"With this faith we will be able to hew out of the
mountain of despair a stone of hope." (inscribed on the MLK Memorial, pictured left)
It’s been fifty years since the Civil Rights Movement
reached its critical turning point with Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a
Dream” speech. Pop culture, the media and people everywhere are reflecting on
that historic August day in 1963 when hundreds of thousands of Americans
rallied in what would become the largest human rights demonstration in U.S.
history.
Dr. King fought for racial harmony and social and economic
justice for millions of black Americans during a time of segregation and
discrimination deeply rooted in racist attitudes within the spirit of “separate
but equal” rhetoric. Looking back with the luxury of hindsight, these
sentiments were an embarrassing period in American history, one that Dr. King fought
to amend. As many other commentators before me have stated, we should always
remember MLK’s calls for nonviolent change that advances all people, and how
his leadership extended to millions with courage, poise and dignity.
We have come to the point on this blog, I feel, where Syria needs no introduction. Things have been escalating for months, even years now, and the death toll has surpassed 100,000 faster than many similar conflicts in the past. Vicky wrote last Wednesday about the newest development in the never-ending Syrian tragedy: the alleged use of chemical weapons. As Vicky mentioned, these are as of now allegations; the UN is investigating them as I write this article, and, as Vicky also mentioned, any UN results from the investigation will not include whether it was Asad's troops or rebel soldiers that actually used the chemical weapons.
The videos are heart-wrenching
to watch: a young boy, screaming and crying with other children in the street
while bodies lie around them. A young man convulses uncontrollably, while
others are sprawled in the halls of what appears to be an overwhelmed medical
clinic; some still shake and show signs of life, others are clearly dead. In
what has become a hallmark of videos of massacres in Syria, makeshift morgues
lined with scores of corpses leave no doubt that a massive attack has taken
place. The surviving victims display many of the hallmark symptoms of sarin gas
exposure: convulsions, foaming at the mouth, and dilated pupils, and the scale
of the casualties only add weight to this conjecture.
Videos
of the attack today in the Ghouta region east of Damascus killing hundreds of
civilians will test the United States’ ability to stay out of the two-year-old
civil war in Syria. Opposition leaders have already pointed their fingers at
beleaguered president and war criminal Bashar al-Asad. US Pres. Barack Obama
has previously listed chemical attacks as a “red line” that, if crossed, would
automatically trigger American intervention. Yet despite confirming that it had
“conclusive evidence”of such an attack in June, the government has yet to
deliver the promised military aid to rebel groups. The amount of footage from
today’s alleged attack makes it difficult to dispute that something horrific
has taken place in Ghouta, yet there is little reason to believe a Western
response will go much further than rhetoric and promises of aid.
The
Asad regime denies that such an attack took place – and if it did, the
government insists that it was at the hands of the opposition. There is, for
once, good reason to be suspicious of the attack: it took place just a few miles
from where the United Nations chemical weapons inspection team is staying in
Damascus, after having arrived in Syria on Sunday. It seems counterintuitive
that Asad would order an attack on a location that can be so easily and
immediately accessed by UN inspectors, especially so soon after their arrival. The
Asad regime has also been winning important battles using conventional methods,
and there seems to be no good strategic reason that it would shift tactics now.
In the chemical weapons attacks earlier this summer, evidence pointed not only
to the regime’s use of sarin, but also to likely rebel use against government
forces. Both groups claim the other is trying to frame them, and both may be
right. If this is the case in Ghouta, then rebel groups murdered hundreds of
their own supporters in order to gain Western support in the seemingly
never-ending war against Asad, an unthinkable action.
A man lays an infant to rest among scores of victims. Courtesy AP.
Then
again, the Asad regime could be growing increasingly confident that even if the
UN team confirms the use of sarin, Western governments will still stay out of
the Syrian civil war. Asad is many things, but an idiot isn’t one of them; he
can sense as well as anyone else American and European reluctance to get
involved in what would be a messy intervention, at a cost of billions of
dollars to their already unbalanced budgets, not to mention on the side of
rebels who may or may not end up supporting Western interests if they were to
gain power. After all, the “conclusive evidence” of the sarin attacks earlier
this summer cited by the American government has failed to provoke even the
delivery of military aid, let alone boots on the ground.
The
UN teams must answer questions of who is culpable for the attacks swiftly if
there is to be hope of outside intervention. The conflict has already caused
human suffering at a pace and scale that is unprecedented in regional history:
over 100,000 have died in the civil war, and more than half of Syria’s
population has been displaced both internally and abroad. The addition of
chemical weapons will devastate an already shattered country, and lessen the
likelihood of a peaceful transition when the dust clears. In the worst case
scenario, chemical weapons alongside conventional warfare will render the
country Syria a barren failed state, with stronghold controlled by warlords
where massacres and human rights violations regularly take place. In the best,
a timely intervention by outside forces to establish No-Fly Zones and safe
havens for civilians while assisting the rebels to win militarily or force the
regime to the negotiating table would at least leave Syria intact as a country.
At this point in the conflict, that’s the best we can hope for, and that is
nearly as depressing as the West’s lack of intervention for the last two years.
In the digital age of growing government and corporate
surveillance all across the world, the Internet remains a crucial medium of
everyday life. E-mail, social networks, digital media and seemingly unlimited
data allow us to connect with the people and things we love whenever we want. Through the internet we can all be publishers and the world
can be our audience, and our personal information has never been more valuable.
At the same time, our privacy and anonymity are
increasingly coming under attack. Our personal data and information have never
been more sought after by both states and corporations, and human rights groups are
often the primary targets (as was recognised in this recent landmark UN report).
Finally, after two weeks, most U.S. diplomatic posts throughout the Middle East and northern parts of Africa that were closed amidst nebulous terrorist threats will reopen this week. After U.S. intelligence picked up phone conversations between two high-ranking members of al Qaeda (conveniently so, as now we have specific justification for why NSA and other U.S. intel groups do the things they do), these diplomatic posts were promptly shuttered - in some instances, such as in Yemen, U.S. diplomats were flown out of the country and into safer territory. It has been remarkable to see how quickly the State Department reacted to these threats, and how seriously they took them. And therefore, perhaps, what we've seen over the past two weeks is simply how effective terrorism still is and how relevant it will continue to be going forward.
The West African country Mali may
find hope at last in moving forward from its most recent conflict. Early last
year an ethnic-based group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad
(MNLA) rebelled against the government and joined with various Islamist groups
to create a separate state for the Tuareg people in the north Mali region. By
March 2012 factions of the military, dissatisfied with the government’s
response to the rebellion, ousted President Amadou Toumani Touré in a coup
d’état.Shortly thereafter, the MNLA
claimed the conquered territories of North Mali as an independent state, while the
Islamist groups began to travel southward, hoping to establish shari’a law throughout the country. Even
though the international community pledged to respond in October 2012, it
wasn’t until France decided to lead the intervention in January 2013 that the
country began to recover lost ground. Now, 18 months since the last president
was overthrown, the country is able to improve its conditions with new
leadership to guide development and recovery.
In Yemen, the custom of early marriage just met a vocal challenger.
Going viral last week was a video of 11-year-old Nada al-Ahdal ranting about her parents’ decision to forcibly marry her off to a much older man. “What have the children done wrong? Why do you marry them off like that?” she asks the camera rhetorically. Her powerful, candid words touch a delicate nerve amongst Yemenis, some of whom still continue this custom. Just how many? According to a 2006 joint report by the Ministry of Public Health and Population, the Pan-Arab Project for Family Health and UNICEF, early marriage is widely practiced: 52% of Yemeni women and girls are married by the time they turn 18.
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