Terror Games: Syria, Russia and the Olympics
By Bama Athreya
Vladimir Lisin, Russian steel tycoon and vice president of the Russian Olympic Committee who has delivered arms to Syria.
Typically, the Olympic Games are an opportunity for the international community to come together by promoting peace and preserving human dignity through sport. But this year’s Games run the risk of being tarnished by a Russian Olympic official who has been enabling the Syrian regime.
Russia’s richest man, a steel tycoon named Vladimir Lisin, has been helping supply Russian-made arms to the Syrian government responsible for slaughtering thousands of its own people. According to news reports, just one day after the Houla massacre, one of Lisin’s ships reached Syria’s second largest port to offload an alleged shipment of weapons from St. Petersburg.
The Russian government has rewarded Lisin’s loyalty with a top position on their Olympic Committee. And as the families in Syria continue to live in terror amid falling bombs and sniper fire, Lisin is traveling to London to participate in the Olympic Opening Ceremonies.
Over 19,000 people have been killed in Syria and the violence intensifies every day. A protracted civil war in Syria now seems inevitable, which will undoubtedly lead to the loss of many more civilian lives. In fact, the situation in Syria is now officially being called a civil war by the International Red Cross.
Yet, Russia continues to support Assad’s murderous regime — recently vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution that would support negotiations — and people like Lisin are profiting from it.
The multi-billion dollar arms trade between Russia and Syria has been well exposed in recent months. In 2011, the Russian government provided over $1 billion in weapons to the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and over recent weeks attempted to ship attack helicopters and munitions to the Syrian military.
The profits that Lisin has made are now tarnishing Russia’s gold at the Olympics. The oligarch is offering $1 million as reward to every Russian athlete who wins gold at the 2012 games. While the aim of prize money is to inspire gold medal success, it will leave those achievements with a bloody tarnish.
Keeping Lisin from attending the games will add to the much-needed international pressure against Russia and the arms dealers enabling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. We must insist that those who enable Syria’s continued attacks on its own men, women and children pay a price.
It should be made clear to the London Organizing Committee: There is no room at this year’s Games for individuals who enable mass atrocities for their own financial gain.
Together we will stop the deadly flow of arms into Syria by exposing unscrupulous weapons dealers like Vladimir Lisin.
http://blog.endgenocide.org/blog/2012/07/27/terror-games-syria-russia-and-the-olympics/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=terror-games-syria-russia-and-the-olympics
REPORT AIR DATE: July 23, 2012
Forces Clash in Syria's Two Largest Cities
SUMMARY
President Bashar al-Assad's regime and the Free Syrian Army battled for control over Syria's two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo. Independent Television News' John Irvine and Alex Thomson report on the violence that continues between rebels and government troops.
We have two reports about the war in Syria from Independent Television News, beginning with John Irvine on the shelling in the country's second largest city, Aleppo. He filed his story from Beirut, Lebanon.
JOHN IRVINE: A column of Syrian army tanks used to be an irresistible force, but not anymore. This is a rebel ambush in the streets of Aleppo. One tank, the rebels commandeer. At least two others are destroyed. A burning hulk becomes the backdrop for a triumphant group photograph.
As the war escalates, the Syrian armed forces are digging deeper into their arsenal. Fast jets are now being used for bombing runs. The regime has thrown almost everything it has against its own people, but it apparently draws the line at chemical weapons.
JIHAD MAKDISSI, Syrian Foreign Ministry: Any talks of WMD or any unconventional weapon that the Syrian Arab Republic possess would never, would never be used against civilian or against the Syrian people during this crisis.
JOHN IRVINE: What he said next amounted to a warning to the outside world not to get involved.
JIHAD MAKDISSI: These weapons are meant to be used only and strictly in the event of external aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic.
WILLIAM HAGUE, British foreign secretary: What is actually happening is, their own people are rising up against a brutal police state. It has nothing to do with any aggression from anywhere else in the world.
JOHN IRVINE: This conflict is 16 months old. But, still, both sides share an ability to live to fight another day.
GWEN IFILL: Damascus has been the scene of pitched battles between rebel and government troops since the bomb attack that killed four of Assad's closest security officials last week. There have been ongoing clashes in a neighborhood in the capital known as Midan.
Alex Thomson reports on the devastation there.
ALEX THOMSON: The banality of normality, Damascene traffic jams again a feature of life here. The gains claimed by the rebels in the capital appear exaggerated.
The regime's boast that they have pushed the fighters out of some districts altogether is ever more credible, but independent reporting is near impossible. We're heading for Midan, where fighting has been prolonged and intense in recent days. An army checkpoint seals off the edge of the district. You film covertly and fast and move on in a game of cat-and-mouse to try and get into the area.
And then, our guide, who would better stay anonymous, says, we're here. Look around. He hardly needs to. Government forces turned helicopter gunships, tanks, mortars, rockets, heavy machine guns on this district for three days.
The government says, in two days' time, families can begin moving back into Midan. But just take a look at what the family will find when they move back to this house. People say, yes, of course, the rebel fighters have been pushed out, but they will fight another day in another way. And there is no chance that President Assad will win this civil war.
A shopkeeper who fled the fighting comes back to find his business has disintegrated. In theory, the government will pay, but all around us, they're talking now off-camera of a massacre here. Finally, one man will tell us anonymously everything he knows.
MAN: Because this is the only family who stay in their district during that time. They want to leave in a peaceful way. And they couldn't right now.
ALEX THOMSON: Channel 4 News spoke to seven residents independently of each other, who all either named the Ismaili family as the victims or the figure of 16 being killed.
We were sent this video said to show the scene of the killings. The details of a family shot through the head can't be shown. You do see the poignant sight of an unfinished family meal. House after house trashed. Everyone here said soldiers or the shabiha militias went on an orgy of looting here. They know Syrians keep large amounts of cash at home.
This man said the militias stole 18,000 pounds from his place -- outside, the pathetic remains of rebel barricades, futile against organized ground and air assault, the tank tracks of a departed government army. Weirdly, the authorities have fastidiously painted over most of the anti-Assad graffiti which covered the walls around here and left their own: "The soldiers of God were here."
President Assad has won the battle for Damascus, and won it convincingly, but everyone knows winning the battle is not the same as winning the war.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec12/syria_07-23.html
Video from Al Jazeera
REPORT AIR DATE: July 26, 2012
Syrian Rebels Brace for Government Advance; Aleppo Civilians Caught in Crossfire
SUMMARY
Syrian troops have positioned themselves on the edge of Aleppo, preparing to retake the city from rebel control. In response, rebels have reinforced their weapons stockpiles for the expected assault. Meanwhile, Aleppo's three million civilians are caught between the two forces. Independent Television News' Alex Thomson reports.
We begin with Alex Thomson of Independent Television News reporting from Damascus.
ALEX THOMSON: Damascus one week into the battle for the city and video broadcast by Syrian state television shows sustained firefights yesterday in the city's outskirts.
But it is Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, where the latest major assault is likely. Pounded again by the regime's forces from both the north and the south, helicopters move overhead as troops on the ground prepare for a major assault.
Activist groups in Syria claim that the government troops are being redeployed for a coming operation. Such claims are impossible to verify, but several sources now report two Syrian army convoys, the first heading from Hama Military Airport, apparently about 170 vehicles, including tanks, and these are massing at al-Zarba, south of the city.
Another column is heading to Aleppo from Idlib province. With the rebel counterattacks under way, here, what's claimed to be the wreckage of one small part of the Idlib convoy, and nearby a captured government tank.
But if the rebels cannot win in the major cities, they certainly appear to be gaining ground in the propaganda war by being willing to invite along cameras.
Yet, here in Damascus, all our requests to film with the Syrian army have been refused point-blank. Could we speak to a government minister? Impossible. What about a government spokesman even? No chance. The regime apparently thinks this will still do, inside, the endless pictures of the great leader and his dad, the same video of military antics played on TV over and over again everyday, and outside, the pristine flags, the murals, the devices of a regime strangely lost in personality politics of the Cold War.
Some small opposition parties are tolerated here, so long as they're powerless. Incredibly, it's actually easier to interview one of their leaders than it is to speak to anybody from the government.
Hassan Abdullah Azim is chief of the opposition Nasseri (ph) party and a lawyer in Damascus. He's been beaten and tortured by the regime in the past, but he's still not afraid to call it even now.
HASSAN ABDULLAH AZIM, opposition leader (through translator): President Assad should step down and hand over power to the people. We should move forward and organize new free elections for the people to choose the government they want.
ALEX THOMSON: For now, all that sounds like a distant dream.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec12/syria1_07-26.html
ANALYSIS AIR DATE: July 26, 2012
On Syrian-Turkish Border, 'Underdog' Rebels Have Carved Out a Buffer Zone
SUMMARY
Pockets of Syria have fallen under the control of rebel fighters, the anti-Assad opposition forces known as the Syrian Free Army. Judy Woodruff speaks to NPR's Kelly McEvers about her recent trip to five towns along the Turkish border in rural Syria.
Kelly McEvers, welcome.
And how did you decide where you were going inside Syria? We have a map, I think, we are going to be able to show people.
KELLY MCEVERS, NPR: The rebels have basically carved out their own sort of unofficial buffer zone there in northern Syria. It's right next to the Turkish border.
For them, the benefit is that they're able to get their wounded out into Turkey a lot more easily than they could before, and that they can basically get weapons and money into Syria from that -- from the Turkish area. So, for us, it made a lot of sense to sort of -- to get a sense of who the rebels are to spend time in the region that they control, instead of trying to sort of cower and hide and go with them undercover from place to place, to be in this kind of swathe of towns and villages that they actually control.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Where they are relatively safe, free from government assault on a regular basis or...
JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes.
KELLY MCEVERS: If you were to try to look at the map and say where exactly do the rebels control, every day, it changes a little bit. It morphs and changes. On the edges of the area they control, the government might take a town back.
There was one town when we were there that switched hands between the government and the rebels four times. Why? Because the government realizes that this border area is important to the rebels. They realize that it is this buffer zone. And so they are trying to sort of regain control.
But, obviously, the government's army is stretched and sees that its priorities are elsewhere, namely Damascus and Aleppo.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Tell us about the rebels you met. And you talked to a number of them. Who are they? What are they like?
KELLY MCEVERS: It's a really good question and it's one I think a lot of people want to answer right now.
They call themselves the Free Syrian Army, but that's about as far as sort of the unification goes. They don't necessarily answer to a single leader. They're a bunch of disparate groups spread out across the country, some say up to 1,000 of them. One unit might only be eight guys, mostly civilians.
I think the image is that these guys are mostly defected soldiers, people who leave the army and then join the rebels. A lot of those guys actually go to these refugee camps in Turkey, for fear of what would happen to their family after they defect. So a lot of the guys we have met are civilians, workers, farmers, people who decided to take up arms and sort of defend this uprising, this revolution against the president.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And relatively lightly armed, in contrast to what the government has.
KELLY MCEVERS: Exactly. They are so outgunned right now. They're basically operating with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades and homemade bombs.
That's another key component to their sort of arsenal right now. That's how they deal with regime tanks.
But when you talk about a fully equipped army with tanks, artillery, mortars, helicopters, and now we have seen jets being employed in this fight by the regime's army, you can see that the rebels are definitely the underdogs here.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Kelly McEvers, what about the civilians you talked to? And what are they saying about al this? Are they caught in the middle? Are they hoping it's all going to be over? Are they lining up with one side or another?
KELLY MCEVERS: I was in just this very small pocket of Syria, so it's important to say that I can only speak for the people that I was with at that particular time.
By and large, in these villages, they see the rebels as their only hope. They say, look, 16, 17 months ago, we went into the streets to protest against our president. We said we wanted to bring down the president. The regime shot at us, detained us, and tortured us. And no one came to our aid except these guys. These guys picked up guns. And maybe some of them are my cousins and uncles and brothers. They picked up guns. They came here to defend us and we welcome them.
This, they say despite the fact that the rebels' presence in their town sometimes brings the ire of the government. It might mean that civilian homes get shelled, that people die. They say, we don't care. We're willing to take that risk because these are the only people here to protect us. So the rebels definitely have hearts and minds in these towns.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The morale overall, though, was what? What did you find?
KELLY MCEVERS: Again, people were pretty willing to stay on message, especially when talking to a Western journalist. Again, we support these rebels, we support the cause. It's just any day now that we're going to take down the regime.
While I was inside Syria, there was this high-level attack inside Damascus that killed four high-ranking officials in the Syrian government. So, I think that was a real morale boost. And a few days after that, you saw a lot of units going to Aleppo. I was very close to Aleppo, Syria's largest city in the north.
And you saw a lot of rebel units going there, sort of going to take up the fight, and going all the way to Damascus as well. It looks like the government has regained control in Damascus and may soon do the same in Aleppo. So, that morale may turn around pretty quickly.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You had some interesting conversations with people, rebels and citizens, about why the United States isn't doing more. Explain a little about that.
KELLY MCEVERS: Yes, I think there's a lot of anger. I think people look at the case of Libya and they look at the case of other places where the U.S. or at least international community has done more to intervene on the diplomatic level, on the military level.
Look, I think Syrians are smart enough to know that they don't want an Iraq situation. I think most people would say, we don't want anyone to come in and invade and occupy our country. I think they're OK with that. And they're also smart enough to know that the Libya scenario probably doesn't make sense for NATO or the United States. A no-fly zone...
JUDY WOODRUFF: The no-fly zone.
KELLY MCEVERS: ... would be much more complicated in Syria. They get that.
But they say, look, how about some coordination? How about some help? How about some training? There's a lot of things that you could do. You could fly airplanes over our country and tell us, hey, there's some tanks moving this way and there's no tanks on this road, reconnaissance, intelligence, those sorts of things that frankly Western militaries are good at.
And they see that that's not happening. And they say that it's not much longer that they're going to be willing to accept this help. I think, at some point, they are going to refuse it at any cost and it might be too late for any intervention.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Kelly McEvers, NPR, an extraordinary trip. Thank you very much.
KELLY MCEVERS: You're welcome.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And online, you can find links to four of Kelly's reports for NPR this week from the Turkish-Syrian border.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/july-dec12/syria2_07-26.html
