Suspected Russian strikes kill 23 Syria civilians: monitor

[oberliner]

Source: AFP (via Yahoo News)

At least 23 Syrian civilians were killed Saturday in suspected Russian air strikes on a rebel-held town outside Damascus, a monitor said.

Elsewhere, the Islamic State group freed 37 Syrian Christians who were among more than 200 people kidnapped in February, an NGO said.

The strikes on the rebel district of Douma hit the centre of the town where markets are regularly held, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.

They appeared to have been carried out by Russian planes participating in an aerial campaign that began on September 30, the Britain-based group said.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/suspected-russian-air-raids-kill-23-syria-civilians-152940704.html

[jtuck004]

1. Civilian casualties from US drone strikes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
According to the Long War Journal, as of mid-2011, the drone strikes in Pakistan since 2006 had killed 2,018 militants and 138 civilians.[1] The New America Foundation stated in mid-2011 that from 2004 to 2011, 80% of the 2,551 people killed in the strikes were militants. The Foundation stated that 95% of those killed in 2010 were militants and that, as of 2012, 15% of the total people killed by drone strikes were either civilians or unknown.[2] The foundation also states that in 2012 the rate of civilian and unknown casualties was 2 percent, whereas the Bureau of Investigative Journalism say the rate of civilian casualties for 2012 is 9 percent.[3]
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, based on extensive research in mid-2011, claims that at least 385 civilians were among the dead, including more than 160 children.[4] In July 2009, Brookings Institution released a report stating that in the United States-led drone attacks in Pakistan, ten civilians died for every militant killed.[5][6] S. Azmat Hassan, a former ambassador of Pakistan, said in July 2009 that American UAV attacks were turning Pakistani opinion against the United States and that 35 or 40 such attacks only killed 8 or 9 top al-Qaeda operatives.[7]
Although it may never be known how many civilians have died as a result of U.S. UAV strikes in Pakistan, there are estimates of hundreds or thousands of innocent bystanders who have perished in such attacks.[8] Pakistani authorities released statistics stating that between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2009, U.S. RQ-1 Predator and RQ-9 Reaper UAV strikes have killed over 700 innocent civilians. The website PakistanBodyCount.Org (by Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani, a Fulbright Scholar at the Florida Institute of Technology) shows 1,065 civilian deaths between June 2004 and 30 January 2010 and tallies 103 UAV strikes carried out by the United States.[9]
...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_from_US_drone_strikes

Nothing like being two-faced.

[BlueEye]

7. An extremely valid point.

I do believe the Russian public is generally more bloodthirsty than the American public. If the American media were to tell the full extent of civilian casualties under the drone program, I believe more than half of the population (everybody on the left, plus most moderates) would be somewhere between deeply concerned and outraged.

On the other hand, if Russians learn the full extent of how many civilians are killed, I would guess 2/3 of the populace would be ambivalent at best. There is a widespread grudge held by Slavic people against Muslims, rooted in Chechnya and the Balkans, among other things. Wanton disregard for human rights (from a Western perspective) seems to be culturally ingrained in Russians, given the popularity of some of their policies.

[Xithras]

8. It's actually pretty ingrained into Russian culture for a reason.

Russia was conquered by the Mongols, and operated as a forced vassal state to the Golden Horde for centuries. The Golden Horde was fairly tolerant of other religions, but it was dominated by Muslims for much of its history. Russian history still pointedly (and correctly, fwiw) blames the Horde for the destruction of the original Kievan Rus kingdom, and their occupation led to changes that still sting Russian's today (Ukraine, for example, was the original Rus capital, and the Ukrainians only became a separate people after centuries of Horde occupation and the later population migrations it enabled). Even after Ivan The Great finally threw off the Horde's rule in the late 1400's, the Russian's were still a fairly weak nation and suffered ongoing slave raids in which MILLIONS of Russians were killed or enslaved and taken southward into Ottoman lands. In fact, during the 1600's it's estimated that the Crimean Tatar slave raiders were enslaving an estimated 20,000 Slavs a year, and were probably killing half as many more during their raids. Those raids didn't end until the late 1700's when Catherine The Great oversaw the Russian-Turkic War that captured Crimea, flattened the Crimean cities, slaughtered just about everyone there, and finally ended the Ottoman slave raids into Russia.

While it may seem like ancient history to us, the Russians still teach their schoolchildren about these events to instill a "never again" mentality in them. Russian's view Turks in particular, and Muslims in general, the same way that former colonies view their former colonizers. There's a desire to get along, but there's also a lingering dislike and distrust of outsiders that influences everything they do on the world stage. Their actions are colored by a mild paranoia that the outside world is simply trying to oppress them again.

[smirkymonkey]

10. Interesting point.

I always like getting a little history lesson here and there. Thanks!

[Xithras]

11. Sadly, there's a reason why the word Slav and the word Slave are spelled so similarly.

The original Slavic autonym (the name they called themselves) was basically Slovene, which is where modern Slovenia gets its name. When the Byzantines began capturing them and using them as forced laborers, they referred to them as the Slavus. That name migrated into middle Latin, and later into English as "slave". It made it into the middle east as the word Saqaliba, which was synonymous with "slave" for centuries

Slavic and Russian distrust of western Europe and Middle East goes back a long way, and Russian schoolchildren are taught this stuff in grade school.

[smirkymonkey]

12. Interesting. Are you from Russia? How do you know so much about the culture

and people?

[Xithras]

18. Nope.

1. I've always been a history geek.

2. My current employer has an office in St. Petersburg and I've spent a bit of time there. While our country may have a number of political disagreements with Russia, and while the Russian government may have its head up its ass on social issues, I've found the Russian people themselves to be friendly and welcoming every time I've visited. Russians love to argue politics, and I've had more than a few enlightening conversations with my Russian coworkers over the years as we've downed bottles of Baltika and glasses of vodka after work. Most Russians will point out that Russia has been attacked and invaded countless times and by everyone from the Mongols and Turks to the French, Poles, and Nazi's. They tend to defend their foreign policy by pointing to that history and calling their perceived belligerence a form of "historically justified paranoia". I don't necessarily believe that it justifies Russia's current behavior, but understanding Russian history does put it into perspective a bit.

[BlueEye]

17. That is a somber history lesson, isn't it?

Fascinating though, and a good deal of 20th Century Russian/Soviet history makes more sense when placed into that cultural context. "Mild paranoia" indeed!

[joshcryer]

13. Um, who is being two faced?

The info is from Human Rights Monitor. I am certain that they have detailed all of the US's drone strikes.

[tabasco]

15. So what's your point?

Civilian casualties are okay unless it's the US doing it?

What's the purpose of your post?

[CJCRANE]

2. "The United Kingdom-based SOHR is run out of a two-bedroom terraced home in Coventry by one person

Rami Abdulrahman, a Syrian Sunni Muslim who also runs a clothes shop."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syrian_Observatory_for_Human_Rights

[oberliner]

3. What are the some of the more substantial Syrian human rights groups?

What is a good go-to source for info that is trustworthy on this subject?

[CJCRANE]

4. I doubt there are any, they're probably all partisan just like this guy.

It's just something to bear in mind when quoting the SOHR.

[Sunlei]

5. here, these press releases tend to report on bombings in syria. there have been several 'field hospi

several 'field hospitals' destroyed and hundreds if not thousands of bombs dropped all over Syria. Doctors without Borders also has some good press releases about TPP/ medical drug prices and plenty of info about other parts of the world, and plenty of press releases about the recent USA led- air attack on that one field hospital in Syria.

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news-stories/press/press-releases

[oberliner]

6. That is helpful

Thanks!

[Jesus Malverde]

16. Liveleak

Watch the videos yourself. They had a great one yesterday of a jihadist propagandist, getting blasted in the middle of his report. Mega lulz.

[Xithras]

9. People have been complaining about SOHR for a long time.

The guy has tried to clean things up a bit, but it's still a pretty shabby setup. In the beginning, he simply had an email address and a twitter feed, and would report any death that was tweeted or emailed to him. Unsurprisingly, he quickly became a propaganda tool and lost a lot of credibility as a result.

Nowadays he supposedly only takes reports from his "authenticated" sources, and requires some sort of third party confirmation that an attack occurred. There's still nothing really verifying his numbers other than the word of his sources, but that's probably as good as it's going to get in an active war zone.

The most controversial thing he does is to include rebel fighters in his "civilian" numbers. According to him, if you're not a uniformed military soldier, you're a civilian. So if a group of five rebels charges a civilian military post with machine guns firing, and all five are cut down by gunfire, the SOHR will simply report it as "Five civilians killed by Syrian Army." He doesn't do this for the Free Syrian Army units that broke away for Assad (because he considers them to be actual military), but it still puts his numbers into even more doubt. Interestingly, he also reports killings by and of the Shahiba and other pro-Assad militia's as if they were "Syrian Army" even though they are civilians, so he's clearly demonstrating a bit of bias in that regard.

[joshcryer]

14. This guy doesn't just post anti-Assad stuff though.

He's reported on US droning in the past: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/194874

It's probably not going to be 100% because he's probably trolling Arabic social media. But I would wager the truth is in there somewhere.