Syrians Vote in Presidential Election

The AP reports that polls opened this morning in Syria’s government-held areas amid tight security for the country’s first multi-candidate election in four decades, which incumbent Bashar Assad is widely expected to win.

“The Syrian opposition and government critics have denounced the vote as a sham. Syria’s two main internal opposition groups are boycotting the vote while many activists around the country refer to it as ‘blood elections,’” the wire says. “The balloting is taking place only in areas under government control as much of northern and eastern Syria is in rebel hands.”

Assad is running for a third seven-year term and faces two challengers, Maher Hajjar and Hassan al-Nouri, both of whom have been approved by the regime.

The BBC reports that they “are not widely known and have been unable to campaign on an equal footing with the president.”

Meanwhile, The Guardian reports that Facebook is facing pressure from human rights groups to refuse access to the Assad campaign during the election.

“The Syria Campaign on Monday launched an online petition, calling on the social-media giant to cut off Assad’s Sawa (meaning ‘together’ in Arabic) campaign. The Sawa Facebook site, launched on May 20, has so far attracted more than 200,000 “likes”. Advertisements for the Sawa campaign briefly appeared alongside some people’s Facebook pages, depending on their likes and interests; according to the activists, such ads have appeared alongside the pages of Syrians who stand against the Assad regime.”

Rebel Fire on Regime-Held Aleppo Kills More Than 50 People in Two Days

AFP reports that rebels increased their attacks on Aleppo’s government-held areas in the days leading up to today’s election, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying they killed 54 people on Monday and over the weekend.

Meanwhile, Syrian state media reports that 10 died Monday in a truck bomb attack in the central province of Homs, in an area where government forces had recently made gains.

Syria Conflict Spawning ‘New Generation of Terrorists,’ Report Warns

A new report from the Soufan Group, a private security company, says that in just three years,12,000 foreign fighters have traveled to fight in Syria, a sharp increase from the 7,000 estimated at the start of the year by U.S. and Israeli officials.

“The civil war in Syria already appears to have drawn more foreign fighters than the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and may prove an even more dangerous incubator for terrorism in the long run,” writes Karl Vick of TIME magazine.

According to Vick, “The greatest concern about terrorism resides in the perhaps 3,000 fighters the report says traveled to Syria from Western countries to fight with rebel groups dominated by Islamic extremists. Though arrayed against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Iranian allies, the fundamentalists might in time choose to direct violence against Western targets, ‘the far enemy’ in the parlance of al-Qaeda — and recruit those battle-hardened foreign fighters to return to their home countries and carry out attacks.”

In a similar vein, The New York Times reports on France’s arrest of three of its citizens attempting to get to Syria to wage jihad.

“They had not harmed anyone in France or made plans to do so, according to the evidence at their trial in January, but in France these days, seeking to fight in Syria is enough to bring a charge of plotting terrorism — and in this case sentences of three to five years in prison,” writes Alissa Rubin.

“France, and much of Europe, have grown steadily more concerned over the past year about the possibility that the main terrorist threat could come from their own citizens, European passport holders who can move relatively easily between their homelands and the battlefields of Syria, where Islamist rebel groups are fighting the government.”

Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team

Guardian: Syria Election: A Stage-Managed Show of Democracy by Assad

VICE: Syria’s Election is a Cruel Farce

Reuters: Russia Signals Opposition to Western-Backed Syria Aid Plan

BBC: Syria Election: A Ballot Amid a Battle