IO N IPT SC R SU B
SATURDAY, JULY 9, 2011
The problems faced by Kuwait jobseekers
No: 15144
SHAABAN 8, 1432 AH
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150 Fils
5West, 24 48 Arabs ‘remain mute’ as Syria burns Arab governments silence speaks volumes
Max 50º Min 33º
death toll mounts DAMASCUS: Syrian security forces opened fire on antiregime protests yesterday, killing at least 13 people, two of them in the capital Damascus, activists said. The continuing crackdown on opponents of Bashar Al-Assad came as the president’s regime accused US Ambassador Robert Ford, who had visited the city, of inciting violence. Opposition activists speaking to AFP separately by telephone reported five deaths in the central city of Homs, two in the capital’s commercial neighborhood Medan and six in the area of Dmeir, east of Damascus. In Homs, “at least five people were killed in the AlKhalidya neighborhood by security forces who opened fire against demonstrators,” said Abdel Karim Rihawi, who heads the Syrian League for Human Rights. “Security forces shot dead two demonstrators in the neighborhood of Medan in Damascus,” east of the capital,” he added. London-based Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said six people were killed in the area of Dmeir and that at least 24 people had been injured in Homs, some of them gravely. Rahman said at least 450,000 Syrians rallied after Friday prayers in Hama under the banner “No to dialogue” with Assad’s regime. The Hama demonstrators reiterated their “refusal to dialogue with the regime and called for its fall,” he said. Both US envoy Ford and French Ambassador Eric Chevallier visited Hama on Thursday. Yesterday, the regime accused Ford of meeting “saboteurs” there and inciting anti-Assad protests. “The US ambassador met with saboteurs in Hama ... who erected checkpoints, cut traffic and prevented citizens from going to work,” an interior ministry statement said. — SFP
Plane crash kills 59 KINSHASA: A plane carrying 112 people crashed as it attempted to land in stormy weather in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday, but at least 53 people have survived, the air company said. The plane, operated by Hewa Bora Airways, crashed at Kisangani airport in the northeast of the country. “We don’t know how many people are dead but there are at least 53 survivors from a total 112 passengers and personnel crew,” the airline’s director Stavros Papaioannou said. “The crew members of the Boeing 727 are the first (confirmed) dead,” he added. The plane was on its regular commercial route from Kinshasa to Kisangani and Goma when it was hit by the storm as it approached the airport, Lambert Mende, a spokesman for the local administration said. The heavy rains at the time hampered the rescue operation, he added. A plume of black smoke could be seen at the end of the runway, an AFP journalist reported. But flights, which had been suspended after the crash, resumed a short time later. Plane accidents frequently occur in DR Congo. A UN aircraft crashed as it tried to land in a storm in Kinshasa in April, killing 32. In August last year 20 people were killed after a plane flown by the head of a local airline crashed during landing in the west of the country. — AFP
CAIRO: Egyptian demonstrators rally in downtown Cairo’s Tahrir square yesterday, as thousands of Egyptians took to the streets across the country to defend the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, directing their anger at the new military rulers over the slow pace of reform.— AFP (See page 8)
CAIRO: Arab governments were swift to condemn Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in February when he tried to crush a popular uprising with machineguns and heavy artillery. Now, as Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad uses tanks and live bullets to smash a wave of street protests, the relative silence from Arab capitals speaks volumes. Such contrasting reactions may seem inconsistent. Syria and Libya are both police states built by former army officers who set themselves up as rivals to oil-producing Gulf States such as Saudi Arabia. Gaddafi derided the Gulf’s conservative monarchies. Assad struck up an alliance with Saudi foe Iran and helps it fund Shiite militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. But collapse of the Assad government would suggest the domino effect that toppled leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen has spread from North Africa into the heart of the Middle East, raising the risks for Syria’s neighbors. “The fall of the Syrian regime, along with a fall of the Yemeni regime, would mean a shift of the revolution to a region very close to the Gulf area,” said Nabil Abdel Fattah of Al Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. It seemed easier to abandon Gaddafi after
Libya burned its bridges with many Arab governments and he turned his attentions south, having himself named King of Kings of Africa. Syria has used a mixture of direct intervention and quiet diplomacy towards its neighbors to counter multiple threats in a volatile region. The result is that a future balance of power in the Middle East is hard to imagine without a Syria ruled by Assad. “Assad may not be the most well-liked of Arab leaders but he’s someone who many Arab governments have a working relation with, and in some cases a close relationship,” said Shadi Hamid, Director of Research at Brookings Doha Center. The Assad clan has spent decades cajoling events in the region in its favor through a combination of funding for sympathetic groups abroad and sanctions on others. That game of influence is starkest in Lebanon, where opponents say it closely manipulates the country’s politics to fit its agenda. Saudi Arabia accuses Damascus of ordering the assassination of Lebanon’s Sunni former Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri. The head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, voiced “worry” in June about the months-long clashes in Syria, but signaled
divisions in the 22-member body over how to proceed. He said Arab states were trying to agree a common position. “Even Saudi, which has been at loggerheads with Syria for decades, has stayed quiet because if Assad was overthrown that would be another victory for Arab publics that could spill over into the peninsula,” said Laleh Khalili, Senior Lecturer at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Like many of his neighbors, Assad sits atop an autocratic state that contains a melting pot of religious and tribal groups, many of which traverse boundaries set in colonial times. Syria’s 20 million population is mostly Sunni Muslim but Assad and many senior army figures belong to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The country also contains Christians and ethnically is made up of Arabs and Kurds. Opponents say Assad increasingly relies on loyalist Alawite troops and irregulars known as ‘shabbiha’ to put down the protests. For countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan, an overthrow of Assad could be one Arab revolution too many. “The fall of the Syrian regime would mean the sectarian and religious balances in the southern region would completely collapse,” said Abdel Fattah. — Reuters