Syrian forces continue to shoot up funerals

[Paradoxical]

CBC News

Syrian forces again fire on mourners

Syrian security forces killed at least three people after opening fire on a massive funeral procession for eight anti-government protesters slain the day before, a human rights activist said.

A rights group has raised Friday's death toll to 44 — most in the northern province of Idlib and the central region of Homs — making it one of the deadliest days since an uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime began two months ago. The government, meanwhile, put the toll at 17.

The continuing bloodshed, which has claimed at least 900 lives, raises questions whether international sanctions and harsh words from the U.S. and its allies will dissuade the Assad regime from using extreme force to crush the biggest challenge ever to its 40-year rule.

Despite the violence, tens of thousands of people took part in the funeral for eight of those killed Friday in Homs, local activists said. The funeral procession came under fire as the people marched from the Tal al-Nasr cemetery, leaving three dead and dozens wounded.

The latest deaths bring to at least 900 the number of civilians killed in the government crackdown, according to the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, whose chief Ammar Qurabi is currently in Turkey.

The government repeatedly has blamed the unrest on armed gangs — not true reform-seekers.

Syria's state-run news agency, SANA, blamed Friday's violence on "armed groups who took advantage of peaceful gatherings" shot dead 17 civilians, policemen and members of the military in Idlib and Homs.

SANA quoted an unnamed Interior Ministry official as saying an armed group also attacked several police stations and vehicles.

Syria has banned foreign journalists and prevented local reporters from covering trouble spots, making it nearly impossible to independently verify witness accounts.

I doubt the Syrian reformers have the ability to force any change internally. So will the sanctions actually have any effect on Syria?

[evilsoup]

I wouldn't write off the reformers entirely, though. This is exactly how the Iranian revolution got started (that is: a cycle of funeral being shot up, causing more protest, causing more funerals which are shot up...). Now, Iran is obviously far from an ideal model to follow, but ...

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I wouldn't write off the reformers entirely, though. This is exactly how the Iranian revolution got started (that is: a cycle of funeral being shot up, causing more protest, causing more funerals which are shot up...). Now, Iran is obviously far from an ideal model to follow, but ...

The Iranian revolution had a figure head for everyone to coalese around. The Syrians do not.

[Simon_Jester]

Are we sure they have no one? What if they're simply not a figure who has achieved global renown yet?

Granted, if so, a Syrian revolution is probably years away, but it wouldn't be the first time someone emerged from obscurity to lead such a movement.

[Block]

I wouldn't write off the reformers entirely, though. This is exactly how the Iranian revolution got started (that is: a cycle of funeral being shot up, causing more protest, causing more funerals which are shot up...). Now, Iran is obviously far from an ideal model to follow, but ...

The Iranian revolution had a figure head for everyone to coalese around. The Syrians do not.

It was also pre-planned and much more organized than any of the recent protests in the various countries.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Are we sure they have no one? What if they're simply not a figure who has achieved global renown yet?

Granted, if so, a Syrian revolution is probably years away, but it wouldn't be the first time someone emerged from obscurity to lead such a movement.

Repeat: "A Figure head". Most of these movements in all these countries right now seem to be driven by groups of people rather than a single charismatic person of any stature comparable to Khomeni.

Also, don't hope for too much. Syria is similar to Lebanon when it comes to religious divisions and I suspect hell will break lose if Assad were to go, even though he should. We are seeing inkings now of serious problems in Eygpt as it is. Tunisia is also having problems with the more religious interior versus the secular coast. We all hate Gaddafi, but the country is still bloody tribalistic, and nothing a bunch of young turks say will change that.

[wautd]

Regime tortured a 13 year old boy to death

A 13-year-old Syrian boy detained by government forces has been brutally killed, his wounds displayed in a shocking video. The boy, identified as Hamza al-Khateeb, was shot, burned, and had his penis cut off when his body was returned to his family.

The killing has sparked another wave of protests in Syria, al Jazeera reports. According to a Facebook page memorializing al-Khatib, the boy was arrested at a checkpoint by Syrian forces.

"We will go out from every home, from every district to express our anger" over the killing, actvists wrote on their Facebook page which carries a picture of the boy, according to the AFP. "A month had passed by with his family not knowing where he is, or if or when will he be released. He was released to his family as a dead body. Upon examining his body, the signs of torture are very clear."

WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO. MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL AUDIENCES.
(in link)

Fucking animals, that's what they are.

[Darth Yan]

wow. i mean i knew the assad family was bad, but that's just low even by their standards. They've ruled long enough.

[JME2]

Fucking animals, that's what they are.

Holy shit...

[Darth Yan]

no offense wautd, but your comment could easily be interpreted to say that all syrians are animals. I know you weren't trying to say that but it COULD be interpreted that way

[Eulogy]

They are literally begging for assassination, for an eye-for-an-eye. The assad monsters have signed their death warrants; it's only a matter of time.

[Duckie]

A: You shouldn't call for assassinations, it's both uncouth and illegal, even for people who we don't particularly care about. A proper person calls for resignations.
B: The people of Syria as a whole don't particularly want Assad dead. Were he to be wanted dead, he'd fight to the last and that's not what's needed at all. For one, he'd win if he really threw all his cards in. For two, it'd be way bloodier than simply forcing him out. The people of Syria, from an inside source, want Assad to pack up a bunch of money and go retire comfortably in someplace like venezuela. Says this person, 'we'd even pay for the plane if that's what it takes'. Because that's what would do it with the least bloodshed.

[Steven Snyder]

I tried to keep myself and my attention away from Syria. There are enough fucked up things in this world, can't I just sit this one out, I paid attention to Egypt and Libya.


But this 13 year old boy, I can't get past this to think about it rationally. How could someone do this to another human, let alone a child...what they did to him just blows my mind.

[wautd]

no offense wautd, but your comment could easily be interpreted to say that all syrians are animals. I know you weren't trying to say that but it COULD be interpreted that way

The ones who did the torturing, obviously.

[K. A. Pital]

Describing torturers as animals is a dangerous illusion. Unless you're willing to accept that all humans are animals, and torturers are humans in the end. It's not as if democracies don't torture.

[Sea Skimmer]

But this 13 year old boy, I can't get past this to think about it rationally. How could someone do this to another human, let alone a child...what they did to him just blows my mind.

But if you don’t torture him, and ten other people, one traitor might escape. That one traitor might make other traitors. How could you allow that when the fall of the regime means all those other crimes you already committed for the regime might come back to haunt you in a myriad of very undesirable ways? That’s the reality these people operate under. Syria has over a dozen different intelligence services and police forces who are allowed to round up people for interrogations, so act soft and odds favor someone form another branch picking up you. Assuming you aren’t executed out of hand.

They are literally begging for assassination, for an eye-for-an-eye. The assad monsters have signed their death warrants; it's only a matter of time.

No reason to assume any of that. They already got away with way worse then this in 1982 when they destroyed Hama. The elder Hafez Al-Assad was about as assassination proof as Hitler was, surviving multiple hand grenades being thrown right in front of him. I doubt anyone is going to nail Assad the younger in a world of far improved body armor, armored glass and other VIP protection tools. The ruling family is pretty large with power spread around heavily, so killing any one of them would be meaningless anyway.

[wautd]

Describing torturers as animals is a dangerous illusion. Unless you're willing to accept that all humans are animals, and torturers are humans in the end. It's not as if democracies don't torture.

True

[Big Orange]

They practically demolished Hama with artillery, didn't they? If the Syrian people have to remove the Assad regime through armed revolt (if they don't get decisively crushed) it sounds as bad if not worse than Libya, likely going to go on and on and on. Also open Western intervention is less likely due to Assad being good friends with Putin.

[Sea Skimmer]

They practically demolished Hama with artillery, didn't they? If the Syrian people have to remove the Assad regime through armed revolt (if they don't get decisively crushed) it sounds as bad if not worse than Libya, likely going to go on and on and on. Also open Western intervention is less likely due to Assad being good friends with Putin.

The week plus of tank and artillery shelling and bombing from the air could be considered at least vaguely legitimate for 1982 combat as a major armed insurgent force had staged an uprising in the city when this happened. They expected the uprising, which was somewhat spontaneous on the part of the local insurgents, to become nation wide, but instead Hama stood alone and was besieged instantly.

What makes Hama brutal in a century which saw numerous cities bombed to ruin is what the Assad regime troops did in the weeks that followed as they basically dug civilians out of the rubble just to execute them on the spot, and put the rest of the population from areas of the city not held by uprising forces in defense, in highly improvised concentration camps in which thousands then died of exposure and disease. They also just went house to house and killed everyone in sight at times. Like Qaddafis forces now, the Syrian regime could only rely on certain elite units and these had limited but still divisional strength numbers.

In the city itself they demolished the rubble of all the major buildings, mosques, churches and anything else notable with explosives and bulldozers, and then rebuilt Hama with a different street grid so that the city center was entirely changed. That was done half to hide the evidence and half to deny future opposition known landmarks and street intersections from the combat as rallying points. Afterwards a portion of the surviving population was forcibly removed to other areas and the rest subject to the usual police state tactics of repression if they uttered a word about it.

You get wide variations in the reported death toll, keeping in mind that the minimal of 15,000 dead is the official Syrian death toll and other estimates go to 40-60,000 people because all bodies were thrown in deep mass graves dug out with bulldozers, and simply no one has ever been allowed to dig on those sites. I suspect the US government may have very good information on this from SR-71 overflights, the resolution is easily good enough to count human corpses in piles, but those aren't going to get released anytime soon.

[K. A. Pital]

So Syria has been a far crappier regime than Libya. I haven't found anything even remotely close to the Hama masscare in the history of modern Libya. However, I doubt Syria's islamist insurgents woudl've been any more merciful to their opponents if they triumphed. Iran suggests no.

I suspect the US government may have very good information on this from SR-71 overflights

Did the US even use the SR-71 heavily to overfly Syria during the Hama massacre?

[hongi]

To be honest, I wouldn't mind it if there was an Islamist uprising at this point in Syria. It's far from certain that Islamists would win the war, in which case they served as good cannon fodder, or the factional contest if the government does fall. Anything to bleed Assad.

[Block]

To be honest, I wouldn't mind it if there was an Islamist uprising at this point in Syria. It's far from certain that Islamists would win the war or the factional contest if the government does fall. Anything to bleed Assad.

While that may sound good, it would be extremely bloody and push a lot of people back into the government's camp. The reason anyone supports the protestors at all is because they've remained peaceful so far and are for the most part secular.

[hongi]

Hey man, let me entertain my revenge fantasies in peace!

I know what you mean. The Syrian government is pushing the Islamist angle heavily. According to them, the protestors are all Salafi extremists. From what I hear, a lot of the support for the government is coming from the minorities, Alawis and Christian who are afraid of Sunnis taking over. The middle-class minorities have a lot to gain from sticking with a stable dictatorship.

[K. A. Pital]

To be honest, I wouldn't mind it if there was an Islamist uprising at this point in Syria.

There was one. It ended with Hama. Are you sure that's a good idea?

[Sea Skimmer]

Did the US even use the SR-71 heavily to overfly Syria during the Hama massacre?

I’m not certain but I’m pretty sure the US was over flying the region prior to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and a SR-71 over flight covers a vast area of terrain so you aren't stuck choosing one or even a few places to look at per sortie. Its hard to see the US as not having been interested in what was going on like this, since the fighting had the potential to overthrow the Syrian regime by causing a much feared army mutiny. At the same time you have Saddam clearly heavily bogged down in Iran, so the whole region looked like it might explode into chaos at any time.

Considering the obvious soil discoloration mass graves were probably also visible on satellite overheads, but I don’t think they’d be able to make very good estimates of a body count from that. Aircraft photos have far greater clarity.