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In this image made from amateur video released by DPB (Deir el-Zour Press News)
and accessed via the Associated Press television news on Aug. 10
shows Syria tanks on the street in Deir el-Zour on Aug. 9.
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| Impoverished districts of Latakia on Sunday, killing at least 23 people in a renewed assault on the Mediterranean coastal city, activists said. | |
As the gunships blasted waterfront districts, ground troops backed by tanks
and security agents stormed several neighborhoods. The sharp crackle of machine-gun fire and loud explosions could be heard across the city.
The intense operations in Latakia, a key port city once known as a summer
tourist draw, are part of a brutal government crackdown on several Syrian cities meant to root out protesters demanding the ouster of President Bashar Assad.
Latakia has a potentially explosive sectarian mix. Sunnis, which are a majority
in Syria, live in the city's urban core, while Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam http://www.todayszaman.com/news-253678-syrian-gunboats-fire-on-latakia-weekends-death-toll-rises-to-23.html .. | |
One of the only thinks I ever read by Thomas Friedman that is accurate- copied from the NY Times:
ReplyDeleteSeptember 21, 2001
Hama Rules
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
In February 1982 the secular Syrian government of President Hafez al-Assad faced a mortal threat from Islamic extremists, who sought to topple the Assad regime. How did it respond? President Assad identified the rebellion as emanating from Syria's fourth-largest city — Hama — and he literally leveled it, pounding the fundamentalist neighborhoods with artillery for days. Once the guns fell silent, he plowed up the rubble and bulldozed it flat, into vast parking lots. Amnesty International estimated that 10,000 to 25,000 Syrians, mostly civilians, were killed in the merciless crackdown. Syria has not had a Muslim extremist problem since.
I visited Hama a few months after it was leveled. The regime actually wanted Syrians to go see it, to contemplate Hama's silence and to reflect on its meaning. I wrote afterward, "The whole town looked as though a tornado had swept back and forth over it for a week — but this was not the work of mother nature."
This was "Hama Rules" — the real rules of Middle East politics — and Hama Rules are no rules at all...
http://www.mafhoum.com/press2/63P58.htm
That's one way to maintain law and order I guess, untill the people figure out a way to pay yoy back
ReplyDeleteThis is what Friedman says now:
ReplyDeleteThe New Hama Rules
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/opinion/the-new-hama-rules.html