FYI Note how finance Capital-meaning Zionism- has succeeded in reducing everything to black and white thus deluding some of the presumably most articulate of us into knowing or unknowing collusion with the Zionist discourse and agenda. Khadiga 23.4.2012
Regards
K Safwat
Founder Oxford Friends of Gaza:
--- On Mon, 23/4/12, rosemary galli <gallirose@hotmail.com> wrote:
From: rosemary galli <gallirose@hotmail.com>
Subject: [nowoxford_internalforum] Christian Science Monitor on Syrian activists vs. Free Syrian Army
To: nowoxford_internalforum@yahoogroups.co.uk, "k moseley" <moseleykp@aim.com>
Date: Monday, 23 April, 2012, 15:46
The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com
Syrian activists to rebels: Give us our revolution back
Many of the activists who began the uprising in Syria more than a year
ago feel their peaceful push for change has been hijacked by the rebel
Free Syrian Army. They're meeting in Cairo today.
By Gert van Langendonck, Correspondent, Sarah Lynch, Correspondent
posted April 16, 2012 at 2:21 pm EDT
Beirut, Lebanon; and Cairo
Syrian activist Mohamed Alloush has fled his native country for
Lebanon, but it wasn't President Bashar al-Assad's regime that drove
him away. It was the rebels of the Free Syrian Army who ran him out of
his hometown of Homs.
"In September last year I had been arrested again by the regime for
organizing protests," says Mr. Alloush, speaking on a cafe terrace in
Beirut. "After they released me, I ran into a group of men I knew as
members of the Free Syrian Army. I walked up to them and screamed:
"You guys have stolen our revolution! You are just as bad as the
shabiha," the pro-regime militia in Syria.
The rebels kept Alloush for four days, after which they told him not
to show his face in Homs again.
Alloush is part of the movement of young revolutionaries who began the
protests against the Assad regime in March last year in the wake of
similar uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. They feel sidelined by the
violent turn the conflict in Syria has taken since the Free Syrian
Army (FSA) was formed last summer. An armed group comprised mainly of
former Army soldiers who defected from the regime, it is also
reportedly cooperating with Sunni jihadis from abroad and many
brigades have adopted an increasingly sectarian tone.
?Our revolution has been stolen from us by people who have their own
agenda,? says a singer who uses the pseudonym ?Safinas? because she
still lives in Damascus. ?We are not violent people. We want to get
back to the real thing. It was a clean thing when it started, but it
has become something else now. I am against the regime, but I am also
against the armed rebels.?
More than 200 peaceful Syrian activists are gathered in Cairo until
tomorrow for a conference aimed at uniting revolutionaries around one
common goal: returning to the nonviolent protests of last summer.
While they acknowledge that the FSA has built up significant momentum,
with Saudi Arabia and Qatar calling for the international community to
arm the rebels, they see an opportunity for the momentum to swing back
to the nonviolent activists if the United Nations cease-fire brokered
by Kofi Annan holds.
?Mr. Annan?s plan is our main hope at this point and we are trying to
have everybody abide by it,? says Haytham Khoury, a member of the
Syrian Democratic Platform, attending Cairo?s conference. ?We are
contacting other opposition groups, trying to give hope to the people
through media? to convey that ?this is a very good step toward saving
lives and regaining a completely peaceful revolution.?
The Syrian regime suspended military action beginning April 12, but
reports of renewed shelling today underscore the fragility of the
cease-fire, which is aimed at ending the violence that has killed more
than 9,000 since the uprising broke out. With the international
community struggling to gain leverage over the regime's brutal
crackdown, some Syrians see the FSA as their only option for freedom.
"Frankly, we?ve given up" on the international community, an activist
in Damascus who identifies himself as Mar says via Skype. ?You guys
have let us down. The FSA is our only hope for salvation now.?
Assad's government has characterized the uprising largely as the work
of armed gangs and terrorists. The activity of the FSA, which has been
accused of human rights violations as it fights the regime, has
complicated what began as a revolution in which the masses peacefully
but persistently demand political reform as Egyptians did in Tahrir
Square.
Some say that the Assad regime views political change, rather than
armed insurgency, as the greater threat.
?The regime is more afraid of the nonviolent protesters than it is of
the armed Islamists. That?s why most of them have been forced to leave
the country or are in prison," says Yara Nseir, who was forced to flee
Syria last summer after she had been detained 18 days for distributing
leaflets. "They wanted it to become an armed uprising because it
allows them to tell the world that they are fighting terrorists.?
Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davuto?lu made a telling remark at an
Istanbul press conference April 13, when he was asked if ?the Syrian
regime is afraid of their own Tahrir.? He replied, ?That is what we
have believed from day one.?
'I told them to their face they are criminals'
Alloush, who fled to Lebanon to escape the FSA, was among the first
activists to organize anti-regime protests in Homs when the uprising
began in March 2011.
?Back then the regime would have armed troublemakers mingle with the
protesters to have an excuse to open fire on us. Well, they don?t need
to do that anymore: the Free Syrian Army has provided them with the
perfect excuse to go on killing people.?
In February, Alloush went back to Homs clandestinely. He made the
rounds of the city?s mosques to persuade the imams there to preach
against the use of violence. When the FSA found out he was in town he
fled to neighboring Lebanon once again.
Another young Syrian activist, who goes by the pseudonym Yusuf Ashamy,
has also drawn the ire of the FSA.
Mr. Ashamy was in Tripoli in north Lebanon last month to ask the FSA
for help in sending a shipment of medicine to besieged cities in Syria
when Human Rights Watch published a report on severe human rights
violations by the Syrian rebels.
In an open letter to the leaders of the Syrian opposition, Human
Rights Watch cited ?increasing evidence of kidnappings, the use of
torture, and executions by armed Syrian opposition members.?
"I told them to their face they are criminals if they do such things,
and that they know the meaning of the word freedom," says Ashamy.
Ashamy was told he had better not show his face around Tripoli again
if he wanted to stay alive.
"They have ruined everything," Ashamy says of the FSA. "In the
beginning we were all Syrians. But when I was last in Homs [late last
year] I found that people there were not even aware of what is
happening elsewhere in the country. They see this as a purely Sunni
Muslim insurgency, and I was accused of being a spy because my
ancestry is Druze. "
Why the uprising has shrunk
Lately, some of the activists have formed a new group to revive the
peaceful demonstrations of the early days of the revolution.
"We are still many who want a peaceful revolution,? an activist who
calls herself Celine says via Skype from Damascus. ?But since it
became an armed conflict, many people who were sympathetic to our
cause have dropped out.?
It has also become much more dangerous to stage protests. ?These days
we only talk to people we know very well,? says Celine.
As a consequence, the protests have become much smaller. Celine
describes one recent action.
"We had agreed to meet at a strategic intersection in central
Damascus. Some of us set tires on fire, while others chanted slogans.
The whole thing lasted no longer than five minutes. Bystanders wanted
to join us but we?d already disappeared.?
It may not seem much, ?but it is important that our voices are heard.
And we make sure that our protests are filmed and the videos are sent
out to the media.?
Leaders needed for 'this sensitive period'
The Syrian National Council, an umbrella opposition group, is supposed
to provide a channel for working for political change. But even Ms.
Nseir, who is the SNC's spokesperson in Lebanon, says the SNC is seen
as too closely aligned with the FSA to present a real alternative to
their armed rebellion.
"The SNC claims to be representative of the Syrian people. That?s just
not true," says Nseir. "They talk only about arming the rebels. They
never talk about nonviolent resistance and they certainly do not speak
for the ramadieen, or grey people, the silent majority who support
neither the regime nor the armed rebels.?
Nseir has considered resigning from the SNC, as others have done, ?but
I was persuaded to stay on and try and change things from within.?
She has set her hopes on the Cairo conference. ?We hope to agree on a
message that everyone who is against the further militarization of
this conflict can get behind," she says.
?The opposition: They have to solve the problem,? says Ali Ali, a
Syrian activist who was heavily involved in planning the nation?s
uprising and now resides in Cairo, where he is attending the
conference.
?The people who are demonstrating in the streets need to stop the
blood and need a real opposition to lead this sensitive period,? he
says, adding that like the regime, the opposition is responsible ?for
the blood that bleeds every day in Syria? and finding a way to make
violence end.
?This conference is an arena for all political ideas and visions to
meet,? says Syrian activist Orwa Al-Ahmed, now living in Dubai. ?Most
people are with the peaceful initiative. But to achieve this it
requires the involvement of other political leaders and visions.?
The activists are not na?ve: they know they cannot turn back the clock
to last summer, before the uprising turned violent. But they are still
determined to work toward peaceful solutions.
"There is no going back," says Alloush. "The Free Syrian Army is a
reality and we have to accept it. But that does not mean that we have
to accept them as the leaders of this revolution. I know these people,
and I know that many of them want to turn Syria into an Islamic
republic if they get the chance.?
The Syrian opposition has called for mass demonstrations this Friday
to test Mr. Annan's peace plan. One of the conditions of the plan is
that the regime allow freedom of assembly.
"We have a tiny window, but time is against us," says activist
Safinas. "We are fighting two regimes and two armies now."
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