Being Well Treated
"My mission was to bomb the town of Mohassen. The wounds on my face were caused by the strong wind that forced me on to stones after I ejected from my plane. The revolutionaries have treated me well and they gave me first aid assistance." Mufid Mohammed Suleiman, MiG 23 pilot
Nice to know off the top that his battered appearance was not the result of malfeasance on the part of the rebels who captured the unlucky pilot, but rather the result of happenstance. Strong winds can result in unforeseen calamities, no doubt about it. And revolutionaries have a tendency to be kind-hearted, offering succour and aid to those whom they detest.
And Abul Laith, chief of the Descendants of Mohammed Brigade assures an interviewer that the prisoner will be the recipient of treatment in accord with "religious ethics and the Geneva Convention". So all is well. Not necessarily for the Syrian airforce which has lost one of its fighter jets, and its pilot captured, persuaded by kind treatment and gentle encouragement to adhere to an approved script.
"Introduce yourself" urges a prompter. So the fighter pilot identified himself on video, surrounded by armed rebels, as Col. Rafik Mohammed Suleiman, on a mission to attack a rebel-held territory. "What do you tell the officers of the Assad army?" prompts the leading voice of the little parody. And the pilot urges his colleagues to do the right thing and defect.
The tenets of Islam and the Geneva Convention will be honoured in handling this pilot. It hasn't been pleasant to become aware of international anger resulting from summary executions and rebels torturing their prisoners while shouting "Free Syrian Army Forever!" It's very bad public relations. And recognized as such. Therefore, the Geneva Convention it will be.
But this pilot is in a very bad place indeed. The Free Syrian Army militants are enthused that they can claim they shot down his jet. And the international community of onlookers and well-wishers can speculate that Turkey or the Gulf States or both have seen their way clear to providing the FSA with anti-aircraft weapons.
After all, Syria shot down a Turkish plane with anti-aircraft machine-gun fire it claimed was in overflight in Syrian airspace. There's more than one way of skinning a cat, or delivering revenge. And the FSA is simply delighted to have delivered a Syrian regime pilot into its own deserving hands to the huge consternation of the Syrian airforce claiming it was a mechanical malfunction that brought the plane down.
It's good for morale. The regime has moved tanks into Saif al-Dawla, neighbouring Aleppo's Salaheddine suburb where they felt they had control of the area until regime forces claimed to have retaken it. So the rebels needed a perk-me-up. Civilians still left in Aleppo are far less sanguine about events. They are starving; food availability has plummeted.
Doctors operating field hospitals for the rebels are seeing residents coming to them for food, not medical help. "A woman came inside and we thought she needed medical attention, but instead she asked for food. She said her family hadn't eaten for days and she had no money to buy anything."
Foreign ministers at a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation agreed to suspend Syria from the international body. Might be a good idea for them to organize a life-saving mission of air drops of food to Aleppo and towns nearby where the regime and the rebels are facing off, making life even more of a misery for people hoping they will survive a conflict they never asked for.
Labels: Chaos, Conflict, Security, Societal Failures, Syria
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, August 15, 2012
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