November 09, 2005
Damascus, Watch The Skies
This is a more in-depth treatment by the Washington Post of Bush Administration’s evolving policy toward Syria. It is a must read.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 12:50 PM
November 08, 2005
Is Syria Next?
The Washington Post is reporting, in its blog section(!), that U.S. military planners have been "updating" their target lists for Syria. Here’s the money quote: "Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld directed U.S. Central Command to prepare a ‘strategic concept’ for Syria, the first step in creation of a full-fledged war plan. The planning includes courses of action for cross-border operations to seal the Syrian-Iraqi border and destroy safe havens supporting the Iraqi insurgency, attacks on Syrian weapons of mass destruction infrastructure supporting the development of biological and chemical weapons, and attacks on the Syrian regime. U.S. forces have also been operating along the Syrian border since early 2003, and there have been numerous reports of clashes between U.S. and Syrian forces on Syrian soil, as well as reports of U.S. special operations forces operating inside Syria."
In fact, that isn’t just the money quote, it is pretty much the whole article. Why doesn’t the Washington Post think this is worth full front-page treatment?
Posted by Richard Miniter at 10:52 PM
August 23, 2005
The Syrian Democrats
For those who like to look over the horizon, I recomend checking out this blog by the Reform Party of Syria. The last Ba'athist dictatorship is tottering, and the democratic resistance, small and embattled though it is, has been heartened by the liberation of Iraq, the other Ba'athist thug government.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 07:33 PM
June 03, 2005
Why the death of journo may shake Syria
Here's more on Kassir. An editorial in today's New York Sun—which like the WSJ continues the tradition of reporting in editorials—adds some details and some context to Kassir's murder. After arguing that Syria is behind the murder, here's the money quote:
The Syrian dictatorship is tottering and weak. President Bush has decided that Bashar al-Assad will be gone and that the route to Iran is through Syria. Someday historians will see the murder of Samir Kassir, like the recent Syrian missile attack on Turkey that the New York Times was reporting last night, as a last desperate gasp of a failing regime that realized that the mere existence of a semi-free press in a neighboring state was enough to pose a mortal threat to its own existence. It is a fact that tells much about the nature of the Syrian regime and why its end can't come soon enough.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 11:31 AM
Is Syria Still Killing in Beirut?
Check out this Agence France-Presse story about the car bomb blast that killed a prominent pro-independence Lebanese leader, Samir Kassir. The son of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, who was murdered in February by Syrian intelligence, was quick to tie his father' murder to that of Kassir, saying "the blood-stained hands that assassinated Rafiq Hariri are the same ones that assassinated Samir Kassir."
Here are some excerpts:
- Calling the murder a "terrorist act," Saad Hariri said it &qout;proves that the military-police regime to which the martyred journalist was opposed cracks down and continues to defy the Lebanese and the international community."
- Kassir's brother, Sleiman, told AFP he "lived all his life in danger." When asked about a possible motive for the killing, he said: "He used to write all these articles against Syria."
- "He was a great defender of freedoms in the Arab world. This is an act of state terrorism and I expect more such crimes," prominent Syrian opposition figure and filmmaker Omar Amiralay, a close friend of Kassir, told AFP.
- A prominent member of the Democratic Left, an opposition group, Kassir was a professor of political science at the Jesuit Universite; Saint Joseph and published several books on the Lebanese civil war. He was married to Giselle Khoury, a star talk-show host on Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 03:01 AM
March 24, 2005
Bloggers v. dictators
Syria Exposed is a new blog, apparently written from inside Syria. The English is imperfect, but the view is interesting. Some of his comments ring true, becuase they sound like things that Arabs in region have privately told me over the past few years, such as refering to the 1960s era intellectuals as "the failure generation." Again, this is the web. We don't really know who this blogger is or if he is for real. But sure seems like it.
Posted by Richard Miniter at 04:56 PM
March 17, 2005
Power of the Internet on Closed Societies
This is a fascinating piece of reportage about the power of the internet on Syria and, by extension, other closed societies. The anecdote on Hafiz Assad, the current dictator, asking the secret police (mukhabarat) to log onto the web is worth the click through by itself. And check out some of the Syrian dissident web sites.
Attention editors! What's really missing is a good comprehensive piece on pro-reform web sites across the Arab world. What role do sites and viral e-mail lists have on driving demonstrators to the streets in Beirut? Will Iraq become a beacon of unregulated Arabic language for the Muslim world? Just how do they regulate the web in Baghdad? Are there hundreds of sites in Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia and so on that we don't know about? What about Afghanistan? Is there anything the Western powers can do to promote free speech online in the Middle East? Would the Bush doctrine of spreading democracy be possible without the web?
Posted by Richard Miniter at 09:06 AM