Fighting in Syria Continues

Via the BBC:  Syrian unrest: ‘Heavy fighting’ in Jisr al-Shughour

The government says it is trying to restore order after 120 security personnel were killed last week.

[…]

BBC correspondents on the border say the number of those who have crossed is probably higher than the official figure of 5,050 given on Sunday afternoon by the UN’s refugee agency, the UNHCR. Witnesses said there might be as many as 10,000 sheltering in the area.

US officials say the crackdown has created a humanitarian crisis, and called for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to be given access.

Much more at the link of a highly violent and disturbing situation that continues to develop.

FILED UNDER: Middle East, World Politics, , ,
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. Southern Hoosier says:

    Islam is peace.

    How’s that Arab Spring working out?

    What I don’t understand is how this can be happening.

    jukeboxgrad says: Saturday, June 11, 2011 at 22:50

    Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable.

    jukeboxgrad says: Sunday, June 12, 2011 at 16:03

    The Gallup poll I cited is not an “opinion.” It was “based on six years of research and more than 50,000 interviews representing 1.3 billion Muslims who reside in more than 35 nations that are predominantly Muslim or have sizable Muslim populations. Representing more than 90% of the world’s Muslim community, it makes this poll the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind.”

    How can a 3 year old Gallup poll possible be wrong?

  2. Neil Hudelson says:

    Now a totalitarian government cracking down on its citizens in order consolidate power is a muslim act?

    Man your hatred for all things brown really runs deep.

  3. @SH:

    I was unaware that events in Syria could be construed as a) representative or all Muslims, b) representative of the entire Arab Spring (insofar as it pertains, as a minimum, to a number of countries), or c) serve as the rejection of a 35-country study.

    Your comment makes no sense.

  4. Southern Hoosier says:

    Brown?

    The United States Census Bureau defines White people as those “having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

  5. Southern Hoosier says:

    @ Steven L. Taylor

    Syria is a prime example of how well the Arab Spring is not working out.

    Syria has rapidly become the next bloodiest battleground, with the Assad regime having murdered 900 civilians

    Yemen, where it is ongoing, more than 400 people have been killed.

    Libya indicate that around 12,000 people have been killed there since the revolution began.

    Bahrain and Oman – an estimated total of 100.

    REUTERS – Tunisia’s government on Tuesday reported four more civilians killed in the worst civil unrest for decades, bringing its toll from weeks of violence to 20, but human rights groups put the death count higher.

    The uprising in Egypt, which forced Hosni Mubarak from office, left 846 people dead

    JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) – More than 1,500 people have died this year in violence across southern Sudan, the United Nations said, ahead of the region’s independence in July.

    How’s that Arab Spring working out? I don’s see any end to the killings or the the beginning of democracy.

    “Muslims and Americans are equally likely to reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable.”
    Do you think Americans would tolerate this kind of killing? If Gallop shows that we both “reject attacks on civilians as morally unjustifiable,” then why all the attacks against civilians? Why the attacks against Christians in Egypt?

    And why no outcry from these 35 other Muslim counties that reject violence? The silence is deafening.

  6. Tano says:

    There is no “brown” racial category in the Census.

    For a traditional view of what is meant by the term, dating back to the eugenicists, see HERE

  7. Southern Hoosier says:

    @Tano
    Where did you find this, Stomfront?

    Lothrop Stoddard’s “Distribution of the primary races” from Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920). Scanned from an original.

  8. @SH:

    Syria is a prime example of how well the Arab Spring is not working out

    And who, pray tell, is claiming otherwise?

  9. Tano says:

    Where did you find this, Stomfront?

    I found it right where you went to get it.
    I did think its provenance would make it accessible to you.

    Are you willing to concede that even people like you have used the term “Brown” for Arabs and middle easterners?

  10. Southern Hoosier says:

    Steven L. Taylor says:
    Sunday, June 12, 2011 at 17:17

    @SH:

    I was unaware that events in Syria could be construed as b) representative of the entire Arab Spring

  11. Southern Hoosier says:

    Are you willing to concede that even people like you have used the term “Brown” for Arabs and middle easterners?

    No, I usually refer to them by their ethnicity, their country of citizenship or their religion

  12. Southern Hoosier says:

    @ Tano

    I just downloaded The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy from Google Books.

    My fault the book isn’t as racist as it sounds.

    The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920), by Lothrop Stoddard, postulates the collapse of white world empire, and of colonialism, because of the population growth among colored peoples. The postulations constitute scientific racism, with which Stoddard concludes for, and advocates, an eugenic separation of the “primary races” of the world.

    Despite the book’s title, Stoddard does not advocate a white race bid for world domination, based on white supremacy, but questions the right of white peoples to invade the lands of other races, and criticizes the European colonial empire powers for imposing their will upon the peoples of Asia.

  13. CB says:

    and now the first legit foreign policy thread to come around in a long time has been highjacked by a guy who clearly doesnt deserve recognition in this conversation. congratulations, jackass.

  14. @CB

    @SH: It occurs me, as I think about it, that you don’t even understand what the “Arab Spring” is, insofar as it represents uprisings of populations against authoritarian governments. Such action are unlikely to be greeted with candy and flowers.

    And what the “Arab Spring” ends up producing remains to be seen, and will, ultimately, be country specific. I return to my original statement in this thread, and will expand it to the plural: your comments make no sense.

  15. Tano says:

    my apologies to the rest of you for feeding the troll…

  16. Southern Hoosier says:

    Spring is Orwellian Newspeak for revolution or uprising. Spring implies a genteel and inevitable changing of government just as the seasons change from Winter to Spring. Spring is a glorious time when life and hope is reborn, not crushed into the streets.

    If there was a Arab Spring, it didn’t last long and was followed by a brutal Arab Winter.

    “remains to be seen?” There is 1400 years of history to look at. Islam and democracy cannot coexist.

  17. Neil Hudelson says:

    Islam and democracy cannot coexist.

    Mmmhmm, any other idiocies you want to proclaim?

  18. Southern Hoosier says:

    Neil Hudelson says:
    Monday, June 13, 2011 at 11:11

    Islam and democracy cannot coexist.

    Mmmhmm, any other idiocies you want to proclaim?

    I was going to ask you the same thing.