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Kim Kardashian Butts Into Syria's (Online) Civil War With #SaveKessa

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  • Kim Kardashian Butts Into Syria's (Online) Civil War With #SaveKessa

    KIM KARDASHIAN BUTTS INTO SYRIA'S (ONLINE) CIVIL WAR WITH #SAVEKESSAB CAMPAIGN

    The Daily Beast
    March 31 2014

    The notorious vixen has been in her share of controversies before--and
    had even supported the occasional dictator. But nothing like this.

    On Sunday, sex tape vixen/reality TV starlet/entrepreneur
    Kim Kardashian took a break from the #belfies to wade into
    geopolitics--specifically, the ethically murky territory of the Syrian
    civil war.

    On Twitter, she made what seemed like a simple cry to save the citizens
    of Kessab, a town in Syria that's been the scene of intense fighting
    in recent days. The tweet was even welcomed by one of the country's
    main rebel groups. But, as with all things Syria, the reality is far
    more complicated. Kessab was, until recently, part of a stronghold for
    Damascus dictator Bashar al-Assad. Some are accusing the campaign to
    "save" the place of using fake images as part of a possible stealth
    movement to support the Assad regime.

    Her 72-day marriage and recent Vogue cover notwithstanding, this isn't
    the first time Kardashian has lent her sizeable name to a controversial
    issue. Back in April 2011, Kim featured on the cover of the Turkish
    edition of Cosmopolitan magazine. Bad timing. Kim is, of course,
    Armenian, and April is the month the Armenians pay remembrance to
    Turkey's genocide of the Armenians in the years during and following
    World War I. Then, in Dec. 2012, Kim paid a (paid) visit to Bahrain,
    one of the world's more oppressive regimes, to help generate publicity
    for a Millions of Milkshakes restaurant chain. She even lauded the
    "amazing hospitality" of Sheikh Khalifa and the "Kingdom of Bahrain"
    on Twitter (before deleting the tweets).

    Then, on Sunday, Kardashian gave a massive social media bump to the
    #SaveKessab campaign, tweeting out the following to her 20.4 million
    Twitter acolytes:

    In doing so, she joined political figures like Rep. Adam Schiff and
    other celebrities like Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker in helping
    the hashtag trend worldwide.

    Unlike Barker, the issue hits closer to home for Kardashian.

    The Kardashian clan helms from Karakale, a village situated in
    Eastern Turkey close to the Armenian border. Karakale was, back
    then, an ethnic Armenian village. Kim's great-great grandparents on
    her father's side are Sam and Harom Kardaschoff, and "Kardaschoff"
    is the Russian spelling of the Armenian name "Kardashian." Her two
    great-great-grandparents, along with her great-grandfather, fled
    Karakale during what Armenians refer to as the Medz Yeghern ("great
    crime")--the genocide of Armenians and expulsion from their homeland,
    which constitutes present-day Turkey, in the years following World
    War I. Men were massacred, and Armenian women and children were taken
    on death marches to the Syrian Desert.

    Sam and Harom Kardaschoff, along with their son, Tatos, moved to Los
    Angeles and started a waste management business. Then, Tatos changed
    his name to Tom, and the family angled into the meatpacking business.

    Robert Kardashian, the father of Kim and her celebrity siblings, who
    was also a big-shot lawyer that served on the O.J. Simpson defense
    team, is Tom's grandson.

    "I was raised with a huge Armenian influence, always hearing stories
    of Armenia, celebrating Armenian holidays," said Kim. "My father
    taught us to never forget where we came from."

    Last week, that family history collided with today's civil war
    in Syria. Syrian rebels, including fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra,
    the official al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, advanced into Latakia,
    the northwestern coastal province that is the ancestral home to
    the Assad family. Clashes between the rebels and regime loyalists,
    including the Iranian-trained National Defense Forces, prompted the
    flight of hundreds of Christian Armenians from the border town of
    Kessab, into the provincial capital city of Latakia. Kessab has now
    fallen to opposition fighters, giving them another strategic foothold
    in the north through which they'll no doubt seek to run weapons and
    resupplies from the Turkish region of Hatay, which has served as a
    de facto rebel barracks outside of Syria.

    Armenians constitute about 1 percent of the total Syrian population,
    making them the seventh-largest ethnicity in the country, which has
    been torn apart by almost three years of civil war. And while it is
    certainly true that Syrian Christians cannot be so easily divided
    into pro- and anti-Assad camps (there are Christian units of the
    rebel Free Syrian Army, for instance), the coastal enclaves of the
    country tend to be more loyalist.

    Most of Kessab's Armenians do indeed back the Assad regime, seeing it
    as their only guarantor against radical Islamists who now make up a
    sizable part of the Syrian opposition. For this reason, rebels have
    attempted to reassure the Armenians that they will not be persecuted
    or harmed, nor will their holy sites be desecrated; they've allegedly
    posted videos showing rebels protecting Armenian church in Kessab.

    Nevertheless, such reassurances have failed to win over the local
    population, much less the far-flung and influential Armenian diaspora,
    which in the United States has a powerful lobbying arm. The fear
    of another Armenian genocide, such as the one perpetrated by the
    collapsing Ottoman Empire in 1915, is palpable, judging by the social
    media campaigns to "Save Kessab" initiated by grassroots U.S. Armenian
    grassroots organizations.

    One of Syria's main rebel groups is welcoming the attention from
    Kardashian.

    "We are glad Kim Kardashian is taking an interest in this issue, as we
    too are concerned about extremist groups' persecution of minorities,"
    Khalid Saleh, a spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, told The
    Daily Beast. "The Free Syrian Army has put out a statement committed
    to protecting of citizens of Armenian descent and to maintaining
    the integrity of their religious sites and protecting them from the
    Assad's attacks and use of indiscriminate fire, which continue against
    innocent people."

    But while no one could argue with the goal of saving civilians caught
    in a horrific crossfire, some of the tactics of the Save Kessab
    campaign have come under heavy fire. One of the cornerstone images of
    the movement purports to be of a Syrian Christian, slain by a crucifix
    shoved down her throat. That image, in fact, taken from a horror movie,
    according to the online debunkery site Snopes.com.

    A second image, widely circulated by the movement, claims to show a
    victim of a recent massacre in the region--a decapitated young girl
    in a frilly blue dress. The girl lost her life in 2012, not during
    the battles of the last few weeks.

    The use of the images has led critics of the #SaveKessab effort to
    brand it as nothing more than pro-Assad propaganda.

    It's unlikely, of course, that Kardashian took much time to investigate
    these claims. As one wag on Twitter put it:

    Read the tweets at
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/31/kim-kardashian-butts-into-syria-s-online-civil-war-with-savekessab-campaign.html

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