Anne Barnard's Schizophrenic Syrian Civil War Reporting

Anne Barnard has been working overtime in her reporting on the Syrian civil war to paint the conflict as an oppressed people rising up against an Alawite Stalin, Bashar al-Assad, bent on ethnic cleansing. Any Syrian who supports the government is either a dupe, a Shiite zealot or a regime goon. 

The latest installment in this effort -- since last week Barnard, Beirut Bureau Chief for the New York Times, has been reporting from Damascus -- is "Enlisting Damascus Residents to Answer Assad’s Call." And despite its toeing of the U.S. State Department line -- Barnard highlights the role of Iran in training pro-government neighborhood militias -- reality, even if it is always shunted to the bottom of her stories, finds its way into the piece:

In an apartment draped with philodendrons in the nearby Shiite quarter, Bassem Wehbe described why the militia was needed. A Sunni gang had kidnapped him from his nearby grocery store, he said, taunted him with sectarian slogans and chopped off his finger with an ax. His finger still bandaged, he played a video of the act that the captors had sent to his family. 

He said he tried to reason with his captors — who he believed were Syrians influenced by televised sermons of radical clerics in Saudi Arabia — telling them of the Sunni-Shiite mixed marriages and business dealings common in the Old City. 

“They said, ‘No, this period is over,’ ” Mr. Wehbe said. “Is it possible we were in this country?” 

A few days later, Christians packed the Street Called Straight, carrying the coffin of a man killed by kidnappers to a nearby church. 

Watching was one of the militiamen from the park, who had said earlier that he joined only to protect the neighborhood. Now, he said he would happily deploy to fight rebels in the suburbs. 

“The best way to defend,” said another militiaman, “is to attack.”

For a more nuanced assessment of support for the al-Assad government than Barnard's, check out "The Plight of Syrian Minorities," which appears on the Counterpunch website this weekend. Written by Anna Haq, a pseudonym, religious minorities -- Alawites and Christians -- are described as not being mindlessly sectarian; rather, they are secular minded and not generally in favor of the Baathist ruling party under al-Assad. It's just that the rebels are so bad there is no longer any choice but to support the government. Here are the passages that grabbed my attention:

Despite the claim of the opposition that the government has lost its credibility, the Assad regime has established its control not only militarily but also among those who remained on Syrian soil. In Homs, the army made major advances in the neighborhood of al-Khaldieh where the armed rebels gathered after the fierce battles of Baba Amer. On their route to Khaldieh, the armed rebels forced the inhabitants of old Homs, mostly Christians, out of their homes over night. Those who could not leave (the elderly and the sick) sought refuge in the Jesuit Monastery in Bustan al-Daiwan. The rebels would like to think that these sixty hostages might be there only ticket out of a foreseeable siege. Meanwhile, in retaliation for the bombardment of al-Khaldieh, and of what might seem a last hope to wreck havoc among civilians, the rebels have been firing mortars at the neighborhoods of Akrama and al-Nuzha. Concentrations of Alawites and Christians, these neighborhoods seem perfect to target allegedly pro-government civilians. 

Of course, not all Alawites and Christians are pro-Assad. Unless directly related to the Assad family, Alawites remain largely peasantry communities. Like many of the Christian minority, urban Alawites are middle-class civil servants who cannot afford a taxi ride toward Beirut or Amman and prefer a dignified death in their homes to the humiliation of refugee camps. “I have been labeled pro-government without given the chance to express my political views,” says Hisham furiously, his gesticulations are wider than the skype window. “This revolution erupted against the tyranny of the Assad family but the Sunni rebels proved to be more barbaric than the Assad army could ever be.” The recent rebel attack on al-Qumeirah checkpoint generated some attention to the plight of minorities in Syria, yet the Alawites have been spared such sympathy. “It is bad enough that the media ignored the situation of religious and ethnic minorities since the eruption of the revolution. Now that they remembered us, they seem to marginalize the Alawites,” Khaled confirms while compassionately tapping the 20-years old Hisham on the back. “I am Christian but I am anti-Assad. Well, I was anti-Assad but the rebels left us no choice. I volunteer for my neighborhood checkpoint to protect my loved ones,” adds Hisham. 

The slaughtering of 14 young men at al-Qumeirah checkpoint was the latest scare in west Homs. The bodies of the four soldiers and ten young civilians were found decapitated, heads were taken as trophies. The checkpoint is one among few others set by the government around al-Zara but maintained mostly by civilians to guard their villages from the rebels treading the path from Lebanon to al-Husun. The recent attacks served as a reminder to religious and ethnic minorities of their plight: they are alone in their fight. Earlier in the conversation, Adnan wondered: “where were the BBC when a Christian engineer was slaughtered in his bed in Homs in March 2011? Do they know that he made an exceptional contribution to the Civil Engineering department at al-Baath University for which he received a prize he did not live enough to enjoy? Where were they when many other youth were murdered in their beds by the rebels? Where is the Syrian Coalition? Are they ever going to denounce the barbaric acts of the jihadist? Do they think they can win the liberals back with their cowardly silence?”

The reality of the Syrian civil war, convincingly presented in this one story, is what has Anne Barnard working overtime trying to obscure. The rebels have very little domestic support at this point. The most active rebel military units are Kurds and foreign fighters of Al Qaeda affiliates. The U.S. government cannot officially acknowledge this since it does not support Kurdish statehood, and it is at war with Al Qaeda affiliates. Yet the Obama administration is committed to providing military aid to the opposition. It's a schizophrenic position, the strain of which is reflected in Barnard's reporting.