Saturday, August 10, 2013

The new Syrian Observatory report

From Asa:  "As'ad, look at these new figures from the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights:

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 106,423 people
have now died in the Syrian civil war.  The majority of the dead are said to be combatants: 65,083
Of these, the majority are on the Syrian government side: 44,588 (this includes soldiers, government militias and alleged "Shabiha, and pro regime informers" and Hizballah)  SOHR says 38,660 civilians (including 5,553 children and 3,607 women) have been killed.

I am a little sceptical in some aspects. My comments:

1) SOHR are close to the rebels, so in my opinion, the number of rebel dead is likely to be an underestimate
2) The figures do not record which side killed how many civilians
3) But there is a clue as to rebel human rights abuses: the 17,000+ dead
figure for govt. militias includes "Shabiha, and pro regime informers".
I'm sure all of them got fair trials.
4) The fact the majority of dead are combatants, and the majority of those are on the Syrian regime side is very much consistent with the unpopular fact the western media rarely acknowledges: there is a proxy war being carried out against the regime by outside powers (whose reasons are nothing to do with freedom and democracy).
5) The SOHR figures undermine the media nonsense about "Asad has killed
100,000 of his own people."