Category: syria

The battle of Aleppo is creating a disgusting future for war

Not that war is pretty anyway…

Usually, I try to keep it chill on the Sundry Letter, but as history unfolds, one must take note. 

The Battle of Solferino that took place in June 1859 left 40 000 Italian, French and Austrian soldiers dead or wounded. Henry Dunant was there and he spent his time tending to the wounded. The reflections he wrote then led to the founding of the Red Cross.

Paul Mason for The Guardian: 

Solferino inspired the principle that hospitals and army medical personnel are not a legitimate target in war. Today, with the bombing of hospitals by the Russians in Syria, the Saudis in Yemen and the Americans in Afghanistan, those who provide medical aid in war believe that principle is in ruins.

Unlikely seeds of democracy in Syria

Robin Yassin-Kassab, reporting for The National: 

Daraya, a suburb west of Damascus now suffering its fourth year under starvation siege, is run by a council. Its 120 members select executives by vote every six months. The council head is chosen by public election. The council runs schools, a hospital,and a public kitchen, and manages urban agricultural production. Its office supervises the Free Syrian Army militias defending the town. Amid constant bombardment, Daraya’s citizen journalists produce a newspaper, Enab Baladi, which promotes non-violent resistance. In a country once known as a ‘kingdom of silence’, there are more than 60 independent newspapers and many free radio stations.”

And: 

Towns could legislate locally according to their demographic and cultural composition and mood. The alternative to enhanced local control is new borders, new ethnic cleanings, new wars. At the very least, the councils deserve political recognition by the United States and others. Council members should be a key presence on the opposition’s negotiating team at any talks.

Localism as an answer to the many woes brought upon by globalisation is not such a far-fetched idea. Mix this with Yaneer Bar-Yam’s idea on teamwork and we have something interesting. 

Syrian refugees design app for navigating German bureaucracy

‘In Syria, there was always a way to avoid bureaucracy, even if it meant paying a bit of extra money. Here, there is no way around the paperwork,’ Khattab said.

Read more on the Guardian from a couple of days ago. The app is brilliantly named Bureaucrazy. They need funds and coding support. 

Obama was going to war to back up a public threat, but he was doing so without knowing for sure who did what in the early morning of 21 August.

He must be thanking a whole array of gods that he didn’t go to war. The US already went to war because of wrong intel, let’s not do that again. Long but research piece. 

By consolidating its remaining regional assets, Iran may be trying to strengthen its hand in the nuclear poker game it is playing with the international community. At a time when Washington is engineering a rapprochement between Turkey and Israel – respectively Iran’s greatest rival and enemy in the region – it makes sense.

Hizbollah, for all its military might, has been dented by scandals and setbacks, and faces an uncertain future. Its leaders are probably realistic enough to know the Assads cannot win and that they could be left on the wrong side of history. Both Iran and Hizbollah may be reading shifts within the dynamic stalemate of the Syrian conflict itself.

An insightful piece in the FT on the situation in Lebanon and the supposed spillover of the Syrian civil war. The macroeconomic approach is interesting.