Focus on Syria Project sees some ignored in crosshairs of war

Arab Spring

FOS sheds light on humanitarian situation, suffering of some civilians

Excerpt, editing, end comment by Carolyn Bennett

Stories and news on the humanitarian crisis in Syria ─ this is some of what Focus on Syria has to say about itself and its motives.

WHY, WHEN

Because “two years after the start of the Syrian crisis, the international public is not yet informed enough about the gravity of the conflict and its devastating impact on Syrian society and the life of the people,” FOS steps in to help. Media “have reported on political and military events in Syria but little attention has been given to the humanitarian situation and the sufferings of civilians.”

In contrast with wars of the past, “civil societies of the world have been mobilized only in a marginal way.”

 

WHO, WHAT, WHERE

“An independent initiative of world citizens deeply worried about the human disaster and feeling solidarity with all the different components of the Syrian people” forms the rationale for establishing the Focus on Syria Project (headquarters unclear: England, France, Middle East Diaspora)

Focus on Syria Project
Damascus 

Their goal is “to contribute to putting the Syrian crisis ─ and particularly its humanitarian consequences ─ on the agenda of international public opinion.” To meet with Syrians in need, listen to their stories, document their situation, publish and spread information; raise awareness and mobilize.

Focus on Syria comprises a network of journalists, photographers, and aid workers “engaged in their field work on the Syrian crisis; and other people with a specific interest on Syria and its current situation.”

Others join the network by sharing and publishing their material on the crisis and contributing their efforts in raising awareness among other people. Others join by supporting organizations that provide assistance to the Syrians.

Refugees Kenya

Refugees Somalia

REFUGEES

Refugees Yemen

Displaced
Tormented in
Palestine

Regional Refugees
Syria, Lebanon
Jordan, Egypt,
Iran,  Iraq, Turkey

Beyond Syria: 2011 – present

U

prisings (initiated without Western interference)

Syrian rally for dialogue

SYRIA

The Syrian civil war or Syrian uprising or Syrian crisis ─ begun on March 15, 2011 with popular demonstrations becoming nationwide by April 2011 ─ is an ongoing armed conflict between forces loyal to the government and protesters demanding the end of the dominant party that has ruled since 1963 and the resignation of the country’s president whose family has held the presidency since 1971. These demonstrations were part of the wider Middle Eastern protest movement known as the Arab Spring.

Clashes with police Protesters in Bahrain
run for cover

BAHRAIN

The  uprising in the Persian Gulf country of Bahrain also begun in 2011 is a sustained campaign of civil resistance, a series of demonstrations, demanding greater political freedom and equality for the majority Shia population and an end the monarchy of Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The Bahrain uprising is part of the revolutionary wave of protests in the Middle East and North Africa following the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia. [Bahrain is home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and the U.S. government sides with the oppressive monarchy, family dynasty, against the struggle of the people of Bahrain]

YEMEN

Yemenis protest
their government and
U.S. drone attacks

Simultaneous with Tunisia and Egypt’s revolution, the Yemeni uprising, also begun in 2011, is an ongoing demonstration against unemployment, economic conditions, and corruption including their government’s proposals to modify Yemen’s constitution; and demands for the resignation of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh. [The U.S. sides an oppressive government and drone attacks the people.]

ARAB SPRING

"Awakening"

The “Arab Spring,” begun on December 18, 2010, is a term given to a revolutionary wave of nonviolent and violent demonstrations and protests; riots and civil wars in the Arab world.

Uprisings so far have left rulers out of power in Tunisia, Egypt (twice), Libya, and Yemen.

Civil uprisings continue in Bahrain and Syria.

Major protests have broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan.

Minor protests have occurred in Mauritania (on the Atlantic coast of Africa forming geographic and cultural bridge between the North African Maghrib ─ including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia ─ and the westernmost portion of Sub-Saharan Africa); Oman (southeastern coast of Arabian Peninsula); Saudi Arabia; Djibouti (northeast coast of Horn of Africa); Western Sahara (territory occupying an extensive desert Atlantic-coastal area of northwest Africa); and Palestine/Palestinian Authority (eastern Mediterranean region comprising parts of modern Israel and Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the West/ PLO is governing body of “emerging” Palestinian autonomous regions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip)

Outside the Arab world there have been protests by the Arab minority in Iranian Khuzestan (southwestern Iran bordering Iraq on the west, April 2011); border clashes in Israel (May 2011); and conflict involving weapons and Tuareg fighters returning from the Libyan civil war into Mali; and sectarian clashes in Lebanon described as spillover violence from the Syrian uprising, and regional Arab Spring.

All protests have shared similar techniques of civil resistance in sustained campaigns involving strikes, demonstrations, marches, and rallies, as well as the effective use of social media to organize, communicate, and raise awareness in the face of state attempts at repression and Internet censorship.

Given the vast reach of uprisings, conflicts, violent foreign interference, and the widespread suffering of people displaced inside and outside their countries and of refugees on both sides of the Mediterranean and across Asia, west to east, one wonders whether FOS (the so-called Focus on Syria organization) is actually concerned, especially as it does not disclose its central location; or it is merely another based-in-the-West “Friend of Syria” interference with selfishly sinister motives.   

Sources and notes

FOCUS ON SYRIA PROJECT, http://www.focusonsyria.org/the-project/

Wikipedia notes on uprisings

Wikipedia collage image of Arab Spring: Clockwise from top left: Protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo (Egypt); Demonstrators marching through Habib Bourguiba Avenue in Tunis (Tunisia); Political dissidents in Sana’a (capital of Yemen); Protesters gathering in Pearl Roundabout in Manama (capital land largest city of Bahrain)  ); Mass Demonstration in Douma (Syria); Demonstrators in Bayda (Al-Bayda, south central Yemen town)

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Arab women unbowed take hold of historic moment, stand up, defend their rights

Arab women's cyber uprising

Women at the forefront of ‘Arab Spring,’ their hopes sidelined, continue to rise

Edited by Carolyn Bennett

Dictators fell and reforms took hold, Natalia Sinitsa writes today at Pravda.Ru, but women were refused “the rights they hoped for.” Even the slight successes women had achieved at the time of ‘Arab Spring’ have dissolved.”

Then in the belief that only they can declare their mission a failure, the women brought their fight for rights to the Internet.

Human Rights
Women of Color

Unbowed

In October of 2011, the 28-year-old Lebanese activist, Haidar Diyala, along with four like-minded women launched a Facebook campaign, 'The Uprising of Women in the Arab World,' “to tell the world about the injustices against women in the region,” Natalia Sinitsa reports.

At every stage of history, Haidar Diyala declared, there have been excuses such as “war is not the time to discuss [women’s rights]”; but it is now the time to say, “We want our rights” …

Activist Tawakkol Karman
Yemeni women uprising

 The Arab Spring was held “under the banner of freedom, dignity and equality ─ but these cannot be established if the women are left out of the equation. …”

So “… it is too early to say that the Arab Spring has failed for women. This can only be stated when women themselves declare failure of their mission.

One cannot betray women standing up to defend their rights and deciding to take advantage of an historic moment.

Source

“The female face of Arab Spring” (Natalia Sinitsa, Pravda.Ru), January 9, 2013, http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/09-01-2013/123409-arab_spring_female_face-0/

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Uprising against “oppression, corruption, nepotism, bribery” —

Protests in Yemen

Yemeni revolution envisions restructuring from “ruins of repressive, militarized, corrupt rule”

Excerpt, minor editing by Carolyn Bennett from Democracy Now transcript

Yemeni Activist Tawakkol Karman accepting the Nobel Peace Prize

U.S.-allied with Saleh regime in Yemen
Across Red Sea
U.S. bombs
Horn of Africa (Somalia)

“… I stand before you in … one of the most important moments of human history — coming from the land of the Arab Orient, coming from the land of Yemen, the Yemen of wisdom and ancient civilizations, the Yemen of more than 5,000 years of long history, the great Kingdom of Sheba, the Yemen of the two queens, Bilqis and Arwa, the Yemen that is experiencing the greatest and the most powerful and the largest eruption of Arab Spring revolution, the revolution of millions throughout the homeland which is still raging and escalating today.…

Tawakkol Karman
Human rights activist
Journalist
Nobel laureate

“… [W]hen I heard the news that I had received the Nobel Peace Prize, I was in my tent in the Tahrir Square in Sana’a. I was one of millions of revolutionary youth. There, we were not even able to secure our safety from the repression and oppression of the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh.

“At that moment, I contemplated the distinction between the meanings of peace celebrated by the Nobel Prize and the tragedy of the aggression waged by Ali Abdullah Saleh against the forces of peaceful change. However, our joy of being on the right side of history made it easier for us to bear the devastating irony.

“Millions of Yemeni women and men, children, young and old, took to the streets in 18 provinces demanding their right to freedom, justice and dignity, using nonviolent but effective means to achieve their demands. We were able to efficiently and effectively maintain a peaceful revolution in spite of the fact that this great nation has more than 70 million firearms of various types.

Yemeni Protests

Southwest Central Asia (Arabia)
East/Horn of Africa

“Here lies the philosophy of the revolution, which persuaded millions of people to leave their weapons at home and join the peaceful march against the state’s machine of murder and violence just with flowers and bare breasts, and filled with dreams, love and peace. We were very happy because we realized, at that time, that the Nobel Prize did not come only as a personal prize for Tawakkul Abdel-Salam Karman, but as a declaration and recognition of the whole world for the triumph of the peaceful revolution of Yemen and as an appreciation of the sacrifices of its great, peaceful people.

'Day of Rage" - Yemen

“… This revolution will soon complete its first year since the moment it was launched as a peaceful and popular revolution of the youth, with one demand: peaceful change and the pursuit of free and dignified life in a democratic and civil state governed by the rule of law. This state will be built on the ruins of the rule of a repressive, militarized, corrupt and backward family police rule, which has consistently brought Yemen to the edge of failure and collapse during the last 33 years.

…“… [T]he Arab Spring revolutions have emerged with the purpose of meeting the needs of the people of the region for a state of citizenship and the rule of law. They have emerged as an expression of people’s dissatisfaction with the state of corruption, nepotism and bribery.

Yemeni protesters

“These revolutions were ignited by young men and women who are yearning for freedom and dignity. They know that their revolutions pass through four stages, which can’t be bypassed:

TOPPLING the dictator and his family,

TOPPLING his security and military services and his nepotism networks,

ESTABLISHING the institutions of the transitional state, and

MOVING TOWARD constitutional legitimacy and establishing the modern civil and democratic state.

“…Many nations, including the Arab peoples, have suffered, although they were not at war, but were not at peace either. The peace in which they lived is a false ‘peace of graves’ — the peace of submission to tyranny and corruption that impoverishes people and kills their hope for a better future.

United Nations
192 member nations

“… [A]ll of the human community should stand up with our people in their peaceful struggle for freedom, dignity and democracy, now that our people have decided to break out of silence and strive to live and realize the meaning of the immortal phrase of Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab — ‘Since when have you enslaved people, when their mothers gave birth to them free?’…

Tawakkol Karman shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with three other women “for non-violent struggle, for the safety of women, and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

Sources and notes

TAWAKKOL KARMAN BRIEF

Tawakkol Karman shares the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with: Leymah Gbowee (Residence at time of award Liberia); and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (at the time of the resident and President of Liberia).

She is the first Arab woman, the youngest Nobel Peace Laureate to date, and the second Muslim woman to receive a Nobel Prize

Tawakel Karman (Arabic: توكل كرمان ‎ Tawak[k]ul Karmān; Anglicized: Tawakul, Tawakkol, Tawakkul or Tawakel Abdel-Salam Karman) (32, b. February 7, 1979, became the international public face of the 2011 Yemeni uprising that is part of the Arab Spring uprisings.

2011 protests include protest on the ‘Day of Rage’ that Karman had called for in Sana’a, Yemen, from February 3, 2011. During the ongoing 2011 Yemeni protests, Tawakel Karman organized student rallies in Sana’a in protest against the long-standing rule of Saleh’s government. [Wikipedia note, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tawakel_Karman&printable=yes]

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2011/karman.html

“‘The Arab People Have Woken Up’: Yemeni Activist Tawakkol Karman Accepts Nobel Peace Prize” [Speech given Saturday December 10, re-broadcast with transcript on Democracy Now, December 13, 2011, http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/13/the_arab_people_have_woken_up

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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Embarrassingly condescending, clueless lecturer

Ancient peoples see the rhetoric for what is it — Same Ole policies and prejudice

Excerpt, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

“Mr. Obama and his equally gutless Secretary of State have no idea what they are facing in the Middle East. The Arabs are no longer afraid.” — Middle East expert and journalist Robert Fisk

What the U.S. President should have said in his Middle East speech, Fisk wrote in the Independent before today’s live version, is, “We will leave Afghanistan tomorrow. We will leave Iraq tomorrow. We will stop giving unconditional, craven support to Israel. Americans will force the Israelis — and the European Union — to end their siege of Gaza. We will withhold all future funding for Israel unless it ends, totally and unconditionally, its building of colonies on Arab land that does not belong to it. We will cease all cooperation and business deals with the vicious dictators of the Arab world — whether they be Saudi or Syrian or Libyan — and we will support democracy even in those countries where we have massive business interests. Oh yes, and we will talk to Hamas. …”

President Barack Obama, of course, said no such thing. He continued to lecture people on matters about which he is carelessly clueless. The people of the Middle East know far more about their lives and what they should and should not do than any U.S. official will ever know and, glaringly arrogantly, disrespectfully, these officials historically have not a care of knowing.

“What Mr. Obama does not understand … and, of course, Mrs. [Hillary Rodham/Bill] Clinton has not the slightest idea – is that, in the new Arab world, there can be no more reliance on dictator-toadies, no more flattery,” Fisk wrote.

“The CIA may have its cash funds to hand but I suspect few Arabs will want to touch them. The Egyptians will not tolerate the siege of Gaza. Nor, I think, will the Palestinians. Nor the Lebanese, for that matter; and nor the Syrians when they have got rid of the clansmen who rule them.

“The Europeans will work that out quicker than the Americans – we are, after all, rather closer to the Arab world – and we will not forever let our lives be guided by America’s fawning indifference to Israeli theft of property. …

“… [T]he old Middle East is over. The new Middle East is about to begin. And we better wake up.”

Anymore, the U.S. president, his Cabinet, and his rhetoric seem silly — an embarrassing portrait in cluelessness.

Sources and notes

At the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C., President Barack Obama spoke today on events in the Middle East and North Africa, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/photos/us-president-barack-obama-speaks-events-middle-east-photo-180523439.html

“Robert Fisk: President's fine words may not address the Middle East's real needs — In a keynote speech today, Barack Obama will try to redefine America’s relationship with the Arab world. Our writer is skeptical,” May 19, 2011, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-presidents-fine-words-may-not-address-the-middle-easts-real-needs-2286077.html

Robert Fisk (b. July 1946, Maidstone, Kent, England, UK)

Journalist and expert on Middle-East conflicts, author of several books about Middle-East conflicts, Robert Fisk is a recipient of Amnesty International UK Press Awards including for his articles on the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999. He has also received the British Press Awards’ International Journalist of the Year seven times and twice won its ‘Reporter of the Year’ award. Fisk holds undergraduate and doctoral degrees in English and Classics (Lancaster University) and Political Science (Trinity College, Dublin), and is the recipient of several honorary degrees.

Quotes attributed to Fisk:

“War is primarily not about victory or defeat but about death and the infliction of death. It represents the total failure of the human spirit.”

“The best definition of journalism I have heard: ‘to challenge authority — all authority — especially so when governments and politicians take us to war, when they have decided that they will kill and others will die.'” http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1745178/bio

Among the reactions in the Middle East to the U.S. president’s ‘Arab Spring’ speech collected by Al Jazeera were these:

“The peoples of the region are not in need of Obama’s lectures. Obama reaffirmed his absolute support for the policies of the (Israeli) occupation and his rejection of any criticism of the Occupation.”

“We affirm that Palestinian reconciliation is a Palestinian affair and that the (peace) negotiations have proven to be pointless.”

“We were expecting a lot more from Obama’s speech today regarding the Palestinians who suffer from the hardships of the occupation and what the Israeli occupation does against the Palestinians but Obama did not bring anything new.”

“What Obama needs to do is not to add slogans but to take concrete steps to protect the rights of the Palestinian people and the Arab nation.”

“Reactions: Obama's ‘Arab Spring address’ — Reactions to Obama’s speech outlining his vision for the Middle East and North Africa,” May 19, 2011, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2011/05/2011519164415837225.html

Recap

MIDDLE EAST NEAR EAST COUNTRIES

The Middle or Near East consists of the lands around the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. These lands extend from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula and Iran, sometimes beyond. 

Some of the first modern Western geographers and historians who tended to divide the Orient into three regions gave the region the name Near East. In their three-region designations, the Near East applied to the region nearest Europe, extending from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf; the Middle East, extending from the Persian Gulf to Southeast Asia; and the Far East, encompassing the regions facing the Pacific Ocean.

The change in usage from Near to Middle East began evolving before World War II and extended through the war. The term Middle East was given to the British military command in Egypt.

So defined, the Middle East consisted of the states or territories of —

Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon
Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Jordan
Egypt, The Sudan, Libya and
Various states of Arabia proper (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Trucial States, or Trucial Oman [now United Arab Emirates]

 Subsequent events have tended, in loose usage, to enlarge the number of lands included in the definition, among them —

Three North African countries: Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco “closely connected in sentiment and foreign policy with the Arab states” 

Afghanistan and Pakistan, because of geographic factors, state official and others take into account in connection with affairs of the Middle East. 

Greece occasionally is included in the compass of the Middle East because the Middle Eastern (then Near Eastern) question in its modern form first became apparent when the Greeks in 1821 rebelled to assert their independence from the Ottoman Empire). Turkey and Greece, together with the predominantly Arabic-speaking lands around the eastern end of the Mediterranean, were also formerly known as the Levant.

Historically the countries along the eastern Mediterranean shores were called the Levant. Common use of the term is associated with Venetian and other trading ventures and the establishment of commerce with cities such as Tyre and Sidon as a result of the Crusades. It was applied to the coastlands of Asia Minor and Syria, sometimes extending from Greece to Egypt. It was also used for Anatolia and as a synonym for the Middle or Near East. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the term High Levant referred to the Far East. The name Levant States was given to the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon after World War I, and the term is sometimes still used for those two countries, which became independent in 1946. Levant (from the French lever, ‘to rise,’ as in sunrise, meaning the east.

Use of the term Middle East remains unsettled, and some agencies (notably the United States State Department and certain bodies of the United Nations) still employ the term Near East.

Middle East. (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Deluxe Edition.  Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica

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Bennett's books available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; The Book Den, Ltd.: BookDenLtd@frontiernet.net [Danville, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY]; LONGS’ Cards and Books: http://longscardsandbooks.com/ [Penn Yan, NY]

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