BEIRUT — The streets of Beirut's working-class Sunni neighborhoods started filling up with all the signs of trouble by about 9 p.m. on Sunday night. Young men on scooters clustered together, barricading their neighborhoods with burning tires and overturned dumpsters. But even cynical observers of Lebanon's descent into chaos couldn't predict how bad it would get. The youths' fury stemmed from a killing earlier in the day of two prominent Sunni religious figures from north Lebanon, who died in a hail of bullets at an army checkpoint. But how and why the two men -- strong supporters of the Syrian rebellion just over the border -- were killed quickly became moot in the eyes of the frustrated young men of Beirut. The Army, long a ... Continue reading →
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DAMASCUS, Syria — For 48 hours, the two Damascus residents struggled to reach the besieged city of Homs by car, trying to deliver boxes of blood bags so surgeons there could operate on the wounded. But gunfire made the roads impassable. Finally, they strapped their contraband to their backs and, led by a shepherd through back roads and dirt paths, hiked 65 miles to the city. As the violence across Syria reaches a treacherous new phase and the numbers of displaced and injured swell, such individual and ad hoc efforts have grown into an increasingly organized underground network of volunteers willing to brave injury and arrest to deliver relief supplies to those trapped, wounded or displaced by the fighting. The government sees the network as ... Continue reading →
AFP/Getty Images Syrian President Bashar Assad's government has waged a two-pronged campaign against the opposition, critics say. His military continues to fight, while nonviolent activists are being detained in increasing numbers, according to monitoring groups. President Bashar Assad's regime has launched a new and sweeping arrest campaign of opposition activists and intellectuals in the past few weeks, according to Western analysts and diplomats. The growing tally of arrests has gone largely unnoticed, overshadowed by the daily violence that threatens to jeopardize the U.N. peace plan. But in combination, both are undermining the already faint hopes of peace. "It's a political decapitation," says Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding. Doyle is monitoring the arrests and believes the regime aims to eliminate negotiating ... Continue reading →
