Kisah Antara Pemberontakan dan Perang Saudara di Suriah

Entah itu Perang Saudara atau Pemberontakan yang terjadi di Suriah 2011-2012 adalah merupakan sebuah konflik kekerasan internal yang sedang berlangsung di Suriah. Ini adalah bagian dari Musim Semi Arab yang lebih luas, gelombang pergolakan di seluruh Dunia Arab. Demonstrasi publik dimulai pada tanggal 26 Januari 2011, dan berkembang menjadi pemberontakan nasional. Para pengunjuk rasa menuntut pengunduran diri Presiden Bashar al-Assad, penggulingan pemerintahannya, dan mengakhiri hampir lima dekade pemerintahan Partai Ba'ath. Pemerintah Suriah dikerahkan Tentara Suriah untuk memadamkan pemberontakan tersebut, dan beberapa kota yang terkepung. Menurut saksi, tentara yang menolak untuk menembaki warga sipil dieksekusi oleh tentara Suriah. Pemerintah Suriah membantah laporan pembelotan, dan menyalahkan "gerombolan bersenjata" untuk menyebabkan masalah pada akhir 2011, warga sipil dan tentara pembelot dibentuk unit pertempuran, yang dimulai kampanye pemberontakan melawan Tentara Suriah.

Para pemberontak bersatu di bawah bendera Tentara Pembebasan Suriah dan berjuang dengan cara yang semakin terorganisir, namun komponen sipil dari oposisi bersenjata tidak memiliki kepemimpinan yang terorganisir. Pemberontakan memiliki nada sektarian, meskipun tidak faksi dalam konflik tersebut telah dijelaskan sektarianisme sebagai memainkan peran utama. Pihak oposisi didominasi oleh Muslim Sunni, sedangkan angka pemerintah terkemuka adalah Alawit Muslim Syiah. Assad dilaporkan didukung oleh Alawi dan paling banyak adalah orang Kristen di negara ini.

Persoalan perang sebenarnya bukan penganut agama apa yang paling banyak, tetapi jumlah korban (terutama korban sipil tanpa senjata) dan kerusakan harta benda yang sia-sia. Penggunaan senjata atau bom berbahan kimia yang dilarang juga merupakan persoalan serius dalam perang. Terlepas dari siapa yang bersalah dalam perang itu, atau terlepas dari siapa yang akan menang atau nanti akan kalah, masalah kemanusiaan harusnya didahulukan penanganannya, bantu mereka para orang sipil yang terjebak dalam perang itu untuk segera lepas dari medan perang.

Referensi

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Sumber Perang saudara Suriah

Kekompakan Iran dan Rusia Tentang Suriah

Perwakilan Menteri Luar Negeri Iran untuk Urusan Arab-Afrika Hossein Amir-Abdollahian dan Wakil Menlu Rusia Mikhail Bogdanov dalam pertemuan Senin menolak rencana serangan militer Amerika Serikat terhadap Suriah.

Dalam pertemuan itu kedua pejabat menyerukan untuk terus dilakukan konsultasi antara Teheran dan Moskow untuk menemukan solusi politik guna memecahkan krisis tersebut.

Iran dan Rusia menentang setiap penggunaan senjata kimia di Suriah dan menentang intervensi militer di negara itu, kata Amir-Abdollahian kepada IRNA.

Amir-Abdollahian menuding kelompok teroris dan kelompok Takfiri untuk kejahatan terhadap kemanusiaan.

Dia memperingatkan bahwa setiap intervensi militer luar di Suriah akan mengarah pada perang tak terbatas dan semakin memperburuk situasi.

Sumber Iran dan Rusia kompak

Four-man team set free after being detained for five days without charge, as three other staff are still in custody

Egyptian authorities have freed a four-member team of Al Jazeera journalists after holding them in detention for five days without charge. Correspondent Wayne Hay, cameraman Adil Bradlow and producers Russ Finn and Mohammed Baher were freed on Sunday afternoon. They were arrested on Tuesday while covering events in Cairo Three other Al Jazeera journalists are still being held in Egypt: Shihab Elddin Shaarawi, an executive producer with Al Jazeera Mubasher, was arrested on Friday morning. Egyptian authorities on Sunday confirmed he had been arrested, after initially denying that they were holding him. Another Al Jazeera correspondent, Abdullah al-Shami, has been held in Egypt since August 14 while Mohamed Badr, a cameraman for Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr, has been under detention for more than a month. The arrests came amid a campaign against the network, during which its offices in Egypt were raided and equipment seized by security forces. Reporters Without Borders, the media rights group, has denounced the "growing hostility" towards journalists in Egypt. Al Jazeera has urged the Egyptian authorities to release its journalists unconditionally and return the seized equipment.
source al jazeera

Obama told his war-weary country that America needs to use limited military force

Inaction is not an option for the United States in Syria after a horrendous chemical attack, President Barack Obama has said as he urged holdout legislators to back a military strike.

"We are the United States of America. We cannot turn a blind eye to images like the ones we've seen out of Syria," Obama said in his weekly address on Saturday.

"That's why I call on members of Congress, from both parties, to come together and stand up for the kind of world we want to live in; the kind of world we want to leave our children and future generations."

Obama told his war-weary country that America needs to use limited military force in Syria to deter future chemical weapons attacks, but said he did not want to enter into another costly and protracted war.

"This would not be another Iraq or Afghanistan," Obama said in his weekly radio and internet address, previewing arguments he will make in a nationally televised address on Tuesday.

"Any action we take would be limited, both in time and scope - designed to deter the Syrian government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so," he said.

A week ago, Obama said he felt limited strikes in Syria were needed, but added he wanted to ask Congress to authorise the use of military force.

Neither Democratic nor Republican lawmakers have been enthused about the prospect, partly because Americans strongly oppose getting involved in another Middle Eastern conflict.

Americans 'war-weary'
A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Tuesday suggested 56 percent of Americans believed the United States should not intervene, while only 19 percent supported action.

"I know that the American people are weary after a decade of war, even as the war in Iraq has ended, and the war in Afghanistan is winding down. That's why we're not putting our troops in the middle of somebody else's war," Obama said in his recorded address.

Obama and his top officials plan an intensive lobbying effort on Capitol Hill next week, scheduling meetings with undecided lawmakers.

Obama said failing to respond to the August 21 attack, which Washington blames on President Bashar al-Assad's government and that killed hundreds of children and more than 1,400 people in total, would threaten US national security by increasing the chance of future chemical attacks from the Syrian government, terrorist groups, or other nations.

Congress reconvenes on Monday and Obama addresses the nation on Tuesday. But he acknowledged that convincing Congress to back military action against the Syrian regime would be a "heavy lift".

"I understand the scepticism," the US president said.

Source from al jazeera

Amerika Serikat dan Rusia belum dapat mengatasi perbedaan terkait aksi militer di Suriah.

Presiden Rusia Vladimir Putin mengatakan sebagian besar pemimpin negara G20 yang menghadiri pertemuan puncak menentang aksi militer terhadap Suriah.

Dalam jumpa pers penutup di ujung pertemuan puncak di St Petersburg itu, Putin kembali menekankan bahwa serangan militer merupakan pelanggaran hukum internasional.

Putin juga mengatakan Amerika Serikat dan Rusia belum dapat mengatasi perbedaan terkait aksi militer di Suriah.

Ia mengatakan serangan militer akan "kontraproduktif" dan mengganggu kestabilan di Timur Tengah.

Presiden Amerika Serikat Barack Obama berupaya untuk mendapatkan dukungan dari para pemimpin G20 terkait serangan Amerika di Suriah.

Panel Senat Amerika telah menyepakati seruan serangan militer terhadap Suriah ini.

Pemerintah Amerika menuduh pasukan Presiden Bashar al-Assad membunuh 1.429 orang dalam serangan gas beracun di luar kota Damaskus tanggal 21 Agustus lalu.

Obama mengatakan penggunaan senjata kimia itu bulan hanya merupakan tragedi Suriah namun ancaman bagi perdamaian dunia.

Assad menyalahkan pasukan pemberontak terkait serangan itu.

Menjelang pertemuan G20, Putin memperingatkan Amerika agar tidak mengambil tindakan sepihak terhadap Suriah.


silahkan lihat arsiv dan fersi lengkapnya lihat disini

Residents stockpiling food, wives and children of the elite sent hastily abroad

Mr. Bashar al-Assad of Syria appeared to be in a jovial mood late last week, even while facing a threatened American attack, joking with a visiting Yemeni delegation about the political mess in nearby Egypt and deriding his regional rivals as “half men.”

Damascus was tense — streets deadly quiet, residents stockpiling food, wives and children of the elite sent hastily abroad. But Mr. Assad kept up appearances, greeting visitors at the entrance to the boxy white presidential palace atop a hill or to his small personal office in a wooded glen nearby. “He is not hiding,” a Syrian journalist noted.

That has been his strategy, echoed in the public activities of his glamorous wife, Asma, since the March 2011 beginning of the conflict — to act as if nothing untoward is happening, as if the gory civil war that has laid waste to Syria is taking place in a different realm. Mrs. Assad, rail thin, was even photographed recently wearing a trendy fitness band on her wrist.

“He doesn’t give the impression that he is bloodthirsty or that he’s a man of war,” said Talal Salman, the editor of Al-Safir newspaper in Beirut, who was once close to the Syrian leader but broke with him early over the bloody crackdown against peaceful protesters. “He does not give the sense that he’s going to battle.”

But behind the veneer of normality, Mr. Assad has grown increasingly aggressive, declaring his determination to wipe out the opposition, insisting that he is standing against an imperialist enemy. Gone from at least his public statements is any talk of finding a political settlement, while he ratchets up his military drive to try to regain lost territory.

For two and a half years, the president has never wavered from his position that the uprising is a foreign plot — and he continues to refuse to express any responsibility or remorse for the blood washing over Syria. He has steadfastly rejected calling it a civil war.
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro published on Monday, Mr. Assad said, “In the beginning, the solution should have been found through a dialogue from which political measures would have been born.”
That is no longer the case, he said, repeating his constant refrain that 90 percent of the opposition fighters are terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda. “The only way to cope with them is to liquidate them,” he said. “Only then will we be able to discuss political measures.”
Mr. Assad, who turns 48 next week, was never meant to rule. Bashar was the second son, summoned home from his training as an ophthalmologist in Britain in 1994 after his macho older brother, Bassel, died driving his Mercedes-Benz too fast on the Damascus airport road. But even before he inherited the presidency from his father, Hafez, in 2000, Syrians had hoped he would bring change. They even called him “The Hope.”
He championed computers at a time when the government still registered fax machines. He spoke English. He married a well-educated, beautiful woman and drove her to the opera in the family Audi. He described the oppressive Baath Party that his father had built as “a corpse on his shoulders,” Mr. Salman remembered.
But Mr. Assad ultimately balked at challenging his father’s legacy. Instead the president never seriously entertained the idea that reform required fundamentally altering the police state that his father had begun constructing in 1970.
To this day he believes that system can be resurrected.
“This is his mood,” said Samir al-Taqi, a heart surgeon once close to the president who fled into exile even before the uprising. “He thinks he can return and resume ruling as he did before.”
Abdullah al-Maqtari, a Yemeni Parliament member from a party that supports Mr. Assad, said the president exhibited “high morale” during an hourlong discussion with his delegation on Thursday.

The Syrian government has a long history of bloody rivalry with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement. So when one of the guests referred to Mohamed Morsi, the deposed president of Egypt and a Brotherhood leader, as a donkey, Mr. Assad interjected that the remark insulted the animal, Mr. Maqtari said in an interview in Beirut.

The Instagram account established by the presidential palace pumps out a constant stream of carefully staged pictures showing the president and his wife carrying out their official functions. Here he is giving a speech about economic development, even as the economy has virtually ceased to function. There she is sweating over a huge vat of food to be distributed to the families of fallen soldiers for the feast marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Some observers noted with glee that Mrs. Assad, a former investment banker raised in Britain, sported on her right wrist a turquoise Jawbone Up, a trendy, roughly $100 gadget to track diet, sleep and exercise routines. The constant data stream is meant to goad users to improve their habits.
The war has curbed the couple’s unscripted public appearances. Mortar shells have crashed into Malki, the leafy upscale neighborhood of Damascus where they still live with their three children.
In early August, mortars struck in the vicinity of the presidential motorcade as Mr. Assad left home for the morning prayer marking the close of Ramadan, opposition activists said. One activist said everyone walking on the street at the time was arrested — with a friend’s brother released after two weeks. “They are very nervous,” she said of government leaders.
The reality is that the war has entered a stalemate, and while Mr. Assad’s forces have scored some recent victories, he presides over a fraction of Syria. His violent reaction to the uprising led what was once a proudly secular society into a largely sectarian conflict between the majority Sunni Muslims and his small minority of Alawites, an obscure branch of Shiite Islam.
“For him there is nothing to lose,” a Damascus-based analyst said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “He cannot compromise. He has to see this through. He cannot rebuild; he cannot reconcile. He is stuck. He can rule over a pile of rubble — that is the best he can do.”
The state propaganda apparatus seized on President Obama’s decision to submit the proposed attack to a Congressional vote as a great victory for Mr. Assad, referring to it as a “historic American retreat” and portraying anyone insufficiently vocal in support of the government as a “traitor.”
“The fact that it is being threatened is a very comfortable zone for this regime, which has been under threats and sanctions for decades,” said Fadi Salem, a Syrian political analyst based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. “It is a playground where they are very good at playing.”
If Mr. Assad maintained a calm demeanor, the threat of an American attack rattled many, particularly government supporters. Syrians wondered how far the Americans would go — something drastic or something limited to signal disapproval of what the White House said was a poison gas attack that killed more than 1,400 people in the Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21.
Ayman Abdel Nour, a college friend of the president’s who now opposes him, said Mr. Assad had been assuring those around him — including the knot of relatives who remain his closest advisers — that the West was bluffing. The president argued that Washington would not move to unseat him because the main alternative, the increasingly Islamist opposition, was far worse in Western eyes. That also appears to be the main basis for much of the support he has left among Syrians.
“This is what Bashar Assad has told the top elite: that it will be a cosmetic attack,” Mr. Abdel Nour said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles. “They believe it deeply.”
With such an opaque government, discerning its real thoughts can be a challenge. But many analysts believe that a cosmetic attack would help rejuvenate Mr. Assad’s fortunes, at least temporarily, adding to the decades-long list of confrontations with the West in which Syria has prevailed merely by waiting out the uproar, by surviving.
International pressure over accusations that Mr. Assad’s government carried out the 2005 assassination of Lebanon’s leading politician, Rafik Hariri, was once so great, that he was forced to withdraw all Syrian troops from Lebanon, for example. But the outrage gradually dissipated.
The Assads think that they will prevail this time as they always have.
“He is playing again like his father, skirting the edge of the abyss,” Mr. Abdel Nour said. “You might win, but one centimeter difference and you might fall.”

edited by niema.