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Friday February 23, 2018

February 22, 2018 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 23, 2018

Families struggle to survive in Eastern Ghouta, under siege

A four-day-long bombardment by Syrian government forces is reported to have killed more than 300 civilians in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area. Here, people living there tell their stories.

February 20, 2014

The enclave – home to an estimated 393,000 people – has been under siege since 2013. But pro-government media say a major military operation might soon begin to clear rebel factions from their last major stronghold near the capital Damascus.

The relentless air and artillery strikes are leaving civilians, particularly women and children, in a state of fear and forcing them to seek shelter underground, where they are largely deprived of food and sanitation.

“We are living in a basement, underneath a half-destroyed house,” Asia, a 28-year-old student and mother-of-three whose husband was killed in an attack while he was on his way to work, told the BBC.

“My daughter is sick. Her hair is falling out because she is so afraid.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, says the government and its allies have carried out more than 1,290 air strikes on the Eastern Ghouta and fired 6,190 rockets and shells at the region since mid-November, when hostilities between government and rebel forces escalated.

Between Sunday and Wednesday alone there were reportedly about 420 air strikes, and 140 barrel bombs were dropped by helicopters.

UN war crimes experts are also investigating several reports of rockets allegedly containing chlorine being fired at the Eastern Ghouta this year.

The recent surge in casualties means that more than 1,070 civilians, including several hundred children and women, have been killed and 3,900 injured in the past three months, according to the Syrian Observatory. (Source: BBC News)

Wednesday April 1, 2015

March 31, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 1, 2015

Is Canada’s ISIS mission ready for Syria’s moral maze?

In all of Canada’s long military history, we’ve likely never known less about a territory we are about to attack than the Syria we’re going to bomb from on high.

We’re not alone in that ignorance as virtually no one today can figure out the full scale of the explosive, antagonist-rich tinderbox and moral disaster zone that is present day Syria.

Certainly not the U.S., nor the few Arab countries that will be our sole allies in bombing the ISIS operations there.

Our normal Western allies in these kinds of operations, including the British, French, Dutch, Danes and Australians, fear Syria is an impenetrable maze of horrors and want nothing to do with such attacks.

When British Prime Minister David Cameron tried to lead his country into bombing Syria in 2013, the U.K. Parliament acted as if he’d lost his marbles. A free vote of MPs roared a resounding “no way.”

To put it squarely, there is a democratic and Western world consensus — minus only the U.S. and Canada — that feels military attacks on Syria are far too risky for military, political, legal and, yes, even moral reasons.

The moral objections may seem surprising at first, for surely there is “moral clarity,” as Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson puts it, in attacking the murderous ISIS regime almost anywhere you find them.

The problem, however, is that it is not at all clear that Canadian attacks inside Syria won’t make a chaotic situation even more deadly for innocent civilians.

For example, many argue that Western airstrikes would only help and embolden the Assad dictatorship, whose crimes against humanity probably surpass even ISIS itself. (Source: CBC News)