Women and children are still being held hostage by Syrian 'rebels' who deliberately killed civilians.
10/11/13, "Syria rebels executed civilians, says Human Rights Watch," BBC
"Rebel forces in Syria
killed as many as 190 civilians and seized more than 200 hostages during
a military offensive in August, Human Rights Watch says.
It said the findings "strongly suggest" crimes against humanity were committed.
Rebels and Syrian government forces have both been accused of abuses.
Syrian opposition forces comprise many groups, some of which are allied to al-Qaeda.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says it conducted an on-site investigation and interviewed more than 35 people, including survivors and fighters from both sides of the offensive.
In its 105-page report,
it says that in the early hours of 4 August opposition fighters overran
government positions in the Latakia countryside and occupied more than
10 Alawite villages.
Women and children
"Witnesses described how opposition forces executed residents and opened fire on civilians, sometimes killing or attempting to kill entire families who were either in their homes unarmed or fleeing from the attack," the report said.
HRW says about 20 opposition groups took part in the offensive and that five were involved in the attacks on civilians - the al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), Jaysh al-Muhajirin wa al-Ansar, Ahrar al-Sham and Suqour al-Izz. None are affiliated to the Western-backed Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army.
The report says ISIS and Jaysh al-Muhajirin were still holding the hostages, most of them women and children.
The government launched a counter-attack the next day and regained control of the area on 18 August. Joe Stork, acting Middle East director at HRW, said the abuses were "not the actions of rogue fighters".
"This operation was a co-ordinated, planned attack on the civilian population in these Alawite villages," he said.
HRW says evidence including witness statements and a review of hospital records showed opposition forces executed or unlawfully killed at least 67 of the 190 dead civilians who were identified.
It says the high civilian death toll and the nature of the recorded wounds "indicate that opposition forces either intentionally or indiscriminately killed most of the remaining victims".
"The evidence strongly suggests that the killings, hostage taking, and other abuses committed by opposition forces on and after August 4 rise to the level of crimes against humanity," the report said.
HRW says Islamist rebel groups - which include foreign fighters - are financed by individuals in Kuwait and the Gulf. It calls on the UN to impose an arms embargo on all groups credibly accused of war crimes.
Human rights organisations also accuse Syrian government forces of killing civilians during the country's 31-month long conflict, most recently in a poison gas attack near Damascus on 21 August.
Western nations blamed government forces for the attack, in which hundreds died, but President Bashar al-Assad says rebel fighters are responsible.
The attack led to a disarmament deal in which Syria agreed to allow its chemical weapons arsenal to be destroyed, placing on hold the prospect of US-led strikes on Syria as punishment for the Damascus attack.
Experts from the global chemical weapons watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), are currently overseeing efforts to destroy weapons production equipment in Syria.
Earlier this year, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called on the UN Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
She said it "would send a clear message to both the government and the opposition that there will be consequences for their actions".
More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict, according to the UN."
=============================
"U.S. influence in the Arab world has been waning for a decade. But the House of Saud was deeply alarmed when Obama abandoned longtime Arab ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt during the 2011 pro-democracy uprising."
10/8/13, "Saudis bankroll new rebel force to fight own war on Assad," UPI, Beirut, Lebanon
"Saudi Arabia, exasperated with U.S. vacillation related to Syria's chemical arsenal and now its effort to reconcile with Iran, Riyadh's foremost adversary, is forging a new alliance of Islamist rebels in Syria under a pro-Saudi warlord to supersede the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army.
Riyadh
also wants to foment an Iraq-style "Sunni Awakening" to unite Syria's
majority sect to topple the minority Damascus regime of President Bashar
Assad.
Middle East analyst Michael Weiss, writing in the Beirut Web portal Now Lebanon, observed Riyadh has "taken substantive measures to circumvent Washington altogether on Syria by activating a cadre of new clients in the form of a hard-line Salafist rebels who are now united under the umbrella of the army of Islam. ...
"The Saudis have enlisted '50 brigades' and some thousands of fighters under a new structure headed by Zahren Alloush, head of Liwa al-Islam, the new group's most powerful Salafist brigade."
Alloush studied Islamic theology in Saudi Arabia where his father Abdallah is a Salafist cleric.
The Saudi move is also a response to last week's formation of a hard-line Islamist alliance of 13 groups, including the powerful Jabhat al-Nusra, allied with al-Qaida, and to isolate the jihadists who're proving to be the most effective anti-regime force in Syria.
The plan seems to be to buy control of disaffected rebel bands, many of them without strong leadership, and to forge them into a well-armed force capable of battering Assad's regime.
"For us in Saudi Arabia, the worst scenario is to let Bashar survive this: he has to go," said Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi analyst close to Riyadh's power elite.
"The world can ignore what's happening in Syria, but this is on our doorstep and it's on fire with sectarian flames that will reach all neighboring countries."
The Saudi strategy has been engineered in large part by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of the General Intelligence Directorate, and his brother Prince Salman, named deputy defense minister by Abdullah in August.
Bandar, Abdullah's nephew, was ambassador to the United States for 22 years (1983-2005).
He's a master of Middle Eastern intrigue and played a key role in several covert operations with the Americans, including arming Islamist mujahedin against the invading Soviets in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s.
On July 31, Bandar flew secretly to Moscow for closed-door talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad's ally, at his suburban home in hopes of persuading him to back off keeping the Syrian dictator in power.
Bandar reportedly offered to buy Russian arms worth $15 billion and not to oppose Russia's natural gas deals, but apparently to no avail.
Nonetheless, the episode underlined how Riyadh's strategic view is swinging increasingly eastward.
Bandar is Abdullah's point man on the complex Syrian imbroglio, which the Sunni Saudi monarchy sees as part of its increasingly fraught confrontation with Shiite Iran's drive to be the paramount power in the Persian Gulf and to extend its influence through Iraq and Syria to the largely Sunni Levant.
Before moving to rally the disparate Syrian rebels by showering them with petrodollars, Bandar and cohorts first eliminated rival Qatar which was funding and arming Islamist hardliners in Syria.
Gulf sources say the surprise June 25 abdication of Qatar's emir, Sheik Hamad, in favor of his son, Sheik Tamin bin Hamad al-Thani, took place with a little help from Riyadh to curb Doha's political clout in the region.
All this has meant a sharp shift by Riyadh away from the strategic alliance with the United States, established in 1945 when Franklin D. Roosevelt met King Abdelaziz ibn Saud, Abdullah's father, aboard the U.S. Navy cruiser Quincy in the the Suez Canal.
This shift has been building for some time, spurred in part by the discovery of vast shale oil deposits in the United States that dwarf those of Saudi Arabia, the world's top producer.
U.S. influence in the Arab world has been waning for a decade. But the House of Saud was deeply alarmed when Obama abandoned longtime Arab ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt during the 2011 pro-democracy uprising.
The royals fear they could be left in the lurch as well.
The chill in Riyadh-Washington relations is likely to get icier as the Saudis seek to scupper any accommodation between Obama and Iran that does not completely eliminate Tehran's nuclear program."
. Middle East analyst Michael Weiss, writing in the Beirut Web portal Now Lebanon, observed Riyadh has "taken substantive measures to circumvent Washington altogether on Syria by activating a cadre of new clients in the form of a hard-line Salafist rebels who are now united under the umbrella of the army of Islam. ...
"The Saudis have enlisted '50 brigades' and some thousands of fighters under a new structure headed by Zahren Alloush, head of Liwa al-Islam, the new group's most powerful Salafist brigade."
Alloush studied Islamic theology in Saudi Arabia where his father Abdallah is a Salafist cleric.
The Saudi move is also a response to last week's formation of a hard-line Islamist alliance of 13 groups, including the powerful Jabhat al-Nusra, allied with al-Qaida, and to isolate the jihadists who're proving to be the most effective anti-regime force in Syria.
The plan seems to be to buy control of disaffected rebel bands, many of them without strong leadership, and to forge them into a well-armed force capable of battering Assad's regime.
"For us in Saudi Arabia, the worst scenario is to let Bashar survive this: he has to go," said Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi analyst close to Riyadh's power elite.
"The world can ignore what's happening in Syria, but this is on our doorstep and it's on fire with sectarian flames that will reach all neighboring countries."
The Saudi strategy has been engineered in large part by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, head of the General Intelligence Directorate, and his brother Prince Salman, named deputy defense minister by Abdullah in August.
Bandar, Abdullah's nephew, was ambassador to the United States for 22 years (1983-2005).
He's a master of Middle Eastern intrigue and played a key role in several covert operations with the Americans, including arming Islamist mujahedin against the invading Soviets in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s.
On July 31, Bandar flew secretly to Moscow for closed-door talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad's ally, at his suburban home in hopes of persuading him to back off keeping the Syrian dictator in power.
Bandar reportedly offered to buy Russian arms worth $15 billion and not to oppose Russia's natural gas deals, but apparently to no avail.
Nonetheless, the episode underlined how Riyadh's strategic view is swinging increasingly eastward.
Bandar is Abdullah's point man on the complex Syrian imbroglio, which the Sunni Saudi monarchy sees as part of its increasingly fraught confrontation with Shiite Iran's drive to be the paramount power in the Persian Gulf and to extend its influence through Iraq and Syria to the largely Sunni Levant.
Before moving to rally the disparate Syrian rebels by showering them with petrodollars, Bandar and cohorts first eliminated rival Qatar which was funding and arming Islamist hardliners in Syria.
Gulf sources say the surprise June 25 abdication of Qatar's emir, Sheik Hamad, in favor of his son, Sheik Tamin bin Hamad al-Thani, took place with a little help from Riyadh to curb Doha's political clout in the region.
All this has meant a sharp shift by Riyadh away from the strategic alliance with the United States, established in 1945 when Franklin D. Roosevelt met King Abdelaziz ibn Saud, Abdullah's father, aboard the U.S. Navy cruiser Quincy in the the Suez Canal.
This shift has been building for some time, spurred in part by the discovery of vast shale oil deposits in the United States that dwarf those of Saudi Arabia, the world's top producer.
U.S. influence in the Arab world has been waning for a decade. But the House of Saud was deeply alarmed when Obama abandoned longtime Arab ally Hosni Mubarak in Egypt during the 2011 pro-democracy uprising.
The royals fear they could be left in the lurch as well.
The chill in Riyadh-Washington relations is likely to get icier as the Saudis seek to scupper any accommodation between Obama and Iran that does not completely eliminate Tehran's nuclear program."
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