And The Flames Go Higher

Falling Further Faster
(Part of The Darkness Visible post)

Since about midday Wednesday the Syrian military has been shelling the city of Aleppo with greater ferocity than has been seen since the standoff began. Jets have been dropping bombs nonstop for nearly a day now as their target range from Aleppo to towns north of the city. Artillery's deafening roar has not stopped since Assad ordered his hellish assault. And the tactics being reported are nothing short of barbaric.

Carving a crescent shape behind the civilian neighborhoods the bombings are being used to pin the innocent in while the army attacks head on. Helicopters are being used to patrol any routes of escape while the shabiha roam the rebel flanks. Every living soul in Aleppo seems to be the target.

What information is coming out of Aleppo lends itself to a massacre larger than any seen as of yet in this 17 month rebellion. The use of jets to bomb from the air has made it harder for innocent civilians to escape the barrage of artillery and tank fire. Machine gun fire erupts on the streets leading north out of Aleppo whenever people are seen trying to flee. It appears that Assad will hold to his promise to burn Aleppo to the ground. And he may be making sure that nobody will get out alive.

Of the original 3 million citizens there is an estimated 2.5 million still trapped in the city and its outlying neighborhoods. Most have been without running water or electricity since Assad's siege of the city began. All have been having a hard time trying to find food. And nearly everyone has been under the regime guns for the last 24 hours.

News agencies are reporting that Assad's forces have taken at least one of the key neighborhoods and are pushing toward the north side of the city. We are also hearing that Assad's regime is threatening to use "unconventional" weapons to win the fight in Aleppo. These weapons could include chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. On the lighter side of the spectrum Assad could also be referring to napalm or high explosives to level larger areas of the city. In any case the dense population in the neighborhoods of Aleppo would spike the death toll sky high if Assad gets even more desperate.

In previous weeks Assad has threatened to use chemical and biological weapons on foreign troops if any nation or the UN tries to intervene. It appears now that the ever more desperate situation of the regime is pushing the use of these weapons closer to reality. Yet the West continues to only worry about the use of these weapons on their troops and against their interest. Apparently the helpless citizens trapped in Aleppo are not a Western interest.

On the rebel side of the battle news has come forward that the Syrian rebels have killed a Russian general who was working with the Syrian army in Damascus. The Syrian rebels produced his military id and several other sources of identification in addition to video of his body. In response the Russians have produced a man on video in Moscow who claims to be the dead general. The flaw in the Russian video is the fact the man in the video was told from a man behind the camera what to say... including his own name... and stumbled through the scripted video. In addition to not knowing who he was supposed to be, the Russian puppet also didn't look anything like the dead general in Syria.

So as I have suspected all along, Russia is doing more than just providing Assad the weapons, helicopters, tanks, and ammunition to kill his own people with. Putin's interest in keeping Syria oppressed has brought Russian military leaders to the battle field where they are reported to be directing the Syrian offenses. And yet despite an invested interest in the battle for Syria, Russia continues to be allowed to vote on the issue in the UN.

For now we still are forced to wait to see what is really happening in Aleppo as the rebels fight on against ever growing odds. So for now we will pray for the safety of those innocent civilians now trapped in the crossfire. May G-d have mercy on them seeing as how Assad will not.

A View of Shabiha Slaughter

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First Hand Account
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Bound with zip-ties like so many others who came before him, Mahmoud was taken from his cell with ten other men. None could be directly linked to the rebel movement. None had any crimes for which a death sentence was usually applied... that is until now.

Assad's feared shabiha have been using the technique Mahmoud suffered. Blindfolded, Mahmoud was taken with his comrades in a truck to a contested neighborhood of Aleppo. It was there that the shabiha unloaded the men and lined their prisoners up against a wall. Put on his knees Mahmoud could hear his captors cock their weapons. And for a moment the shabiha's victims there is silence.

Then all hell erupts.

Mahmoud felt the shabihas' bullets rip into his feet and legs as the bullets climbed up his body. When Mahmoud felt a bullet hit his head he told the AP that he thought right there that he was dead. But by a miracle the bullet did not kill him.

When the shabiha left they thought they had sent a message to the rebels. It had been their goal to use this tactic to demoralize the rebel forces ahead of the planned "massive assault" on Aleppo. Mahmoud's would be killers didn't realize that they had left a witness.

Now the world knows that Assad's forces are using war crimes to try and break the rebels' fighting spirit. Now we know that Assad's forces are killing prisoners of war. Yet it seems only the rebels are learning from this new revelation.

Western media seems reluctant to post stories like this one. Some post it with the safety words like "not independently verified" to cover their butts. Others try to speculate while the facts lay right out there in the open. But most just simply hide the stories from Syria behind everything else from the Olympics to Obama.

For Mahmoud the story of Syria's conflict are far to real. The tales of war crimes are now permanently engraved in his flesh. The abuses of Assad will forever be with him whenever he looks in a mirror. And for his family... the horror of Assad's wrath is still a reality as the shabiha continue to threaten their lives.

It is time for us here on the opposite side of the world to act. We need to speak up and tell our representatives in Washington that we don't want people like Mahmoud to die at the hands of Assad's thugs. We need to put pressure on Obama's White House to do more than just use tough talk when dealing with Assad, Russia, China, and Iran. We don't need a boot licking president bowing down to Putin and Assad. We need a president that speaks softly but carries a big stick. We want action when it comes to Syria... the Syrians need action from the West right now.

Another Massacre... Another Day in Syria

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Shabiha Go Door To Door In Damascus
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In a town on the outskirts of Damascus, Jdeidet Artouz, the Shabiha have committed yet another massacre. Nobody knows if this is in response for the rebels' killing of four police officers yesterday. But what is clear is that the "ghost" went door to door to round up what they called "terrorist". And as a result somewhere between 30 and 60 innocent civilians were butchered so that Assad's regime could satisfy its need for fresh blood.

In addition to the tension in the capitol of Syria another massacre was carried out in a neighboring suburb of the city, Yalda. In this slaughter the Shabiha again were seen going door to door looking for their "terrorist". And again the innocent civilians who happened to still be in their homes hiding were rounded up and taken away. Lined up in front of brick walls the 20 to 30 men, women, and children were shot and left to rot in the summer sun.

All the while the nearly hundred dead bodies in these too attacks are supposed to be ignored because some human rights groups were "appalled" by the four dead police officers the rebels produced. Nobody seems to be able to realize that the four police officers were armed and fighting back before they were captured. Nobody seems willing to admit that the four officers were used by the Assad regime to oppress the people of Aleppo. But we can't deny that the civilians butchered at the hands at the Shabiha were unarmed and no threat to Assad's tyrannical rule.

Not to argue that the crimes of the rebels is justified by the deaths of the innocent. But how can we compare the beating, tormenting, and killing of four police officers (most likely loyal to their government since they were still armed and fighting when captured) to the savage massacres of innocent civilians?

The answer is that we can't.

As the fighting in Aleppo heats up we are almost guaranteed that we will be seeing more massacres and more humanitarian crises coming out of Syria. The fact that food and water are becoming scarce in the embattled city isn't helping the civilians trapped inside to stay out of the crossfire. Taxi service is actually still up and running in Aleppo as the cabs charge around five times the usual fare. Citizens scramble across streets and flee inside as bullets zip down the streets. Children search for food as jets dive bomb their neighborhoods. And all this happens as the death toll ticks upward despite the fact nobody is counting it.

Now we will have to wait to see what happens next. While it hurts to hear of another massacre... let alone two... we are waiting to see what happens in Aleppo. All the hallmarks of a humanitarian tragedy are there. All the parts for a massacre are lining up. So let us pray that what appears to be just over the horizon does not come. Pray for Syria.

An Eye For An Eye

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House to House Fighting in Aleppo

What would you do if you were told that somebody you knew had attacked and maybe even killed your family and friends? How would you feel if the person was free to do this sort of thing over and over again? And if you had the opportunity to kill this person would you?

For the Free Syrian Army this seems to have been the case when they captured a police station in Aleppo today. The rebel fighters were led to believe that the police they had taken prisoner as a result were shabiha. And that appears to be the reason these police officers were not just executed but beaten and publicly humiliated before being butchered.

Some believe that the police officers were taken to a near by school where they were gun down. The video shows the four officers being lined up and put on their knees. Then the rebels yell out "G-d is good" and commence to firing into the police. For about a 30 to 45 seconds the gunfire and screaming are all you can hear. The riddled bodies of the prisoners collapse under a hail of bullets. Then the video ends.

This is not a simple execution. This is retaliation. Reprisals for what the hated shabiha have done all across Syria. And yet nobody can confirm that these police officers were actually Assam's militia. No one can tell us for sure that these poor prisoners weren't just the target of the rebels' collective frustrations.

No matter what the case it is still wrong by our Western standards to savagely beat prisoners of war. It is blatantly wrong to execute them... let alone with a barrage of bullets that last long enough to kill the prisoners 10 times over.

Human rights groups that have had sympathy for the rebels' cause now find themselves squeamish when it comes to supporting a fight as brutal as that which Assad himself has fought. Of course it is hard to compare 4 prisoners to 20,000 plus casualties Assad's campaign has racked up. And nobody can say that this is on the same level as slaughtering innocent children to terrify their parents (Assad's favorite method of oppression). But none the less it is the first step toward a bitter end where both sides fight a war with the idea of "an eye for an eye... a tooth for a tooth".

Meanwhile Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary, has noted that Assad is absent from the fight.

"His recent remarks show him for the coward that he is," Jay Carney referencing Assad. "He hides out of sight, encouraging the heavily armed Syria military to continue slaughtering civilians in his name."

Other Western governments have been noticing the same thing as the White House this past week. The Arab League has decided to go to the UN and make an official call for Assad to step down. One can only assume that Assad's lack of courage to come out into the open has spurred this unprecedented course of action onward. After all, since a bomb attack killed four of Assad's top officials on July 18Th the cowardly leader has been missing in action. And it seems that even the Arab League's request may not bring him back out into the open.

So now the world will wait to see what comes of Aleppo.

While Assad's neighbors plead with the West to force him to step down the commercial hub of Syria burns. This decisive battle the West wants to see in Aleppo appears to be a fight that could last weeks. For the the countless number of civilians trapped in the cross fire this battle may end in a humanitarian disaster not seen since Srebrenica. And all we here on the other side of the world can do is wait, watch, and pray.