"And I have found both freedom and safety in my madness, the freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief. "

Khalil Gibran (How I Became a Madman)

Lübnan Marunîleri / Yasin Atlıoğlu

NEWS AND ARTICLES / HABERLER VE MAKALELER

Monday, April 15, 2013

President Assad's army is starting to call the shots in Syria (Robert Fisk- The Independent)


The country's brutal secret services are no longer the power they once were. Other forces are at work.
 
Old Mohamed Said al-Sauda from Deraa, in his tawny gown and kuffiah headscarf, sat at the end of a conclave of tribal elders, all newly arrived in Damascus for an audience with no less than the President himself. They sat – only one woman in a blue dress among them – round a long table in the Damas Rose Hotel drinking water and coffee, rehearsing their anxieties. How should they talk to the young armed men who came into their villages? How should they persuade the rebels not to damage their land and take over their villages? "We try to talk to the saboteurs and to get them to go back to rebuilding the country," al-Sauda told me. "We try to persuade them to put aside their arms, to stop the violence. We used to have such a safe country to live in."


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/president-assads-army-is-starting-to-call-the-shots-in-syria-8572079.html