The Syrian situation ... week of Sep 10

Syrian girls from refugee camps being sold to Saudi and other Arab harems
   .....It is common to see on Arabic online forums    requests by men "seeking marriage from Syrian girls". At a price ranging from 500 to 1,000 Saudi riyals (Dh490 to Dh980), girls are reportedly being taken from refugee camps in Jordan. Saudi Arabia is most often named as the destination, but a similar trend is reported in other countries including Iraq and Turkey....
....In these classified ads, men post brief requests on different websites, often leaving only their first names and email addresses. "I am looking for a Syrian wife," a man identifying himself as Asa'ad wrote on a website. "I am a man of means and I fear God. My Syrian sisters are decent and honourable."
Many other comments are far more demeaning. A man, who identified himself only as "Jordanian", sardonically wrote "no woman deserves sympathy these days", in reference to dishonesty. Another man who called himself Abdulsamad wrote a longer post explaining that his desire to marry a Syrian woman had preceded the conflict, apparently to present a better case.
Another man wrote: "This is not a question of exploitation. It is a question of supply and demand." He suggested a reduction in dowries to 100 dinars [Dh520] because of the increasing number of refugees.



Maher Abu Tair, a Jordanian columnist, wrote: "All we hear these days is talk about a Syrian wife who can be bought with 100 dinars. One could go to any of the areas of Al Mafraq, Amman, Ramtha, Irbid or Karak to pick for himself a Levantine houriya." (A Levantine houriya, or virgin, is a reference to women from the Levant known in Arab cultures for their beauty). He added that people are encouraged by the speedy, cheap and conditions-free marriages.
Abdelbari Atwan, the editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, wrote that old men from different Arab countries have married girls from refugee camps who are below the age of 15. "Marriage of minors in refugee camps is a type of rape that must be stopped immediately," he wrote. "Perpetrators must be brought to justice."
Why doesn't the Syrian opposition raise the issue to regional governments? Why doesn't it have a team dedicated to the welfare of refugees? According to a western diplomat who works on Syrian issues, the opposition receives sufficient relief resources, but the funds are misspent. A credible Syrian opposition would raise the issue with authorities and international organisations.....


Judeo-Christian armed and funded terrorists in Syria threaten to bring down commercial aircraft as "legitimate targets"
....Reports that France is considering aiding rebel factions in northern Syria with anti aircraft guns is sending tremors through the region's aviation industry as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has declared civil aircraft to be legitimate military targets.
Less than a dozen international airlines are currently still serving Damascus, although many – including Etihad and Royal Jordanian – have withdrawn services in the past week. The FSA insisted that while they intend to shoot down civilian planes, it would be the regime “and its Russian allies” that are to blame for the resultant deaths.
Several of the Gulf nations that have been arming the rebels have openly resisted sending anti-aircraft weapons to the groups, fearing that this sort of shift might happen. The French government has yet to comment.
The FSA’s threat to target aircraft after September 19 was made by the group's political advisor, Bassam El-Dada.....


Terrorists armed and funded by Judeo-Christian countries declare passionately and fervently that they aim to turn  Syria into a raving Islamist country .
Foreign Islamists intent on turning Syria   into an autocratic theocracy have swollen the ranks of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad and think they are waging a "holy war", a French surgeon who treated fighters in Aleppo has said.
Jacques Beres, co-founder of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, returned from Syria on Friday evening after spending two weeks working clandestinely in a hospital in the besieged northern Syrian city.
In an interview with Reuters in his central Paris apartment on Saturday, the 71-year-old said that contrary to his previous visits to Homs and Idlib earlier this year about 60 percent of those he had treated this time had been rebel fighters and that at least half of them had been non-Syrian.
"It's really something strange to see. They are directly saying that they aren't interested in Bashar al-Assad's fall, but are thinking about how to take power afterwards and set up an Islamic state with sharia law to become part of the world Emirate," the doctor said.
The foreign jihadists included young Frenchmen who said they were inspired by Mohammed Merah, a self-styled Islamist militant from Toulouse, who killed seven people in March in the name of al-Qaeda......
.....Showing his muddied surgical case, shoes and clothes, Beres said that Turkish forces had flooded the Reyhanli border area with water making it difficult for refugees to cross unnoticed.
“We were caught by the Turkish army. It took us 20 hours to cross the border and I was fined $500 for crossing the border illegally. They flooded the border completely so that they can hear who is crossing. Those they do catch they are sending back,” he said.....