info
I’d be curious to hear responses to this. It’s a 30 minute talk explaining the difference between socialist organizations that are generally supportive of the governments in Syria & Libya (as well as Cuba, China, etc) versus those who view themselves in support of the revolutionary forces, against the regimes in Syria & Libya. It’s certainly something that deserves much thought & consideration.
Article segment: Why the left must support Syria’s revolution
April 9, 2013
BEYOND THOSE who support the Syrian regime as a progressive opponent of imperialism, there are those who are justly suspicious of the motives of the U.S. and other powerful governments—and who fear that Syrians are doomed to a civil war between a bloodthirsty dictator and groups of intolerant little tyrants sustained by the U.S. and other powers.
What these pictures of the situation miss—intentionally or not—is the fact that Syria is in the grips of more than a civil war. What is taking place is a popular revolution, with an armed component. There are a wide variety of groups involved and at least as many strategies and ideas about what the struggle is about—including those that are not left wing and that will make accommodations with imperialism.
But the uprising is also a very dynamic process that has involved millions of people becoming active in public life for the first time. There are political advances and retreats, and moments of triumph and disappointment, just as there are military victories and defeats. But it would be wrong to reduce the Syrian Revolution to the question of the armed struggle and the role of imperialist powers in trying to shape and co-opt that armed struggle.
Take the role of women in the uprising—something that is not widely appreciated anywhere, and especially not in the mainstream media. Women have been very active participants and leaders from the beginning. They have played a role not just as victims and mothers and sisters of the martyrs and detainees, but also in demonstrations, on the front in field hospitals, in citizen reporting, and in the distribution of medicine and humanitarian supplies.
As a group of women activists in Aleppo wrote, “We will not wait until the regime falls for women to become active.” At the same time, they write, the “militarization of the revolution” has overshadowed the role of women—so in early March, the revolutionary local council of Aleppo was elected and didn’t include a single woman, despite some well-known female activists being nominated.
So there is—like everywhere in the world—some distance to go before women have equality in Syria. But the role they have played in the struggle so far—and will in the future—underlines how the uprising has opened up many different fronts in the battle against the Assad regime. As Ghayath Naisse said in an interview published by SocialistWorker.org:
The popular masses have invented many forms of struggles, including massive popular demonstrations that we saw in July of last year in Hama and Deir Ezzour; fast demonstrations (like flash mobs) that only last for several minutes; and demonstrations in neighborhoods with narrow streets in order to prevent the security forces from finding and cornering them, thus allowing protesters to disperse in narrow alleys when faced with repression.
Other actions include night demonstrations, releasing balloons carrying revolutionary slogans, dyeing the fountains red in major city squares, raising the flags of the revolution in streets and balconies, renaming streets with names of the revolution’s martyrs and, of course, a series of general strikes. The most recent one, in December 2012, was called the Strike of Dignity and lasted two days.
Every Friday, the masses raise their slogans, most of them united, in response to specific situations or to express their opinion regarding any matter of concern to the revolution. These are also a means to form a common mass consciousness and to generalize revolutionary experiences.
—
I WANT to leave the last word to a brave revolutionary, leftist writer Nahed Badawiyya, speaking from inside Syria:
The Arab Revolutions have come to put an end to the traditional left, and especially the traditional Communist Parties, which have been ineffective for a long time. They have become conservative, reactionary structures, devoid of members. In Syria, these Communist Parties gravitated towards the murderous regime and become accomplices to its crimes.
Therefore, much of their base, especially the youth, abandoned them and took to the streets to join their generation in protest. You will notice this phenomenon in all the traditional political movements in Syria. The youths of the Palestinian, Arab and Kurdish political movements have all separated from their leadership and joined the revolution. In all these political movements, the party leaderships were an obstacle and a brake on the revolutionary Syrian youth. At the same time, however, new Leftist youth formations emerged from within the revolution giving voice to its essence. I hope they grow and proliferate.
Full article here in which Yusef Khalil answers the objections of those on the left who reject the Syrian uprising against dictatorship—and demands to know which side they’re on.
As Sherry Wolf put it on her Facebook: “Don’t reduce the Syrian Revolution to the question of the armed struggle and the role of imperialist powers in trying to shape and co-opt that armed struggle. Read this thoughtful and nuanced piece by Yusef Khalil. If you want to comment, please read the article. For some reason the Syrian Revolution inspires radicals to talk out of their ass.”
CIA trains & spies for Syrian rebels – report
March 23, 2013
Some Syrian rebel groups get training and intelligence straight from CIA officers, US officials told media. The helping hand is meant to bolster the secular opposition against both governmental troops and Islamist forces.
The CIA’s increased involvement in Syria is part America’s greater engagement in the war-torn country, according to The Wall Street Journal. The spy agency has selected some small rebel units from the Free Syrian Army to receive combat training and fresh intel they can act upon, the newspaper says, citing unnamed US officials and rebel commanders.
The training is provided by the CIA, working together with British, French and Jordanian intelligence agencies. The rebels are taught to use various kinds of arms, including anti-tank weapons. They are also schooled in urban combat tactics and counterintelligence tactics. The experience will supposedly help them stand against the professional Syrian army, which scores victories against the armed opposition thanks to both more advanced weapons and better organization.
The rebels are also receiving fresh intelligence collected by the CIA, which they can act upon at short notice. The extent of the info provided remains in secret, but the US can potentially provide what they gather trough satellite and signal surveillance as well as intelligence coming through exchanges with Israeli and Jordanian agencies.
The CIA is said to keep this part of dealing with the rebels limited, withholding sensitive types of information, like the suspected locations of Syrian chemical weapons stockpiles.
The US spy agency was previously working in Turkey vetting rebel groups for receiving arms shipments from Gulf monarchies. The effort aimed at preventing the weapons from being funneled to Islamists had mixed results, the WSJ says. The CIA also works with Iraqi counterterrorism units to counter the flow of Islamist militants across the border to Syria.
The White House has been reluctant to send combat-worthy equipment to Syrian rebels, despite calls inside the US and from Gulf and some European countries to do so. It is concerned that those would end up in the hand of the more powerful Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist force, the Nusra Front. Unlike arms, the intelligence from CIA is operationally useful for a short period of time and would not be traded for years to come, a US official explained.Washington’s concern over the growing influence of the Nusra Front was reiterated on Friday by President Barack Obama, as he was visiting Jordan as part of his Middle Eastern tour.
“I am very concerned about Syria becoming an enclave for extremism because extremists thrive in chaos, they thrive in failed states, they thrive in power vacuums,” Obama said after meeting Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
The Nusra Front is believed to be responsible for the bloodiest bombings in Syria over the past months. The latest such attack was the assassination of Mohammad Buti and influential Sunni preacher and supporter of the Syrian government. Buti was killed on Thursday along with some 50 others when a car bomb was detonated near a Damascus mosque.
The US is reportedly gathering intelligence on Nusra Front commanders and fighters for a possible campaign of targeted drone killing similar to those the CIA wages in Pakistan and Yemen and the Pentagon in Afghanistan.
‘West pitting Syrian rebels against Hezbollah’
February 23, 2013
RT: You have recently been to Syria - with the West pushing for democratic change there, do you think the Syrians will actually get that after the violence they’ve endured for so long?
Danny Makki: I think there is much consensus among the Syrian people and in Syria that there has to be democratic change but there is a very big difference between democratic change from the grassroots level and what is being supported and funded by Western countries in Syria now. What we see now is terrorism. And people have to differentiate between a freedom fighter and a terrorist. I don’t think this is pathway to democracy, I think in fact this is a pathway to a failed state.
RT: The Free Syrian Army has apparently set an ultimatum for Hezbollah, threatening to shell its positions in Lebanon. Lebanon is itself divided over the civil war in neighboring Syria, what could the consequences be if large-scale violence spills over there?
DM: With the Syrian crisis there is a danger of it spilling across borders to Iraq, or Lebanon, or even Turkey. The biggest problem in Lebanon is that some of the Western countries are really trying to pit one of the Islamist movements against each other – the Sunni FSA against the Shia Hezbollah. It’s essentially a policy of divide and conquer, which is being instigated media-wise by the West, create divisions and fractures within Arab Syrian and Lebanese societies. And this is the issue they are working today.
By pitting the FSA Hezbollah they are create more division and tension between Syria and Lebanon. And we’ve seen with recent conflict in Tripoli in northern Lebanon that the Syrian crisis is not necessarily in Syria. Syria is the linchpin of the region and there is great tension both in Syria and Lebanon. And there is great fear and anxiety that the struggle in Syria could spill into Lebanon. Lebanon had its own civil war which was very bloody and killed hundreds of thousands. So Lebanon is very scared at the moment of the Syria crisis turning into a Lebanese crisis.
RT: On Monday, Syria said it is prepared to talk to the armed opposition groups, which it has long-dismissed as terrorists – is it a positive change on the way?
DM: In any state terrorism inside the country is a red line that cannot be crossed. We cannot accept terrorism in any country in the world – whether in Syria, America or Britain, or Russia. However there has to be a level of negotiations and dialogue internally speaking to at least have a ceasefire.
There has to be a level of openness between the Syrian government and between rebel forces maybe to instigate exchanges of prisoners, ceasefires in certain areas, to let humanitarian aid reach areas which are under rebel control. These all are issues that have to be negotiated for. And it shows that the Syrian government is not taking the path of an in-transition government. They truly do want to see diplomacy and dialogue to solve this and the fact that they are willing to negotiate with theses armed groups signifies a change of policy in terms of [that] they comprehend there can be no military solution and that any solution which comes within the Syrian crisis at this current moment in time has to be a political solution to stop the suffering of the people and to find a real exit and negotiated settlement to his ongoing crisis.
Arab Spring News Update - Whose news? Our news!
December 6, 2012
- Tunisia’s largest union called for continued protest & a general strike next week against the oppressive government, in an escalation of protests that have resulted in violent clashes in the capital this week.
- Hundreds of young Kuwaitis shouting & chanting protest slogans gathered outside the Gulf Arab state’s capital on Wednesday in the latest demonstration since a parliamentary election on Saturday.
- The Egyptian army sealed off the presidential palace with barbed wire and armored vehicles Thursday as protesters defied a deadline to vacate the area, pressing forward with demands that leader Mohammed Morsi rescind decrees giving himself near-absolute power and withdraw a disputed draft constitution.
- Diplomatic efforts to end Syria’s civil war continued today with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joining Russia’s foreign minister and the U.N. peace envoy to Syria for three-way talks that suggested Washington and Moscow might finally unite behind a strategy as the Assad regime weakens.
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The People’s Record Daily News Update - Whose news? Our news!
November 30, 2012
Here are some stories you may not otherwise read about today:
- In a stand of solidarity, dozens of footballers have signed a petition protesting the decision to stage the European under-21 championship in Israel next year, after the recent military atrocities and war crimes committed by Israel against the people of Palestine.
- Unemployment in the eurozone has hit a record high, with more than 170,000 new jobs lost & youth unemployment at almost 24%, as the economy slumped back into recession.
- According to the UN secretary-general, Syria has now reached “new and appalling heights of brutality and violence”, while the envoy to Syria has said the country is in danger of becoming “a failed state”.
- Just hours before lawmakers in the US Senate overwhelming voted in favor of an amendment that will challenge controversial provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, the Obama administration announced that they plan on vetoing the amendment, making sure they maintain their expansive executive powers to detain American citizens indefinitely, without any reason or legal justification.
- Amid a slew of annual right-wing hysteria about the “war on Christmas,” one official in Virginia has stirred up controversy for denouncing holiday-friendly atheists as ‘fanatical terrorirsts’.
- GMO giant Dupont (second only to Monsanto in its size and moral depravity) has hired police officers to patrol farm areas, looking for farmers to ruin the lives of, by taking them to court for ‘invalidating contracts’ by illegally using seeds for repeat harvests.
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The People’s Record Daily News Update - Whose news? Our news!
November 11, 2012
Here are some stories you may not otherwise hear about today:
- Protests against predatory mortgage menders erupted in Spain on Friday after a woman facing a home eviction killed herself, the second suicide caused by predatory mortgage companies in two weeks.
- Today frustrated residents in New York City protest the slow, lethargic and often even absent response to indefinite power outages in the area.
- Israel has announced that it is prepared to escalate violence in Gaza, after tank shells murdered at least 5 Palestinians and wounded at least 30 more. Some of the injured, many of whom are children, are in critical condition. Palestinian militants fired back, injuring four Israeli’s, with none in critical condition, prompting Israel to announce that it is “prepared to escalate,” their efforts to kill Palestinians.
- In somewhat related news, Israel fired what they are calling “warning shots” into Syria after mortars fired from Syria hit an Israeli base in Golan Heights. It is the first time Israel has fired into Syria since 1973.
- Just after a new set of austerity measures was passed in Greece, Athens has announced that yet another set of harsh budget cuts is coming in 2013, prompting what is expected to be massive protests in response.
- Gun sales have risen dramatically in the United States, just after President Obama’s reelection. With citizens fearing that President Obama will crack down on the sale of assault weapons, gun sales, particularly assault weapons, have spiked to unprecedented levels.
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![Climate change & Mideast insecurity: The hidden connectionNovember 4, 2012
The remarkable silence of this year’s presidential candidates on the issue of global warming was all the more notable during Monday’s debate on foreign policy. For all the talk of violent threats to American security in Syria and North Africa, neither candidate connected them to a powerful contributing cause: climate change.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded in 2011 that “human-caused climate change [is now] a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts.” That helps explain why Syria for the past five years has experienced what one expert called “the worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent many millennia ago.”
An important article published by the Center for Climate and Security this year notes the drought — which was compounded by government mismanagement of water resources — plunged more than a million Syrians into extreme poverty and hunger. The famine prompted hundreds of thousands of people to flee their villages for the cities, at a time when the country’s social infrastructure was already burdened by the strain of housing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees.
The Assad regime’s inept response to this social crisis helped fuel political protests that led to the country’s civil war when the government rebuffed them with force. “Indeed,” the authors note, “the rural farming town of Dara’a was the focal point for protests in the early stages of the opposition movement last year — a place that was especially hard hit by five years of drought and water scarcity, with little assistance from the al-Assad regime.”
Similar factors contributed to the earlier eruption of social protests across North Africa that produced the “Arab Spring,” according to a study by researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI). They found a powerful correlation between high food prices and mass riots. As they pointed out, “widespread unrest does not arise from long-standing political failings of the system, but rather from its sudden perceived failure to provide essential security to the population.”
Sure enough, the protests that swept the Arab world began as the Food and Agriculture Organization’s world Food Price Index peaked at nearly 240 in the winter of 2010-11, up from about 150 in 2009 and the low 100s earlier in the decade.
More trouble may be brewing in coming months if this explanation is correct. The historic U.S. drought this summer, combined with droughts in Russia and neighboring food exporters, have spurred soaring food prices. The FAO’s index hit 216 in September.
Any index reading over 210 represents a dangerously high level, according to the NECSI study. “Such a threat to security should be a key concern to policymakers worldwide,” it warned. “While some variation in the form of unrest may occur due to local differences in government, desperate populations are likely to resort to violence even in democratic regimes.”
Source](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcyahwD8wc1r6m2leo1_500.jpg)
Climate change & Mideast insecurity: The hidden connection
November 4, 2012
The remarkable silence of this year’s presidential candidates on the issue of global warming was all the more notable during Monday’s debate on foreign policy. For all the talk of violent threats to American security in Syria and North Africa, neither candidate connected them to a powerful contributing cause: climate change.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded in 2011 that “human-caused climate change [is now] a major factor in more frequent Mediterranean droughts.” That helps explain why Syria for the past five years has experienced what one expert called “the worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent many millennia ago.”
An important article published by the Center for Climate and Security this year notes the drought — which was compounded by government mismanagement of water resources — plunged more than a million Syrians into extreme poverty and hunger. The famine prompted hundreds of thousands of people to flee their villages for the cities, at a time when the country’s social infrastructure was already burdened by the strain of housing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees.
The Assad regime’s inept response to this social crisis helped fuel political protests that led to the country’s civil war when the government rebuffed them with force. “Indeed,” the authors note, “the rural farming town of Dara’a was the focal point for protests in the early stages of the opposition movement last year — a place that was especially hard hit by five years of drought and water scarcity, with little assistance from the al-Assad regime.”
Similar factors contributed to the earlier eruption of social protests across North Africa that produced the “Arab Spring,” according to a study by researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI). They found a powerful correlation between high food prices and mass riots. As they pointed out, “widespread unrest does not arise from long-standing political failings of the system, but rather from its sudden perceived failure to provide essential security to the population.”
Sure enough, the protests that swept the Arab world began as the Food and Agriculture Organization’s world Food Price Index peaked at nearly 240 in the winter of 2010-11, up from about 150 in 2009 and the low 100s earlier in the decade.
More trouble may be brewing in coming months if this explanation is correct. The historic U.S. drought this summer, combined with droughts in Russia and neighboring food exporters, have spurred soaring food prices. The FAO’s index hit 216 in September.
Any index reading over 210 represents a dangerously high level, according to the NECSI study. “Such a threat to security should be a key concern to policymakers worldwide,” it warned. “While some variation in the form of unrest may occur due to local differences in government, desperate populations are likely to resort to violence even in democratic regimes.”
Up to 28,000 Syrians ‘disappeared’ since uprising began
October 18, 2012
Up to 28,000 Syrians have disappeared over the past 19 months, with civilians snatched from the streets or forcibly abducted by government troops or security forces, human rights groups say.
Relatives had been unable to discover the fate of their loved ones. Many of those abducted were almost certainly dead, while others were alive and being held in Syrian prisons or secret detention centers where they were tortured, the groups claimed.
Since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011, government forces had “disappeared” peaceful protesters on an unprecedented scale, the groups said. Some campaigners have estimated the number of those who have vanished could be as high as 80,000.
A harrowing film released on Thursday by the global campaign network Avaaz shows disturbing footage of forced disappearances. In one incident, three soldiers grab two women dressed in black abayas walking down a street. They hit them and drag them away. In another, soldiers abduct a Syrian man, yanking him by the hair past a tank.
Alice Jay, Avaaz’s campaign director, said: “Syrians are being plucked off the street by Syrian security forces and paramilitaries and being ‘disappeared’ into torture cells. Whether it is women buying groceries or farmers going for fuel, nobody is safe.
“This is a deliberate strategy to terrorise families and communities – the panic of not knowing whether your husband or child is alive breeds such fear that it silences dissent. The fate of each and every one of these people must be investigated and the perpetrators punished.”
Victims were not members of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is fighting government forces on numerous fronts. Instead, they were civilians or peaceful protesters whom the authorities suspected of sympathising with the opposition. Some were abducted from their homes after midnight, others seized at military checkpoints. None were seen again.
Fadel Abdulghani, of the Syrian Network for Human Rights which has been monitoring the death toll in Syria since the protests began, said the group had collected 18,000 names of people who had disappeared. It had information but no names for 10,000 more cases, as the families had been too afraid to share them, it said.
Muhammad Khalil, a human rights lawyer from the city of Hasaka in north-eastern Syria, said: “While there is no precise figure, thousands of people have disappeared since March last year. The regime is doing this for two reasons: to directly get rid of the rebels and activists, and to intimidate the society so that it won’t oppose the regime.”
Avaaz said it had spoken to numerous friends and relatives of people who had been forcibly disappeared. It said it would hand over these cases to the UN human rights council, which investigates such abuses. Forced disappearances are a crime against humanity and can be tried in the international criminal court.
Many people talk about the uncertainty of not knowing their relatives’ fate. Mais, whose husband Anas was forcibly disappeared in Talkalakh in February this year, said: “The children need a father in their lives. It has been difficult to adapt. I have had a very hard time explaining his absence. They always ask me: ‘Where is Dad? Who took him?’ And I don’t know how to respond. I have to lie to them. I tell them he is at work, that he is OK.”
Others describe how their loved ones went missing. Ahmad Ghassan Ibrahim, 26, from the village of Qala’at al-Hosn, near Homs, vanished on 27 February. His mother, Fayzeh al-Masri, said: “My son drove his car from Qala’at al-Hosn to the city of Talkalakh. It was then when we lost contact with him. He called his aunt at 10.30pm from a number other than his …We later found out that the number Ahmad called us from belongs to the military security branch in Homs. We asked almost every security branch about him, to no avail.
“A month and a half ago we called his cellphone and someone answered, saying that Ahmad was killed by a regime sniper and buried in Rastan, but we were not able to confirm this information. We have been seriously concerned for six months. We are certain that he would not have left us or his wife, who is expecting twins. We only want to know his fate.”
BREAKING: Pentagon deploys military forces to Jordan-Syria border
October 10, 2012
US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has confirmed that US troops have been dispatched to the Jordan-Syrian border “to help bolster the former’s military capabilities in case violence escalates” in the volatile region.
“We have a group of our forces there working to help build a headquarters there and to insure that we make the relationship between the United States and Jordan a strong one so that we can deal with all the possible consequences of what’s happening in Syria,” Panetta said.
Panetta’s comments came during a NATO conference of defense ministers in Brussels, where he said the US had been working with Jordan to monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria and help the country deal with Syrian refugees crossing over the border.
The US has previously used Jordan as a base for other Syria-related military activities. In May of this year, Washington held military drills in Jordan dubbed ‘Operation Eager Lion,’ which saw around 12,000 troops from several nations participate in undisclosed training exercises.
A US defense official in Washington said the forces were composed of 100 military planners and other personnel who had stayed on in Jordan after attending the annual exercise in May. Several dozen more had subsequently been flown in, and they are operating from a joint US-Jordanian military center north of the capital, the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP.
The Obama administration denied accusations in the Syrian media that the exercises were a threat against President Assad, and maintained that the action focused on the treatment of refugees, anti-terrorism tactics and naval interception of smuggling vessels.
Following the operation, a small US contingent stayed behind to establish the center in Amman, paving the way for the arrival of more personnel.
“We have been working closely with our Jordanian partners on a variety of issues related to Syria for some time now,”Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said. Citing Washington’s concern over Syria’s stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, he said that the US has been planning “various contingencies, both unilaterally and with our regional partners.”
The Syrian conflict took an unexpected turn last week when mortar fire struck across the border at neighboring Turkey, sparking outcry from the Turkish government who subsequently returned fire. Turkey deployed 25 new F-16 fighter jets to reinforce its borders this week as NATO pledged support if the conflict spills into the country again.
Since uprisings against the embattled President Assad began last year, the UN estimated that more than 20,000 people were killed in the conflict and some 700,000 fled Syria to seek refuge in neighboring countries.
People of Lebanon protest China & Russia’s support of massacres in Syria
July 24, 2012
Dozens of people protested at the Russian embassy in Beirut on Tuesday, denouncing Syrian regime massacres while calling on Russia and China to change their positions on the crisis.
The protesters — both Syrians and Lebanese — held up posters denouncing the violence in neighboring Syria, where rights activists say more than 19,000 people have been killed in a 16-month uprising.
“We also wrote the names some of the martyrs on sheets of paper, turning them into paper planes and launching them at the Russian embassy building,” a 30-year-old Lebanese activist told AFP on condition of anonymity.
“I think more and more people are becoming sympathetic to the Syrian people’s demands,” she said.
But when protests were held in Lebanon early on in the uprising, “pro-Syrian regime thugs came to beat up protesters who took to the streets, scaring many people off from demonstrating again.”
The protesters also held up signs denouncing Russia and China for providing “cover” for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad since the revolt began in March 2011, organizers said.
Earlier this month, Russia together with China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Syria for the third time in nine months.
July 19, 2012
About 20,000 Syrians have traveled across the main border crossing into Lebanon over the past 24 hours, a Lebanese security source working at the border said, after heavy fighting tore through several districts of Damascus.
Wikileaks releases 2.4 million Syrian emails
July 5, 2012
WikiLeaks says it is publishing emails from Syrian political figures dating back to 2006 but also covering the period of the crackdown on dissent by Syria’s regime.
“Just now … WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria files, more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies dating from August 2006 to March 2012,” said spokeswoman Sarah Harrison.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said in a written statement: “The material is embarrassing to Syria but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s external opponents.
“It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it.”
The news came a day after Russia denied having discussed with Washington offering exile to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
WikiLeaks said on its website the files would shed light on the workings of the Syrian government but also “reveal how the West and Western companies say one thing and do another”.
It said the 2,434,899 emails came from Syrian ministries including foreign affairs, finance and presidential affairs. There are around 400,000 emails in Arabic but also 68,000 in Russian.
Harrison said it would take time for all the stories to come out.
It is unclear what exactly is in the documents. WikiLeaks only posted a handful to its website Thursday but the disclosure - whose source WikiLeaks has not made clear - wouldn’t be the first major leak of Syrian emails.
Harrison said the WikiLeaks emails dated from August 2006 to March 2012 and originated from hundreds of different domains, including Syria’s ministry of presidential affairs.
Harrison said her group was “statistically confident” the body of material was genuine.
The People’s Record’s other Wikileaks posts.
Syrians Now Willing to Talk
June 24, 2012
In Damascus, Syrians now openly speak their minds, but often won’t offer a name for the record.
The “wall of fear” is crumbling even in the capital, where the security police have the heaviest presence. Syrians have lived under surveillance and emergency law for years, but after 15 months of anti-government protest and a brutal response by the regime, the killings have changed people.
“Now, I believe that most of the Syrians feel in their bones that the regime is over and it’s only a matter of time,” said one veteran activist, “There are wide areas that aren’t under the control of the regime, and Syrians are learning to speak for themselves.”
