Detailed Syria Maps; Activists Honor Revolution Dead in Washington

Thomas van Linge ( @arabthomness ) created the following detailed map of the battle lines in Syria:

Download map to view full detail

Download map to view full detail

Jad Yateem ( @JadYateem ) has also written a report containing maps looking at forces on the ground: Mapping Syria’s divided north and east – NOW

Jadd Yateem map of northeastern SyriaJadd Yateem map of Aleppo

 

100,000 Names Project

A project to read aloud 100,000 collected names of people killed in Syria has just been completed in Washington by activists and other participants with a general concern to honor those who have lost their lives. The project’s purpose was less an effort for political action and more an endeavor to call attention to the massive scale of tragic loss of life in Syria. Participants stood in front of the White House and read the list of names, taking four days to accomplish.

Lina Sergie Attar ( @AmalHanano ), from Chicago, one of the event’s organizers and founder of the Karam Foundation humanitarian organization, wrote a NYT blog piece in advance of the project: Counting Syria’s Dead

… In several days, the Syrian revolution will enter its fourth year. Three years have passed since that promising spring of 2011. Three years after thousands of Syrians rose up to fight the Assad regime’s injustice and brutality with chants and flags. Their chants were met with bullets and mass arrests. Later their armed resistance would be met by barrel bombs and chemical-laden missiles. And as the crisis dragged on, foreign terrorists poured into the country to fight for an agenda that does not represent the Syrians’ early demands for freedom and dignity. Today, Syria as we once knew it, is gone: a third of the population is displaced, over a million homes have been destroyed, and over 100,000 people are dead. Spring is no longer a season to celebrate rebirth. It is a season to mourn the death of a country’s dream. …

On March 12, 2014, people will gather in front of the White House to read the names of 100,000 Syrians who have been killed over the past three years. The reading will take place for 72 continuous hours, ending on March 15, the third anniversary of the Syrian Revolution. Readers will recite the names in thirty-minute increments from lists— complied from three independent sources — of Syrians killed by all forms of violence in the brutal conflict.

When you call someone by their name, something materializes that transcends the ephemeral utterance. The concrete syllables of one’s name represents everything that person is or was supposed to be. As we read 100,000 names, our dead gain the weight of recognition that they deserve but were never granted. …

Honoring the memory of 100,000 victims – Daily Star

Fallen Syrians, Molly Crabapple

 As the third anniversary of the Syrian uprising arrives Saturday, the last of 100,000 names of people killed in the conflict will be read aloud outside the White House.

A project lasting continuously for three days, it involves over 140 people reading aloud for half-hour periods, some in Syria itself, participating via Skype, and some who are reading the names of their own loved ones whom they have lost.

While the U.N. may have stopped counting the dead in January, saying it could not keep an accurate count due to the chaos on the ground, those killed in Syria continues to rise by around 100 to 200 each day.

… “I think people have become numb to the death tolls and the protracted conflict. It’s easy for someone to brush Syria away by saying, ‘It’s too complicated,’ or ‘It’s happening across the world and doesn’t affect us,’ but that is not a luxury afforded to Syrians,” Attar says. …

Syria’s war, 3 years on: ‘a horror film’, in faces of the dead and voices of revolt – Molly Crabapple – Guardian

… These faces remind you that the revolution began with hope. In 2011, a wave of protests swept the world, from the US, Greece and Spain to the Arab World. From Tahrir to Tunisia, people took to the streets, mobilizing against the cruelty of their regimes. In Syria, with a police state and its latest neoliberal reforms driving people into shanty towns, these protests were the first time many had ever raised their voices against Bashar al-Assad. …

Many early protesters, like Ghaith Matar, believed in nonviolence. Matar was nicknamed “Little Ghandi” for greeting soldiers with roses. He was arrested by security forces, returning to his family as a tortured corpse.

Assad’s brutality radicalized the indifferent. Aboud Dandachi is an IT professional from Homs who gave dispatches to the international media until he fled to Turkey in 2013. Dandachi told me that, after years working in the Gulf, in 2011 he’d finally bought a house in an upscale neighborhood. He cared little for the revolution at first. Then, in April 2011, the regime killed over 100 people at a sit-in. Dandachi’s brother was almost caught up in the massacre, he told me. “That was the night I turned from a fence-sitter to an activist.” …

Why artist Molly Crabapple decided to sketch Syria’s dead

… “It’s so easy to see the people who die in a war as faceless victims or geopolitical pawns. It’s so easy to forget these were individuals who were loved, who were brave, and who had dreams and hopes in life,” Crabapple says.

“And what I want to do with my pictures is to say each and every one of these people is important. Look at them. It’s about remembering these people as individuals, rather than just statistics.” …