It was exactly a month ago when commenting on the Mobile Warfare in Syria, I predicted a possible peak in the protests for the half of April. Unfortunately I was a (quite easy actually) good prophet even if my prediction was not completely correct since we are now in the second half of the month. The wave is moving and in the last days the situation has plunged: protests are rising and from the “Black Friday”, the day in which the protests reached the peak, sources report nearly 300 victims in the wave of violence which shook the Country.
As usual I am watching with interest the roles that mobile technologies and social networks are playing and I am noticing the same patterns which characterized the revolutions of this beginning of 2011: social networks used for witnessing the events, common persons becoming improvised reporters armed only with their mobile devices (weapons), and governments desperately trying to stop the streams of bits from the hot zones with coarse attempts.
Consequently it is not surprising that many tweets are just reporting (together with the dramatic news of new military repressions) the cut-off of Internet, Mobile Phones and landlines in Nawa (Governorate of Daraa).
Nevertheless, Syrian Citizens keep on witnessing, what is happening and their tweets and updates are shacking the web (and the world): they show the importance and power of Mobile Warfare and the weapons citizens are using are well summarized by this tweet which encloses the essence of the mobile warfare:
The shots of the gun are viewable, for instance on the Facebook Syrian Revolution 2011 page, which is continuously fed with video “shot” from mobile devices. Moreover, in this moment, mobile communications in Daraa are possible only thanks to Jordanian Mobile Networks:
Will it happen an hijacking of the mobile network with the collaboration of a close country as occurred in Libya with the “Free Libyana”? Difficult to say, but for sure some other tweets do not exclude this possibility:
Worthwile to mention: the above tweet also mentions the hacking of Addounia.tv occurred on April, the 23rd. “More tradional” Cyberwar operations…
Update
Few seconds after publishing the post I found an interesting information, emphasizing the power of mobile warfare, according to which reports by the “Israeli”, announced yesterday that the United States intends to allocate funding for the “revolutions” through the Internet in the “Arab countries” to help the activists bring about change for their countries.
The information have been mentioned by tge “Jerusalem Post” (but I did not fond any conform so far). According to the latter, the administration of President Barack Obama plans to spend more than $ 25 million to facilitate the use of the Internet through activists who’s governments hinder the use of Internet services.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Democracy, Human Rights and Labor “Michael Posner” announced to the newspaper “the current administration believes that democratic change must be emanated from within. “
Wars and battlefield are really changing and the parallelism between real weapons and cyber weapons is getting more and more pertinent strengthening the concept of War 2.0: in the “old” world, foreign enemy countries financed internal rebels providing them weapons; in the new world they learn them how to use internet.
Update 2
Thanks to Twitter I came across this interesting article from NYT, which further enhances the similarities between cyber-activism and real activism. Exiles drive the revolution allowing the sharing of images and information all over the World. Meanwhile they created a network to smuggle “weapons” inside Syria. Which kind of weapons? Of course satellite phones, along with hundreds of cameras and laptops.
Several say they relied on Syrian businessmen — abroad or in Syria — to finance one of their most impressive feats. After witnessing the Egyptian government’s success in shutting down the Internet and mobile phone networks in January, they made a concerted attempt to circumvent a similar move by delivering satellite phones and modems across Syria. Ammar Abdulhamid, an activist in Maryland, estimated that they delivered 100 satellite phones, along with hundreds of cameras and laptops.
Thanks to this “smuggling” we may listen to the tweets of freedom. The mobile warfare seems unstoppable…
