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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSolidarity is not a Crime. Listen to Syrians!
As members of an organization committed to peace and justice, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of Syria (CISPOS), it was disheartening for us to see an article in Huffington Post that falsely alleges that we are working in sync with neocon warhawks to produce and sustain a perpetual state of U.S. war. Coleen Rowley and Margaret Sarfehjooys article Selling Peace Groups on US-Led Wars does not provide insightful analysis and is constructed on unfounded claims.
The article is fallout from the widespread controversy in the peace movement over how to respond to the brutal war in Syria.
Many anti-war pundits and activists have bought into U.S. propaganda that the U.S. is actively supporting the Syrian rebels to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria. They point to the 1997 Project for a New American Century plan for regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. They believed Hillary Clinton in 2012 when she said the Assad regime must go and that the international community stands with the Syrian people. In fact
the U.S. has given very little training, small weapons, and funds to very few rebel groups. Congress recently dropped $300 million for the Syrian rebels from the defense bill, almost completely cutting what the Syrian opposition already saw as paltry support from the U.S. On the other hand, the CIA has long had a working relationship with Assad, sending him numerous terrorist suspects to torture as part of their rendition program. Assad has provided Israel with a secure border.
Talk with Syrians and youll learn that U.S. aid was never enough to counter Assads MiGs, attack helicopters, Scud missiles, heavy tanks, chemical weapons. They repeatedly state that the U.S. bombing of ISIS has helped Assad the bombing has sometimes targeted groups aligned with anti-Assad forces and never hit the regime. Syrians too initially believed Clintons promises but have been repeatedly disappointed in the support from the U.S. and the international community.
Syrians will tell you that the people who rose up against Assad in early 2011 were not the traditional opposition leaders that the U.S. had met with. The uprising was indigenous not foreign terrorists as Assad has claimed.
In the 1980s, peace organizations worked in solidarity with Central Americans who struggled to rid their countries of repressive regimes. We LISTENED to their voices. Today too many activists have NOT listened to Syrians. They have gotten their information from pro-Assad propaganda sites like Global Research, Consortium News, Mint Press, RT (Russian TV), Press TV (Iranian TV). Like Rowley and Sarfehjooy, many in the peace movement interpret the Syrian conflict as the U.S. trying to overthrow the anti-imperialist Assad regime. Most Syrians will tell you that is not true.
Rowley and Sarfehjooy disparagingly refer to local Syrian Americans as expatriates, dismissing their authority to speak on Syria. Rowley and Sarfehjooy have attacked our Committee in Solidarity with the People of Syria (CISPOS) and Friends for a NonViolent World (FNVW) for hosting events with local Syrian Americans. They claim that FNVW and CISPOS are promoting war by hosting speakers who demonize the Syrian government of Bashar Assad and thereby justify U.S. intervention. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Eighteen other Twin Cities church, peace and university groups have hosted the very same local Syrian American speakers as FNVW and CISPOS. These include:
Amnesty International (Minneapolis chapter), Arab American Cultural Institute, Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota, Al Madinah Cultural Center, French Culture and Language Association, Global Solutions, Northwest Neighbors for Peace, the Carleton community, Minnesota Peace Project, Presbyterian Church of the Apostles, Yale School of Public Health, Arab Film Fest, University of Minnesotas Human Rights Program, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, Middle East Peace Now, St. Luke Presbyterian Church, Minnesota Independent Scholars Program, Mizna.
Are those organizations also complicit in promoting U.S. military intervention? Of course not.
Rowley and Sarfehjooys organization, Women Against Military Madness, and their frequent co-sponsor, the Anti-War Committee, are the only Twin Cities organizations to hold Syria events without local Syrian Americans. Instead, WAMMs Syria events have featured their own members (who have no Syria expertise), Assad apologist Mother Agnes, and Matar Matar from the pro-Assad Syrian American Forum. They have refused to include any Syria events on their calendar from the above eighteen organizations.
Recently thirteen local Syrian Americans sent a letter to WAMM politely requesting that their November event on Syria (WAMMs fifth event) include a Syrian. They did not receive a response.
U.S. military intervention is NOT the only response to Assads brutal police state and his monstrous war crimes. FNVW and CISPOS helped organize an International Solidarity Hunger Strike to pressure the UN to allow unhampered access for humanitarian agencies to deliver food to besieged areas of Syria. Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Medea Benjamin, Kathy Kelley, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and many other activists endorsed the hunger strike.
These two groups (CISPOS and FNVW) have organized fundraising events for medical aid to Syria. FNVW held an Olives & Herbs lunch in solidarity with starving Syrians who have subsisted on only those foods for months. CISPOS members have gone to anti-U.S. intervention demonstrations with signs that say, No to U.S. Bombing! Stop Assads Bombing! and No Drones! No Barrel Bombs! Their recent forum featured Syrian American Mohja Kahfs important, well-researched presentation on nonviolent activism in Syria from the beginnings of the revolution to the present. (Mohja Kahf on Vimeo)
The source of the problem is familiar to those with knowledge of the history of sectarian disagreements on the left. The strong condemnations from Rowley and Sarfehjooys article did not come from a vacuum. For the last three years, the presence of members of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (frso.org), a dogmatic Stalinist sect, on WAMMs board and the influence of their ideology has resulted in increased intolerance from the WAMM board towards anyone with a differing viewpoint.
Freedom Road has publicly taken a position in support of the Assad government in Syria. FRSO leader Joe Iosbaker has stated that the Syrian government ought to be defended. (8/4/13) He traveled to Syria in June as part of a delegation to certify Assads fraudulent re-election in the midst of the bloodiest war on the planet. Iosbaker returned to claim that he had witnessed democratic elections where Assad was given the mandate by the people of Syria. (6/4/14)
While WAMM for decades was a respected democratic, feminist organization, its recent actions have abandoned those roots and generated discord within the Twin Cities peace community.
After four years of the Syrian conflict, it is unacceptable for us to say its too complicated. We must not be complicit with the war crimes of the Assad regime by our silence. Listen to Syrians. Learn the facts. We can stand in solidarity with their epic struggle for freedom and dignity AND, at the same time, oppose U.S. military intervention.
PeaceForce
(1 post)Great to read an article about Syria from people who know what they're talking about! Thanks CISPOS!
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Nice to see a new storefront at DU. Enjoy your visit.
MNmom
(164 posts)Nowhere do we advocate for war. We're advocating for people to be informed about Syria...one of the biggest myths is that the US is supporting the rebels for regime change. Another myth is that ISIS is the most brutal force and that Assad can help defeat ISIS - wrong! Assad is a thousand times more brutal than ISIS and helped in its growth.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)MNmom
(164 posts)You have no informed objections to the article.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)here's more straight dope on CISPOS's "just wanting peace"
In Minneapolis, FNVW and its spin-off CISPOS hosted several events with Syrian expats who were on record as supporting the U.S. bombing of their country. (This isnt only happening in the U.S. In April 2011, a Vancouver peace group documented its objection to the fact that other Canadian peace groups were sponsoring speakers who justified and advocated in favour of the NATO bombing of Libya.)
Often Syrian experts speaking to peace groups, such as FNVW/CISPOSs upcoming speaker, Mohja Kahf, have ties to the early destabilization of Syria. This American Prospect article documents how Najib Ghadbian, Kahfs husband of over 20 years (apparently up to last year when they divorced) was one of the Syrian dissidents who attended the early 2006 meeting with Liz Cheney (then-Vice President Dick Cheneys daughter), along with other Syrian dissidents to plan how to destabilize Syria and topple its government. Like some Syrian version of Ahmed Chalabi, the neocons choice to run post-invasion Iraq, Kahfs husband apparently got himself invited to Liz Cheneys Iran-Syria Operations Group by having signed the Damascus Declaration in 2005, the year before.
...
Resources for information on Syria often come from citizen journalists with deep ties to neocons and U.S. government sources. From the State Departments website , the $330 million in support for the Syrian opposition includes training for networks of citizen journalists, bloggers and cyber-activists to support their documentation and dissemination of information on developments in Syria. Syrian dissidents received funding from the Los Angeles-based Democracy Council, which ran a Syria-related program called the Civil Society Strengthening Initiative funded with $6.3 million from the State Department. The program is described as a discrete collaborative effort between the Democracy Council and local partners to produce, among other things, various broadcast concepts.
James Prince, the founder and President of the Democracy Council, is also an adviser to CyberDissidents.org , a project created in 2008 by the Jerusalem-based Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, founded and funded by Sheldon Adelson, a patron and confidant of Benjamin Netanyahu.
https://consortiumnews.com/2014/12/25/selling-peace-groups-on-us-led-wars/
I'll believe Coleen Rowley over Random Internet Schlepp Who Waltzes Onto DU and Tells Us How Wrong We Are With a Handful of Posts #5219; thanks to KoKo for the link
MNmom
(164 posts)Eighteen other church, peace and university organizations sponsored the very same Syrian American speakers that CISPOS did:
Amnesty International (Minneapolis chapter), Arab American Cultural Institute, Human Rights Program at the University of Minnesota, Al Madinah Cultural Center, French Culture and Language Association, Global Solutions, Northwest Neighbors for Peace, the Carleton community, Minnesota Peace Project, Presbyterian Church of the Apostles, Yale School of Public Health, Arab Film Fest, University of Minnesotas Human Rights Program, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, Middle East Peace Now, St. Luke Presbyterian Church, Minnesota Independent Scholars Program, Mizna.
The speaking events did NOT promote U.S. bombing - they were informational events about the history of Syria and the present conflict.
Earlier many Syrians thought that the U.S. could help the Syrian people - by bombing Assad's runways to stop his MiG's and attack helicopters. Most now understand that any U.S. intervention will not be to help the Syrian people, as in the disastrous US bombing campaign against ISIS, which is helping Assad and killing many civilians.
MNmom
(164 posts)to ascribe the views of her ex-husband to Mohja Kahf. Kahf has a significant body of work of her own - she's a writer whose writings can be found at Fellowship of Reconciliation. She's an activist in the Syrian Nonviolence Movement and - surprise, surprise!!! - doesn't share the views of her ex-husband.
Also, it is Assad propaganda that the US was behind the uprising. Read Kahf's well-researched piece on the nonviolent beginnings of the Syrian uprising and the ensuing armed struggle.
http://www.fnvw.org/vertical/Sites/%7B8182BD6D-7C3B-4C35-B7F8-F4FD486C7CBD%7D/uploads/Syria_Special_Report-web.pdf
Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)(except the larger ones in the one paragraph of course)
I did follow the news (multiple sources, some local) on what was happening in Syria when the uprising happened and for about a year afterwards. Off and on since then. I noticed for myself the nonsense with the punditry's disinformation and propaganda, similar to what's related here.
If you have, offhand, any sources of information to recommend, I'd be interested in checking them out. I'm on Twitter too, if you can rec someone to follow.
Thanks.
MNmom
(164 posts)http://www.syriadeeply.org/ Syria Deeply They are also on Twitter.
On facebook there are a number of sites with reporting directly from Syria.
Palestinian Camps Network
Radio Free Syria
We repost information about Syria on our Cispos: Committee in Solidarity with the People of Syria facebook page.
Thanks for your interest!
Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)but the rest are new to me. EA News I like a lot already, on first glance. I will locate your group too, on Facebook.
Looking at my Syria list on Twitter I remembered one of my favorite sources, not news as such but background, to possibly trade back to you: Matt VanDyke, he's a local guy from near where I live and has made a couple of compelling documentaries on Syria and his experiences in Libya.
Below, his first film about a Syrian woman teacher-turned-journalist called "Not Anymore" which won a ton of awards, and the second video is a 20 minute TYT interview which contains the entire trailer for his new film, his own coming of age story which happened to take place in Libya during its revolution, called "Point and Shoot", it won Tribeca 2014 for documentaries. The trailer begins at 36 seconds in, but the interview is pretty interesting too.
I believe he's currently in Iraq overseeing aid distribution, collected here.
https://twitter.com/Matt_VanDyke
MNmom
(164 posts)I don't think I'd seen Not Anymore - powerful film. I'll watch the Libyan one later - I'm going out now. It's so hard to understand how many in the "peace movement" have no empathy, no concern for the Syrian people.
btrflykng9
(287 posts)I will look into these groups further as I have time.
I value your knowledge on this topic and willingness to share your thoughts.
MNmom
(164 posts)Isis is getting all media coverage now while the Assad regime every day is committing war crimes. They're just not reported in the Western media.
EndWarNow
(3 posts)haven't taken a stronger stand against Assad's war crimes. It's mind boggling that some "peace" groups have brought in pro-Assad speakers - disgraceful!!!! Thanks for your post and your work, MNmom!