Syria’s Women Are Targets of Abuse and Torture. The Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network tells the BBC that more than 6,000 women have been raped since the start of the conflict, with others targeted by snipers and used as human shields.
“They are being used as privilege, not in the sense that they are favoured, but because sometimes of their relationship to opposition members or government-related members,” EMHRN spokeswoman Hayet Zeghiche told the BBC.
“The report also says the kidnapping of women has also become a strategy of exchanging prisoners and exacting revenge, and that the nature of the crimes, such as rape and gang rape, leaves many women isolated.”
Turks Worry as Sons Fight in Syria. Daren Butler reports for Reuters on young Turkish men from the city of Sanliurfa, near the border, leaving home to fight with the jihad in northern Syria.
“Abu Huseyin says he has sent dozens of people from this ancient city in southeastern Turkey to join jihadist groups in northern Syria and vows to continue helping them fulfill what he says is their duty to God,” he writes.
“Several hundred Turks are estimated to be among thousands of foreigners swelling the ranks of Islamist rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, generating what some politicians say is a risk that, radicalized and battle-hardened, they could one day return to stage attacks on Turkish soil.”
Over the weekend Bloomberg News looked at Islamists settling on the Turkish-Syrian border.
Friction Between Iranian, Syrian Soldiers Surfaces. Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper reports on signs of rising tension between Iranian and Syrian government forces.
“A pro-Syrian opposition website has published footage on YouTube of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander in Syria criticizing the callous behavior of the Assad regime’s forces toward the Syrian people,” it writes. “One clip shows commander Esmail Heydari, who was killed in an ambush in Aleppo province in August along with the filmmaker who recorded the footage, complaining of the ‘bad habits’ of Syrian troops.
“’I feel that some of the problems here [in Syria] stem from a cultural problem created by the army,’ Heydari says in the video, comparing the behavior of Syrian forces to that of the Iranian military under Iran’s former shah, who is widely reviled in the Islamic Republic and regarded as an oppressive dictator.”
Lebanon’s Cannabis Trade Booming in Shadow of Syrian War. With Lebanese forces tied up along the Syrian border, the country’s illicit marijuana industry has been left to grow and thrive.
“This year, the harvest was abundant, and the authorities have left us alone because they are otherwise occupied,” a pot grower in the eastern Bekaa region tells the AFP. “In the past, the Lebanese army would descend annually to destroy some of the illicit crop, but this year the harvest has gone untouched … All along the winding roads of the Shiite hamlet, men and women work on the crop behind half-closed curtains, and defend the industry as their only source of employment.”
Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team:
CBS: Childhood Lost to Syria’s War
WSJ: Ahead of Syria Talks, Local Truces Falter
AP: Two Swedish Journalists Abducted in Syria