Tag Archives: Syria

Munich, Kabul, Manbij: the calculus of carnage

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Photo by L.C. Notaasen, published under Creative Commons license

Yesterday, an eighteen-year-old with a Glock pistol shot and killed nine people in a mall in Germany. Yesterday, a suicide bomber targeted a protest in Kabul and killed at least 80 people. The ISIS bomber targeted Shia Muslims, members of Afghanistan’s Hazara minority. Last Tuesday, an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria killed families who were fleeing ISIS. The exact number of dead is disputed – 56? 85? 160? 212? The families, who included many young children, were fleeing ISIS when the coalition bombers mistakenly targeted them. Guess which of these three stories got the bigger headlines? Continue reading

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Syrian suffering, refugees continue: U.S. response is small and slow

Syrian refugees' camp in Cappadocia, Turkey. Photo by Fabio Sola Penna, published under Creative Commons license. 

Syrian refugees’ camp in Cappadocia, Turkey. Photo by Fabio Sola Penna, published under Creative Commons license.

In an eloquent cri de coeur, Lina Sergie Attar wrote about the agony of Syria:

“Now, the everyday violence and death Syrians witness is no longer recorded in full force unless events surpass the daily ‘acceptable’ quota of death—like it did on August 16 in Douma, after more than 100 people were killed by a regime aerial attack on a crowded marketplace. These kinds of mass tragedies, like the chemical weapons attack in 2013 and the Daraya massacre in 2012, capture the world’s attention—headlines, outrage, condemnation—for a few moments before Syria’s suffering once again fades to white noise. When the country has been reduced to smoldering ashes and its people have been forced into a mass exodus to new countries and new homes, our capacity to document—to speak or write and chant—dwindles. History collapses into a simple etcetera.”

More than four million refugees have fled Syria. Millions more remain inside Syria, but no longer in their own homes, internal refugees forced to flee for their lives. Continue reading

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Act now to save the next child

Photo of Syrian refugees fleeing to Turkey in 2014, by European Commission DGEcho, published under Creative Commons license.

Photo of Syrian refugees fleeing to Turkey in 2014, by European Commission DGEcho, published under Creative Commons license.

Abdullah Kurdi, father of the toddler whose body washed up on a Turkish beach, spoke to Reuters as the bodies of his wife and two young sons lay in a Turkish morgue:

“The things that happened to us here, in the country where we took refuge to escape war in our homeland, we want the whole world to see this,” he said.

“We want the world’s attention on us, so they can prevent the same from happening to others. Let this be the last.”

We can take concrete actions, tonight, tomorrow, the next day to save the next child. Actions carry no guarantees of success, but inaction ensures failure. Continue reading

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Body on the beach: Europe’s refugee scandal

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UPDATED 9/3/2015: The Independent published a heart-wrenching photo of a dead child who washed ashore on a beach in Turkey. He is Syrian, one of more than 2,000 refugees who have died this year trying to escape to Europe. Continue reading

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