A Syria for All Its People — Two Books on an Unnecessary War

On Friday night, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom launched strikes against military targets in Syria to punish Bashar al-Assad’s regime for a suspected chemical attack near Damascus last weekend. The United States and its allies have been bombing Syria since 2014 as part of a military campaign against the Islamic State, but Friday’s attack marked only the second instance since 2011 when the United States directly targeted the Syrian government. President Donald Trump ordered both U.S. strikes against Assad without congressional authorization. Two books on Syria, based on years of in-country reporting, capture a key period in modern Syrian history, beginning with the 2011 revolution that morphed into a complex, multi-pronged, international war. 
weiterlesen auf theintercept

The Syrian People Have Been Betrayed By All Sides

Where do you stand on the conflict in Syria? This question has become perhaps the ultimate political and sectarian Rorschach test of our time.
Are you a leftist or libertarian who opposes U.S. air strikes and waxes lyrical about the paramountcy of Syrian sovereignty and international law? Or are you a very mainstream liberal or conservative who backs military action to remove the Syrian dictator from power — or, at least, to protect his people from barrel bombs and chemical attacks?
Are you a Shia Muslim who supports Assad against genocidal Salafist rebels backed by Sunni-led Saudi Arabia? Or a Sunni Muslim who supports the rebels against a genocidal Alawite regime backed by Shia-led Iran?
weiterlesen auf the intercept

Aleppo’s people are being slaughtered. Did we learn nothing from Srebrenica?

I was a teenager when I faced the worst of humanity. I remember our house burning to the ground and my family fleeing Srebrenica, hoping against hope for a chance to live. I remember the torture, and the smell of blood. I didn’t know it yet, but I was living through the worst genocide in Europe since the second world war. And afterwards, I remember the promises of “never again”.
Those promises are being broken, hour after hour, day after day, in the deepening horror of east Aleppo. More than 500,000 people have died since war began in 2011. Imagine it. Years of cluster bombs, rockets and toxic gas raining down, funeral after funeral, death after death, while the world looks on and watches your country and your people being destroyed.
weiterlesen auf theguardian.....