News: Civil War in Syria

Pro-Freedom · May 5, 2017

Genocide apologist Assad supporters are the subject, obscene language suits obscene people justifying obscene crimes against humanity.

F**k Assad, F**k his Western Lackeys: An Anarchist Statement on Eva Bartlett’s Hamilton presentations

28-01-2017:...While we appreciate the skepticism towards the mainstream media, as well as a general disdain for western imperialism, the so-called anti-imperialists who back Bartlett want us to believe that the near-consensus global and small press reports of the atrocities carried out by Assad regime simply didn’t happen. Or, to paraphrase Bartlett, it’s possible that a few mistakes have been made by Assad’s army, but she hadn’t heard of anything in particular. Sound conspiracy theory-ish yet? There’s more.

Bartlett’s conspiratorial claims, many of which have been debunked online (by sources which, by virtue of contesting Bartlett’s claims, are considered unreliable), have found a welcome home on such websites as GlobalResearch.ca, a site that sounds very professional and…well…researched when she’s citing it in front of a crowd. When you check the site out though, you’ll find that it devotes an entire section of it’s content to 9/11 truth articles, hosts articles by Alex Jones/Infowars, alt-right figure Paul Joseph Watson, and describes itself as “a major news source on the New World Order”.

That the far-right and the authoritarian left are feeding at the same conspiracy trough should give us pause, and all the more so when Bartlett, practically quoting Donald Trump, dismisses all information that doesn’t fit her narrative as fake news. As well, the conspiracy theory that there must be a guiding, conspiratorial hand behind mass movements because oppressed people could never rise up on their own has its roots in anti-black right-wing American conspiracy theories that refuse to accept that black people could possibly organize to make demands for justice. It doesn’t stop being condescending and racist when it’s said about Syrians.

Bartlett’s selling point for her material is that she, again unlike mainstream reporters, has been “on the ground”. That’s true inasmuch as she was in the region still understood as Syria, but she has not set foot in any non-regime areas. [1] In fact, she distinguishes between the people whose stories she claims to be innocently recounting as true “average, every-day Syrians”, contrasting them with the millions of Syrian people who have populated areas that have been out of Assad’s control, who she only refers to as terrorists. One of these “average Syrians” she quotes is an Assadist army general who, wouldn’t you know it, tells a western self-styled journalist getting the Assad tour of Syria that he’s refusing to attack a neighbourhood because there are too many civilians. Woah! Really digging deep with your investigation, there, Eva!
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https://itsgoingdown.org/********-a...atement-eva-bartletts-hamilton-presentations/

Pro-Freedom · May 5, 2017

After years of 'War on Terror' rhetoric from the West and Israel, Assad's copied the best - and it works a treat...

How would the West respond if most Syrian rebels were Christians?

04-05-2017: ....For years, Assad had watched Israeli propagandists undercut Western condemnation of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza by conflating Palestinian resistance with “radical Islam” and by portraying Hamas as the face of the revolution.

It’s a ruse Israel has deployed mercilessly to crush three intifadas, and incarcerate two million Gazans in an open-air concentration camp – while earning barely a raised eyebrow from the West. Assad also looked on as the West did nothing as Abdel Fattah al-Sisi overthrew a democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and then slaughtered hundreds of its political supporters.

But widespread media coverage of the early days of the Syrian revolution made it clear to Western audiences that the nationwide protests against Assad were non-sectarian and secular in nature.

Despite this reality - and despite the fact protesters weren’t even yet demanding regime change - Assad preposterously portrayed the peaceful street protest movement as an Islamic terrorist-led conspiracy against him. And people in the West bought it.
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http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/rebels-christian-syria-west-1381886596

Pro-Freedom · May 5, 2017

Since Assad has been targeting hospitals and medical personnel since 2011, describing the strategy as "new" is a stretch...

Syria’s new death traps: Hospitals

04-05-2017: ..Airstrikes targeted 11 Syrian hospitals in April, destroying infrastructure, killing patients and aid workers. In Syria, civilians are left with no choice but to adopt a risk mentality when rushing to hospital for treatment. Busy, noisy and overwhelmed hospitals now resemble silent library-like places, not attended in fear of being killed by targeted missiles. It’s clear that targeting hospitals and humanitarian workers has become a strategy of war in the Syrian conflict, but how has this impacted the civilian population and the humanitarians?

Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American journalist with On the Ground News (OGN), reported that 11 hospitals have been targeted with airstrikes rendering them out of service. In a video featuring an undisclosed hospital, Kareem explains how a hospital in northern Syria is empty as civilians are too scared to resort to a hospital for medical relief.

OGN tells MEMO: “Strikes took place in Arbin Hospital in Eastern Ghouta; Khan Sheikhoun which was targeted twice; Kafara Khareen in which airstrikes destabilised two hospitals for women and a special unit for children; Maaret Al-Numan hospital in Idlib; Abideen hospital in southern Idlib, Kafra Nubal hospital, Deir Al-Sharqi and three airstrikes in hospitals in Dara’a, all in April 2017, alone.
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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170504-syrias-new-death-traps-hospitals/

Pro-Freedom · May 6, 2017

The leading Syrian intellectual and former political prisoner Yassin al Saleh, once again shows the posturing phoneys like Chomsky and Pilger up as the Orientalist reactionaries they are.

THE SYRIAN CAUSE AND ANTI-IMPERIALISM

05-05-2017:...The central element in the definition of the anti-imperial left is imperialism and, of course, combatting it. Imperialist power is thought of as something that exists in large amounts in America and Europe. Elsewhere it is either nonexistent or present only in small amounts. In internationalist struggles, the most important cause is fighting against western imperialism. Secondary conflicts, negligible cause and vague local struggles should not be a source of distraction. This depopulated discourse, which has nothing to do with people’s lived experiences, and which demonstrates no need for knowledge about Syrians, has considered it unimportant to know more about the history of their local struggles.

The Palestinian cause, which was only discovered by most anti-imperialists during the 1990s, has paradoxically played a role in their hostility towards the Syrian cause. From their far-off, transcendent position in the imperialist metropoles, they have the general impression that Syria is against Israel, which occupies Syrian territory. Thus, if Syria is with Palestine and against Israel, it is against imperialism. At the end of the day, these comrades are with the Assadists, because Syria has been under the Assad family rule for nearly half a century. Roughly speaking, this is the core of the political line of thinking which can be called ivory-tower anti-imperialism. That Syrians have been subject to extreme Palestinization by a brutal, internal Israel, and that they are susceptible to political and physical annihilation, just like Palestinians, in fact lies outside the clueless, tasteless geopolitical approach of those detached anti-imperialists, who ignorantly bracket off politics, economics, culture, the social reality of the masses and the actual history of Syria.

This way of linking our conflict to one major global struggle, which is supposedly the only real one in the world, denies the autonomy of any other social and political struggle taking place in the world. Anti-imperialists, especially those living in the allegedly imperialist metropoles, are most qualified to tell the truth about all struggles. Those who are directly involved in this or that struggle hardly know what’s really going on – their knowledge is partial, “non-scientific”, if not outright reactionary.
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http://aljumhuriya.net/en/critical-thought/the-syrian-cause-and-anti-imperialism

Pro-Freedom · May 6, 2017

While its people are starving, Assad-allied Venezuela donated $500,000 for Trump's inauguration and has supplied Assad's regime with fuel.

Venezuela Is Starving

05-05-2017:...Venezuela has the world’s highest inflation—estimated by the International Monetary Fund to reach 720% this year—making it nearly impossible for families to make ends meet. Since 2013, the economy has shrunk 27%, according to local investment bank Torino Capital; imports of food have plunged 70%.

Hordes of people, many with children in tow, rummage through garbage, an uncommon sight a year ago. People in the countryside pick farms clean at night, stealing everything from fruits hanging on trees to pumpkins on the ground, adding to the misery of farmers hurt by shortages of seed and fertilizer. Looters target food stores. Families padlock their refrigerators.

Three in four Venezuelans said they had lost weight last year, an average of 19 pounds, according to the National Poll of Living Conditions, an annual study by social scientists. People here, in a mix of rage and humor, call it the Maduro diet after President Nicolás Maduro.

For more than a month, Venezuelans have protested against the increasingly authoritarian government of Mr. Maduro; by Friday, more than 35 people had been reported killed in the unrest. The country’s Food Ministry, the president’s office, the Communications Ministry and the Foreign Ministry didn’t return calls or emails requesting comment for this article.

“Here, for the government, there are no malnourished children,” said Livia Machado, a physician and child malnutrition expert. “The reality is this is an epidemic, and everyone should be paying attention to this.”

Dr. Machado and her team of doctors are seeing a dramatic increase in emaciated infants brought to the Domingo Luciani Hospital in Caracas, where they work.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuela-is-starving-1493995317

Pro-Freedom · May 6, 2017

This is Putin's "ceasefire" today ( 06-05-2017), lauded by the world's fawning media, with the Assad regime's warplanes continuing to drop barrel bombs on what remains of the besieged areas of east Damascus, where Syrian resistance forces continue to hold off the regime forces who are backed by Russian and Iranian troops and it's assorted terrorist mercenary from around the world. Meanwhile, in the north of Syria, Assad is assisted by the US-backed PKK and its affiliates.

While the Assad supporter's and phony Western "pro-Palestine" "leftist" media continues to justify or deny Assad's internationally rubber-stamped genocide, Palestinian media like the Shehab News Agency in Gaza which shared this footage, continue to stand with the Syrian people, knowing all too well how it feels to be subjected to a globally-endorsed and assisted Nakba.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1904020696307008

Pro-Freedom · May 6, 2017

What a (non) surprise - another sham regime "ceasefire" helpfully promoted by global media, just like the make-believe "safe zones"...

Syrian Regime Violates The Four De-Escalation Zones Agreement In Syria

06-05-2017: 'Syrian regime forces, during the last few hours, have violated the agreement of four de-escalation zones in several areas across Syria, with artillery and airstrikes.

Syrian regime helicopters dropped barrel bombs over Gharya Gharbya town in Daraa countryside, moreover, Syrian regime forces bombarded Sora town with heavy artillery in Daraa countryside, no injuries reported.

However, Syrian regime helicopters dropped barrel bombs over Latamna town in the northern countryside of Hama, and the syrian regime forces bombarded the city with heavy artillery, in addition to bombarding Helfaya city, leading to colossal destruction in the properties.

In Damascus, Syrian regime forces bombarded Qaboon neighborhood with mortar projectiles, in addition to recording clashes on the neighborhood's outskirts.
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http://qasioun.net/en/news/show/654...e_Four_De_Escalation_Zones_Agreement_In_Syria

Pro-Freedom · May 7, 2017

Assad's internationally assisted, UN-backed Nakba continues under the cover of another meaningless "ceasefire", while the world powers meet to carve up what remains...

Syrian regime intensifies bombing on Swaida countryside

7-05-2017:..Regime forces stepped up their shelling of the villages of al-Asfar, al-Sakia and Khirbat Sa'ad in the north-eastern Swaida countryside under the control of Syrian resistance factions.
Facebook page Swaida 24 reported regime army escalation in the region is renewed after two days of the cessation of military operations. The most recent operation in which National Defense forces failed to storm Tal Saad.
The Swaida countryside has witnessed displacement of dozens of families due to renewed military operations a month after ISIS withdrawal and the return of most of the people of the area to their villages.

In a related context, several people wearing military uniforms were injured by an explosive device that targeted a passenger bus bound for the village of Majdal to Damascus on Sunday morning.

The explosion took place Kawa Hadar where the injured were taken to Swaida National Hospital for treatment.
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https://en.zamanalwsl.net/news/25924.html

Pro-Freedom · May 7, 2017

Germany drops the flag of the Assad regime and lift the flag of the Syrian revolution instead.

Pro-Freedom · May 8, 2017

It's not ethno-sectarian cleansing of millions, it's just "evacuation" - see also the "mass evacuation" of Palestine in 1948.

Syrian rebels begin to evacuate Damascus suburb

08-05-2017:..Hundreds of Syrian rebels began leaving the besieged Damascus district of Barzeh on Monday as part of an evacuation deal with the government, state media and a war monitor reported.

State television said fighters and their relatives had started departing Barzeh for rebel-held Idlib province in northwest Syria.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitoring group, said buses had arrived in Barzeh at dawn and hundreds of fighters and family members had started to board them. More people would leave over the next five days, state TV and the Observatory said.

A military spokesman from the Jaish al-Islam rebel group confirmed the evacuation had begun, but said his faction had not taken part in any negotiations about it. The spokesman, Hamza Birqdar, said the government had concluded the deal with a civilian committee in Barzeh.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has promoted the use of such evacuations, along with what his government calls "reconciliation" deals for rebel-held areas that surrender to the government, as a way of reducing bloodshed.

However, the United Nations has criticized both the use of siege tactics which precede such deals and the evacuations themselves as amounting to forcible displacement.
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http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Mi...ascus-neighborhood.ashx#.WRBC1YFJDW8.facebook

Pro-Freedom · May 8, 2017

The supporters of this tyrant criminal Assad, are set to write on Assad's generosity in allowing her to rummage for food in high-class bins.

Syrian lady found eating rubbish near Assad’s palace

08-05-2017: ..A photo of an old Syrian lady eating from a bin in the Al-Malki area of Damascus near the palace of Syrian regime President Bashar Al-Assad has surfaced.

The photo shows an elderly lady picking up an apple with her left hand while searching the bin for food with her right hand.

#HashtagSyria news site published the image on Saturday, which it reported was taken near the Abu Rummaneh neighbourhood where all the rich officials live.

According to the site, the lady’s clothes “do not suggest that she is a beggar, but indicate that she used to have decent life”.
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https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170508-syrian-lady-found-eating-rubbish-near-assads-palace/

Pro-Freedom · May 9, 2017

Must-read

Yassin al Haj Saleh on Syria and the Three Impossibilities

09-05-2017:...When the revolution began, no one believed or predicted that half a million Syrians would die. No one thought that Bashar Al-Assad would continue to have a firm grasp to power, and that his chances of survival would somehow astonishingly improve, after injuring nearly two million people, displacing half of them from their homes (including 5 million people—22% of the population—outside the country), and annihilating over 2% of the entire population. And it was unfathomable that three million Syrians displaced in Turkey, half a million displaced in Germany, and tens of thousands of others displaced in various European countries (like the Netherlands, Sweden and France) would become objects of toleration—the focal point of a moral debate on inclusivity. All of this seemed viscerally impossible!

But, it is exactly what happened, and Syrians have learned to reckon with the fact there are powerful forces in the world that can turn the “impossible” into the concrete. More specifically, the “impossible” became a reality at the intersection of Russia and Iran’s political motivations on the one hand, and the United States and Israel’s on the other. Though these nations have their own competing, chauvinistic motivations in mind, they astonishingly intersect over one fact: that preserving the Assad regime is in their interest.

In other words, the “impossible” political realities that have unfolded in Syria are the consequence of an incredibly peculiar and fortuitous military axis—a rare and practically impossible political synergy between various global and regional powers. It is the reason Syrian civil society was annihilated beyond belief, but it is also why Syrians now believe that, not only is the impossible actually conceivable, it is perhaps ordinary.
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https://muftah.org/yassin-al-haj-saleh-syria-three-impossibilities/#.WRG5NfnyiM9

Pro-Freedom · May 9, 2017

09-05-2017:..Task Group for the Sake of Palestinian Refugees in Syria documented 1,600 cases of enforced disappearance among Palestinian refugees in Syrian regime prisons since 2011

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/2...-palestinians-in-syria/#.WRHYQ2q8EL0.facebook

Pro-Freedom · May 9, 2017

The UN, Assad, Putin and Khamenei are keen to stage a typically "democratic" election in Syria as soon as possible, having helpfully already decided the results in the traditional fashion.

Pro-Freedom · May 9, 2017

Syrian Regime Continues In Its Violations For The De-Escalation Zones

09-05-2017:..Syrian regime forces and their supporting militias have already begun breaking the agreement of de-escalation zones in Syria, by bombarding several areas across Syria, especially the areas included in the resolution of the Kazakh capital city of Astana conference.

Syrian regime forces, on Tuesday, bombarded Erbin city with mortar projectiles, leading to injuries amid the civilians, in addition to renewing the shelling over Zamalka city with a mortar projectile, leading to damages in the properties.

Separately, Syrian regime forces bombarded Douma city with 2 mortar projectiles, leading to the injury of a woman and her child in Eastern Ghouta area of Rif Dimashq province.
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http://qasioun.net/en/news/show/661...In_Its_Violations_For_The_De_Escalation_Zones

Pro-Freedom · May 9, 2017

Trump's apparently "forgotten" that the US has been backing Assad's PYD allies since 2014, with two US airbases and thousands of US troops already in Rojava.

Two U.S. officials tell NBC News that Trump has approved a plan to arm the Syrian Kurds

09-05-2017:...Once the order comes to the Pentagon, the U.S. can begin providing the Syrian Kurds with arms and equipment fairly quickly since some equipment is pre-positioned.

The officials could not say what might flow in first or how it would get there, but among the expected options are:

Breaching equipment — bulldozers, engineering equipment
More effective infantry equipment: rifles, ammunition, armor and communication gear (radios)
The officials said the equipment could be delivered by any number of methods: Ground convoys, C-130s, and air drops are all possible, depending on what the equipment is and the area.
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http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/officials-trump-approves-plan-arm-syrian-kurds-n756886

Pro-Freedom · May 10, 2017

With the refugees safely dead, there will no doubt be crocodile tears and faux-outrage from the cheerleaders for Assad's ongoing Nakba.

Hundreds of Syrians drowned after Italian navy ignored SOS

08-05-2017: Italian coastguards repeatedly ignored desperate pleas to rescue hundreds of refugees trapped on a sinking boat in the Mediterranean, despite a navy vessel being just a few miles away, an Italian magazine has claimed.

When the boat eventually capsized, 250 people drowned. As many as 60 children were among the dead.

The recordings, which date from the night of the tragedy in October 2013, appear to reveal Italian operators ignoring numerous distress calls from a Syrian doctor named Mohammed Jammo asking for assistance as their boat began to sink close to the Italian island of Lampedusa.

The operators tell the doctor to call the Maltese authorities for help - despite an Italian rescue vessel being in the area, L'Espresso reported.

The Italian naval ship was eventually sent to rescue the refugees five hours after the distress calls were made and after numerous requests for help from the Maltese armed forces.
It was too late for dozens of children and their parents who perished beneath the waves.
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https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/n...yrians-drowned-after-italian-navy-ignored-sos

Pro-Freedom · May 10, 2017

Gasping for life:
Syria's merciless war on its own children

10-05-2017:...She stares off into the distance as she gasps for air, her tiny chest heaving desperately to take in more oxygen. Her eyes are wide and unflinching, her pupils constricted, the panic behind them clear.

The little girl looks confused: she doesn't understand why she is dying, why she is lying in the back of a truck with other small children, some foaming at the mouth, others motionless, the life already gone from them.

The ground all around her is strewn with bodies, some wracked with convulsions, thrashing around in the mud as rescue workers attempt in vain to hose off the chemical agent that has blanketed them.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/09/middleeast/syria-chemical-attack-ward/

Iranian Monitor · May 11, 2017

While the Israelis are pushing Trump and the Russians to cut Iran's role in Syria, the Russians are reportedly trying to find an arrangement that will further the chances of peace and lessen US opposition to Iran's role in securing the ceasefire in Syria.

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/...ord-with-u-s-on-iran-role-in-syria-safe-zones
Russia Seeks Accord With U.S. on Iran Role in Syria Safe Zones

Russia is seeking to convince the U.S. to accept an Iranian role in a plan for foreign troops to police safe zones in Syria as a step toward ending the six-year war.

The U.S. and Iran must show “compromise and flexibility” in helping to secure the so-called de-escalation zones proposed by Russia to shore up a Syrian cease-fire, President Vladimir Putin’s Middle East envoy, Mikhail Bogdanov, told reporters in Sochi on Thursday. Russia is trying to mediate between the U.S. and Iran, though it’s under “no illusions” about the difficulties, he said.
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“Does anyone think Iran is going to leave this region and Syria, as if you could wave a magic wand and Iran would disappear?” Bogdanov said. “That’s not going to happen.”
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Pro-Freedom · May 11, 2017

written by Syrian Christians

Don't be fooled: Assad is no friend of Syria's Christian minorities

11-05-2017:..Christians never had true freedom of religion under the Assad regime; for decades, it used a mixture of incentives and threats to tightly control Christian clergy and ensure that they were not free to speak their mind. Christians were much more free before Assad took power, when Protestant Christian Fares al-Khouri was elected prime minister of Syria in democratic elections in 1954. But under Assad, Rohrbacher might be surprised to know, Christians are legally banned from becoming the head of state.

It’s a strange protector of Christians who nurtures and shelters their worst enemies against the will of the entire world. Assad did that, too — starting in 2003, his intelligence services worked closely with the terrorist fanatics who would eventually form ISIS because he wanted to prevent America from stabilizing Iraq.

The Syrian revolution began six years ago as a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian movement, but Assad released dozens of extremists from his jails in an effort to give the revolution a more Islamist character and present the false choice between him and the radical Islamists he nurtured. According to the Treasury Department, Assad continues to buy “a great deal of oil” from ISIS constituting millions of dollars in trade. At one point, oil sales to Assad accounted for 72 percent of ISIS’ income from revenues, according to documents uncovered from a U.S. Special Forces raid on ISIS Oil Minister Abu Sayyaf.

Christians are not safe in Assad’s Syria. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, over 60 percent of all churches in Syria that have been destroyed during the war have been by the Assad regime. Many Christians have been killed by Assad’s indiscriminate barrel bombs and aerial attacks in the past six years most notably many who were bombed to death by Assad warplanes and attacked by Hezbollah in Yabroud, a mixed Christian-Muslim town along the Lebanese border that was a bright spot for interfaith relations among Syrians after it was liberated from Assad in 2012.

Assad views Christians as a sectarian card used to preserve his interests and preserve his regime. While Assad sends delegations of priests all around the world, including the United States, to defend his regime and Hezbollah, have we forgotten the Christian priest who was murdered and dragged through the streets by Syrian security agents for defying Assad during the mid-2000s Kurdish revolt?
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http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-bl...ias-christian-minorities#.WRSkBIGZ7fB.twitter

Pro-Freedom · May 11, 2017

Chomsky and the Syria revisionists: The Left's moral cul-de-sac

06-05-2017:...In Chomsky's hierarchy of concerns, it seems a westerner's right to deny genocide is more sacrosanct than a Syrian's right to life and liberty. Chomsky lives in a country where dissent is protected by law, and, in his case, rewarded with stardom and publishing contracts.

This is why he can't relate to dissidents abroad - unless they are fortunate enough to be persecuted by a US client - who at great personal cost fight for basic rights. In these ideological battles the world is a mere proxy and truth a dispensable artefact. Its dehumanising binaries erase struggling peoples if the regime oppressing them is seen as an objective ally by virtue of being in the bad books of Washington.

This is not the first time this kind of campism has led large sections of the western Left down a moral cul-de-sac. But few could have predicted that the figure leading this sordid procession one day would be the sage many of us once worshipped.
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https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/c...syria-revisionists-the-lefts-moral-cul-de-sac

Iranian Monitor · May 12, 2017

Yeah, the true friends of the Christian community in Syria are the Wahhabis! Too bad the Christians and most of the rest of the population in Syria have been fooled to think otherwise.

Pro-Freedom · May 12, 2017

The UN, meanwhile, continues to give tens of millions of dollars in aid money to Assad's family.

Doctors resort to crowdfunding Syrian hospitals as red tape locks aid money

12-05-2017:..Doctors in Syria have turned to crowdfunding in a desperate attempt to keep makeshift hospitals running in caves and underground.

Rules governing how aid budgets are spent have tied up funding, forcing medics to seek alternative means of building and reinforcing the facilities, according to a report by the Syria Campaign, an advocacy group.

Under donor guidelines, work to maintain the subterranean hospitals, which have replaced overground clinics wiped out in targeted bombing raids, is deemed “development” rather than “humanitarian” expenditure.

In Idlib province, an opposition-held area in northern Syria, 30 hospitals have no fortification at all. Just three underground hospitals are running in the region, putting workers and patients alike at risk.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an NGO that has tracked attacks on medical workers during the conflict, said there have been 454 strikes on medical facilities during the Syrian war, killing 814 medics. Underground and cave hospitals offer much better protection for staff.

In April 2017 alone, there were 25 attacks on health facilities, equivalent to one every 29 hours; 91% were carried out by the Syrian government or its allies, including Russia.

The Health Cluster Working Group, a body of Syrian NGOs, said in the report that fortification of basement, cave and underground field hospitals – developed by Syrian engineers and medical staff in response to the crisis – is urgently needed.

The study found that while medics have adapted operations “to fit the unique horrors of the conflict” in Syria, donors have failed to adapt their funding accordingly.
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https://www.theguardian.com/global-...dfunding-maintain-underground-field-hospitals

Pro-Freedom · May 13, 2017

THE DICTATOR’S TEAM

11-05-2017:...For five years, Firas al-Khatib has boycotted the Syrian national team to protest dictator Bashar al-Assad, who bombed and starved Khatib's hometown.

Now, suddenly, Khatib seems to be having a change of heart. He is thinking about rejoining Syria for its final push to qualify for next year's World Cup. His reasons are complicated, and he's reluctant to express them.

"I'm afraid, I'm afraid," he says in stilted English. "In Syria now, if you talk, somebody will kill you -- for what you talk, for what you think. Not for what you do. They will kill you for what you think."

Khatib is bearded and runty, with curly brown hair and kind eyes. He has earned millions playing professionally in Kuwait. The mall's posh setting offers a glimpse into his comfortable life here -- yachts bobbing on scalloped blue water, robed men and women drawing flavored tobacco from tableside water pipes. But Khatib seems nearly crushed by the weight of his dilemma, which he discusses over two days of interviews. "Every day before I sleep, maybe one hour, two hours, just thinking about this decision.
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http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/st...government-brought-soccer-campaign-oppression

Pro-Freedom · May 15, 2017

"Am I going to die in here?"

11-05-2017:...From an early age, Mohammad's dad always taught him to never trust the Syrian government. He was told stories about people that were jailed and killed for speaking out against the government. He learned about the 1982 Hama massacre, when the Syrian army killed thousands of people in order to quell the uprising against the president at that time, Hafez al-Assad. "Growing up, I was really scared of the government… Everyone was saying that the government has spies everywhere, so be careful, don't speak ill about the government," Mohammad remembers being told.

"Everyone will say 'Shhhh, don't say anything, just whisper it, because the walls have ears. And they will hear you, and they will put you in jail, or even kill you.''
Those talks with his father were eye-opening, and scary. Whether Mohammad was hearing stories of people being sent to prison for life, or the thousands massacred in Hama, his father's message was always clear -- no one opposes the Syrian government without paying a price. It was an important lesson in a country run by a dictator.

But after three decades of ruling with an iron fist, that dictator died on June 10, 2000. It marked the end of a dark era for many Syrians. That culture of fear fostered by Hafez al-Assad was giving way to a sense of hope. Assad's 34-year old son was ushered into power.

A doctor, with little experience in the military, Bashar al-Assad was seen as a progressive president, who was ready to lead a more moderate regime. The economy boomed, relationships with neighbouring countries formed, and the rise of the internet opened up communication with the world.
But that newfound hope soon faded when al-Assad's family intervened to re-establish a heavy military presence with high security measures. By the time Mohammad got to high school, he became frustrated with the inability to voice his opinions. "Everyone will say 'Shhh, don't say anything, just whisper it, because the walls have ears. And they will hear you, and they will put you in jail, or even kill you,''' Mohammad said
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http://www.cbc.ca/radio/campus/am-i-going-to-die-in-here-1.4109564