Last week I did my first cross live; I spoke on CCTV about Hassan Nasrallah’s speech http://english.cntv.cn/program/newsupdate/20130510/100315.shtml
My segment is from 08:50
TV appearance speaking about Nasrallah’s speech
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The Art of Civil War
This article was published by Foreign Policy on 8 May, 2013
BEIRUT — “What period it’s from is not important. I just care how much it’s worth,” says Abu Khader, a smuggler in Majdal Anjar, a small Lebanese town on the Lebanon-Syria border. Smuggling everything from cigarettes to arms has long been a family business. But Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters low on cash have started offering alternative payment for the guns they crave — stolen Syrian antiquities.
Cuneiform tablets, Roman friezes and statues, and Byzantine coins are particularly popular. “They give me antiquities, and I give them guns,” Abu Khader puts it simply.
An AK-47 can set you back $1,200 on the black market today, and the more desirable M4 carbine can cost around $4,500. Selling antiquities can help finance these purchases. “I have moved at least 100 objects,” Abu Khader says.
In addition to the Syrian civil war’s horrible human and economic costs, the conflict has also devastated Syria’s cultural heritage. At a February UNESCO conference, the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) called the looting more damaging than the fighting that is ravaging mosques, old houses, and Crusader castles.
Only 3 percent of Syria’s heritage sites remain outside areas of conflict, according to a map released by the U.S. State Department’s Humanitarian Information Unit. A 2012 Global Heritage Fund report also makes for grim reading: All UNESCO World Heritage sites in Syria have been affected by the war, from the old cities of Aleppo and Damascus to the Crusader castle Crac des Chevaliers to the Roman city of Bosra.
Syria is an archaeological treasure trove, featuring antiquities from the Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, and Ottoman periods. The country hosted up to 100 foreign archeological expeditions annually before the war started. The destruction of the millennia-old minaret of the Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo on April 24 is just the latest casualty of the violence.
Looting has become more commonplace as the conflict has dragged on. “There wasn’t that much evidence of looting this time last year. Now there is,” says Durham University doctoral student Emma Cunliffe, author of the Global Heritage report.
Similar pillaging followed the invasion of Iraq, the war in Libya, and even the uprising in Egypt. According to Maamoun Abdel-Karim, director of the DGAM, the antiquities directorate received at least 4,000 confiscated objects over the course of 2012, most of which were recovered on their way out of the country.
Read the full article here: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/08/syrian_rebels_stolen_treasures_art_theft_guns
Aid Operations Caught in the Crosshairs of Syrian Conflict
This article was published by the Interdependent on April 18, 2013
In early April, two trucks belonging to the World Food Programme (WFP) were hijacked en route to Aleppo. It was but the latest in a string of incidents primarily involving rebel forces that have challenged the ability of UN organizations to provide aid and health care to those Syrians who need it most.
Both the WFP and the International Red Cross (ICRC) and Red Crescent have sounded the alarm recently about rising security risks to their operations. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) has seen 23 of its vehicles hijacked and six ambulances destroyed. The WFP has endured over 20 attacks since it started operations in December 2011, affecting trucks that transport food and warehouses and other vehicles.The attacks on WFP operations averaged once a month in 2012. Since the beginning of this year, that number has jumped to once a week, which makes the two-truck hijacking particularly alarming. According to Matthew Hollingworth, who is in charge of WFP’s operations in Syria, “[The trucks] were detained at opposition checkpoints while they were crossing front lines and the drivers detained and the commodities taken.”
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Lebanese Abstract Artist Opens At Tate Modern
This article was published by Al-Monitor on 17 April, 2013
The apartment in which Raouda Choucair lives is a testament to her life. Her abstract paintings line the walls, and the cabinets are filled with maquettes for abstract public works she intended to have built. The drawers are crammed with notes, drawings and ideas documenting a career that now, with Choucair aged 97, seems to be finally taking off.
Until today, these objects seemed destined to be the preserve of a few people in the know. Often misunderstood by her Lebanese contemporaries, Choucair lived a solitary life, rueing the lack of recognition that her attempt to rhyme modernism with Arab art garnered. But now, over 120 pieces, many of them never seen outside her studio, have been shipped off to the Tate Modern in London, for the first major museum show of Lebanon’s first abstract artist. The show opens on April 17 and will run for six months [until Oct. 20].
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Radio 1 fragment over vluchtelingen in Libanon
Gisterochtend sprak ik over de Libanese vluchtelingen crisis op radio 1. VVD kamerlid Han ten Broeke, die ik afgelopen weekend in Beiroet ontmoette, vertelde ook over zijn ervaringen in de Bekaa vallei.
No-Fly Zone Debate: Are the Patriots Up to It?
This article was published by Al-Monitor on 31 March, 2013
In the control room at Incirlik Air Base, images from the previous night show two red dots, indicating ballistic missiles fired in Syria. The two missiles originated in the Homs region, but both landed well clear of the Turkish border. So far, “Fireball” — the term used to indicate a ballistic missile heading their way — has not been heard yet in any of the command centers.
And still they come
This article was published by the Economist Pomegranate blog on 27th March 2012
WHEN Zaharith left the fighting of Damascus for the safety of Lebanon, she did not expect to find herself in jail. But the young Syrian is living in an abandoned prison in Souawiri, a town in the Bekaa valley. Damp walls stretch up to a tiny barred window and heavy locks dangle from the iron door which seals the cell she shares with five other families.
Zaharith is one of over 1m refugees who have fled Syria. With fighting intensifying the flow shows no sign of abating. Lebanon has accepted the largest number. The Lebanese government now estimates that there are 1m Syrians in the country, which has a population of 4m, including workers and refugees who have not registered.
Read the full article here http://www.economist.com/blogs/pomegranate/2013/03/syrian-refugees-lebanon
