Yesterday my wife and I were discussing the UK vote on intervening in Syria. It is such a horrible plight for people trapped in the middle of this, that both options of going in or not going in are equally awful.
The conclusion was that we don't know what the right answer is, but there must be some better way. We've got to stop thinking that military action is the only alternative.
We need to seriously do some bigger, different thinking. Possibly the UK granting opening it's doors to anyone who wants to flee this hell? I don't know.
Initiatives like Hire Programmers from Syria are a great start to thinking differently. I have no idea if it will be successful at achieving its goals or not, but I still applaud the effort.
The right thing would be to convince Assad to offer a truce, step down, and allow a democratic election to happen. He'd have to be given protection, too, otherwise he'd never agree to stop, because he'd fear too much for his life.
Of course, even if they do convince Assad of that, it doesn't mean things will go smoothly. The "rebels" might still be upset if they lose the election, which is why it's so important UN or whoever needs to guarantee fair elections. It's the least they can do to appease the rebels, so they don't want to start the civil war all over again. They could even guarantee some sort of remuneration from the state for all the people who lost a family member in the war.
This is the least violent, and best solution for everyone involved.
IMO the right thing to do would be to solve just the chemical weapon problem, and solve it in the most limited way possible.
Have Assad escrow his chemical forces with the Russians at the Russian naval base in Syria (Tartus), on the basis of "you may have lost control of your forces; they must be kept safe so there will be no unauthorized use."
Other than that, focus purely on helping the civilians. I dislike both Assad and the rebels (the AQ/etc. groups), and don't want either to win. I also don't want them to fight forever, because it is killing civilians.
We should provide secure IDP facilities within Syria (either camps or protected cities), with real force (so we never again have another Srebrenica), or just focus on providing what infrastructure we can (free internet/phone/tv/etc. from Rivet Joints and UAVs and cross-border, medical supplies, etc.).
Taking sides doesn't really help.
(Letting Assad step down and go into comfortable exile in Iran or Russia would be fine, too, but making regime change a requirement to deal with chemical weapons seems to be an overcomplication.)
Definitely -- all chemical weapons should be escrowed. I'd be ok with doing a 1 for 1 swap of chemical for conventional weapons in exchange, if required, if the goal is just to get rid of the chemical weapons.
Exactly. That's smart foreign policy. A limited definable goal, preservation of the norm of prohibition against the use of chemical weapons, and a way to accomplish it that respects the interests of each of the parties.
this is not a war by an outside force like the Serbs of ethnic cleansing against a neighbor, but rather it is a civil war. The Alawis, Christians and secular-minded Sunnis in Syria are afraid of the rebel forces and either support or are neutral toward the Syrian government; together they may well come to half the country. That isn’t exactly a mandate for outside intervention.
But then you look at Egypt. It once seemed so hopeful and now it appears to descending ever more into violence and civil war. What's to say that even if they do have fair elections unrest will continue.
Democracy is.not a solution for Syria. Mind you, about 60% of the population there belong to a group that hate the other 40% and would happily vote to kill them all. This is why Assad has so many people in Syria on his side.
One solution mentioned in the house of commons during the debate was arming the rebels with chemical weapons as a deterrent against the Assad regime. I kid you not....
It doesn't even make sense, since CW are much more effective against the general population than troops. ie: It is much easier for troops to deploy countermeasures that negate or reduce the effectiveness of a CW attack. OTOH, in unlucky environmental conditions, a CW attack can wind up harming the rebel attackers and surrounding innocents as well, while the troops sit in their anti-CW gear and wait it out. Arming rebels with CW is just about the dumbest, least effective, most dangerous way to use CW; and ought to be a war crime in its own right.
Obviously the suggestion is stupid as both the rebels and the Syrian forces have mutual enemies that they both would use chemical weapons on.
I don't think Israel will allow an enemy guerrilla army from being armed with chemical weapons.
The real issue here is that Russia has vowed to protecting the Assad regime. This conflict is ultimately a proxy war.
The real question I have is why Russia is protecting Assad? Is it just a question of support what in their eyes is the lesser of two evils or is it a case of RDF?
That if Israel isn't backing the rebels. Israel doesn't like Syrian government -basically because it's one of the few Arab states that has a logical stance against Israel dominance in the region-, and hopefully a new government will be more "puppety" to their interests. Also Syrian government is pretty secular, which also bothers most Arab nations. Most US arab allies would prefer a more "islamic" government, probably this suits Israel as well so they have more justification in their "preventive" attacks (like they do in Lebanon with the Hezbola excuse).
Btw, if there was a chemical attack, there are 3 possibilities: a) Assad, b) Rebels (who may already have got access to some chemical weapon), c) CIA doing business as usual.
And as always, we'll never learn the truth in time.
No one is denying that there was a chemical attack. The question is how big it was. If it was just a small attack then it could have been the rebels dropping a bag of sarin gas. But if it is confirmed it was a large attack that could have only been launched by payload thus it must have come from the Syrian army. Leaving two possibilities. A rogue element from within the army or the Assad regime.
> Carla del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told Swiss TV there were “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof,” that rebels seeking to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used the nerve agent.
This means: it's not impossible that rebels have access to some chemical weapon.
The US gov keeps repeating "we have evidence that it has happened" but a) they have never shown it, and most of all: b) they don't say "we have evidence that shows it was Assad".
Earlier events, if they actually occurred, were very small-scale; They killed a handful of people, and were very difficult to confirm - with blood tests eventually being held up as a smoking gun that chemical weapons were used at all.
What happened on August 21 is an entirely different matter: it involved a large-scale rocket barrage on a dozen locations in discontinuous rebel-held neighborhoods which gassed entire city blocks; the gas persisted long enough afterwards to kill people such as journalists who responded to the reports. Hundreds of Youtube videos of the fairly characteristic aftermath exist, with the bodycount presently at about 1500. The areas gassed were threateningly close to the core of Damascus. This much cannot be reasonably contested.
The US government reports that it was listening in on the phone calls from one military commander to another and heard comments indicating regime involvement. They are also claiming to have identified using aerial imagery the area the rockets were fired from, the preparation three days before, and the actual firing of the rockets:
> The US government reports that it was listening in on the phone calls from one military commander to another and heard comments indicating regime involvement.
I just don't understand why they could not let the UN check what they call "evidence".
One of the arguments of the rebels is that they never had access to such weapons, which is absolutely false. In other news in May 30th Al-Qaeda's Jabhat Al-Nusra members were arrested in Turkey possessing Sarin Gas. Which, oh coincidence, is the same gas used in latest attack.
Also logic dictates it's very unlikely that the Syrian government, which is winning the war, will launch Sarin Gas in a Damascus neighbourhood (which is the capital, and thus where Al-Assad and this relatives live), leaving the US and its allies with an excuse to strike. Also Washington didn't want UN inspectors to stay longer to investigate, and it's doing everything possible to strike before UN inspectors can reach any conclusion. Without talking about Kerry proclaming US government has "proofs" but unwilling to show these proofs to anyone... Sorry, this is a "déjà vu".
The website or post in no way implies that this is the case.
One reason to choose Syria is that the situation may be more acute than it is in most other places in the world at the moment.
One reason to choose programmers could be that this is also the industry that the founder is active in, perhaps making it easier to approach potential customers.
It would be just as easy to divide up the population into any other constituent subgroup and select only those for help.
Any of these would also be a valid goal according to the effort being proposed here:
Syrian auto mechanics
Syrian bakers
Syrian musicians
Syrian nurses
You are presupposing that you can ONLY easily help programmers and furthermore, ONLY those Syrians with programing skill SHOULD be helped. Taken to it's logical extension, you end up helping people based on Ethnicity or Religion.
Why not instead focus on trying to help the greatest number of people in the most expedient way possible: by working to END this terrible civil war. That's CERTAINLY possible given the assemblage of talent reading these words.
OP is organizing something that might end up helping (or even saving) many Syrians. You're just bikeshedding.
This is HN, it's only natural to focus on programming. There are many here with the authority to hire programmers, not many people hiring nurses or mechanics. Besides, it's easier to get a visa if you're a programmer, and it's also easier to get remote work (e.g. in case a Syrian can't get a visa to US or EU but can move to Lebanon or Turkey).
A little lack of distance in this website, but I guess HNers may have better knowledge and network to help programmers. That said, I wish for a hireawarrefugee.org to pop up.
Cause you're accepting 4-year vote. This can be changed. More things like this will happen in the future. Let's find a real solution and not just patches when the inevitable already has happened. Jeez Western people...
Thank you very much for this, I'm Syrian (programmer) and seeing this makes me feel really happy and grateful.
I know this could possibly be a life changer for a lot of Syrians (I will try as much as possible to spread it across my friends and colleagues are still alive there)
For a Syrian, living abroad means a lot, it means having basic human rights, equality, freedom of speech, and easy access to knowledge etc .. those privileges are taken for granted by most western people.
Unfortunately, We are victims of a geographic accident and we have to go through a harder way to have those privileges.
The idea here is apparently that there are people living in a war-torn country ruled by a murderous dictator who will gas his own people and the only reason they haven't left is because they can't find a good programming job. As if they're sitting there on Monster.com as the bombs rain down, desperately refreshing for a job with benefits.
The degree of disconnection here from the reality of the situation in Syria is so enormous as to be insulting, even though that was not the intent.
This is great, but I've been trying my very best to get hired in a decent web company in the US for the past year or so, and all my attempts have failed many times because of visa issues or that the company wasn't interested in candidates from outside the US.
It's a chicken and the egg situation I think; I believe the purpose of this site is to connect people and probably stemmed from the Ask HN thread the other day [1].
I think he is just starting the site and obviously you need marketing to promote it. Upvoting the news and keeping it in the HN homepage is a good idea.
The HN community from Syria can also share their contact information in this thread.
We need this for every profession. Seriously, lets just take out all the civilians from a conflict and leave the place to those who willing choose to die for it.
Open all the borders. Revolutionary, radical, but consider the thought before you trash it.
The conclusion was that we don't know what the right answer is, but there must be some better way. We've got to stop thinking that military action is the only alternative.
We need to seriously do some bigger, different thinking. Possibly the UK granting opening it's doors to anyone who wants to flee this hell? I don't know.
Initiatives like Hire Programmers from Syria are a great start to thinking differently. I have no idea if it will be successful at achieving its goals or not, but I still applaud the effort.
Well done, and good luck.