Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: More than 90 Syrians have been killed so far today, Monday 16/7/2012. 60 of them were civilians. 46 Unarmed civilians:
-In Homs 12 killed. 5, including 3 children, killed by the bombardment of al-Rastan and its surrounding villages. 2 killed by the bombardment of Talbiseh. 1 civilian was killed in Homs. 1 civilian died in a prison, months after he was taken away. 3 civilians, including a woman and a child, were killed by regime bombardment on the al-Dara al-Kabeera village, Reef Homs.
-In Damascus 6 killed by the gunfire and bombardment in the city. 3 in the al-Midan neighbourhood, 1 is yet to be identified. 2 in Nahr Eisha neighbourhood and 1 in the Tadamun neighbourhood.
-In Reef Dimashq province 2 civilians were killed by regime gunfire in the town of al-Thiyabiya, which is witnessing intense clashes between rebel fighters and regime troops.
-In Aleppo province 1 civilian was killed when his truck was attacked by regime forces on the road to al-Bab.
-In Idlib 2 killed. 1 in Salqin by the regime bombardment. 1 child killed by regime bombardment on the town of al-Shantara.
-In Hama provice 13 killed. 3, including a child, were killed by regime fire in the Bab Qabli neighbourhood. 1 killed in Tarig Halab neighbourhood. 1 by sniper fire near the Uthman al-Hawrani school. 4 were killed by direct fire in the al-Hamidiyeh neighbourhood. 1 civilian was killed when his car was attcked by pro-regime gunmen. A family of 4, 1 woman and 3 children, were killed when a rocket fell on their home in the al-Hamidiyeh neighbourhood of Hama.
-In Deir Izzor 5 killed. 1 civilian was killed by a sniper in the neighbourhood of al-Qusoor. A man and his son were killed by a shell in the al-Hamidiyeh neighbourhood of Deir Izzor. A woman and her husband were killed when their car was targeted by regime forces in the city of Deir Izzor.
-In Dera’a province 3 killed. 2 from the bombardment on the town of Atman. 1 when a rocket fell on the Dera’a al-Balad neighbourhood of Dera’a.
Reports indicate that 5 people were summarily executed in the medical complex in the city of Hama. Their names have not been documented yet.
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14 Armed fighters:
Deir Izzor prov: 1 rebel fighter was killed by clashes in the al-Erdi neighbourhood.
Idlib prov: 2 insurgents killed. 1 fighter killed by clashes on the edges of Salqin. 1 rebel fighter died from earlier wounds in the town of Atameh.
Aleppo prov: 5 rebel fighters killed by clashes in the city of Jarablis.
Hama prov: 1 rebel fighter was killed by clashes in the al-Hamidiyeh neighbourhood of Hama.
Damascus: 2 rebel fighters killed in al-Midan. 1 in the al-Tadamun neighbourhood.
Homs prov: 3 rebel fighters killed by clashes and gunfire in the city Homs.
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3 defected soldiers were killed during clashes in Reef Dera’a, Deir Izzor and Aleppo. A defected soldier was killed during the bombardment of Homs.
No less than 27 members of the Syrian armed forces, including an officer, were killed in the provinces of Aleppo, Hama, Damascus, Dera’a and Idlib.
..
Footage sent from armed rebels in al-Midan, Damascus, makes clear that the armed rebels that were fighting in the city of Douma in June are now fighting in the capital.
Video of a rebel battalion in al-Midan today vowing to attack Assad in his home: https://www.youtube.com/
Video from a month ago (2/6/2012) in Douma, Reef Dimashq, showing the same rebel leader by a destroyed tank, he also vows here to attack Assad in his home: http://www.youtube.com/
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NOW! Lebanon
[local time]
22:22 The bodies of two Iraqi men identified as journalists, who were stabbed and shot dead in Damascus, were handed over at a border post with Syria on Monday, officials said.
22:12 Russia on Monday blocked a proposed UN Security Council statement on mass killings in the Syrian village of Treimsa, diplomats said amid worsening deadlock over international action on the conflict.
21:58 Russia and China have begun to change their attitude towards the regime in Damascus as the violence against its opponents escalates, Turkey’s deputy prime minister said Monday.
19:09 Monday’s death toll in Syria increased to 44 people killed by regime forces, Al-Jazeera quoted activists as saying.
19:08 The Syrian army blocked the Damascus-Zabadani road, Al-Jazeera quoted activists as saying.
18:48 Senior Syrian security officer Rustom Ghazaleh on Monday denied reports that he had defected from the regime, Chinese Xinhua news agency reported.
17:51 European Union foreign ministers planned to adopt fresh sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime at talks next week, EU diplomats told AFP on Monday.
17:50 An AFP feature piece published Monday details how a small band of fighters called the “Soldiers of the Prophet Mohammad” fight regime forces in the Wastani mountains overlooking Jisr al-Shughur.
17:29 The Damascus regime was guilty of “tremendous political obstruction” that is preventing aid reaching an estimated 850,000 people in need in Syria, a top UN relief official said on Monday.
16:04 A YouTube video purportedly filmed on Monday in the Damascus neighborhood of Al-Zahira shows a car allegedly belonging to a Shabiha member burning on a street after it was set on fire by the Free Syrian Army.
16:04 Gunfire can be heard in a video purportedly filmed Monday in the Al-Midan neighborhood of Damascus. The cameraman can be heard saying: “God is [the] greatest.”
15:59 A video purportedly filmed Monday in Damascus’ Nahr Aisha neighborhood shows protesters cutting the international road to Amman with burning tires. Heavy fighting has raged throughout Damascus since Monday.
15:09 Syrian regime forces and rebels are clashing in the Damascus neighborhoods of Al-Zahraa, Abou Habel and Al-Midan, Al-Jazeera television reported.
15:04 Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood began Monday a two-day meeting on the outskirts of Istanbul focusing on ways to support the uprising against the regime in Damascus, a member of the organization said.
14:34 Dialogue was no longer a solution to ending the slaughter in Syria and the United Nations’ Security Council must step in, Jordan’s Prime Minister Fayez Tarawneh said in the Czech capital Prague Monday.
14:16 Troops deployed armored vehicles near the heart of the Syrian capital for the first time on Monday since an anti-regime uprising broke out last year, activists said.
13:47 The Syrian Opposition said on Monday that high-ranking Syrian officer Rustom Ghazali’s family arrived in Jordan, Al-Arabiya reported.
12:47 Syria declared Morocco’s ambassador persona non grata on Monday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said, in a tit-for-tat move hours after Rabat expelled Damascus’s envoy to the North African country.
12:40 Monday’s death toll in Syria has risen to 20 people, most of them killed in Homs and Aleppo, Al-Jazeera quoted the Syrian Network for Human Rights as saying.
12:18 Syria is in a state of all-out civil war and all sides must respect international humanitarian law or risk facing war crimes prosecutions, the Red Cross said on Monday.
12:06 Syrian forces on Monday killed 10 people, Al-Jazeera television reported.
12:06 Syrian forces on Monday raided Al-Maydan neighborhood in Damascus, Al-Arabiya television quoted the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution as saying.
11:33 Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday it was “unrealistic” that Russia urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, AFP reported.
11:22 Russia on Monday accused Western powers of using “blackmail” to get its backing for possible UN Security Council sanctions against Syria over the regime’s crackdown on an armed opposition.
10:48 Regime forces shelled the Damascus neighborhood of Tadamon on Monday, hours after the most violent battles in the capital since the outbreak of the Syrian revolt, activists said.
9:09 Activists said on Monday that Syrian security forces shelled Homs neighborhoods, as well Rastan and Talbisa cities in the Homs governorate, Al-Jazeera reported.
8:30 MORNING LEADER: Syria’s army blasted rebel strongholds in Damascus with mortars Sunday, sparking the “most intense” fighting in the capital since the revolt erupted 16 months ago, a monitoring group said.
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BBC: Assad ‘will use chemical weapons’
The most senior Syrian politician to defect to the opposition tells the BBC that the regime will “not hesitate” to use chemical weapons if it is cornered…
[Comment – this is sounding familiar!]
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Reuters: Russia accuses West of blackmail, stands firm on Syria
MOSCOW – Russia said on Monday it would block moves at the U.N. Security Council to extend a U.N. monitoring mission in Syria if Western powers did not stop resorting to “blackmail” by threatening sanctions against Damascus
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Guardian: The Syrian opposition: who’s doing the talking?
The media have been too passive when it comes to Syrian opposition sources, without scrutinising their backgrounds and their political connections. Time for a closer look …
A nightmare is unfolding across Syria, in the homes of al-Heffa and the streets of Houla. And we all know how the story ends: with thousands of soldiers and civilians killed, towns and families destroyed, and President Assad beaten to death in a ditch.
This is the story of the Syrian war, but there is another story to be told. A tale less bloody, but nevertheless important. This is a story about the storytellers: the spokespeople, the “experts on Syria”, the “democracy activists”. The statement makers. The people who “urge” and “warn” and “call for action”.
It’s a tale about some of the most quoted members of the Syrian opposition and their connection to the Anglo-American opposition creation business. The mainstream news media have, in the main, been remarkably passive when it comes to Syrian sources: billing them simply as “official spokesmen” or “pro-democracy campaigners” without, for the most part, scrutinising their statements, their backgrounds or their political connections.
It’s important to stress: to investigate the background of a Syrian spokesperson is not to doubt the sincerity of his or her opposition to Assad. But a passionate hatred of the Assad regime is no guarantee of independence. Indeed, a number of key figures in the Syrian opposition movement are long-term exiles who were receiving US government funding to undermine the Assad government long before the Arab spring broke out.
Though it is not yet stated US government policy to oust Assad by force, these spokespeople are vocal advocates of foreign military intervention in Syria and thus natural allies of well-known US neoconservatives who supported Bush’s invasion of Iraq and are now pressuring the Obama administration to intervene. As we will see, several of these spokespeople have found support, and in some cases developed long and lucrative relationships with advocates of military intervention on both sides of the Atlantic.
“The sand is running out of the hour glass,” said Hillary Clinton on Sunday. So, as the fighting in Syria intensifies, and Russian warships set sail for Tartus, it’s high time to take a closer look at those who are speaking out on behalf of the Syrian people.
The Syrian National Council
The most quoted of the opposition spokespeople are the official representatives of the Syrian National Council. The SNC is not the only Syrian opposition group – but it is generally recognised as “the main opposition coalition” (BBC). The Washington Times describes it as “an umbrella group of rival factions based outside Syria”. Certainly the SNC is the opposition group that’s had the closest dealings with western powers – and has called for foreign intervention from the early stages of the uprising. In February of this year, at the opening of the Friends of Syria summit in Tunisia, William Hague declared: “I will meet leaders of the Syrian National Council in a few minutes’ time … We, in common with other nations, will now treat them and recognise them as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people.”
The most senior of the SNC’s official spokespeople is the Paris-based Syrian academic Bassma Kodmani.
Bassma Kodmani
Bassma Kodmani of the Syrian National Council. Photograph: Carter Osmar
Here is Bassma Kodmani, seen leaving this year’s Bilderberg conferencein Chantilly, Virginia.
Kodmani is a member of the executive bureau and head of foreign affairs, Syrian National Council. Kodmani is close to the centre of the SNC power structure, and one of the council’s most vocal spokespeople. “No dialogue with the ruling regime is possible. We can only discuss how to move on to a different political system,” she declared this week. And here she is, quoted by the newswire AFP: “The next step needs to be a resolution under Chapter VII, which allows for the use of all legitimate means, coercive means, embargo on arms, as well as the use of force to oblige the regime to comply.”
This statement translates into the headline “Syrians call for armed peacekeepers” (Australia’s Herald Sun). When large-scale international military action is being called for, it seems only reasonable to ask: who exactly is calling for it? We can say, simply, “an official SNC spokesperson,” or we can look a little closer.
This year was Kodmani’s second Bilderberg. At the 2008 conference, Kodmani was listed as French; by 2012, her Frenchness had fallen away and she was listed simply as “international” – her homeland had become the world of international relations.
Back a few years, in 2005, Kodmani was working for the Ford Foundationin Cairo, where she was director of their governance and international co-operation programme. The Ford Foundation is a vast organisation, headquartered in New York, and Kodmani was already fairly senior. But she was about to jump up a league.
Around this time, in February 2005, US-Syrian relations collapsed, and President Bush recalled his ambassador from Damascus. A lot of opposition projects date from this period. “The US money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W Bush after he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005,” says the Washington Post.
In September 2005, Kodmani was made the executive director of theArab Reform Initiative (ARI) – a research programme initiated by the powerful US lobby group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The CFR is an elite US foreign policy thinktank, and the Arab Reform Initiative is described on its website as a “CFR Project” . More specifically, the ARI was initiated by a group within the CFR called the “US/Middle East Project” – a body of senior diplomats, intelligence officers and financiers, the stated aim of which is to undertake regional “policy analysis” in order “to prevent conflict and promote stability”. The US/Middle East Project pursues these goals under the guidance of an international board chaired by General (Ret.) Brent Scowcroft.
Peter Sutherland pictured at the Bilderberg conference. Photograph: Hannah Borno
Brent Scowcroft (chairman emeritus) is a former national security adviser to the US president – he took over the role from Henry Kissinger. Sitting alongside Scowcroft of the international board is his fellow geo-strategist, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who succeeded him as the national security adviser, and Peter Sutherland, the chairman of Goldman Sachs International. So, as early as 2005, we’ve got a senior wing of the western intelligence/banking establishment selecting Kodmani to run a Middle East research project. In September of that year, Kodmani was made full-time director of the programme. Earlier in 2005, the CFR assigned“financial oversight” of the project to the Centre for European Reform (CER). In come the British.
The CER is overseen by Lord Kerr, the deputy chairman of Royal Dutch Shell. Kerr is a former head of the diplomatic service and is a senior adviser at Chatham House (a thinktank showcasing the best brains of the British diplomatic establishment).
In charge of the CER on a day-to-day basis is Charles Grant, former defence editor of the Economist, and these days a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a “pan-European thinktank” packed with diplomats, industrialists, professors and prime ministers. On its list of members you’ll find the name: “Bassma Kodmani (France/Syria) – Executive Director, Arab Reform Initiative”.
Another name on the list: George Soros – the financier whose non-profit “Open Society Foundations” is a primary funding source of the ECFR. At this level, the worlds of banking, diplomacy, industry, intelligence and the various policy institutes and foundations all mesh together, and there, in the middle of it all, is Kodmani.
The point is, Kodmani is not some random “pro-democracy activist” who happens to have found herself in front of a microphone. She has impeccable international diplomacy credentials: she holds the position ofresearch director at the Académie Diplomatique Internationale – “an independent and neutral institution dedicated to promoting modern diplomacy”. The Académie is headed by Jean-Claude Cousseran, a former head of the DGSE – the French foreign intelligence service.
A picture is emerging of Kodmani as a trusted lieutenant of the Anglo-American democracy-promotion industry. Her “province of origin” (according to the SNC website) is Damascus, but she has close and long-standing professional relationships with precisely those powers she’s calling upon to intervene in Syria.
And many of her spokesmen colleagues are equally well-connected.
Radwan Ziadeh
Another often quoted SNC representative is Radwan Ziadeh – director of foreign relations at the Syrian National Council. Ziadeh has an impressive CV: he’s a senior fellow at the federally funded Washington thinktank, the US Institute of Peace (the USIP Board of Directors is packed with alumni of the defence department and the national security council; its president is Richard Solomon, former adviser to Kissinger at the NSC).
In February this year, Ziadeh joined an elite bunch of Washington hawks to sign a letter calling upon Obama to intervene in Syria: his fellow signatories include James Woolsey (former CIA chief), Karl Rove (Bush Jr’s handler), Clifford May (Committee on the Present Danger) and Elizabeth Cheney, former head of the Pentagon’s Iran-Syria Operations Group.
Ziadeh is a relentless organiser, a blue-chip Washington insider with links to some of the most powerful establishment thinktanks. Ziadeh’s connections extend all the way to London. In 2009 he became a visiting fellow at Chatham House, and in June of last year he featured on the panel at one of their events – “Envisioning Syria’s Political Future” – sharing a platform with fellow SNC spokesman Ausama Monajed (more on Monajed below) and SNC member Najib Ghadbian.
Ghadbian was identified by the Wall Street Journal as an early intermediary between the US government and the Syrian opposition in exile: “An initial contact between the White House and NSF [National Salvation Front] was forged by Najib Ghadbian, a University of Arkansas political scientist.” This was back in 2005. The watershed year.
These days, Ghadbian is a member of the general secretariat of the SNC, and is on the advisory board of a Washington-based policy body called the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies (SCPSS) – an organisation co-founded by Ziadeh.
Ziadeh has been making connections like this for years. Back in 2008, Ziadeh took part in a meeting of opposition figures in a Washington government building: a mini-conference called “Syria In-Transition”. The meeting was co-sponsored by a US-based body called the Democracy Council and a UK-based organisation called the Movement for Justice and Development (MJD). It was a big day for the MJD – their chairman, Anas Al-Abdah, had travelled to Washington from Britain for the event, along with their director of public relations. Here, from the MJD’s website, is a description of the day: “The conference saw an exceptional turn out as the allocated hall was packed with guests from the House of Representatives and the Senate, representatives of studies centres, journalists and Syrian expatriats [sic] in the USA.”
The day opened with a keynote speech by James Prince, head of the Democracy Council. Ziadeh was on a panel chaired by Joshua Muravchik (the ultra-interventionist author of the 2006 op-ed “Bomb Iran”). The topic of the discussion was “The Emergence of Organized Opposition”. Sitting beside Ziadeh on the panel was the public relations director of the MJD – a man who would later become his fellow SNC spokesperson – Ausama Monajed.
Ausama Monajed
Along with Kodmani and Ziadeh, Ausama (or sometimes Osama) Monajed is one of the most important SNC spokespeople. There are others, of course – the SNC is a big beast and includes the Muslim Brotherhood. The opposition to Assad is wide-ranging, but these are some of the key voices. There are other official spokespeople with long political careers, like George Sabra of the Syrian Democratic People’s party – Sabra has suffered arrest and lengthy imprisonment in his fight against the “repressive and totalitarian regime in Syria”. And there are other opposition voices outside the SNC, such as the writer Michel Kilo, who speaks eloquently of the violence tearing apart his country: “Syria is being destroyed – street after street, city after city, village after village. What kind of solution is that? In order for a small group of people to remain in power, the whole country is being destroyed.”
Ausuma Monajed. Photograph: BBC
But there’s no doubt that the primary opposition body is the SNC, and Kodmani, Ziadeh and Monajed are often to be found representing it. Monajed frequently crops up as a commentator on TV news channels.Here he is on the BBC, speaking from their Washington bureau. Monajed doesn’t sugar-coat his message: “We are watching civilians being slaughtered and kids being slaughtered and killed and women being raped on the TV screens every day.”
Meanwhile, over on Al Jazeera, Monajed talks about “what’s really happening, in reality, on the ground” – about “the militiamen of Assad” who “come and rape their women, slaughter their children, and kill their elderly”.
Monajed turned up, just a few days ago, as a blogger on Huffington Post UK, where he explained, at length: “Why the World Must Intervene in Syria” – calling for “direct military assistance” and “foreign military aid”. So, again, a fair question might be: who is this spokesman calling for military intervention?
Monajed is a member of the SNC, adviser to its president, and according to his SNC biography, “the Founder and Director of Barada Television”, a pro-opposition satellite channel based in Vauxhall, south London. In 2008, a few months after attending Syria In-Transition conference, Monajed was back in Washington, invited to lunch with George W Bush, along with a handful of other favoured dissidents (you can see Monajed in the souvenir photo, third from the right, in the red tie, near Condoleezza Rice – up the other end from Garry Kasparov).
At this time, in 2008, the US state department knew Monajed as “director of public relations for the Movement for Justice and Development (MJD), which leads the struggle for peaceful and democratic change in Syria”.
Let’s look closer at the MJD. Last year, the Washington Post picked up a story from WikiLeaks, which had published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables. These cables appear to show a remarkable flow of money from the US state department to the British-based Movement for Justice and Development. According to the Washington Post’s report: “Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified US diplomatic cables show that the state department has funnelled as much as $6m to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other activities inside Syria.”
A state department spokesman responded to this story by saying: “Trying to promote a transformation to a more democratic process in this society is not undermining necessarily the existing government.” And they’re right, it’s not “necessarily” that.
When asked about the state department money, Monajed himself said that he “could not confirm” US state department funding for Barada TV, but said: “I didn’t receive a penny myself.” Malik al -Abdeh, until very recently Barada TV’s editor-in-chief insisted: “we have had no direct dealings with the US state department”. The meaning of the sentence turns on that word “direct”. It is worth noting that Malik al Abdeh also happens to be one of the founders of the Movement for Justice and Development (the recipient of the state department $6m, according to the leaked cable). And he’s the brother of the chairman, Anas Al-Abdah. He’s also the co-holder of the MJD trademark: What Malik al Abdeh does admit is that Barada TV gets a large chunk of its funding from an American non-profit organisation: the Democracy Council. One of the co-sponsors (with the MJD) of Syria In-Transition mini-conference. So what we see, in 2008, at the same meeting, are the leaders of precisely those organisations identified in the Wiki:eaks cables as the conduit (the Democracy Council) and recipient (the MJD) of large amounts of state department money.
The Democracy Council (a US-based grant distributor) lists the state department as one of its sources of funding. How it works is this: the Democracy Council serves as a grant-administering intermediary between the state department’s “Middle East Partnership Initiative” and “local partners” (such as Barada TV). As the Washington Post reports:
“Several US diplomatic cables from the embassy in Damascus reveal that the Syrian exiles received money from a State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative. According to the cables, the State Department funnelled money to the exile group via the Democracy Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit.”
The same report highlights a 2009 cable from the US Embassy in Syria that says that the Democracy Council received $6.3m from the state department to run a Syria-related programme, the “Civil Society Strengthening Initiative”. The cable describes this as “a discrete collaborative effort between the Democracy Council and local partners” aimed at producing, amongst other things, “various broadcast concepts.” According to the Washington Post: “Other cables make clear that one of those concepts was Barada TV.”
Until a few months ago, the state department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative was overseen by Tamara Cofman Wittes (she’s now at theBrookings Institution – an influential Washington thinktank). Of MEPI, she said that it “created a positive ‘brand’ for US democracy promotion efforts”. While working there she declared: “There are a lot of organizations in Syria and other countries that are seeking changes from their government … That’s an agenda that we believe in and we’re going to support.” And by support, she means bankroll.
The money
This is nothing new. Go back a while to early 2006, and you have the state department announcing a new “funding opportunity” called the “Syria Democracy Program“. On offer, grants worth “$5m in Federal Fiscal Year 2006”. The aim of the grants? “To accelerate the work of reformers in Syria.”
These days, the cash is flowing in faster than ever. At the beginning of June 2012, the Syrian Business Forum was launched in Doha by opposition leaders including Wael Merza (SNC secretary general). “This fund has been established to support all components of the revolution in Syria,” said Merza. The size of the fund? Some $300m. It’s by no means clear where the money has come from, although Merza “hinted at strong financial support from Gulf Arab states for the new fund” (Al Jazeera). At the launch, Merza said that about $150m had already been spent, in part on the Free Syrian Army.
Merza’s group of Syrian businessmen made an appearance at a World Economic Forum conference titled the “Platform for International Co-operation” held in Istanbul in November 2011. All part of the process whereby the SNC has grown in reputation, to become, in the words of William Hague, “a legitimate representative of the Syrian people” – and able, openly, to handle this much funding.
Building legitimacy – of opposition, of representation, of intervention – is the essential propaganda battle.
In a USA Today op-ed written in February this year, Ambassador Dennis Ross declared: “It is time to raise the status of the Syrian National Council”. What he wanted, urgently, is “to create an aura of inevitability about the SNC as the alternative to Assad.” The aura of inevitability. Winning the battle in advance.
A key combatant in this battle for hearts and minds is the American journalist and Daily Telegraph blogger, Michael Weiss.
Michael Weiss
One of the most widely quoted western experts on Syria – and an enthusiast for western intervention – Michael Weiss echoes Ambassador Ross when he says: “Military intervention in Syria isn’t so much a matter of preference as an inevitability.”
Some of Weiss’s interventionist writings can be found on a Beirut-based, Washington-friendly website called “NOW Lebanon” – whose “NOW Syria” section is an important source of Syrian updates. NOW Lebanon was set up in 2007 by Saatchi & Saatchi executive Eli Khoury. Khoury has been described by the advertising industry as a “strategic communications specialist, specialising in corporate and government image and brand development”.
Weiss told NOW Lebanon, back in May, that thanks to the influx of weapons to Syrian rebels “we’ve already begun to see some results.” He showed a similar approval of military developments a few months earlier, in a piece for the New Republic: “In the past several weeks, the Free Syrian Army and other independent rebel brigades have made great strides” – whereupon, as any blogger might, he laid out his “Blueprint for a Military Intervention in Syria”.
But Weiss is not only a blogger. He’s also the director of communications and public relations at the Henry Jackson Society, an ultra-ultra-hawkish foreign policy thinktank.
The Henry Jackson Society’s international patrons include: James “ex-CIA boss” Woolsey, Michael “homeland security” Chertoff, William “PNAC” Kristol, Robert “PNAC” Kagan’, Joshua “Bomb Iran” Muravchick, and Richard “Prince of Darkness” Perle. The Society is run by Alan Mendoza, chief adviser to the all-party parliamentary group on transatlantic and international security.
The Henry Jackson Society is uncompromising in its “forward strategy” towards democracy. And Weiss is in charge of the message. The Henry Jackson Society is proud of its PR chief’s far-reaching influence: “He is the author of the influential report “Intervention in Syria? An Assessment of Legality, Logistics and Hazards”, which was repurposed and endorsed by the Syrian National Council.”
Weiss’s original report was re-named “Safe Area for Syria” – and ended up on the official syriancouncil.org website, as part of their military bureau’s strategic literature. The repurposing of the HJS report was undertaken by the founder and executive director of the Strategic Research and Communication Centre (SRCC) – one Ausama Monajed.
So, the founder of Barada TV, Ausama Monajed, edited Weiss’s report, published it through his own organisation (the SRCC) and passed it on to the Syrian National Council, with the support of the Henry Jackson Society.
The relationship couldn’t be closer. Monajed even ends up handling inquiries for “press interviews with Michael Weiss“. Weiss is not the only strategist to have sketched out the roadmap to this war (many thinktanks have thought it out, many hawks have talked it up), but some of the sharpest detailing is his.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
The justification for the “inevitable” military intervention is the savagery of President Assad’s regime: the atrocities, the shelling, the human rights abuses. Information is crucial here, and one source above all has been providing us with data about Syria. It is quoted at every turn: “The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told VOA [Voice of America]that fighting and shelling killed at least 12 people in Homs province.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is commonly used as a standalone source for news and statistics. Just this week, news agency AFP carried this story: “Syrian forces pounded Aleppo and Deir Ezzor provinces as at least 35 people were killed on Sunday across the country, among them 17 civilians, a watchdog reported.” Various atrocities and casualty numbers are listed, all from a single source: “Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP by phone.”
Statistic after horrific statistic pours from “the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” (AP). It’s hard to find a news report about Syria that doesn’t cite them. But who are they? “They” are Rami Abdulrahman (or Rami Abdel Rahman), who lives in Coventry.
According to a Reuters report in December of last year: “When he isn’t fielding calls from international media, Abdulrahman is a few minutes down the road at his clothes shop, which he runs with his wife.”
When the Guardian’s Middle East live blog cited “Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” it also linked to a sceptical article in the Modern Tokyo Times – an article which suggested news outlets could be a bit “more objective about their sources” when quoting “this so-called entity”, the SOHR.
That name, the “Syrian Observatory of Human Rights”, sound so grand, so unimpeachable, so objective. And yet when Abdulrahman and his “Britain-based NGO” (AFP/NOW Lebanon) are the sole source for so many news stories about such an important subject, it would seem reasonable to submit this body to a little more scrutiny than it’s had to date.
The Observatory is by no means the only Syrian news source to be quoted freely with little or no scrutiny …
Hamza Fakher
The relationship between Ausama Monajed, the SNC, the Henry Jackson hawks and an unquestioning media can be seen in the case of Hamza Fakher. On 1 January, Nick Cohen wrote in the Observer: “To grasp the scale of the barbarism, listen to Hamza Fakher, a pro-democracy activist, who is one of the most reliable sources on the crimes the regime’s news blackout hides.”
He goes on to recount Fakher’s horrific tales of torture and mass murder. Fakher tells Cohen of a new hot-plate torture technique that he’s heard about: “imagine all the melting flesh reaching the bone before the detainee falls on the plate”. The following day, Shamik Das, writing on “evidence-based” progressive blog Left Foot Forward, quotes the same source: “Hamza Fakher, a pro-democracy activist, describes the sickening reality …” – and the account of atrocities given to Cohen is repeated.
So, who exactly is this “pro-democracy activist”, Hamza Fakher?
Fakher, it turns out, is the co-author of Revolution in Danger , a “Henry Jackson Society Strategic Briefing”, published in February of this year. He co-wrote this briefing paper with the Henry Jackson Society’s communications director, Michael Weiss. And when he’s not co-writing Henry Jackson Society strategic briefings, Fakher is the communication manager of the London-based Strategic Research and Communication Centre (SRCC). According to their website, “He joined the centre in 2011 and has been in charge of the centre’s communication strategy and products.”
As you may recall, the SRCC is run by one Ausama Monajed: “Mr Monajed founded the centre in 2010. He is widely quoted and interviewed in international press and media outlets. He previously worked as communication consultant in Europe and the US and formerly served as the director of Barada Television …”.
Monajed is Fakher’s boss.
If this wasn’t enough, for a final Washington twist, on the board of the Strategic Research and Communication Centre sits Murhaf Jouejati, a professor at the National Defence University in DC – “the premier center for Joint Professional Military Education (JPME)” which is “under the direction of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff.”
If you happen to be planning a trip to Monajed’s “Strategic Research and Communication Centre”, you’ll find it here: Strategic Research & Communication Centre, Office 36, 88-90 Hatton Garden, Holborn, London EC1N 8PN.
Office 36 at 88-90 Hatton Garden is also where you’ll find the London headquarters of The Fake Tan Company, Supercar 4 U Limited, Moola loans (a “trusted loans company”), Ultimate Screeding (for all your screeding needs), and The London School of Attraction – “a London-based training company which helps men develop the skills and confidence to meet and attract women.” And about a hundred other businesses besides. It’s a virtual office. There’s something oddly appropriate about this. A “communication centre” that doesn’t even have a centre – a grand name but no physical substance.
That’s the reality of Hamza Fakher. On 27 May, Shamik Das of Left Foot Forward quotes again from Fakher’s account of atrocities, which he now describes as an “eyewitness account” (which Cohen never said it was) and which by now has hardened into “the record of the Assad regime”.
So, a report of atrocities given by a Henry Jackson Society strategist, who is the communications manager of Mosafed’s PR department, has acquired the gravitas of a historical “record”.
This is not to suggest that the account of atrocities must be untrue, but how many of those who give it currency are scrutinising its origins?
And let’s not forget, whatever destabilisation has been done in the realm of news and public opinion is being carried out twofold on the ground. We already know that (at the very least) “the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department … are helping the opposition Free Syrian Army develop logistical routes for moving supplies into Syria and providing communications training.”
The bombs doors are open. The plans have been drawn up.
This has been brewing for a time. The sheer energy and meticulous planning that’s gone into this change of regime – it’s breathtaking. The soft power and political reach of the big foundations and policy bodies is vast, but scrutiny is no respecter of fancy titles and fellowships and “strategy briefings”. Executive director of what, it asks. Having “democracy” or “human rights” in your job title doesn’t give you a free pass.
And if you’re a “communications director” it means your words should be weighed extra carefully. Weiss and Fakher, both communications directors – PR professionals. At the Chatham House event in June 2011, Monajed is listed as: “Ausama Monajed, director of communications, National Initiative for Change” and he was head of PR for the MJD. The creator of the news website NOW Lebanon, Eli Khoury, is a Saatchi advertising executive. These communications directors are working hard to create what Tamara Wittes called a “positive brand”.
They’re selling the idea of military intervention and regime change, and the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the “activists” and spokespeople representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in many cases financially) interlinked with the US and London – the very people who would be doing the intervening. Which means information and statistics from these sources isn’t necessarily pure news – it’s a sales pitch, a PR campaign.
But it’s never too late to ask questions, to scrutinise sources. Asking questions doesn’t make you a cheerleader for Assad – that’s a false argument. It just makes you less susceptible to spin. The good news is, there’s a sceptic born every minute.
[Comment: Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights came under acute scrutany earlier this year in response to a smear campaign against him. He was found to be credible https://supportkurds.org/reports/syrian-observatory-for-human-rights http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15896636]
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Guardian: Syria crisis: border tribes could finish off Assad regime
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) avoids the words “civil war”. It prefers the blander “non-international armed conflict”, but the meaning is essentially the same, and the ICRC’s declaration that it has spread across Syria is an important milestone.
According to Sean Maguire, the organisation’s spokesman in the UK, the criteria for the ICRC statement are the intensity of the violence, the level of organisation of the armed opposition, and the duration of the fighting.
“It is not everywhere in Syria and it’s not all the time, but it has become much more widespread. It is an extension of the conflict rather than necessarily an escalation,” Maguire said.
As a consequence, the protections given to civilians and detainees offered by the Geneva conventions apply to the whole of Syria, although the targeting of residential areas was previously covered by international humanitarian law. In effect, what could be previously prosecuted as “crimes against humanity” can now be prosecuted as “war crimes”. The point is largely moot, however, as the international criminal court cannot open an investigation into what is happening in Syria without a UN security council mandate, and Russia and China have blocked any such move.
The ICRC designation reflects the extent to which the Assad regime’s counter-insurgency is backfiring. Every time it sends troops to quell opposition in a city, district or village, its blunderbuss use of artillery and air power has claimed more and more innocent lives, alienating one slice of society after another.
The intensity of fighting in Damascus reached a new high on Monday, with plumes of black smoke rising above the capital and tanks in suburban streets. Bbut the fate of Syria may also be decided in the remoter governorates, away from the camera, where the ground is shifting, perhaps decisively.
Hassan Hassan, a Syrian columnist at UAE-based the National newspaper, described those shifts in his home region along the Iraqi border as a way of explaining the defection last week of the ambassador to Baghdad, Nawaf al-Fares. At the beginning of the revolt last year, Hassan says, Fares armed his clansmen in the region, part of the Egaidat confederation, and organised them against other Sunni tribes who had joined the insurgency.
His position, however, became untenable last month, when the government mounted an offensive on his home town of Deir ez-Zour, allegedly killing 350 people. “The tribes are aware their stance today will affect their reputations for generations to come,” Hassan wrote. “As a leader of a prominent tribe, Mr Al Fares’s loyalty to the regime is secondary to his loyalty to the tribe and its place in the region. The news of his defection has already been received well by many tribal leaders. The defection of Fares, a longtime loyalist, shows the regime has lost its ability to turn the tribes against each other, and use them to maintain relative calm. It is yet another example of how the regime has become its own enemy,”
The conservative Gulf monarchies, who are determined to bring Assad down and are widely reported to be supplying arms to the Free Syrian Army, have long identified these tribal allegiances as the key to the regime’s survival, and have gone about courting them. It is no accident Fares has made his new base in Qatar.
“The regime is desperate – at all levels they know it is dead, it is a matter of time,” Fares said on al-Jazeera over the weekend.
The question now is how much time. Fares said the relatives he left behind were not being targeted by military interrogators. But the regime still has fear at its disposal, and that can be a powerful glue.
Fierce clashes in Syrian capital revive calls for action against Bashar Assad
16 Jul 2012: Regime defector expected to outline leadership bid as deadly wave of clashes sweeps Damascus …