Support NeoGAF

[liger05]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/syria-releases-women-detainees-prisoner-swap

Syrian authorities have released 61 female detainees in a three-way prisoner exchange, one of the more ambitious negotiated deals in the country's civil war in which rival factions remain largely opposed to any bartered peace.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Thursday that the government of President Bashar al-Assad had freed the women over the past two days. There was no immediate comment from Syrian officials, nor details of who the women were or their current location.

The SoHR said the release was part of a hostage swap brokered last week by Qatar and the Palestinian Authority (PA), in which Syrian rebels freed nine Lebanese Shia Muslims and Lebanese gunmen released two Turkish pilots as well.

Lebanese officials have said a third part of the deal called for the Syrian government to free a number of female detainees to meet the rebels' demands.

The involvement of Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar and the PA in the deal showed the extent to which the conflict has spread across the wider region.

Syria's crisis began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests against Assad, and slowly turned into an insurgency and then a full-blown civil war. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict, while another 2 million have sought refuge from the violence in neighbouring countries and beyond.

Electricity has gradually returned to Damascus hours after a power cut affected the capital and other parts of the country. The government blamed the cut on a rebel attack, which it says damaged a gas pipeline that supplies fuel to power stations in southern Syria.

Syria's state news agency quoted the electricity minister, Imad Khamis, as saying authorities planned to have power back on in all areas within 48 hours. The oil minister, Suleiman Abbas, said maintenance crews were working to supply the Tishrin power station south-east of Damascus with fuel via a reserve pipeline.

Damascus and southern Syria have been struck by several power cuts throughout the war. Many rebel-held parts of the country have been without power for months.

Good job on the rebel side and it seems that in total 128 women will be freed from the dungeons of Assad.

 

[General Choomin]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/syria-releases-women-detainees-prisoner-swap



Good job on the rebel side and it seems that in total 128 women will be freed from the dungeons of Assad.

Good job on the rebels? LOL! The poor people who the terrorists took hostage were old men. Stop supporting terrorists dude.

EDIT: Also the article you quoted said "61 female detainees". Your fabrications are just so blatant it's hilarious. I guess you will make any sorta shit up for your pathetic jihad against civilization.

 

[liger05]

Good job on the rebels? LOL! The poor people who the terrorists took hostage were old men. Stop supporting terrorists dude.

EDIT: Also the article you quoted said "61 female detainees". Your fabrications are just so blatant it's hilarious. I guess you will make any sorta shit up for your pathetic jihad against civilization.

Well of course they are detainees, exactly when I did I say otherwise.

You talking about frabrications lol.

 

[General Choomin]

61 does not equal 128 you god damn liar. Stop making shit up you terrorist lover.

 

[liger05]

61 does not equal 128 you god damn liar. Stop making shit up you terrorist lover.

Damn it must really hurt seeing your leaders soldiers continue to get a beating. Oh well.

As I said 61 released with a possible 68 further to be released Alhamdulillah

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-syria-hostages-freed-20131020,0,5891383.story#axzz2im19C3mO

BEIRUT — Nine Lebanese hostages freed after being held by Syrian rebels for more than a year arrived to a tumultuous welcome in Beirut late Saturday, capping a complex deal that also resulted in the release of two Turkish pilots kidnapped in Lebanon and the reported freeing of scores of prisoners from Syrian jails.

About an hour after the nine ex-hostages were mobbed by relatives and other well-wishers at a VIP lounge at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport, images on Turkish television showed an aircraft carrying the two Turkish Airlines pilots arriving at Istanbul Ataturk Airport.

The Lebanese had been flown from Istanbul to Beirut, while the Turks were whisked off by jet in the opposite direction, from Beirut to Istanbul.

The convoluted case has highlighted how the Syrian civil war, now in its third year, has spread instability and sectarian tension throughout the Middle East.

The sequence of events resulting in the releases unfolded Friday and Saturday after months of sensitive, closed-door negotiations and shuttle diplomacy involving officials and intelligence operatives of at least four governments, along with Syrian rebel commanders.

Playing a crucial mediating role was the Foreign Ministry of the Persian Gulf state of Qatar, which, like Turkey, has been a supporter of the antigovernment forces in Syria. Qatari jets flew the freed Lebanese to Beirut and the liberated Turkish pilots to Istanbul.

A top Lebanese security official, Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, who heads the nation's General Security bureau, reportedly made several recent trips to Syria and Turkey in an intensified effort to craft a deal to release the nine Lebanese men.

"Congratulations to Lebanon, not just the hostages," Ibrahim, who accompanied the nine former captives from Turkey back to Lebanon, told reporters at the chaotic scene at the Beirut airport.

The 17-month-crisis shook Lebanon's fragile, multi-sectarian democracy, which is reeling from the spillover effects of the war in neighboring Syria.

Ecstatic officials, family members, clerics and others thronged the two airports.

Earlier, news of the hostages' release had prompted displays of fireworks and street celebrations in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the families of many of the nine men live.

The abduction in August of the two Turkish pilots by Lebanese kidnappers, apparently in retaliation for the taking of the nine Lebanese, had provoked outrage in Turkey and heightened criticism of the country's support for the rebels fighting to oust the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, architect of Turkey's controversial Syria policy, was on hand at the airport in Istanbul on Saturday to greet the two released pilots.

The nine Lebanese were reportedly released late Friday in neighboring Turkey. That set the stage for the release Saturday of the two pilots to the Turkish ambassador in Lebanon. Under extremely tight security, the pilots were reportedly flown by helicopter to the Beirut airport and then put on a plane to Istanbul.

The status of another facet of the deal — the reported release of scores of women in Syrian jails and prisons — was not immediately clear. Opposition forces had demanded freedom for 127 female prisoners in Syria in exchange for releasing the nine Lebanese captives. Some reports indicated that as many as 200 Syrian prisoners could be freed, but there was no immediate confirmation.

The nine Lebanese men were among 11 Lebanese citizens seized by a Syrian rebel faction in May 2012 near the Syrian border town of Azaz, part of the northern province of Aleppo. Two hostages were later released in what the rebels called an act of goodwill. Rebel-held areas of Syria have seen an epidemic of kidnappings for political, monetary and sectarian motives.

Syrian rebels alleged that the hostages were operatives of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant group that is closely allied with Assad. Hezbollah officials and relatives of the hostages denied that the nine had any formal link with Hezbollah. The hostages' families said all were pilgrims returning to Lebanon from a visit to Shiite shrines in Iran.

Syrian rebels are mostly Sunni Muslims, the majority sect in Syria. Sunni-Shiite tension has been a major irritant in the Syrian civil war. Assad is a member of the Alawite sect, considered an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Shiite-dominated Iran is among Assad's closest foreign allies.

For months, relatives and supporters of the nine Lebanese hostages have staged demonstrations demanding that Turkey, gulf states and other backers of the Syrian rebels put pressure on their allies to release the kidnapped men.

On Aug. 9, gunmen in Beirut waylaid a minivan carrying a Turkish Airlines crew and kidnapped the two pilots, Murat Akpinar and Murat Agca, as they were traveling from the airport to a hotel after their flight had landed in Beirut. Lebanese authorities have said the kidnapping was retaliation for the abduction of the nine Lebanese. Officials in Lebanon had long anticipated that the pilots would be released once a deal was made to free the Lebanese captives.

Lets just hope the other sisters are freed!!

 

[dripdripsplash]

61 does not equal 128 you god damn liar. Stop making shit up you terrorist lover.

Damn it must really hurt seeing your leaders soldiers continue to get a beating. Oh well.

This is two complete garbage posts, no offence. I'm not trying to be arrogant or something but have gone so low, even on GAF ?

 

[CHEEZMO™]

At least liger actually posts stuff. Choomin seems to exist only to either attack others or make identical content-less posts filled with nothing but trite, whiny invective.

It's incredibly tiring.

 

[General Choomin]

Sorry I don't post speculation from the al-queda twitter news network like liger or celebrate when multiple suicide car bombs go off trying to kill civilians like cheezmo.

I read http://angryarab.blogspot.com/ to get opinion and news on the situation. He is an atheist communist anti-racist as well as a regional expert. Much more credible then the clowns who read twitter news network (lol).

 

[CHEEZMO™]

Counterfactual aside, it's pretty nuts how similar Abu Khalil and I are.

Former M-L, now Anarchist; Feminist; atheist and secularist; pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist; opposed the Iraq war and critical of KSA, Iran and US foreign policy.

He probably has a Twitter account, y'know.

 

[Partial Gamification]

This is a satirical piece of the angryarab interviewing himself, its in reference to a series of interviews that he did with journalists:

[...]

AA: Ok, sorry. So what is happening in Syria?

AA: Bandar bin Sultan.

AA: Can you elaborate?

AA: Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud

AA: I see. You wouldn’t get AlJazeera or AlArabiya telling you this, but I think we both know that.

AA: Indeed. How is the conflict likely to be resolved?

AA: I thought I was the one asking the questions.

AA: Sorry. Please go ahead.

AA: How is the conflict likely to be resolved?

AA: This will ultimately end in a best case scenario for the Zionist entity, and in fact all the details have been decided a long time ago. My sources tell me that even the location of the Zionist embassy in Damascus has been decided and a Syrian businessman will offer it to them free of charge. Thanks Laila.
[...]

AA: true. Ignore that, I stepped out of character. What do you think of the Syrian opposition?

AA: They are lousy traitors, liars and murderers. And the Western media bends over backwards to accommodate their lies and deceptions. And Western governments have given them a carte blanche to destroy Syria.

AA: This is the type of rich analysis that people like to get from you. Why is this kind of honesty so rare?

AA: Most analysts are too pedantic, they are concerned with factual truths as opposed to inherent emotional truths. This is a product of the skewed Western imperial hegemonic model of thinking with its neurotic obsession with empiricism and ‘facts’. I have broken free from those chains of accuracy. I speak a deeper level of truth that people feel is right.

AA: And that’s why we are all addicted to reading your stuff. What do you think of the secular moderates in the Syrian “revolution”?

AA: What secular moderates? Have you looked at their photographs, with their beards and jihadi T-shirts? I have been saying for months that they are all Salafis and Trotskyists. I have always hated Trotsky, with his pretentious little glasses and bourgeois lifestyle. The man is so irritating. And you should say “”revolution”” for emphasis.

AA: What has this series of interviews taught you? Some people said that you weren’t asking questions in as much as making statements, what do you respond to that?

AA: I am not Larry King, there’s a skill to asking the question in a certain way to get the answer you want if you’re trying to expose propaganda. I indicated at the beginning of every interview whether I liked the interview or not, based on whether they agreed with my view on Syria or not. What I learned at the end is that I was right all along.
source

Jokes aside, there is a difference between a handful of rich peoples funding armed groups of religious fanatics and financing a revolution. Not all the rebels are parts of these groups. Both sides of the conflict in Syria have committed documented cases of human rights violations. Geneva II is next month and people are starving in besieged camps and neighborhoods [warning - graphic pic]:

The Charity Commission for the Relief of the Palestinian People has succeeded in providing at least some humanitarian relief to the Palestinian camps. But of late it has come under attack from the Syrian armed forces. Protestations that the organisation is politically unaffiliated and purely humanitarian have not spared it the government’s crackdown.

“They have started arresting our cadres, and arrested the general coordinator of the commission, Ali Shihabi. The situation is worse than bad in the camps, it has actually become a matter of collective murder,” Prof. Abu Salma told IPS.
source NSFW (dog being butchered)

 

[General Choomin]

Even he dismisses twitter as a news source. I guess you haven't been reading his blogs lately because you are at the polar opposite of what he thinks. He would and never does cheer on sectarian propaganda fueled hate wars. Nor does he cheer on GCC armed terrorists decapitating people because they don't pray the same way as a Wahhabi terrorist does.

Also yeah that little joke interview is just an insult. Before Obagy was outed he got in contact with her to ask some questions before any of the media even mentioned how much of a fabricating neocon fraud she was. When he pointed out how much she was a fraud she huffpuffed and left. Most of the people in support of John McCains terrorist franchise here have used Obagy's lies liberally when creating arguments.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

Nor does he cheer on GCC armed terrorists decapitating people because they don't pray the same way as a Wahhabi terrorist does.

Man I must've forgotten about this or something. Maybe it happened during the vodka-fuelled haze that followed my kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.

 

[General Choomin]

Man I must've forgotten about this or something. Maybe it happened during the vodka-fuelled haze that followed my kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.

You must black out whenever liger makes a post about his favorite group of lovely people. Do you drink a lot of vodka?

 

[Partial Gamification]

Even he dismisses twitter as a news source. I guess you haven't been reading his blogs lately because you are at the polar opposite of what he thinks. He would and never does cheer on sectarian propaganda fueled hate wars. Nor does he cheer on GCC armed terrorists decapitating people because they don't pray the same way as a Wahhabi terrorist does.

Also yeah that little joke interview is just an insult. Before Obagy was outed he got in contact with her to ask some questions before any of the media even mentioned how much of a fabricating neocon fraud she was. When he pointed out how much she was a fraud she huffpuffed and left. Most of the people in support of John McCains terrorist franchise here have used Obagy's lies liberally when creating arguments.

I don't agree with his worldview, I think he's too jaded. Not saying its unjustified, or that everything he claims is wrong, just that he is definately fixed in how he see and writes about this conflict.

John McCain is a warhawk and you are hungup on this Elizabeth Obagy... why the broken-record?

The coverage of the extremists' crimes is not something to brush aside but I don't think that its the whole picture and I doubt anyone does; Assad, the citizens, people on the frontlines, and people outside looking in. It is interesting; if there are a few tens of thousands of foreign fighters, what is going to happen? How many are religious fanatics? Assad would have them all killed and its seems that there are many that would fight to the death for a piece of Syria, if not a chunk of the region in time. What about the Syrians? Are you telling me that there are no more moderate citizen activists on both sides calling for a resolution and reconciliation? Read the angryarab but take it with a grain of salt.

 

[dripdripsplash]

An Islamic Battalions message to the Kurds of the World and Syria.

Arabic only.

I'll translate (paraphrasing): We as Muslims should put our differences aside and fight together against Bashar and his allies. Also an invitation to all Kurds to join the Jihad in Syria.

Seems like the Kurds is too valuable an asset too lose to Bashar or stay at war with.

Oh and Norway rejects US request to destroy Syrian chemical weapons

EDIT: Oh I forgot. Theres also a Kurd talking, if anyone is able to translate that'd be awesome.

EDIT: I FORGOT THE DAMN LINK AGAIN. SORRY.

 

[liger05]

An Islamic Battalions message to the Kurds of the World and Syria.

Arabic only.

I'll translate (paraphrasing): We as Muslims should put our differences aside and fight together against Bashar and his allies. Also an invitation to all Kurds to join the Jihad in Syria.

Seems like the Kurds is too valuable an asset too lose to Bashar or stay at war with.

Oh and Norway rejects US request to destroy Syrian chemical weapons

EDIT: Oh I forgot. Theres also a Kurd talking, if anyone is able to translate that'd be awesome.

EDIT: I FORGOT THE DAMN LINK AGAIN. SORRY.

There are kurdish Islamic brigades fighting against Assad and the YPG forces who have been helping Assad for months.

Syrian cooking cat meat to eat. That's how desperate people are yet people want some sort of reconciliation with Assad. Laughable.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gPLD3P...top_uri=/watch?v=gPLD3Pv7fs0&feature=youtu.be

 

[General Choomin]

There are kurdish Islamic brigades fighting against Assad and the YPG forces who have been helping Assad for months.

Syrian cooking cat meat to eat. That's how desperate people are yet people want some sort of reconciliation with Assad. Laughable.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gPLD3P...top_uri=/watch?v=gPLD3Pv7fs0&feature=youtu.be

What? Did the terrorists run out of human livers and hearts to eat? Why don't you go to Syria and fight your jihad there you terrorist lover. Only you want this senseless war to continue. A war started by outside propaganda and outside money pushed poor farmers in economic trouble due to a two year drought to fight the government that over 70% of the Syrian people support.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

Interesting reaction to news of people being driven into starvation.

 

[General Choomin]

Interesting reaction to news of people being driven into starvation.

The Syrian government has over 60% of the population under it's control with only 40% of the land while the terrorists have control of 60% of the land but only 40% of the people. They can get all the bombs and bullets they want from Turkey, Israel, and Jordan but they seem to not give a crap about adminstrating the area they have by providing basic things like bread and clean water.

They do, however, love to eat livers and hearts of the people they murder. That's simply a fact. This is all the terrorists faults. You don't hear about any of the foreigners who bring polio to Syrian kids starving. That's because they loot any food the civilians have and claim it for the "resistance".

They are nothing but thugs who hate peace and want the people to suffer even more. That's why they won't even entertain the thought of joining a peace conference set up by all the major nations.

But keep on supporting the scum Wahhabi salafi terrorists.

 

[liger05]

The Syrian government has over 60% of the population under it's control with only 40% of the land while the terrorists have control of 60% of the land but only 40% of the people. They can get all the bombs and bullets they want from Turkey, Israel, and Jordan but they seem to not give a crap about adminstrating the area they have by providing basic things like bread and clean water.

They do, however, love to eat livers and hearts of the people they murder. That's simply a fact. This is all the terrorists faults. You don't hear about any of the foreigners who bring polio to Syrian kids starving. That's because they loot any food the civilians have and claim it for the "resistance".

They are nothing but thugs who hate peace and want the people to suffer even more. That's why they won't even entertain the thought of joining a peace conference set up by all the major nations.

But keep on supporting the scum Wahhabi salafi terrorists.

The amount of shit that comes from your mouth is amazing considering you can't get enough off Assad's dick.

The idea you care about the people yet support a murderous tyrant is beyond a joke just as is some western supported so called peace conference which is simply another tool to protect the regime.

Aid distribution in the ISIS held town of Azaz.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbAWmNUJz9Q&feature=youtu.be

 

[CHEEZMO™]

And let's not forget who it was that spent months bombing bakeries and sanitation facilities, or literally carrying out scorched Earth tactics as they emptied granaries and burned farms and their crop fields when they were pulling out of an area. Where was your frothing outrage in the several months this was going on?

Bashar is a monster who will siege people into annihilation, just like his cunt of a father.

I guess every tyrant needs his bootlickers.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

They really pulled out all the stops on this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtpHS-yAU9Q
Jaish (Liwa) al-Islam compilation of previous operations, with locations and subs to boot.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

Phillip Smyth has a new profile up, this time about Sariyya al-Tali’a al-Khurasani.

 

[General Choomin]

The amount of shit that comes from your mouth is amazing considering you can't get enough off Assad's dick.

So in addition to supporting terrorists and having a pathetic idea of what an actual government should be, you are now using homophobic accusations to attack me. You're a big man liger!

 

[liger05]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/30/uk-syria-crisis-hunger-insight-idUKBRE99T07M20131030

(Reuters) - One Syrian security official called it the "Starvation Until Submission Campaign", blocking food and medicine from entering and people from leaving besieged areas of Syria.

Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have used partial sieges to root out rebel forces from residential areas during the civil war. But a recent tightening of blockades around areas near the capital is causing starvation and death, residents and medical staff say.

At an army checkpoint that separates government-held central Damascus from eastern suburban towns earlier this month, a thin, teenage boy on a bicycle circled a soldier and begged to be allowed to take a bag of pita bread, a staple food, into the eastern suburbs. The soldier refused but the boy kept begging for "just one loaf".


The soldier finally shouted: "I'm telling you, not a single morsel is allowed in there. I don't make the rules. There are those bigger than me and you who make the rules and they're watching us right now. So go back home." The soldier, visibly upset, exhaled quietly and deeply when the boy slipped out of sight.

The incident illustrates how blockades are being used as a weapon in a war that grew out of pro-democracy protests in the summer of 2011, increasing an already grave humanitarian crisis. Blockades are employed mostly by the government but also on a smaller scale by the armed opposition.

Food and medicine, which could be used by the warring parties, are rarely allowed to enter besieged areas and the movement of civilians in and out is restricted.

Over one million Syrians are trapped in areas where aid deliveries have stalled, the United Nations says.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report last month that half of those people are in rural Damascus and around 310,000 people more trapped in Homs province in central Syria.

Waiting for the inevitable post which says this is all lies and the regime has done nothing wrong.

 

[CHEEZMO™]

It's okay, every single one of the people under siege is a CIA Psy-ops ZioTakfiri from Afsaudisia.

 

[General Choomin]

It's okay, every single one of the people under siege is a CIA Psy-ops ZioTakfiri from Afsaudisia.

Nice straw man. Maybe you can imply that people who disagree with you are homosexuals who love dictators like liger does.

It's funny how the terrorists control most of the border crossings and 60% of the land and have less people under their control yet they have a famine problem. I guess you expect the government to feed foreign terrorists who decapitate christians and kill people who don't pray right while using the women as comfort women for their wahhabbi jihad.

 

[liger05]

Nice straw man. Maybe you can imply that people who disagree with you are homosexuals who love dictators like liger does.

It's funny how the terrorists control most of the border crossings and 60% of the land and have less people under their control yet they have a famine problem. I guess you expect the government to feed foreign terrorists who decapitate christians and kill people who don't pray right while using the women as comfort women for their wahhabbi jihad.

You must must trolling. I wasn't calling you a homosexual just one that seems incapable of any balance due to your love in for everything Assad and Co.

If you don't think it's the government's responsibility to ensure its citizens don't starve to death then clearly your mental. Or is it simply you really do believe that all those besieged in Homs and other areas are foreign terrorists as you call them. The regime you seem to love so much had no issue seeing civilians starve simply cos they lost any particular area to the rebels. I'm not shocked though as tyrants do crazy things in there quest to hold onto power.

As usual you ignore any post which dares to mention the Shia militia in Syria. You seem to love talking about foreign terrorists but never seem to mention the Shia from Iran, Iraq or Lebanon. Care to explain why?

 

[ModBot]

This is why we can't have nice things. Clearly the OT has outlived its usefulness; make new threads for specific new news.