Angry Arab's introduction to Akram's latest report (report follows): I hesitated before I posted this. Akram, as you know now, is the Angry Arab correspondent in Syria. I have received various reports from Syrians, including from Akram, before I settled on Akram as the chief correspondent in Syria. I never met Akram and never asked for his political affiliations: I only knew of the sectarian affiliation of his family because he volunteered it when someone challenged his reports about the plight of Christians in Syria, when he maintained that there are no campaigns by rebel forces against Christians. But I must here and on other occasions state that I don't necessarily agree with all the conclusions by Akram (including in this report below) but I can certainly state that I trust that he reports in good faith and without any agenda whatsoever. I view him as an honest reporter even when I disagree with him. In the report below, I disagree: I believe that the regime bears a bigger responsibility and I don't think that one should find excuses for regime bombing of civilian targets. I don't believe that a regime can be dragged to kill its own people, especially when the Asad regime has had a long history of killing Syrians, Palestinians, and Lebanese. Now Akram's latest report:
"To
be fair, one can't put all the blame of what's happening in Syria on the Syrian
regime. No government in the world, were it authoritarian or democratic, accepts
its sovereignty to be disputed. The fact is that the two parties bear equal
responsibility for every drop of blood that fall on the Syrian
ground.
28
years of fighting the Israeli occupation in South Lebanon, Hezbollah' first
priority was the residents safety. It never tried to hold any town because it
knew the catastrophic consequences of such an act. Instead, its focus was on
making the occupation's life a hell by attacking the checkpoints and military
barracks of the Israelis and their agents of the South Lebanon Army using the
guerrilla warfare. Throughout this period, we never heard of the fall of a
single civilian as a result of the resistance activities. But the Syrian
"revolutionaries", in their savage fighting to topple the Syrian regime, don't
care about the fate of the innocent civilians. By, deliberately, transferring
the battle to the populated centers, the rebels are, partly, responsible for the
destruction of cities and the killing and the displacement of the people they
pretend to protect. They are, clearly and unethically, willing to drag the
Syrian regime to commit atrocities in order to obtain the long- awaited western
military intervention.
The
big problem remains in the destructive tactic embraced by the Syrian regime.
Contrary to all what we know about urban warfare, the Syrian army seems
reluctant to engage its ground forces against the rebels, preferring, in many
cases, to apply Harassing Fire, by
mortars, howitzers and tanks, against the populated areas, where the
insurgents are deployed, a tactic the effectiveness of which in eliminating the
insurgents is questionable, while "mass destruction" that it holds to the
targeted towns and neighborhoods can be, easily, predicted. Amazingly, the
Syrian warplanes use low precision rockets against targets situated in the urban
areas. According to a recent report of Human Rights Watch, the Syrian warplanes
attacking a hospital in Aleppo, used S-5 rockets. S-5 is an unguided rocket. That is, it becomes out of
control the same moment it's launched and it could, due to external factors,
deviate from its course without the pilot can do anything. This fact may explain
the high toll of civilian casualties in Azaz caused by another air strike. Reports said that two FSA facilities were in proximity of the
targeted residential block but neither was damaged. It could be hard to be
understood, unless the real objective is suppressing the "societal texture"
that, as it's said, incubates the insurgents.
The
war is still in its early beginnings, but the figures are already horrific:
Hundreds of thousands of refugees in the neighboring countries living in bad
conditions, 1.2 millions uprooted within the country, 2.5 million people in need
of help, 5 devastated Provinces, and indices of a healthcare system that is in
course to a full collapse.
Mutating
into a proxy war, the Syrian crisis is getting uglier and bloodier. The
international forces aren't just waiting on the sidelines; they are actively
fighting to impose their conflicting agendas. With each passing day, more and
more issues are added to the bloody negotiation between the United-States and
Russia: today are the Iranian nuclear program, the former Soviet republics and
the American missile shield, and tomorrow Asia-Pacific and the underground
resources in the Arctic… and who knows what else. It’s now completely out of
control of both warring sides, who doesn't seem willing to do anything to make
the war bearable by the innocent people.
As
the situation worsens, Syrians must never forget that, by stupidity and
arrogance, the Syrian regime hasn't only declined to close the gaps that were
opened one day of March 2011 when things were at its disposal, but also
encouraged the emergence of sectarianism and worked relentlessly to eliminate
the secular and peaceful elements of the uprising. Syrians must never forget the
dirty role of the Muslim Brotherhoods in transforming the uprising into a
sectarian conflict by opening the doors wide for the reactionary Gulf sheikhdoms
and the anti-Arab forces to destroy the country."
