the opposition on the brink.
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Syrian Opposition Leaders Boycott a Government Dialogue OpeningBy NADA BAKRINYTIMES,10 July 2011,
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian officials on Sunday formally opened what they described as a national dialogue aimed at a transition to multiparty democracy, but the country’s opposition leaders
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boycotted the event, calling it a sham to mask the government’s brutal crackdown on the pro-democracy protests that have shaken Syria’s ruling Assad family.
Although moderate politicians attended the talks in Syria, opposition figures said they would not participate without an end to the crackdown, which rights groups say has left an estimated 1,300 Syrians dead and 12,000 arrested.
The talks came almost four months after protesters first took to the streets across Syria demanding an end to the government of President Bashar al-Assad, whose clan has dominated Syrian political life since the 1970s and has shown little or no tolerance for dissent. The Syrian uprising was inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt that toppled authoritarian regimes in those countries earlier this year.
In his opening remarks, Vice President Farouk al-Shara said that the two-day talks, held at a state-owned resort in Demas, a town 12 miles outside of the capital, Damascus, were to discuss legislation that would allow for a transition to a multiparty system. He said the authorities would hold another meeting later to announce the new system.
Though his announcement answered a demand of pro-democracy activists, many Syrians dismissed it and said they were skeptical of a government that has repeatedly promised reforms and has yet to deliver any.
“This dialogue is beginning at an awkward moment and in a climate of suspicion,” Mr. Shara said. “There are many obstacles, some natural and some manufactured, to a transition toward another point.”
One opposition leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity so as to avoid government reprisals, called the event “a dialogue between the authority and the authority itself.” The opposition leader said, “We decided to boycott the meeting because if we
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participated we would be partners in the bloodshed by the regime’s military and security machine.”
President Assad, who came to power in 2000 after inheriting the office from his father, announced the dialogue in a speech on June 20, his third to the nation since the uprising started.
A posting last week on social networking sites for nationwide demonstrations under the banner “No to dialogue” attracted hundreds of thousands to the streets on Friday. Activists said that security forces killed at least 15 protesters and arrested hundreds of others. Even though the numbers of those reported killed and arrested were lower than in previous weeks, opposition figures and protesters said the violent repression in itself had discredited the government’s call for dialogue.
In Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city, which has become a focal point for the uprising, the Friday protests took place in the presence of the French and American ambassadors, who had visited Hama in a symbolic show of support for their cause. The Syrian Foreign Ministry summoned both diplomats on Sunday to protest against their visit to Hama.
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Syrian Kurdish Parties Form Coalition in Europe Seydkahn Kojir Rudaw (Kurdish website publishes from Kurdistan Iraq),11 July 2011,
Ten Kurdish parties from Syria created a new coalition for their parties in Europe last week and pressed for uniting the Kurdish voice in Europe during a conference in the Germany city of Dortmund.
The conference was attended by 20 party representatives, including Mizgen Mayqari, the representative of Kurdish Union Party in Syria to Europe.
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Mayqari told Rudaw, “We work together in Kurdistan and in Europe. This coalition will represent the Kurds of Syria in Europe and the world and it will take part in every diplomatic effort about the Kurds.”
Mayqari said the coalition will approach Kurdish groups and individuals to garner support for their new coalition.
An 11th party that could not attend the conference will join the coalition, Mayqari reported.
Mayqari told Rudaw that the conference and the coalition are part of the Kurdish struggle in Syria.
In a similar move in March, 12 Kurdish parties in Syria came together in the city of Qamishlu and established the Council of Syrian Kurdish Parties.
The Dortmund conference also formed a political committee run by Mayqari, Abduklsalam Mustafa and Kamaran Bekas, representatives of the United Democratic Party in Europe.
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Al-Jazeera: Syria threatening journalists Satellite news channel condemns 'campaign of threats' against reporters covering uprisings in Arab world Yedioth Ahronoth (original story is by AFP)10 July 2011,
Al-Jazeera satellite news channel on Sunday condemned what it called a campaign of threats against its journalists because of its coverage of uprisings in the Arab world.
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"Al-Jazeera presenters have been the targets of a campaign of threats, with in some cases their own safety and that of family members being threatened," the Doha-based channel said in a statement.
The campaign "is aimed at influencing al-Jazeera's coverage of the uprisings and protests that have swept many Arab countries," it said.
"Al-Jazeera now knows the source of these threats which convey nothing but the moral bankruptcy of those behind them."
The statement did not name the source, but did say it was planning to take legal action.
However, a source at the broadcaster said the threats emanated from Syria, which has been rocked by protests calling for the ouster of President Bashar Assad since mid-March.
Syrian authorities have sealed off the country to most international media as they crack down on coverage of anti-Assad protests.
The authorities there accuse al-Jazeera and other international satellite channels of exaggerating the protests and of broadcasting footage without verifying their authenticity.
The pan-Arab satellite television channel has been in hot water with several autocratic Arab regimes over its coverage of uprisings sweeping the region since January.
During the protests in Egypt that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, the channel was banned from operating inside the country and nine of its journalists were briefly detained.
In Libya, Al-Jazeera cameraman Ali Hassan al-Jaber was killed on March 12 in an ambush near Benghazi which the rebels blamed on
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Muammar Gaddafi's forces, and several Al-Jazeera journalists have also been arrested covering the revolt.
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Robert Fisk: Why I had to leave The Times When he worked at The Times, Robert Fisk witnessed the curious working practices of the paper's proprietor, Rupert Murdoch. Despite their jocular exchanges, the writer knew he couldn't stay...Independent,Monday, 11 July 2011
He is a caliph, I suppose, almost of the Middle Eastern variety.
You hear all these awful things about Arab dictators and then, when you meet them, they are charm itself. Hafez al-Assad once held my hand in his for a long time with a paternal smile. Surely he can't be that bad, I almost said to myself – this was long before the 1982 Hama massacres. King Hussein would call me "Sir", along with most other journalists. These potentates, in public, would often joke with their ministers. Mistakes could be forgiven.
The "Hitler Diaries" were Murdoch's own mistake, after refusing to countenance his own "expert's" change of heart over the documents hours before The Times and The Sunday Times began printing them. Months later, I was passing by the paper's London office on my way back to Beirut when the foreign editor, Ivan Barnes, held up the Reuters wire copy from Bonn. "Aha!" he thundered. "The diaries are forgeries!" The West German government had proved that they must have been written long after the Führer's death.
So Barnes dispatched me to editor Charles Douglas-Home's office with the Reuters story and I marched in only to find Charlie entertaining Murdoch. "They say they're forgeries, Charlie," I announced, trying not to glance at Murdoch. But I did when he reacted. "Well, there you go," the mogul reflected with a giggle. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Much mirth. The man's
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insouciance was almost catching. Great Story. It only had one problem. It wasn't true.
Oddly, he never appeared the ogre of evil, darkness and poison that he's been made out to be these past few days. Maybe it's because his editors and sub-editors and reporters repeatedly second-guessed what Murdoch would say. Murdoch was owner of The Times when I covered the blood-soaked Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982. Not a line was removed from my reports, however critical they were of Israel. After the invasion, Douglas-Home and Murdoch were invited by the Israelis to take a military helicopter trip into Lebanon. The Israelis tried to rubbish my reporting; Douglas-Home said he stood up for me. On the flight back to London, Douglas-Home and Murdoch sat together. "I knew Rupert was interested in what I was writing," he told me later. "He sort of waited for me to tell him what it was, although he didn't demand it. I didn't show it to him."
But things changed. Before he was editor, Douglas-Home would write for the Arabic-language Al-Majella magazine, often deeply critical of Israel. Now his Times editorials took an optimistic view of the Israeli invasion. He stated that "there is now no worthy Palestinian to whom the world can talk" and – for heaven's sake – that "perhaps at last the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip will stop hoping that stage-strutters like Mr Arafat can rescue them miraculously from doing business with the Israelis."
All of which, of course, was official Israeli government policy at the time.
Then, in the spring of 1983, another change. I had, with Douglas-Home's full agreement, spent months investigating the death of seven Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners of the Israelis in Sidon. It was obvious, I concluded, that the men had been murdered – the grave-digger even told me that their corpses had been brought to him, hands tied behind their backs, showing marks of bruising. But now Douglas-Home couldn't see how we would be "justified" in running a report "so long after the event".
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In other words, the very system of investigative journalism – of fact-checking and months of interviews – became self-defeating. When we got the facts, too much time had passed to print them. I asked the Israelis if they would carry out a military inquiry and, anxious to show how humanitarian they were, they duly told us there would be an official investigation. The Israeli "inquiry" was, I suspected, a fiction. But it was enough to "justify" publishing my long and detailed report. Once the Israelis could look like good guys, Douglas-Home's concerns evaporated.
When he died, of cancer, it was announced that his deputy, Charles Wilson, would edit the paper. Murdoch said that Wilson was "Charlie's choice" and I thought, so, all well and good – until I was chatting to Charlie's widow and she told me that it was the first time she had heard that Wilson's editorship had been her late husband's decision. We all knew Murdoch had signed up to all manner of guarantees of editorial independence, oversight and promises of goodwill when he bought The Times – and had then fired his first editor, Harold Evans. He would deal with the trade unionists later.
Charles Wilson – who much later became, briefly, the editor of The Independent – was a tough, friendly man who could show great kindness, as well as harshness, to his staff. He was kind to me, too. But once, when I was visiting Wilson in London, Murdoch walked into his office. "Hallo, Robert!" Murdoch greeted me, before holding a jocular conversation with Wilson. And, after he had left, Wilson said to me in a hushed voice: "See how he called you by your first name?" This was laughable. It was like the Assad smile or the King Hussein "Sir". It meant nothing. Murdoch was joking with his ministers and courtiers.
A warning sign. Still in west Beirut, where dozens of Westerners were being kidnapped, I opened The Times to discover that a pro-Israeli writer was claiming on our centre page that all journalists in west Beirut, clearly intimidated by "terrorism", could be regarded only as "bloodsuckers". Was the paper claiming that I,
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too, was a bloodsucker? In all this time, Murdoch had expressed exclusively pro-Israeli views, and had accepted a "Man of the Year" award from a prominent Jewish-American organisation. The Times editorials became more and more pro-Israeli, their use of the word "terrorist" ever more promiscuous.
The end came for me when I flew to Dubai in 1988 after the USS Vincennes had shot down an Iranian passenger airliner over the Gulf. Within 24 hours, I had spoken to the British air traffic controllers at Dubai, discovered that US ships had routinely been threatening British Airways airliners, and that the crew of the Vincennes appeared to have panicked. The foreign desk told me the report was up for the page-one splash. I warned them that American "leaks" that the IranAir pilot was trying to suicide-crash his aircraft on to the Vincennes were rubbish. They agreed.
Next day, my report appeared with all criticism of the Americans deleted, with all my sources ignored. The Times even carried an editorial suggesting the pilot was indeed a suicider. A subsequent US official report and accounts by US naval officers subsequently proved my dispatch correct. Except that Times readers were not allowed to see it. This was when I first made contact with The Independent. I didn't believe in The Times any more – certainly not in Rupert Murdoch.
Months later, a senior night editor who had been on duty on the night my Vincennes report arrived, recalled in a letter that he had promoted my dispatch as the splash, but that Wilson had said: "There's nothing in it. There's not a fact in it. I wouldn't even run this gibberish." Wilson, the night editor said, called it "bollocks" and "waffle". The night editor's diary for that day finished: "Shambles, chaos on Gulf story. [George] Brock [Wilson's foreign editor] rewrites Fisk."
The good news: a few months later, I was Middle East correspondent for The Independent. The bad news: I don't believe Murdoch personally interfered in any of the above events. He didn't need to. He had turned The Times into a tame, pro-Tory,
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pro-Israeli paper shorn of all editorial independence. If I hadn't been living in the Middle East, of course, it might have taken me longer to grasp all this.
But I worked in a region where almost every Arab journalist knows the importance of self-censorship – or direct censorship – and where kings and dictators do not need to give orders. They have satraps and ministers and senior police officers – and "democratic" governments – who know their wishes, their likes and dislikes. And they do what they believe their master wants. Of course, they all told me this was not true and went on to assert that their king/president was always right.
These past two weeks, I have been thinking of what it was like to work for Murdoch, what was wrong about it, about the use of power by proxy. For Murdoch could never be blamed. Murdoch was more caliph than ever, no more responsible for an editorial or a "news" story than a president of Syria is for a massacre – the latter would be carried out on the orders of governors who could always be tried or sacked or sent off as adviser to a prime minister – and the leader would invariably anoint his son as his successor. Think of Hafez and Bashar Assad or Hosni and Gamal Mubarak or Rupert and James. In the Middle East, Arab journalists knew what their masters wanted, and helped to create a journalistic desert without the water of freedom, an utterly skewed version of reality. So, too, within the Murdoch empire.
In the sterile world of the Murdochs, new technology was used to deprive the people of their freedom of speech and privacy. In the Arab world, surviving potentates had no problem in appointing tame prime ministers. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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Arutz Sheva: 'Arab Spring: Singer [Ibrahim Qashoush] who Called for Assad's Ouster Killed'..
LATIMES: 'Opposition voices absent from Syrian dialogue'..
