Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria

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Shadoer: Aug 31, 2011; Zoe Quinn is one of many women targeted by the Gamergate harassment campaign.

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On another sad note, looks like the supply situation for basic food stuff is getting pretty bad in Aleppo

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-20692697

quote:

Aleppo's winter of discontent

As the conflict in Syria enters a second winter, the BBC's Ian Pannell reports from the Syrian city of Aleppo on the struggle for survival of ordinary people.

Adnan Abu Hassan works over a small wood fire, spreading patties of dough over the back of a hot pan that rests on the charcoals until they become crisp flatbreads.

Adnan is not a baker; he is a painter but these are desperate times in Aleppo's sprawling al-Sukkari neighbourhood.

"There's no work at the moment," he says. "Life is very hard. I earn 100 Syrian pounds a day and I have to feed four children and pay the rent."

That is less than $1.50 or about 90 pence a day. In an economy ravaged by war, the value of the Syrian pound has fallen almost as rapidly as prices for basic goods have risen.

Inflation is rampant and unemployment is endemic. What Adnan earns from bread is simply not enough to survive and like most of his neighbours, he struggles to get by on handouts, donations and loans.

The battle for Aleppo appears to have eased over the last few weeks but the suffering of those who live in this ancient city has not. Aleppo is facing a winter of misery and of dearth.

When the sun sets at 4:30, the streets are empty. The electricity supply was cut off days ago, in some areas weeks ago, and darkness seems to consume the city.

It is a cue for most to head home, cold and hungry. The few who do remain outdoors are to be found queuing in the dark for bread that has become a rare and precious commodity.

For most Syrians, the large flat loaves are the staple part of their diet, but shortages of fuel and flour have left many bakeries closed and others open only for a few hours.

The lines are long and people wait for hours to buy a pack of bread that cost 20 Syrian pounds before the revolution and now costs 200.

Abu Fadi had been waiting for three hours in the rain and still seemed far from the front of a queue that stretched around the corner.

"There is no bread, no water, no electricity, no work," he said. "It takes more than 24 hours to get bread and it's been five days since I was even able to take a shower."

The crowd is restless and fatigue and hunger are taking their toll. Arguments break out quickly as people push and shove each other to get closer to the bakery's door.

The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) tries to keep calm but increasingly it is the target of people's anger.

"I blame the FSA because it's in charge. The one in charge should provide water, food, everything," complained Abu Walid with righteous indignation. "Who's in charge? Aren't they in charge of us?"

# ? Dec 12, 2012 19:43

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# ? May 15, 2024 00:22

dorkasaurus_rex: Jun 10, 2005; gawrsh do you think any women will be there

Just read this article in Foreign Policy magazine today:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/11/the_land_of_topless_minarets_and_headless_little_girls

It is probably the best article about Syria that I have ever read, and also the most depressing. I am posting the article in it's entirety here because seriously, just read it. It's basically a Syrian writing a eulogy for his own country.

quote:

"In Italo Calvino's novel, Invisible Cities, a world traveler named Marco Polo describes the cities of a vast but crumbling empire to its ruler, Kublai Khan. Over time, the intricate descriptions of the cities begin to overlap until the khan slowly realizes that his appointed traveler has been describing the same city, an imagined city, over and over, in fragments -- each vignette exposing another perspective, unveiling yet another city, where death mirrors life and cities are named after Italian women. Each city is suspended between reality and imagination, structured on a set of absurd rules, reminding the reader that a city can only be absorbed through short glances, each glance anchored to an object, a story, or a memory.

I've been reading and rereading Invisible Cities for over a decade. Before the Syrian revolution, Calvino's poetics were safely rooted in the realm of fiction. When I recently picked it up to look for a quote, I began to read it once more -- this time sneaking a few pages at a time between my daily intake of endless streams of gruesome images emerging from our all-too-real Syrian cities. For the first time, Calvino's words detached from fantasy; Syria's cities became embedded within the lines of the Invisible Cities. I listened, along with Kublai Khan, to Marco Polo's narrations and tried to understand how cities become invisible.

Watching death has become a pastime of the revolution. There is much to learn from it. Death is sudden; it is shorter than a short YouTube clip. Death is a man wrapped in his shroud, bloodied gauze strips tied around his head, cotton stuffed in his nostrils, and the bluish-gray tinge of his skin. Death is the camera panning over mass graves where children's bodies are arranged in long, perfect lines, then covered with rust-colored dirt. The death of Syrians accumulated so fast it seems impossible to comprehend over 40,000 lives lost in less than two years.

But the death of a city is different. It is slow -- each neighborhood's death is documented bomb by bomb, shell by shell, stone by fallen stone. Witnessing the deaths of your cities is unbearable. Unlike the news of dead people -- which arrives too late, always after the fact -- the death of a city seems as if it can be halted, that the city can be saved from the clutches of destruction. But it is an illusion: The once-vibrant cities cannot be saved, so you watch, helpless, as they become ruins.

Ruins are sold to us as romantic and poetic. As tourists wandering ancient sites, cameras dangling from our necks and guidebooks in hand, we seek beauty in the swirling dust over the remains of a dead civilization. We imagine what is was like then, before empires decayed and living objects became historical artifacts. But that kind of romanticism is only afforded with the distance of time and geography. In war, ruins-in-the-making are not beautiful, not vessels of meaningful lessons, not a fanciful setting for philosophical contemplations on the follies of men. When you witness it live, when it is real, and when it happens to your city, it becomes another story altogether.

It is the desperate moment when we discover that this empire, which had seemed to us the sum of all wonders, is an endless, formless ruin, that corruption's gangrene has spread too far to be healed by our scepter, that the triumph over enemy sovereigns has made us the heirs of their long undoing.

Being from Aleppo is unlike being from anywhere else in the world. We walked on history so deep, we did not understand it -- we simply learned to call this place, older than all others, home. We grew up knowing that our insignificant existence was the thinnest layer of dust on the thick geological strata of empires, kingdoms, and generations, which lived within our stone walls. We knew without doubt, from an early age, that we were nothing but a blink of our city's eye.

When you are from Aleppo, you are plagued with a predicament: Nothing here will ever change. For some people, living in the city that never changes becomes too difficult. The city's permanence and your inability to make a mark on it push you to eventually leave Aleppo, trading comfort for change. After you leave, no matter where you are in the world, you know that Aleppo is there, waiting exactly as you left it. Instead, it is you who returns in a reinvented form each time you come home -- a university graduate, a bride, a mother, each time proudly carrying your new ideas and identity to your patiently waiting city.

In Aleppo, you grow up worrying if your legacy will ever be worthy of your city's. But you never worry about your city's legacy -- which we thoughtlessly leaned on -- for how could we, ever, change Aleppo's legacy?

Aleppo is Calvino's city of Lalage, a city of minarets on which the moon "rest[s] now on one, now on another." It is a city of churches, temples, relics, and graves of revered mystics. It is a city where the spices of Armenia meld with the tastes of Turkey. It is a city where Arabic, Kurdish, and Armenian tongues speak parallel to each other, with an occasional French word mixed in here or there. It is a city of trade and industry, where men are constantly bargaining and negotiating in the same souks as their fathers before them. It is a city where girls walking down the streets in tight jeans and high heels pass by women in long black coats and white veils pinned under their chins. And they know they all belong right here, to Aleppo.

A man who is not from Aleppo recently told me, "When you travel to Aleppo, you don't see it until you arrive." I had never noticed that. Perhaps, because I was always inside it, I never searched for it when we returned. I never doubted that it would always be there, exactly as I left it, untouched, unchanged. But he was right; Aleppo is an inward-looking city; it sees the world reflected in itself. And because we've lived here for generations, we became like that too.

The Citadel sits on an oval hill in the heart of Aleppo. This is where you bring every visitor. You guide them up the steep stone steps in the summer heat, always promising the tourists trailing behind you that inside will be much cooler. And it is. You take them through the fortress's massive gates and winding interior, which once protected it from attack. You lead them out once more into the bright hot sun, wincing as your eyes adjust from the darkness to the harsh Aleppine light. You continue climbing up, pointing out the Citadel's mosque to your left and the amphitheater to your right. You buy a bottle of water at the cafe because by now, the heat has melted you as well. Then you are at the very top, and as always the breeze from the west surprises you all.

You extend your arm toward the majestic view, as the city of stone and minarets unfolds in front of the guests, like magic. It is the moment you've waited for, to turn to them and say with pride and certainty, "This is where I'm from. This is my city." The cameras click in applause. The city, I imagined, was amused at its children's performance.

Today, the Citadel is no longer a stage for impressing visitors. It is no longer a protected UNESCO World Heritage site. It has reclaimed its original purpose -- a fortress in an active battle between Syrian sons, a site to be occupied and captured once more. The ancient nails and iron horseshoes that once adorned the indestructible doors are now twisted and the wooden planks are broken. The castle's narrow slits, once used for archers, now hide sniper nests. The limestone, untouched for centuries, is riddled with fresh bullet holes, and the newly repaved street below is bloodied with fallen victims, corpses that sometimes rot for days before they can be reclaimed. As activist Sami from Aleppo says, "We are watching remains become remains."

Misplaced pride has proved us unworthy of this history that we could not protect. The Old City, the Citadel, and the souks were not just a stage for us to perform upon in front of others -- they were the heart of every Aleppian. Being from Aleppo is in our blood, and this blood now flows down the cobblestone streets. The broken city is no longer amused at the pastimes of its children.

Syria has become the land of topless minarets and headless little girls. It seems in every video there is always something missing, something broken, something that can never be mended. You learn about things when they are broken -- friendships, love, people, and even cities. I learned from watching the revolution that when things are broken, they take up more space.

Whole objects are compact and efficient. A child's long intestines coil perfectly, unseen inside her flat stomach, unlike the sheer mass of tangled pink flesh that spills out next to her slaughtered body. The sharp edge of a broken skull penetrates another child's forehead as if it had been a concealed knife all along, posing as a smooth, white, curved shield. A minaret is sleek and graceful standing in the sky -- but when it falls, it breaks into mountains of rocks in the street, its top tiers taking down a face of a building along with it. Even Syria itself, a once quiet country that seemed not to take up any space at all before the revolution, is now a regional crisis, clogging newspaper headlines, international political discussions, and social media forums with millions of words and images.

Things take on new, unimaginable forms when they are destroyed. Concrete floors fold into overlapping vertical sheets along the walls of buildings. Charred bodies become smaller, forever frozen in their tortured positions. Metal doors of shops crumple like tin, separating from their frames. Even pleasant memories are twisted with destruction: The crackling sound of burning wood will never comfort me again, as it will always remind me of the crackling wooden doors of Aleppo's historical shops when they were set ablaze.

When things are destroyed, you realize, too late, how fragile it all once was: bones, stones, walls, buildings, cities.

Comprehension of destruction and the change it brings comes in waves -- like grasping that your family is in exile or understanding that places from your childhood have disappeared forever. The dark spaces of the city begin to match the dark places in your mind.

A childhood friend laments, "When we went to the Old City, we never took pictures. Who would ever take pictures in Aleppo?" And it's true; my photographs of Aleppo are all with visitors. They increased in number over the years, when I became a visitor myself. Now we excavate what we can find, using our photographs as references for the city that we mistakenly treated as an unchanging background in the composition. Who would ever have thought that we would stay and she would burn?

The people of Aleppo have been divided about the revolution since its birth. Unlike other cities like Daraa, Homs, and Hama, they did not join it willingly. Some resent the armed opposition fighters who they claim entered the city unprepared to fight the regime. They blame the destruction and devastation of Aleppo on the opposition fighters and conveniently forget the violence the Assad regime inflicted on their city for over four decades.

When Hafez al-Assad fought the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, he crushed the city of Hama -- killing tens of thousands in February 1982 and leveling an entire historical neighborhood -- in what became known infamously as the "events." But people forget what had happened before, the earlier "events," when Aleppo lost thousands of sons -- disappeared in Assad's notorious jails to be tortured, executed, and eventually erased from memory.

But Hafez al-Assad never forgot Aleppo's rebellious side. He ruled it with an iron grip, crippling the city's economy and stunting its development. The entire neighborhood of Bab al-Jneen in the Old City was razed and replaced with a series of concrete government eyesores that obnoxiously towered over the historical urban fabric. The lot in front of the area remained empty for two decades. We used to study the map of the Old City and visually connect the narrow streets across the large gaping hole, imagining what had been erased from our history.

People forget that the reason Aleppo was the best-preserved historic Islamic city in the Middle East was a result of neglect rather than care. Later in the 1990s, when the regime discovered the benefits of trendy buzzwords like "restoration" and "preservation," millions of dollars poured into Assad's coffers from abroad to renovate the Old City. But everyone forgot that Bashar, like his father, never cared for the city of the north. Not for its buildings, its history, or even its people. What had been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone, refurbished, reclaimed, and reinvented, is now destroyed in minutes. Nothing was deemed sacred, not the Great Umayyad Mosque, not the old souks, not the Christian quarters of al-Jdeideh, and not even the symbol of the city, the Citadel.

The people of Aleppo resemble the people in so many of Calvino's cities in their amnesia. They forget that silence and fear have lost their currency in the post-revolution market. They forget that Assad's shells do not discriminate between a silent citizen and a brave one.

Our country is a landscape of urban and rural rape by the Assad dynasty. They leave the land, like the Mongols did before them, covered in smoke, rubble, and blood. The regime redefines barbarianism for the new millennium -- cynically cloaking the country in false modernity for decades, funneling international resources for personal gain and glory, then bombing the country to pieces. In a final insult, they blame it all on a conspiracy.

We hear rumors of our antiquities disappearing through the open seams of our country -- our objects excavated and looted, snatched up and traded for weapons to kill more Syrians. Our artifacts leave Syria to live in other homes, where people will tell their children tales about an ancient place that once was, before it was invisible. Before it died.
***

Aleppo, like Calvino's cities, is a woman. Her complete name, Halab al-Shahba, refers to the milk of the prophet Ibrahim's ashen cow. It is no surprise that Aleppo's name would hold meanings both holy and earthly, of sacredness and sustenance. It is a city of milk and marble -- nothing nourishes Aleppo's spirit more than its stone and cuisine. Now, Aleppo is a city of ash and blood. Now the milky limestone has turned gray and black, with veins of red. The white has disappeared, except for the traces of salty tears on our ashen faces.

During war, we learn to look at our cities in fragments, each scene uncovering a part of ourselves we did not know, or pretended not to know. Every day we are forced to confront the ugly parts of ourselves that we naively thought belonged only to other people. For only other people would kill each other; only other people would bomb buildings occupied by innocent families; only other people would loot and rape; and only other people would slaughter a child. These actions, we believed, did not define us. We were not like that.

People who are not Syrian ask me the most painful question, "Why do your people kill each other?" I usually give long-winded explanations, gesturing with my hands but without eye contact, offering historical and logical precedents of tyranny and oppression and revolution and freedom. But I don't tell them what I should, not out of kindness, but out of pity and because it scares me to admit how hardened I've become over the last 20 months: Don't you dare, even for one second, believe that your people and your cities are immune to what happened to my country, my friend. None of you are.

For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and another city which you leave to never return.

Aleppo is Calvino's Almema, the city of the dead, where "you reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living." In Syria, we are living aberrations to life itself. We have seen what no one is supposed to see, the insides of children and the primal sins of men. We have watched with horror as our air force's planes drop barrels of explosives onto sleeping villages. We have defied the laws of nature. Just as no parent should ever have to bury their children, no citizen should have to bury her own city.

Tectonic shifts in a city like Aleppo simply do not happen in one's lifetime. It is no longer a given that my city will outlive me.

Our home is sick, and we are homesick. My mother tells me she is a stranger in other people's home, as strangers live in our home. My father talks about locking up and leaving, the key in his pocket, thinking he will return -- but now return is an impossible dream.

We were supposed to live and die in an Aleppo unchanged, just as our grandfathers had before us, but instead we broke the laws of nature and pass on what we had inherited intact to the few survivors, in ruins.

No one, wise Kublai, knows better than you that the city must never be confused with the words that describe it. Yet between the one and the other there is a connection.

At some point, trust breaks between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan. Storyteller and listener separate into worlds independent of each other. Kublai Khan eventually doubts his narrator and accuses Marco Polo of weaving fantasies out of nothing. Do these cities even exist, he asks, or did you make them up?

Cities are both real and imagined. In peace, they are a backdrop, quietly absorbing your ego, waiting to be noticed when someone visits and sees her anew, while we drag our heels, unappreciative, along the pavements. You dream of leaving this place that never changes, leaving behind the burden of history where you will never amount to even a speck of dust in its never-ending tale. You dream of a place outside this place where the possibility to escape the past and become someone else seems easier. You never imagined that one day, the city will be the one that is exposed, unprotected, and vulnerable -- you never imagined that one day, your city, not you, will be the one that needs to be saved. In war, the city becomes precious, each inch mourned, each stone remembered. The city's sights, smells, and tastes haunt you. You cling to every memory of every place you had ever been to and remember that this is what it was like. Before.

But memories are deceptive. You weave them into images, and the images into a story to tell your child about a city you once knew, named Aleppo. A city of monuments and milk, of sweets and spices, a city so perfect and so beautiful it was named after a prophet's ashen cow. Its minarets once changed shape from square to round to thin spindles, and every call to prayer was a symphony of voices across the neighborhoods echoing each other, as if in constant dialogue. You continue the tale, skipping certain details: the fleeing people, the smoke, the ashes, the fallen minarets and the silenced athans, the blood in the bread lines, and the relentless stench of death. Unlike Calvino, you gloss over the dark underbellies of society, overlooking the evils of men, the betrayals of people -- in fact, you ignore the people altogether because you have become convinced that without the people, a city can remain innocent.

Never mind; those details don't belong here; what matters is holding on to what once was. And you speak faster, describing the homes of grandparents and great-grandparents, pretending they are not empty. You speak of ancient neighborhoods of great-great-grandfathers, rebuilding them with your words in perfect form and not as they are now -- the centuries-old gate a smoldering heap of crushed stone, the jasmine vines broken and dead, the tiled courtyard fountain dried up and covered with dirt. All of this you skip in the narrative, trying to keep the nightmare separate from the dream, for you have not completely learned from Calvino's wisdom: Cities exist in their dualities.

And the child will ask you, because children always do, Mama, does it really exist? Or are you making it up? And you will not know what to say, for the story is both a falsehood and the truth. At once it is real and in the next moment it is intangible, even as you hold the photograph in your hand and the memories in your mind. Despite all your efforts, or perhaps in spite of them, it changed.

And with my words, both said and unsaid, I had finally rendered my city, invisible.

Also of note is the author's Twitter, which is a good resource for Syria-based things.

https://twitter.com/AmalHanano

I fear the situation in Syria has still not bottomed out. Things could always get worse

# ? Dec 12, 2012 21:34

az: Dec 2, 2005

The Entire Universe posted:

Perhaps the order was to mine the roads

That sentence gave me a sudden flash of a tank running into a big rear end naval mine embedded in the middle of the road.

# ? Dec 12, 2012 21:41

Chamale: Jul 11, 2010; I'm helping!

dorkasaurus_rex posted:

Just read this article in Foreign Policy magazine today:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/11/the_land_of_topless_minarets_and_headless_little_girls

It is probably the best article about Syria that I have ever read, and also the most depressing. I am posting the article in it's entirety here because seriously, just read it. It's basically a Syrian writing a eulogy for his own country.

Also of note is the author's Twitter, which is a good resource for Syria-based things.

https://twitter.com/AmalHanano

I fear the situation in Syria has still not bottomed out. Things could always get worse

This is so beautiful and sad. Thank you for posting it.

# ? Dec 12, 2012 21:46

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

I've just put together a piece on Grad rockets being increasingly common in the conflict.

# ? Dec 12, 2012 23:56

Zeroisanumber: Oct 23, 2010; Nap Ghost

dorkasaurus_rex posted:

It is probably the best article about Syria that I have ever read, and also the most depressing. I am posting the article in it's entirety here because seriously, just read it. It's basically a Syrian writing a eulogy for his own country.

That was a very excellent article, thank you. Now if you'll pardon me I'm going to go take a couple of pictures and give someone a hug.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 01:51

mlmp08: Jul 11, 2004; Prepare for my priapic projectile's exalted penetration; Nap Ghost

People have already covered several reasons why the Syrian military would use ballistic missiles against the opposition: avoid air defenses, use whatever-the-gently caress that isn't chemical, parts/fuel issues, etc.

There are a few more.

Some tactical ballistic missiles (TBMs) are accurate enough to affect even smallish bases like the Syrian M-600. Others just aren't, like your run of the mill SCUD B, which is best left to shelling a city or targeting large things like an airbase or depot.

There's no warning for the opposition forces. There's may not be much warning with aircraft, but a supersonic missile landing on you with 500+kg of high explosives such that it blows up before you hear it approach is something else entirely.

It's indirect fire that you can't directly respond to by unless you are targeting a place potentially hundreds of kilometers away. If you're being mortared or shelled, it may be possible to drive up the road and take out the fire base. If supersonic explosives are landing on you, even if you know where it's coming from, it's really quite far away.

There is just absolutely no way to for the opposition forces to shoot it down, which is more than can be said for aircraft.

The footprint of a base which can launch missiles is much smaller than the footprint of a base which launches aircraft. Generally speaking, setting up force protection for a small TBM launch site/garrison is way easier than setting up force protection for a large base housing aircraft and a runway.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 02:19

Scaramouche: Mar 26, 2001; SPACE FACE! SPACE FACE!

The sad thing about that Foreign Policy article is that it's ... sad. There's no anger, no call to action, not much polemic, just 'this was my city and now it is no more'

# ? Dec 13, 2012 03:12

Charliegrs: Aug 10, 2009

I think I remember Ghaddafi ended up firing scuds at the rebels in his final few days. His airforce was gone at that point so I wonder if Syrias airforce is starting to have serious problems with maintenace/morale/fear of getting shot down with more manpads available to the opposition and resorting to ballistic missiles.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 03:17

Canadian Surf Club: Feb 15, 2008; Word.

Went back a few pages and didn't see anything about this

Anyone translate?

Supposedly a document incriminating some ME countries in sending death row convicts to fight in Syria? I'm skeptical just due to the crop of sites carrying it.

ex: http://www.abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&id=370958

# ? Dec 13, 2012 03:22

Chronojam: Feb 20, 2006; This is me on vacation in Amsterdam
Never be afraid of being yourself!

Charliegrs posted:

I think I remember Ghaddafi ended up firing scuds at the rebels in his final few days. His airforce was gone at that point so I wonder if Syrias airforce is starting to have serious problems with maintenace/morale/fear of getting shot down with more manpads available to the opposition and resorting to ballistic missiles.

I wonder how that kind of shift in strategy will impact security on the air defense sites, which already seems kind of lax.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 03:23

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

Charliegrs posted:

I think I remember Ghaddafi ended up firing scuds at the rebels in his final few days. His airforce was gone at that point so I wonder if Syrias airforce is starting to have serious problems with maintenace/morale/fear of getting shot down with more manpads available to the opposition and resorting to ballistic missiles.

How many ballistic missiles would Assad have to use?

Also, I'd reckon that the FSA around Damascus will set up SCUD-buster teams eventually and use prevalent citizen recon to find them. They aren't staying hidden for long. They are not particular stealthy and quiet vehicles.

And, once found, it doesn't take a whole lot to put them out of commission. Sniping engineers is probably the best way.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 03:33

Pedrophile: Feb 25, 2011; by angerbot

So do we have any estimates on how many SCUDs Assad has?

# ? Dec 13, 2012 03:34

Zeroisanumber: Oct 23, 2010; Nap Ghost

Young Freud posted:

How many ballistic missiles would Assad have to use?

Quite a few. Assad and his father built-up Syria's missile capability to offset Israel's conventional superiority. IIRC, Syria can assemble and maintain their own missiles, but need to import precision parts.

The real question isn't so much "how many missiles?" as it is "how many launchers?" Syria could have thousands of missiles, but without a platform to launch them off of they aren't much use. Unless they go crazy and start dropping those out of helicopters too.

Edit: I take the use of SCUDs as a sign that Assad is getting balls-out desperate. Things are not going well if you're launching inaccurate 500 pound bombs at your own country while trying to crush an insurgency.

Zeroisanumber fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Dec 13, 2012

# ? Dec 13, 2012 03:42

Political Whores: Feb 13, 2012

Scud isn't an acronym, it's a name NATO used for Soviet R-11 missiles during the Cold War. Now it's just used to reference any variants on that original design. :eng101:

# ? Dec 13, 2012 04:07

Zeroisanumber: Oct 23, 2010; Nap Ghost

colonelslime posted:

Scud isn't an acronym, it's a name NATO used for Soviet R-11 missiles during the Cold War. Now it's just used to reference any variants on that original design.

Learn a new thing everyday.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 04:23

Terrifying Effigies: Oct 22, 2008; Problems look mighty small from 150 miles up.

Young Freud posted:

How many ballistic missiles would Assad have to use?

Also, I'd reckon that the FSA around Damascus will set up SCUD-buster teams eventually and use prevalent citizen recon to find them. They aren't staying hidden for long. They are not particular stealthy and quiet vehicles.

And, once found, it doesn't take a whole lot to put them out of commission. Sniping engineers is probably the best way.

The problem is your run of the mill SCUD can hit anywhere in Syria from anywhere else. As long as Assad doesn't have to transport the missiles very far to launch them it will be difficult for the FSA to do much in response.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 05:25

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

SedanChair posted:

Democracy Now! reports 200 Alawites killed or injured in an unnamed village.

Follow-up here:

quote:

NY Times

Members of Assad�s Sect Blamed in Syria Killings

By LIAM STACK and HANIA MOURTADA
Published: December 12, 2012

Scores of Syrian civilians belonging to President Bashar al-Assad�s minority Alawite sect were killed Tuesday in the first known Alawite massacre since the Syrian conflict began. But the killings, in the village of Aqrab, happened under circumstances that remain unclear.

Rights organizations researching the massacre said Wednesday that members of the shabiha, a pro-government Alawite militia, were the killers. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad group based in Britain with a network of contacts inside Syria, said 125 to 150 civilians died.

The accusation, if confirmed, would be a shocking episode of Alawite-on-Alawite violence in a conflict punctuated by violence between sects.

Videotaped testimony said to be from survivors, primarily women and children, has flooded the Internet in the last 24 hours, providing a series of glimpses of an atrocity in a devastated town. The picture they paint is inconclusive, however, and restrictions on foreign reporting inside Syria made verification difficult.

Many of the videos were filmed by members of the Free Syrian Army, the main anti-Assad armed group, in what appears to be a clinic, where survivors were being treated for wounds or lie wrapped in blankets, faces blank with shock. In the videos, they say that members of the shabiha gathered civilians inside a building or compound as the Free Syrian Army approached the village.

Soon, though, survivors said the shabiha turned their weapons on the same civilians they had been professing to defend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/world/middleeast/alawite-massacre-in-syria.html

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Dec 13, 2012

# ? Dec 13, 2012 05:41

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

Terrifying Effigies posted:

The problem is your run of the mill SCUD can hit anywhere in Syria from anywhere else. As long as Assad doesn't have to transport the missiles very far to launch them it will be difficult for the FSA to do much in response.

True. But some of the reports I read is that they're firing them off around Damascus, so I can't imagine they're being subtle about it. They're probably well-guarded as well, considering the level of FSA and sympathizers in the city.

And while he can fire them off and move them, they still have the problem as with anything getting transported through Syria, having to deal with IEDs and ambushes. A bunch of Scud launchers getting hijacked or blown up in a cross-country convoy would push Assad's poo poo in, even if the FSA has little idea how to use them. I get the idea that their fairly rare and valuable.

How well is does Assad have south Syria under his control?

# ? Dec 13, 2012 05:49

Political Whores: Feb 13, 2012

Zeroisanumber posted:

Learn a new thing everyday.

It really does sound like it should be an acronym, but the name comes from the fact that NATO used the ASIC practice of naming surface-to-surface missiles with names starting with S. SS 1 Scud was the R-11, SS 4 Sandal was the R12, there were also the SS 2 Shyster, the SS 6 Sapwood, and a few others I can't remember.

This is the first time I've ever used anything from my North America defense policy class.

Political Whores fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Dec 13, 2012

# ? Dec 13, 2012 05:57

7of7: Jul 1, 2008

Omi-Polari posted:

Follow-up here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/world/middleeast/alawite-massacre-in-syria.html

Don't forget the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" is, despite its grandiose name, just one guy in the UK who claims to have a network of informants in Syria.

Given the NY times and other western media's history of citing disgruntled exiles when cheerleading for western intervention in foreign countries I can't take such stories at face value. It'd be like trusting a story about the US whose only source is that guy who defected to North Korea.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 06:40

Deteriorata: Feb 6, 2005

Zeroisanumber posted:

Learn a new thing everyday.

And to

beyond that, a scud is a low lying, fast-moving cloud that is detached from a larger cloud formation. You've seen them dozens of times, but just never knew they had a name (at least that's the way it was for me until I looked it up).

The spindly, fragmented clouds are called scuds.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 06:53

Chamale: Jul 11, 2010; I'm helping!

Are Scuds specifically named after the cloud, or was it chosen at random? I don't understand where Sandal missiles got their name, and I heard that the naming process is always arbitrary for these things.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 07:00

Deteriorata: Feb 6, 2005

Chamale posted:

Are Scuds specifically named after the cloud, or was it chosen at random? I don't understand where Sandal missiles got their name, and I heard that the naming process is always arbitrary for these things.

I assumed it was related to that, but perhaps just because it started with S and was a real word, without caring for what it represented.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 07:02

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

Deteriorata posted:

I assumed it was related to that, but perhaps just because it started with S and was a real word, without caring for what it represented.

Kinda like "fagot", which was used for the Russians' guided anti-tank missile.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 07:07

Nintendo Kid: Aug 4, 2011; by Smythe

Young Freud posted:

Kinda like "fagot", which was used for the Russians' guided anti-tank missile.

Which is also a valid word that didn't become exclusively a slur until a while after.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 07:10

Ash1138: Sep 29, 2001; Get up, chief. We're just gettin' started.

Young Freud posted:

Kinda like "fagot", which was used for the Russians' guided anti-tank missile.

And the MiG-15.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 07:16

Devil Child: Nov 30, 2012; by Y Kant Ozma Post

Charliegrs posted:

I think I remember Ghaddafi ended up firing scuds at the rebels in his final few days. His airforce was gone at that point so I wonder if Syrias airforce is starting to have serious problems with maintenace/morale/fear of getting shot down with more manpads available to the opposition and resorting to ballistic missiles.

An active air-force can cause a lot more damage with missiles and bombs than any ground based unit. From the beginning, Assad's weapons were better than القذافي‎, or however Mahgrebian or MSA want his name spelled. And anybody who heard the "gum cooker" story of the Syrian torture chambers knows that the nations military is particularly demented and violent even by the standards of the region.

I think it's safe to say the decision not to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria will go down as the greatest foreign policy mistake of the decade. At the very least, the casualties would've been lower, and the rebels wouldn't have had to get their anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons from Islamist lunatics. Heavy bloodshed and outmatched weaponry only breeds crazier and crazier rebels. I don't know how much longer the Syrian Rebs can keep from turning into the absolute most brutal psychopaths possible in an effort to win a la the PKK or Hamas, but I do know their descent into dementia can be slowed a few months if somebody stops Assad's air-force.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 07:28

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Young Freud posted:

Kinda like "fagot", which was used for the Russians' guided anti-tank missile.

That means "bassoon" in Russian, by the way. Of course people will get all childish about the word though. The NATO called it Spigot.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 07:42

Young Freud: Nov 26, 2006

OwlBot 2000 posted:

That means "bassoon" in Russian, by the way. Of course people will get all childish about the word though. The NATO called it Spigot.

Haha, I'm stupid. I got carried away with some meme I read on a military imageboard.

But someone brought up the thing about the MiG-15 being called that by NATO so the point stands. I remembered there was something called "Fagot" by NATO, just screwed up what was called it.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 07:57

hepatizon: Oct 27, 2010

Devil Child posted:

And anybody who heard the "gum cooker" story of the Syrian torture chambers knows that the nations military is particularly demented and violent even by the standards of the region.

Heard the what?

# ? Dec 13, 2012 08:10

Devil Child: Nov 30, 2012; by Y Kant Ozma Post

hepatizon posted:

Heard the what?

quote:

It was 2004. Ahmad was then a 22-year-old student of English in Aleppo, Syria�s largest city and now ground zero for the armed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. He had recently discovered the music of international stars like Celine Dion and Chris de Burgh, an Argentinean-born Irish singer.

The title, it turned out, was The Road to Freedom�and when Ahmad began asking around for it, the theme piqued the interest of Syria�s state security. Ahmad was accused of being a subversive and held in Aleppo�s civilian police station for five days. In state custody, he claims he was tortured.

�They said they were going to �make me talk,� that they were going to �jump-start me like a car,�� he shivered. Ahmad claims that four plainclothes officers cuffed him to a chair, jammed open his mouth, and electrocuted his gums. Today, he is missing teeth and still cannot drink certain beverages. His leg shakes as he recounts his ordeal, and he spoke slowly to maintain a steady tone in his voice.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 08:14

OwlBot 2000: Jun 1, 2009

Yikes. I'm beginning to think this Assad guy is a bit of an unsavory character.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 08:21

Invalido: Dec 28, 2005; BICHAELING

Not sure if I saw this seemingly effective trebuchet(!) in BM's youtube playlist of improvised weapons.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c68_1355241473

# ? Dec 13, 2012 08:25

CeeJee: Dec 4, 2001; Oven Wrangler

Scuds were used a lot and quite effectively during the Afghanistan civil war after the Soviets left. Thousands were left to the Afghan government and were almost all fired on rebel forces that had to assemble numbers to attack the cities still in the hands of the government. Its random nature and lack of warning made it all the more effective.

Scuds being usec may indicate the presence of large rebel units that a Scud could be used against or just a spiteful attack on an area held by the rebels.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 09:44

Munin: Nov 14, 2004

7of7 posted:

Don't forget the "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" is, despite its grandiose name, just one guy in the UK who claims to have a network of informants in Syria.

Given the NY times and other western media's history of citing disgruntled exiles when cheerleading for western intervention in foreign countries I can't take such stories at face value. It'd be like trusting a story about the US whose only source is that guy who defected to North Korea.

Yes, it does however mentioned videotaped statements supposed to be from survivors. So there is more to go on than the statements from that one guy. The only thing directly sourced from him only seems to be the casualty number.

You could then of course speculate whether the survivor videos were faked. Did you come across any Brown Moses?

# ? Dec 13, 2012 10:57

Svaha: Oct 4, 2005

Zeroisanumber posted:

Quite a few. Assad and his father built-up Syria's missile capability to offset Israel's conventional superiority. IIRC, Syria can assemble and maintain their own missiles, but need to import precision parts.

The real question isn't so much "how many missiles?" as it is "how many launchers?" Syria could have thousands of missiles, but without a platform to launch them off of they aren't much use. Unless they go crazy and start dropping those out of helicopters too.

Edit: I take the use of SCUDs as a sign that Assad is getting balls-out desperate. Things are not going well if you're launching inaccurate 500 pound bombs at your own country while trying to crush an insurgency.

Thousands? Do You have a source for that, or is this just wild speculation?

One of the sources linked on the Brown Moses blog seems to think that it's a lot less than that:

quote:

It is believed Syria had at least 48 Scud missiles at the outset of the crisis, meaning more than 10 per cent of its entire arsenal has now been used.

�The total [fired] is is probably north of six now,� a US official told the New York Times.

Invalido posted:

Not sure if I saw this seemingly effective trebuchet(!) in BM's youtube playlist of improvised weapons.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c68_1355241473

You know, between this and BM's home made weapon posts, why do I get the feeling this war would be over next week if someone just airdropped a dozen crates of playstation controllers and Arduino boards to the FSA? I thought the Libyans were resourceful, but these guys are just amazing. :stare:

Svaha fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Dec 13, 2012

# ? Dec 13, 2012 11:18

Brown Moses: Feb 22, 2002

Svaha posted:

You know, between this and BM's home made weapon posts, why do I get the feeling this war would be over next week if someone just airdropped a dozen crates of playstation controllers and Arduino boards to the FSA? I thought the Libyans were resourceful, but these guys are just amazing.

One of my various Syria related Youtube playlists is dedicated to DIY weapons, so plenty of weird and wonderful things to see there.

Munin posted:

Yes, it does however mentioned videotaped statements supposed to be from survivors. So there is more to go on than the statements from that one guy. The only thing directly sourced from him only seems to be the casualty number.

You could then of course speculate whether the survivor videos were faked. Did you come across any Brown Moses?

Not many, although I've been in a rush catching up the last couple of days, so might have missed them among the dozens of videos showing injuries and deaths from other parts of the country. The sad fact is dead and injured people aren't something that's unusual enough for me to take that much notice of during my daily trawl through Youtube channels.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 13:32

Svaha: Oct 4, 2005

Brown Moses posted:

One of my various Syria related Youtube playlists is dedicated to DIY weapons, so plenty of weird and wonderful things to see there.

It's like a post-apocalyptic maker fair. It's sort of mind boggling when you think what could happen in a few decades when 3d printer fabrication is more commonplace and DIY weaponized drones start to enter the mix.

# ? Dec 13, 2012 14:13

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# ? May 15, 2024 00:22

Lawman 0: Aug 17, 2010

Svaha posted:

It's like a post-apocalyptic maker fair. It's sort of mind boggling when you think what could happen in a few decades when 3d printer fabrication is more commonplace and DIY weaponized drones start to enter the mix.

The world becomes Thunderdome. :unsmigghh:

# ? Dec 13, 2012 15:32

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Middle East Thread of Despair: More Broken Than Syria

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