Syrian Activists Say U.S. Journalist Is No Spy (Nir Rosen)

[tabatha]

Syrian activists in the city of Homs, who are struggling to draw attention to what they describe as a continued assault by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad on rebellious districts, took time out from that work on Thursday to issue a statement defending an American journalist accused of spying on them for the government.

The journalist, Nir Rosen, has reported from Iraq for several American publications, including The New York Times Magazine, and he recently spent four months in Syria, writing and filming for Al Jazeera. Last week, when e-mails copied by activists from what was said to be Mr. Assad’s private account were published by The Guardian and Al Arabiya, some notes from and about Mr. Rosen were discovered among the correspondence.

Although nothing Mr. Rosen wrote to the Syrian president’s media advisers was that unusual, some supporters of the uprising took the notes about him as evidence that he had betrayed the revolution, and his colleagues, by drawing the government’s attention to the work of other foreign journalists who had entered the Baba Amr district of Homs without permission.

In one e-mail, Mr. Rosen sent the advisers a link to a report by Paul Wood, a BBC correspondent who was smuggled into Homs by activists in November. In another note sent the same week, Khaled al-Ahmed, an adviser to the president, wrote: “Nir Rosen was also able to penetrate Baba Amr,” adding “he personally informed me that several Western journalists entered the area via illegal routes and from the Lebanese border. Among the media envoys are a French and a German journalist.”

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/syrian-activists-say-u-s-journalist-is-no-spy/?smid=tw-thelede&seid=auto

Prior to the reports of charges of spying that were derived/interpreted from the released emails (that I posted), I had used excerpts from Nir Rosen's Al Jazeera article to support the contention that the activists were struggling to get arms - i.e that the only arms they were getting were bought on the black market or from regime troops or were obtained from defectors. That is what Rosen wrote in one of his articles, and which supported the notion that there was no external support for the activists. Additionally, a paper reporter covering that area, has stated that the rumored tanks etc on the border were simply not true. None had been independently verified.

But, the arms situation may have changed after Syria refused to adhere to the Arab League proposal, possibly by Saudi Arabia - there is no confirmation. There is still no "lethal" support from the West.