Christians Flee from Radical Rebels in Syria

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  • @nidal
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    Archive : avril 2012, un leader du Fatah al Islam libanais meurt à Qusayr : In Syria, Lebanon’s Most Wanted Sunni Terrorist Blows Himself Up
    ▻http://world.time.com/2012/04/23/in-syria-lebanons-most-wanted-sunni-terrorist-blows-himself-up

    According to Abu Ali and another fellow fighter, Jawhar arrived in Qsair two weeks ago with a group of 30 Lebanese fighters. While many were members of Fatah al-Islam, they were not traveling under the terror group’s banner. Instead they called themselves mujahideen, holy warriors seeking to help fellow Muslims under attack by the Syrian regime. Jawhar, an explosives expert and a charismatic commander, sought to train fellow fighters how make bombs. In the short time he had been in Qsair, says Abu Ali, he was able to set up dozens of improvised explosive devices destined for members of the Syrian security forces. “His aim was to make a tour in all the districts of Syria to teach the fighters on how to fight a guerrilla war.”

    Ainsi les sympathiques combattants de la liberté de l’ASL vantés par Vanessa Burggraf sur France 24 le 16 mars 2012 sont-ils directement liés (si ce n’est carrément eux) au Fatah al Islam :
    ►http://seenthis.net/messages/225755
    Haytham Manna évoquant, dans cette émission, le danger d’Al Qaeda, est donc pile poil au courant.

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      Article du 25 juillet 2012 : Christians Flee from Radical Rebels in Syria
      ►http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/christians-flee-from-radical-rebels-in-syria-a-846180.html

      “There were always Christians in Qusayr — there were around 10,000 before the war,” says Leila, the matriarch of the Khouri clan. Currently, 11 members of the clan are sharing two rooms. They include the grandmother, grandfather, three daughters, one husband and five children. “Despite the fact that many of our husbands had jobs in the civil service, we still got along well with the rebels during the first months of the insurgency.” The rebels left the Christians alone. The Christians, meanwhile, were keen to preserve their neutrality in the escalating power struggle. But the situation began deteriorating last summer, Leila says, murmuring a bit more before going silent.

      “We’re too frightened to talk,” her daughter Rim explained, before mustering the courage to continue. “Last summer Salafists came to Qusayr, foreigners. They stirred the local rebels against us,” she says. Soon, an outright campaign against the Christians in Qusayr took shape. “They sermonized on Fridays in the mosques that it was a sacred duty to drive us away,” she says. “We were constantly accused of working for the regime. And Christians had to pay bribes to the jihadists repeatedly in order to avoid getting killed.”

      Grandmother Leila made the sign of the cross. “Anyone who believes in this cross suffers,” she says.

      It is not possible to independently corroborate the Khouri’s version of events, but the basic information seems consistent with what is already known. On April 20, Abdel Ghani Jawhar involuntarily provided proof that foreign jihadists are engaged in combat in Qusayr. Jawhar, a Lebanese national and commander with the terrorist group Fatah al Islam, died that day in the Syrian city. An explosives expert, Jawhar had been in Qusayr to teach rebels how to build bombs and accidentally blew himself up while trying to assemble one. Until his death, Jawhar had been the most wanted man in Lebanon, where he is implicated in the deaths of 200 people. Lebanese authorities confirmed his death in Syria. The fact that the rebels had worked together with a man like Jawhar fomented fears after his death that the ranks of insurgents are increasingly becoming infiltrated by international terrorists.

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      Archive : août 2010. Après avoir été le principal vecteur des rumeurs du 14 Mars soutenant que c’était le régime syrien qui avait organisé le Fatah al-Islam à Nahr el Bared (suggérant même que Seymour Hersh avait été précédemment manipulé par Michel Samaha pour évoquer le Fatah al-Islam avant que les services syriens ne déclenchent les événements dramatiques contre l’armée libanaise), Now est forcé d’admettre le contraire en 2010. What’s next for Fatah al-Islam ?
      ▻https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/reportsfeatures/whats_next_for_fatah_al-islam

      The report was denied in Beirut, where March 14 politicians countered that Saudi wasn’t funding Fatah al-Islam, but rather that the Syrians specifically let Absi out of jail to come wreak havoc in Lebanon as a pretext to re-occupy the country their troops had left less than two years prior following a nearly 30-year presence.

      Haddad wrote in his paper that there is no evidence to prove the Syrian puppet theory, and told NOW Lebanon, when asked about the Saudi money theory – which was not addressed in the paper – that authorities curiously did not ask arrested militants how they were funded.

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    @biggrizzly
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    Admire le gloubi-boulga confessionaliste de France 24-avec-Reuters :
    ▻http://www.france24.com/en/20130522-syria%E2%80%99-national-coalition-calls-rebels-defend-qusair-0

    Assad’s forces are intent on seizing Qusair in order to cement their hold on a belt of territory that connects the capital Damascus to Assad’s stronghold on the Mediterranean coast, home to his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has largely supported him.

    Seizing Qusair would also allow Assad to sever links between rebel-held areas in the north and south of Syria.

    With Shi’ite Hezbollah leading the fight in Qusair, its involvement could drag Syria’s civil war - which already pits mainly Sunni Muslim rebels, including radical Islamists and foreign fighters, against an Alawite-led army - into a more regional sectarian conflict.

    Rebel leaders have warned of sectarian revenge attacks against Shi’ites and Alawites on either side of the Syrian-Lebanese border if rebels lose Qusair. Fighters speak of a tacit agreement among their units to launch village by village attacks should they be defeated in the town of 30,000.

    Sabra warned that Hezbollah forces in Qusair could regionalise Sunni-Shi’ite tensions across the Middle East.

    C’est donc la faute au Hezbollah si les chefs rebelles menacent de représailles sectaires… La beauté de cette compilation d’arguments confessionnels ineptes, c’est qu’il n’est fait nulle part mention des chrétiens de Qusayr. Est-ce parce qu’ils ont disparu, chassés l’année dernière par les rebelles (ceux qui ne seraient pas confessionnels si ce n’était l’intervention du Hezbollah) : Christians Flee from Radical Rebels in Syria
    ►http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/christians-flee-from-radical-rebels-in-syria-a-846180.html

    “There were always Christians in Qusayr — there were around 10,000 before the war,” says Leila, the matriarch of the Khouri clan. Currently, 11 members of the clan are sharing two rooms. They include the grandmother, grandfather, three daughters, one husband and five children. “Despite the fact that many of our husbands had jobs in the civil service, we still got along well with the rebels during the first months of the insurgency.” The rebels left the Christians alone. The Christians, meanwhile, were keen to preserve their neutrality in the escalating power struggle. But the situation began deteriorating last summer, Leila says, murmuring a bit more before going silent.

    “We’re too frightened to talk,” her daughter Rim explained, before mustering the courage to continue. “Last summer Salafists came to Qusayr, foreigners. They stirred the local rebels against us,” she says. Soon, an outright campaign against the Christians in Qusayr took shape. “They sermonized on Fridays in the mosques that it was a sacred duty to drive us away,” she says. “We were constantly accused of working for the regime. And Christians had to pay bribes to the jihadists repeatedly in order to avoid getting killed.”

    Ou ce rapport du Vatican qui accusait les rebelles d’avoir chassé les chrétiens de Qusair : Syria opposition denies Vatican report of Christians ordered out
    ►http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/06/syria-opposition-denies-vatican-report-of-christians-ordered-o

    Opponents of the Syrian government disputed a Vatican report that Christians had fled the town of Qusair after an “ultimatum” from the rebel leader, denouncing it as government propaganda.

    News of alleged Christian persecution in the town close to the Lebanese border had been reported Saturday by the official Vatican news agency, adding to ongoing worries that the uprising against President Bashar Assad could devolve into sectarian strife between Islamists and religious minorities.

    The Vatican agency said it wasn’t clear why Christians had been ordered out of the town. “According to some, it serves to avoid more suffering to the faithful; other sources reveal ’a continuity focused on discrimination and repression.’ Still others argue that Christians have openly expressed their loyalty to the state and for this reason the opposition army drives them away,” the news agency reported.

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    Christians Flee from Radical Rebels in Syria
    ►http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/christians-flee-from-radical-rebels-in-syria-a-846180.html

    Somehow, though, the interview was arranged in the end. Reserved and halting, the women described what happened to their husbands, brothers and nephews back in their hometown of Qusayr in Syria. They were killed by Syrian rebel fighters, the women said — murdered because they were Christians, people who in the eyes of radical Islamist freedom fighters have no place in the new Syria.

    […]

    With fighting ongoing, however, the rebels have also committed excesses. And some factions within the patchwork of disparate groups that together comprise the Free Syrian Army have radicalized at a very rapid clip in recent months. A few are even being influenced by foreign jihadists who have traveled to Syria to advise them. That, at least, is what witnesses on the ground are reporting in Qusayr, where fierce fighting has raged for months. Control of the town has passed back and forth between the two sides, at times falling into the hands of the regime and at others of the rebels. Currently, fighters with the Free Syrian Army have the upper hand, and they have also made the city of 40,000 residents a place where the country’s Christian minority no longer feels safe.

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