Hama Massacre: Slaughtering Entire Cities is an Assad Family Tradition

[JimBowie1958]

Hama massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Hama massacre (Arabic: مجزرة حماة*) occurred in February 1982, when the Syrian army, under the orders of the country's president, Hafez al-Assad, conducted a scorched earth operation against the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Sunni Muslim community against the regime of al-Assad.[1] The Hama massacre, supervised in person by President Assad's younger brother, Rifaat al-Assad, effectively ended the campaign begun in 1976 by Sunni Islamic groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, against Assad's regime, whose leaders were disproportionately from president Assad's own Alawite sect.

Initial diplomatic reports from western countries stated that 1,000 were killed.[2][3] Subsequent estimates vary, with the lower estimates claiming that at least 10,000 Syrian citizens were killed,[4] while others put the number at 20,000 (Robert Fisk),[1] or 40,000 (Syrian Human Rights Committee).[5][6] About 1,000 Syrian soldiers were killed during the operation and large parts of the old city were destroyed. Alongside such few events as the Black September Massacre in Jordan,[7] the attack has been described as one of "the single deadliest acts by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East".[8] The vast majority of the victims were civilians.[9]

According to Syrian media, anti-government rebels initiated the fighting, who "pounced on our comrades while sleeping in their homes and killed whomever they could kill of women and children, mutilating the bodies of the martyrs in the streets, driven, like mad dogs, by their black hatred." Security forces then "rose to confront these crimes" and "taught the murderers a lesson that has snuffed out their breath"[10]

Yeah, all those women and children and old men were sneaking around cutting peoples throats in the middle of the night, yeah right.

But back then the Syrian government was able to keep a lid on the news of what is really going on.

Not likely these days. While I suspect Assad may hold on with the support of Iran, China and Russia and other similar criminal regimes, in the long run I think they lose, though they may out last Isreal in the current form of a Jewish state.

 

[waltky]

Russia criticizes Assad...

Russian PM: Delaying Syrian Reforms May be 'Fatal' Error for Assad
January 27, 2013 - Russia has made one of its strongest criticisms of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to date, saying the longtime Russian ally made a potentially "fatal" error by delaying democratic reforms demanded by Syria's opposition.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev made the comment in an interview with U.S. television network CNN, broadcast Sunday. He said Assad should have acted much faster to reach out to moderate opponents. Medvedev said he believes the Syrian president's chances of remaining in power are getting smaller and smaller by the day, but he repeated Moscow's position that Syria's fate must be decided by its own people. Russia has been a longtime supplier of weapons to the ruling Assad family and has vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have condemned him for trying to crush what began as a peaceful pro-democracy uprising.

The rebellion has evolved into civil war in which majority Sunni rebels and Islamist militants have been fighting to end the 12-year rule of Assad, a minority Alawite. Syrian state media said Sunday the government's top judicial council has suspended legal action against exiled opposition figures, to allow them to return home for a national dialogue proposed by President Assad earlier this month. However, Syria's exiled opposition coalition has consistently refused to deal with Assad, saying he must leave power before any peace talks can begin.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos was in Damascus on Sunday to learn more about the suffering caused by the conflict, which she has described as "catastrophic." Amos made no comments to reporters as she arrived in the Syrian capital and held talks with Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem. She also visited a school in the Damascus suburb of Bazreh, where some displaced Syrians have been sheltering. Speaking in Switzerland last week, Amos said Syria is paying the price for the failure of world powers to resolve a civil war that has displaced two million people and turned another 650,000 into refugees abroad. The U.N. is to hold a donor conference in Kuwait on Wednesday, to raise funds for Syria's humanitarian crisis.

In the latest violence, opposition activists said government and rebel forces fought each other around a Damascus railway station on Sunday. They said the fighting in Qadam district led to the closure of a highway that runs to the southern town of Dara'a. There was no independent confirmation of the incident because Syria bars most independent reporting in the country. The United Nations estimates that more than 60,000 people have been killed since the Syrian uprising began with pro-democracy protests in March 2011, before evolving into a civil war.

Source

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Well it's about time!...

Merkel: China, Russia seeing Syrian president's time is up
24 Feb.`13 - China and Russia are increasingly realizing that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's time is up, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, as she visited German troops stationed with NATO Patriot missiles close to the Turkish-Syrian frontier.

Merkel, beginning a two-day trip to Turkey, said the missiles, provided at NATO member Turkey's request, were a signal that the alliance would not tolerate Damascus dragging its neighbors into its conflict. "In view of the terrible events the impression is mounting that China and Russia realize that Mr Assad no longer has a future, that his time is up and that there must be a democratic government," she told troops deployed to operate the missile batteries.

China and Russia, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have blocked attempts by the West to mount pressure on Assad to end the violence in the nearly two-year-old conflict that has killed some 70,000 people. Merkel said conflicts such as Syria's ultimately need a political solution. She repeated her doubts about arming the Syrian opposition, noting weapons provided to Libyan rebels to assist their uprising had fallen into the wrong hands, and had ended up in use in fighting in Mali.

The Chancellor is due to meet Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul in Ankara on Monday for talks on Syria, Turkey's European Union membership bid and Kurdish militants as well as business ties. Before leaving Germany she said she favoured new talks to revive Turkey's stalled EU bid, but stressed the outcome of these talks should be open and said she was still skeptical about whether Turkey should join. A poll published by German newspaper Bild am Sonntag on Sunday showed 60 percent of Germans opposed Turkey's EU membership.

Merkel: China, Russia seeing Syrian president's time is up - Yahoo! News

 

[JimBowie1958]

Granny says, "Well it's about time!...

Merkel: China, Russia seeing Syrian president's time is up
24 Feb.`13 - China and Russia are increasingly realizing that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's time is up, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Sunday, as she visited German troops stationed with NATO Patriot missiles close to the Turkish-Syrian frontier.

Merkel, beginning a two-day trip to Turkey, said the missiles, provided at NATO member Turkey's request, were a signal that the alliance would not tolerate Damascus dragging its neighbors into its conflict. "In view of the terrible events the impression is mounting that China and Russia realize that Mr Assad no longer has a future, that his time is up and that there must be a democratic government," she told troops deployed to operate the missile batteries.

China and Russia, both permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have blocked attempts by the West to mount pressure on Assad to end the violence in the nearly two-year-old conflict that has killed some 70,000 people. Merkel said conflicts such as Syria's ultimately need a political solution. She repeated her doubts about arming the Syrian opposition, noting weapons provided to Libyan rebels to assist their uprising had fallen into the wrong hands, and had ended up in use in fighting in Mali.

The Chancellor is due to meet Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul in Ankara on Monday for talks on Syria, Turkey's European Union membership bid and Kurdish militants as well as business ties. Before leaving Germany she said she favoured new talks to revive Turkey's stalled EU bid, but stressed the outcome of these talks should be open and said she was still skeptical about whether Turkey should join. A poll published by German newspaper Bild am Sonntag on Sunday showed 60 percent of Germans opposed Turkey's EU membership.

Merkel: China, Russia seeing Syrian president's time is up - Yahoo! News

Thanks Waltky for that good news!

 

[waltky]

Hezbollah help and limited use of chemical weapons tips the scales in Assad's favor...

Balance of power in Syria shifting Assad's way
May 31,`13 -- As hopes for a Syrian peace conference fade and the opposition falls into growing disarray, President Bashar Assad has every reason to project confidence.

Government forces have moved steadily against rebels in key areas of the country over the past two months, making strategic advances and considerably lowering the threat to the capital, Damascus. With army soldiers no longer defecting and elite Hezbollah fighters actively helping, the regime now clearly has the upper hand in a two-year civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people.

In back-to-back interviews with Lebanese TV stations this week, Assad and his foreign minister both projected an image of self-assuredness, boasting of achievements and suggesting that the military's offensive would continue regardless of whether a peace track is in place. "What is happening now is not a shift in tactic from defense to attack, but rather a shift in the balance of power in favor of the armed forces," Assad said of his troops' recent battleground successes. "There is no doubt that as events have unfolded, Syrians have been able to better understand the situation and what is really at stake," he told Al-Manar TV, owned by the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group. "This has helped the armed forces to better carry out their duties and achieve results."

Military analysts and activists on the ground in Syria say that Assad's forces have shown renewed determination since roughly the beginning of April, moving to recapture areas that had long fallen to rebels. Significantly, Syrian troops appear to have gained the edge in the country's central Homs region. The regime considers Homs strategically important partly because it links Damascus with the coastal heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The rebels are mostly from the country's Sunni Muslim majority. The coast also is home to the country's two main seaports, Latakia and Tartus.

Syrian troops and Hezbollah forces have successfully been clearing the town of Qusair in Homs province, where rebels have been entrenched for a year. State-run Syrian TV said troops on Friday captured the village of Jawadiyeh outside Qusair, closing all entrances leading to the town and tightening the government's siege.

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Shifts in Syria pressure reluctant Washington
31 May 2013 > For two years, US President Barack Obama has been reluctant to get dragged into the fight in Syria. But with the conflict morphing into a full-fledged war by proxy, attitudes in Washington are slowly beginning to shift.

The situation in Syria has never looked more complex or intractable in two years of uprising and fighting. Plans for peace talks in Geneva remain in doubt. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad continues to receive military hardware from Russia, and the Syrian rebels have accused Shia Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of "invading" Syria and bolstering Mr Assad.

Avoiding 'slippery slope'

Hezbollah, backed by Iran, has acknowledged publicly that it is backing the Syrian president. Meanwhile, the EU has lifted its embargo on weapons to the rebels but no decision has been made by European countries to deliver arms. The Syrian opposition is still struggling to come together. It is easy to forget now that the Syrian revolution started in March 2011, when crowds of peaceful demonstrators spilled into the streets from Homs to Hama to Damascus demanding reform, freedom, and Mr Assad's departure. But Mr Assad maintained most of his support within the elite merchant class, his own Alawite community, and among Christians.

In Washington, hopes that Mr Assad would just fall have alternated with diplomatic efforts for a political solution - anything that would avoid direct US engagement. The administration still insists a political solution is the best option, but the dramatic developments on the ground are forcing it to reconsider its strategy. "The president and those around him fear that taking some kind of a step might put them on the so-called slippery slope," said Fred Hoff, who spent months inside the administration's Syria debate and is now with the Atlantic Council in Washington. "In other words, take one step and in the fullness of time you will be obliged to occupy the country. I think that's mistaken and I would not be surprised if the president himself has come to that conclusion."

'Recalculate'

 

[JimBowie1958]

Russia and China are saving Assad from his just end.