Here’s a link to today’s interview with New York Times journalist C.J. Chivers about the situation in Syria. Chivers has spent much of the past year with rebels in the country and you can read his reports for the Times here.

Damascus from above by rajarajaraja via Flickr

Tomorrow on the show, Terry is talking to journalist C.J. Chivers about reporting he has been doing on Syria for The New York Times. Chivers is also the author of The Gun, that traces how the AK-47 spread around the world. Terry spoke with Chivers in 2010, when that book came out:

On why child soldiers favor AK-47s:

“It’s out there. And the weapon that’s out there is the weapon that tends to get used. But the other reason is the design. It’s very, very simple. It’s almost intuitive. You can take it apart very quickly and put it back together just as quickly. It’s simple to clean. It’s simple to maintain. Most of the Kalashnikovs out there are very well made for the actual conditions of war. It has an excellent protective finish. It’s chromed on the inside of its barrel and its chamber. All of these things mean that if you’re not particularly attentive in caring for it, it’s still going to last and it’s still going to work.”

In some ways, the region is topsy-turvy and it preceded what happened in Syria. Syria is bringing it really to light [that] all the alliances — or so many of the alliances that we were familiar with — are things of the past, and this is something that I think the United States is going to have to cope with and deal with. … In Syria, you have obviously countries that are theocratic countries … like Saudi Arabia … that are certainly far from being democratic … that are on the side of those who are rising up against President Assad, but they’re also supporting the Salafists in Syria, who are not rising up for the sake of democracy, but for a very different purpose. … Then you have a country like Iran which is backing not just a secular regime or semi-secular regime in Syria, but one that has repressed its own Islamists, but backing it because of an age-old alliance between those two countries, and you have an organization like Hezbollah…which is backing the regime in Syria even though its former ally in this axis of resistance against Israel, Hamas, is opposing the regime.

So, I think, the fault lines have become slightly clearer but they’re fault lines that are not democrats versus non-democrats. Although many Syrians are rising up because they want to change the nature of the regime, the fault line is very much Sunni against Shiite; it’s Persian-Iranian against Arabs. That’s why a number of these alliances seem to us at least as Americans quite unnatural. … The region has become really a smorgasbord in terms of its alliances, and … something this unnatural just can’t end well because these alliances are not clear cut, they don’t make sense in terms of the political logic, they are temporary alliances, they are alliances of convenience.

— Robert Malley, International Crisis Group’s program director for the Middle East and North Africa, on why the alliances among Middle Eastern countries are difficult for Americans to untangle

They [Salafists] are very, very restrictive in the way they interpret Islam, they have a very specific ideology … you see them as probably 30-40 percent of all the fighting that happens in Syria. …Why? Because most of the support is coming again from the Gulf countries, from Saudi, from Qatar, who really espouse these ideologies. And again, they [Syrian rebels] really have to take money from these countries because no one else is giving them money. I’ve met Syrian rebels who grow beards, who espouse this very conservative radical rhetoric when they speak. In reality, they drink, they take drugs, they have nothing to do with Islam, but they have to adopt this ideology to get money and support.

— Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on Syrian rebels posing as Salafists, followers of an ultra-conservative sect of Islam. He reported for the PBS Frontline documentary, The Battle for Syria.

Tomorrow: We talk to Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, a correspondent for The Guardian, about the reporting he did for the Frontline documentary, The Battle for Syria.

Photography by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad for the Guardian

Heartbroken over the news that New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid died in Syria yesterday. Shadid was on Fresh Air six times, most recently this past December, where he talked about covering the Arab Spring. We’ll be devoting a portion of the show today to remember him.

Update 10:50 AM: The entire first half of the show will rebroadcast portions of Shadid’s December 2011 conversation on Fresh Air. Shadid, a frequent FA guest, suffered a fatal asthma attack yesterday in Syria, where he was reporting on the political uprising. The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner was just 43-years-old, and leaves behind a wife and two small children.

On Wednesday’s Fresh Air, Anthony Shadid talks extensively about his reporting in the Middle East, including Syria, where many journalists have been denied entry visas. Shadid and photographer Moises Saman crossed the border on motorcycles along what he calls “a lawless strip of terrain” in order to get across the border and cover the protests.

Photo: Moises Saman for The New York Times. The rest of Saman’s images can be found here.

4 Times Journalists Held Captive in Libya Faced Days of Brutality

In March, veteran foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid and three other journalists were held and beaten by security forces in Libya. On today’s Fresh Air, Shadid talks about his experiences in Libya and why he decided to continue reporting from conflict zones. In the past year, he’s covered the Arab uprisings in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain and Tunisia. Before that, he covered the Iraq War for nearly a decade. 

Syrian men promise to marry women who were raped - The Washington Post

To reclaim their “honor,” families in Syria have been known to kill raped female members. Even if families allow such women to live, they are not eligible to marry.

“We sat and discussed that we want to change this. We don’t want to change just the regime in Syria, but also this kind of stuff. So we will marry them in front of everyone,” said Ibrahim Kayyis, a 32-year-old baker from Jisr al-Shugour.

Tomorrow’s Fresh Air: Democracy movements are sweeping across the Middle East. But the dramatic changes in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria have not yet come to the West Bank. If and when that does occur, it could be a game-changer for Israel and the United States according to Robert Malley. He’s the program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group.