Discovering MENA and other thoughts

Death toll approaching 40,000 (plus those wounded, arrested, psychologically injured... and approximately 2.5 million refugees (both internally and abroad)!)... Struggle approaching its 20th month... Winter approaching in destroyed towns and refugee camps throughout the region... Update on the new opposition here   The situation thus remains extremely dire and worrying from all points of view. Heavy fighting continues and shows no sign of abating. Neither side seems capable of putting an end to the conflict. And civilians are the ones who mainly bear the brunt: the civil war is resulting in a notable disintegration of a Syrian society which was once hailed as a model for the rest of Arab countries, principally characterized by its inclusiveness and an exemplary secular core. Citing an alarming deterioration of the security situation on the ground (though I find it hard to believe things can get even worse), the UN OCHA has announced the withdrawal of all its remaining non-essential st...

I wake up with a poignant article by Nagib Aoun drawing a parallel between what is happening in Syria and the magnificent novel by Jean Paul Sartre "Les mains sales" (" As for myself, my hands  are dirty. I have plunged my arms up to the elbows in excrement and blood. And what else should one do? Do you suppose that it is possible to govern  innocently?" ). According to the author, the "Arab Spring" is being kidnapped by jihadist groups (definition of the BBC: " those committed to establishing an Islamic state by violent means ") with only one ambition in mind: replacing dictatorships with theocracies and removing any little remembrance of what could have been a civil society, eventually turned into an homogeneous mass following the Sharia's dictates. Are we facing the possibility of what some call an "Arab Autumn"? This has also been the ongoing warning (and justification) of the Syrian regime since the outset of the upr...

So everyone speaking about the Syrian conflict knows the country is heading towards a full blown-out civil war (some consider it is already the case) waged by the Syrian regular Army (mainly controlled by Assad's Alawites closest allies) and its thuggish militia, the shabiba, against the rebels, most of them organized under the banner of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). According to our beloved Wikipedia, "the Free Syrian Army is the main armed opposition group operating in Syria" [...] "composed of defected Syrian Armed Forces personnel and volunteers" [...] "its formation was announced on 29 July 2011 in a video released on the Internet by a uniformed group of deserters from the Syrian military who called upon members of the Syrian army to defect and join them". First of all, the FSA is composed of civilians who took up arms. The peaceful demonstrations, following the example of their Arab brothers in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain, st...