TRANSCRIPT:
ASHLEY HALL: Rebels and forces loyal to Syria's president
Bashar al-Assad are locked in a fierce battle just outside the capital
Damascus.
The fighting has cut access to the international airport, and two airlines have stopped flights to the Syrian capital.
At the same time, internet and telecommunications links in the country have been cut.
Both the Assad regime and rebel forces are blaming each other for the worst communications blackout in 20 months of conflict.
It's making it much more difficult to get accurate information about the situation in Syria.
Nonetheless, Timothy McDonald reports.
(Sound from rockets firing)
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Amateur video uploaded by activists, shows what appears to be MiG warplanes firing rockets on the city of Homs.
Like many others that have emerged since the start of the Syrian conflict, it can't be independently verified.
For the opposition, the internet has played a vital role in documenting the war and pressing the case for international support.
For the time being, that appears to have stopped.
Jim Cowie from the US internet monitoring company Renesys told the BBC that internet traffic has stopped entirely.
JIM COWIE: It's as if the Syrian internet fell off a table and stopped working. It's very unambiguous, it is a complete withdrawal of all the internet connected resources in the country.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: The apparent shutdown follows fighting in Damascus, which has forced the closure of the international airport. Emirates and EgyptAir stopped flights to the Syrian capital.
US officials say the rebels are making gains, but the war hasn't yet shifted decisively in their favour. US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland blames the Syrian government for the shutdown, and says it's quite a revealing move.
VICTORIA NULAND: And it just again speaks to the kind of desperation of the regime as it tries to cling to power.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: One IT expert says the government may have calculated that it was worth shutting down the internet, even though it makes its own communications more difficult too.
Professor Matt Warren is the chair of information systems at Deakin University.
MATT WARREN: It may be that they've made a decision that they're actually losing the perception war, and it's more advantageous for them to control the flow of information rather than resistance organisations being able to disseminate information, you know, widely to the world.
So it could be that form of assessment as well that the Syrian government feels is actually in their best interests to have a greater control, you know, over internet communications.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Shutting down the internet has been a government tactic in other places too. During protests in Egypt last year, the government there tried similar tactics.
In response, engineers at Google and Twitter organised a voice-to-tweet service to help protesters work around the shutdown.
Syria's opposition too, has other ways of getting the word out. The US has provided around 2,000 communications kits to the opposition.
Victoria Nuland says they're not affected.
VICTORIA NULAND: They are all designed to be independent from and able to circumvent the Syrian domestic network precisely for the reason of keeping them safe, keeping them secure.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Also, satellite communications aren't affected, and the opposition can always get footage out the old fashioned way - by taking it over the border.
Still, Professor Warren says the government probably will gain a tactical advantage, because military communications are likely to be unaffected.
MATT WARREN: They would have their own independent communication systems not linked to the internet, so a lot of their equipment and technology historically has been supplied to them by Russia. So it means that they would have their own independent communication network, independent of the internet.
But what may be an issue actually for the resistance is mobile communications because, as we've seen with ad-hoc movements that have developed, mobile communications are actually a very effective way for people to sort of keep in touch.
So again, it may be that some of these strategies are going to impact the resistance organisations more than the government forces.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Syria's minister of information denies that the government is responsible, and instead blames terrorists for the countrywide outage.
He says engineers are working to repair what he said was a fault in the main communications and internet cable.
ASHLEY HALL: Timothy McDonald.
The fighting has cut access to the international airport, and two airlines have stopped flights to the Syrian capital.
At the same time, internet and telecommunications links in the country have been cut.
Both the Assad regime and rebel forces are blaming each other for the worst communications blackout in 20 months of conflict.
It's making it much more difficult to get accurate information about the situation in Syria.
Nonetheless, Timothy McDonald reports.
(Sound from rockets firing)
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Amateur video uploaded by activists, shows what appears to be MiG warplanes firing rockets on the city of Homs.
Like many others that have emerged since the start of the Syrian conflict, it can't be independently verified.
For the opposition, the internet has played a vital role in documenting the war and pressing the case for international support.
For the time being, that appears to have stopped.
Jim Cowie from the US internet monitoring company Renesys told the BBC that internet traffic has stopped entirely.
JIM COWIE: It's as if the Syrian internet fell off a table and stopped working. It's very unambiguous, it is a complete withdrawal of all the internet connected resources in the country.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: The apparent shutdown follows fighting in Damascus, which has forced the closure of the international airport. Emirates and EgyptAir stopped flights to the Syrian capital.
US officials say the rebels are making gains, but the war hasn't yet shifted decisively in their favour. US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland blames the Syrian government for the shutdown, and says it's quite a revealing move.
VICTORIA NULAND: And it just again speaks to the kind of desperation of the regime as it tries to cling to power.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: One IT expert says the government may have calculated that it was worth shutting down the internet, even though it makes its own communications more difficult too.
Professor Matt Warren is the chair of information systems at Deakin University.
MATT WARREN: It may be that they've made a decision that they're actually losing the perception war, and it's more advantageous for them to control the flow of information rather than resistance organisations being able to disseminate information, you know, widely to the world.
So it could be that form of assessment as well that the Syrian government feels is actually in their best interests to have a greater control, you know, over internet communications.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Shutting down the internet has been a government tactic in other places too. During protests in Egypt last year, the government there tried similar tactics.
In response, engineers at Google and Twitter organised a voice-to-tweet service to help protesters work around the shutdown.
Syria's opposition too, has other ways of getting the word out. The US has provided around 2,000 communications kits to the opposition.
Victoria Nuland says they're not affected.
VICTORIA NULAND: They are all designed to be independent from and able to circumvent the Syrian domestic network precisely for the reason of keeping them safe, keeping them secure.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Also, satellite communications aren't affected, and the opposition can always get footage out the old fashioned way - by taking it over the border.
Still, Professor Warren says the government probably will gain a tactical advantage, because military communications are likely to be unaffected.
MATT WARREN: They would have their own independent communication systems not linked to the internet, so a lot of their equipment and technology historically has been supplied to them by Russia. So it means that they would have their own independent communication network, independent of the internet.
But what may be an issue actually for the resistance is mobile communications because, as we've seen with ad-hoc movements that have developed, mobile communications are actually a very effective way for people to sort of keep in touch.
So again, it may be that some of these strategies are going to impact the resistance organisations more than the government forces.
TIMOTHY MCDONALD: Syria's minister of information denies that the government is responsible, and instead blames terrorists for the countrywide outage.
He says engineers are working to repair what he said was a fault in the main communications and internet cable.
ASHLEY HALL: Timothy McDonald.
No comments:
Post a Comment