FN, Syrien......og Hama

Så kom rapporten om FNs undersøgelse af hvem der slog Libanons tidligere premierminister Rafiq Hariri ihjel. Fra BBC:

The UN inquiry report into the assassination of Hariri says many leads point to the direct involvement of Syrian officials.

However, the names of Syrian President Bashar Assad's brother and brother-in-law and other top Syrians were edited out of the final report

Den oprindelige version af rapporten omtaler at seks navngivne personer besluttede at dræbe Hariri - fire fra inderkredsen om Syriens diktator Bashar Assad, og to fra syrernes marionet-regime i Libanon. Rapportens tyske forfatter Detlev Mehlis påstår, navnene blev slettet fordi kun ét vidne nævnte dem. Men hvorfor så putte det i rapporten i første omgang? Reuters har en god gennemgang af, hvad sletningen af de to navne betyder for rapporten:

Maher Assad is the brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. With his name deleted from the above section, he is not mentioned anywhere in Mehlis's report.

Asef Shawkat heads Syria's powerful Military Intelligence and is married to President Assad's only sister, Bushra. His name is mentioned once in the report's final version.

General Hassan Khalil of Syria is a retired chief of Military Intelligence. His name does not appear in the final version.

Bahjat Suleiman is a member of President Bashar's inner circle. His name is nowhere in the final version.

Major General Jamil Al-Sayyed of Lebanon served as head of General Security from 1998 until May 2005, when he resigned under heavy pressure from the Lebanese opposition after Hariri's killing. His name is peppered throughout the report as it details the plot.

Brigadier General Mustapha Hamdan is one of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud's closest aides, in charge of ensuring the president's personal safety. His name also appears frequently throughout the Mehlis report.

Med andre ord slipper syrerne i den redigerede version betydeligt lettere, selv om deres lakajer stadig får skylden. Hele affæren startede med at det libanesiske parlament sidste efter år efter massivt syrisk pres ændrede den libanesiske grundlov, for at den pro-syriske præsident Lahoud kunne sidde endnu en periode. Selv i sin redigerede version fremstår den syriske kampagne for at destabilisere Libanon da en anti-syrisk opposition endelig dannede sig tydeligt (FNs rapport, via BBC):

• 7 September 2004, Economy Minister Marwan Hamadeh, Culture Minister Ghazi Aridi, Minister of Refugee Affairs Abdullah Farhat and Environment Minister Fares Boueiz, resigned from the cabinet in protest at the constitutional amendment.
  
• 9 September 2004, Prime Minister Rafik Hariri indicates to journalists that he will resign.
  
• 1 October 2004, Assassination attempt on Marwan Hamadeh, in Beirut, Lebanon.
  
• 4 October 2004, Rafik Hariri resigns as prime minister.
  
• 20 October 2004, President Lahoud accepts Hariri’s resignation and names Omar Karame to form the new government.
  
  2005
  
• 14 February 2005, Rafik Hariri and 22 other individuals are killed in a massive blast in a seafront area of central Beirut.
  
• 8 March 2005, Hezbollah organizes a one million strong "pro-Syrian" march.
  
• 14 March 2005, a Christian/Sunni-led counter demonstration demands the withdrawal of Syrian troops and the arrest of the chief of the security and intelligence services.

En lille kommentar kræves her: FN lader til at manipulere lidt her. De eneste, der talte en million til Hezbollahs demonstration var Hezbollah selv og en uidentificeret "syrisk sikkerheds-organisation". Resten af verden så kun mellem 200.000 og 400.000, hvoraf hovedparten måske ikke engang har været libanesere, men istedet Palæstinensere og Syrere (læs det hele, ikke kun det jeg citerer):

In figures, the main body of the demonstration was composed of:
1- Syrians from the Syrian working force in Lebanon. The real figures for this working force are around 1.4 million workers (in a country of 3-4 million). This population has been coerced to “demonstrate” in support of its tortures for the last forty years. Syrian authorities did not even have to take excessive measures to “convince” Syrian workers in Lebanon to join the so-called Hizbullah demonstration.

2- Syrians from Syria. Hundreds of buses left Damascus to Beyrouth on the demonstration day. And that, to the extent that, for the first time in 34 years, the celebrations of the 8th of march “corrective movement” (coup d’état of Hafez el-Assad in 1970) in Damascus itself had to be postponed from the 8th to the 9th of March. The “masses” were “away”- demonstrating in Beyrouth.

3- “Masses” came from Sidon in South Lebanon. It so happens that Sidon is the town of Rafik Hariri and people there hate the Syrian regime, whom they blame for assassinating Hiriri. In fact it was the Ain el-Heloué camp (a few kilometres outside Sidon) which came to demonstrate, in addition to all other Palestinian camps in Beyrouth and in North Lebanon. The leaders of Fateh and fundamentalists leaders in those camps had been convoked to Damascus 10 days ago to prepare the Hizbullah demonstration and, most probably, for some terroritst attacks to be perpetrated in the next few days. Such coming terroritst acts, Syria thinks, would give its military-intelligence presence a new legitimacy as a “peace-keeping force”. The official figures on Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon exceed 300 000 refugees.

Mens FN således får pustet den pro-syriske demonstration op til millionen, hopper den let hen over den anti-syriske 6 dage senere, der faktisk meget vel kan have nået den. Medierne anslog fremmødet til mellem 800.000 og en milion. Efter danske forhold svarer det til, at en million mennesker tropper op på Rådhuspladsen for at demonstrere.

Men tilbage til FNs rapport og syrernes terror-kampagne:

• 19 March 2005, a bomb explodes in Jdeideh, a northern suburb of Beirut, wounding 11 people.
• 23 March 2005, three people are killed and three others wounded in an explosion in the Kaslik shopping centre, north of Beirut.
• 26 March 2005, a suitcase bomb explodes in an industrial zone in northeast Beirut, injuring six.
• 1 April 2005, nine people are injured in an underground garage in an empty commercial and residential building in Broumana.
  􀂃 26 April 2005, the last Syrian troops leave Lebanon ending a 29 year military presence.
• 6 May 2005, a bomb explodes in Jounieh north of Beirut injuring 29 people.
• 2 June 2005, journalist Samir Kassir is killed when his car explodes in east Beirut.
• 21 June 2005, former Lebanese Communist Party leader George Hawi is killed when his car explodes close to his home in Wata Musaytbeh.
• 30 June 2005, Fouad Siniora, former finance minister under Rafik Hariri, forms the new government composed of 23 ministers.
• 12 July 2005, Defence Minister Elias Murr is wounded and two other people are killed in a car bomb attack in Beirut.
• 22 July 2005, at least three people are wounded near rue Monot when a bomb explodes in the Ashrafieh quarter.
• 22 August 2005, three persons are injured in an explosion in a garage near the Promenade Hotel in the Al-Zalqa area north of Beirut.
• 16 September 2005, one person is killed and ten others wounded by a bomb near a bank in Ashrafieh.
• 19 September 2005, one person is killed and two wounded in a small explosion at the Kuwaiti information office in Beirut.
• 25 September 2005, a car bomb injures prominent news anchor, May Chidiac, in north Beirut.

Mens jeg er i gang med Syrien kan jeg jo lige så godt illustrere hvad det socialistiske diktatur er i stand til at gøre. Jeg har tidligere nævnt at visse grupper i Mellemøsten spiller efter Hama-regler. Begrebet kommer sig af en opstand islamiske fundamentalister organiserede i den syriske by Hama i 1982 som kulmination på en serie af terror-angreb, de havde udført siden 1978. Alvoren gik først rigtigt op for Baath-socialisterne efter et mordforsøg på Syriens diktator Hafez Assad i 1980:

President Assad as he was waiting to welcome the visiting chief of state from Mali to the official visitors' palace in Damascus Assad managed to escape with only a foot injury thanks to the fact that his bodyguard smothered one of the grenades and he himself kicked the other away. His retribution was not long in coming though. At 3:00 the next morning, June27, some eighty members of Rifaat's Defense Companies were dispatched to Tadmur (Palmyra) Prison, which housed hundreds of Muslim Brothers arrested the previous year. According to Amnesty International, the soldiers were divided into groups of 10 and, once inside the prison, were ordered to kill the prisoners in their cells and dormitories. Some 600 to 1,000 prisoners are reported to have been killed. After the massacre, the bodies were removed and buried in a large common grave outside the prison." Throughout the next year, surprise searches of Hama, Aleppo, and other Muslim Brotherhood strongholds became a weekly event During these roundups curbside executions were regularly carried out against youths suspected of involvement with the Islamic underground. More than once Hamawis awoke to find a sidewalk or a central square littered with bullet-riddled bodies. Some more elderly Muslim clerics had half of their mustaches shaved off, their beards burned, or were forced to dance in the streets while wishing President Assad long life"

Kulminationen kom så med den muslimske opstand i Hama i 1982, der blev knust efter 4 ugers gadekampe af Hafez´s bror, den nuværende syriske diktators onkel Rifaat:

Virtually every building in Hama was damaged in some way. Hama's most famous archaeological site, the 1,200-year-old Kaylani family palaces on the banks of the Orontes, were ravaged. Virtually every mosque had its minaret blown down, which wasn't surprising considering that the Muslim Brothers had used them as sniper's nests. ...

Entire families were apparently rousted out of their homes and gunned down on the streets, simply because a single member was listed by Syrian intelligence as being linked to the Brotherhood. Those civilians who could, tried to escape through under ground sewers or bribe their way through the ring of steel the Syrian army had thrown up around Hama, but few were successful. ...

On February 22, the Syrian govemment broadcast a telegram of support addressed to President Assad from the Hama branch of the Baath Party. The message referred to Muslim Brotherhood fighters killing Baath Party officials and leaving their mutilated bodies in the streets. It added that security forces had taken fierce reprisals against the Brotherhood, "which stopped them breathing forever."

For the next several weeks, there was a settling of accounts between the Assad regime and Syria's fourth-largest city; many more people perished as a result. Most of the casualties in Hama apparently were registered during this phase. Syrian army engineers set about systematically dynamiting any buildings which remained standing in "Brotherhood" neighborhoods, with who-ever was inside. Ancient Hama, the marketplace, craft quarters, and mosques, which provided the social fabric for the Muslim Brotherhood to flourish, were totally obliterated. As the army mopped up the city, many of those who had survived or had not fled were brought in for interrogation in makeshift detention camps set up by the Mukhabarat intelligence service. According to the Muslim Brotherhood, something called "Solomon's Chair," which was fitted with iron spikes, was offered to any prisoner who hesitated to talk. Others had their hands welded. The torture and interrogations, according to Ya'ari, were supervised by Colonel Mohammed Nassif, an aide to Rifaat.

Just to make sure that those people who lived in the Muslim Brotherhood districts would be dispersed and forced to find new housing and new jobs at the mercy of the government, Rifaat brought in bulldozers and crushed all those buildings and neighborhoods which had been shelled beyond repair. Then he brought in steamrollers to flatten the rubble like parking lots. According to both Amnesty International and the Muslim Brotherhood, groups of prisoners suspected of anti-government sentiments were taken from detention camps, machine-gunned en masse, and then dumped into pre-dug pits that were covered with earth and left unmarked. Amnesty also quoted allegations that cyanide gas containers were brought into the city, connected by rubber pipes to the entrances of buildings believed to house insurgents, and turned on, killing everyone inside. Virtually the entire Muslim religious leadership in Hama - from sheiks to teachers to mosque caretakers - who survived the battle for the city were liquidated afterward in one fashion or another; most anti-government union leaders suffered the same fate.

Kom så lige og sig, at Amerikanerne var åh-så-onde mod Fallujah.

Henrik