Where is ‘red line’ on rape in war? (CNN)

I remember a chalk line drawn on blacktop by a group of kids at recess when I was young. The message was clear: This is the line you do not cross. If you stepped over it, you would face the wrath of those kids in whatever game we were playing. Now turn that line crimson and color it toxic. This is the adult version of “do not cross.”

This is the infamous red line.

We first heard about it in terms of Syria a year ago. President Barack Obama said that the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad would cross a “red line” that would have “enormous consequences.” As chemical weapons were deployed in Syria in August, Obama’s tripwire was triggered. Then Obama told reporters: “First of all, I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line.”

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‘Take Your Portion’: A Victim Speaks Out About Rape in Syria (The Atlantic)

Alma Abdulrahman is lying gaunt and unable to move anything below her diaphragm in a hospital bed in Amman. Some bedsores have become so deep she’s having surgery tomorrow. Screws hold together her upper vertebrae, and cigarette burns pock her right shoulder. Her voice fades in and out, hoarse from either weakness or morphine.

Six months earlier, she was paralyzed when a regime soldier struck her in the neck with a rifle on a street on the outskirts of Damascus. Now, from a guarded hospital room, she wants to be heard, and what she has to say is deeply disturbing.

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A Syrian Refugee Wedding (The Nation)

Inside a furniture-free caravan in the Jordanian desert, sixteen women and girls and a plump boy wedge themselves in a circle around a 15-year-old girl and a woman doing her hair. The hairdresser combs through one-inch sections, spraying on a fixative before twisting them into elaborate shapes. The girl, whom I’ll call Nada (I’ve changed her name as well as others’ to protect their privacy), is one of hundreds of thousands of refugees who have fled to neighboring countries from Syria’s civil war. We are in Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp—now the second-largest in the world—and Nada is getting married today.

After Nada’s geisha-like makeup is done, three women will sprinkle her body with talcum powder, minus the parts covered by leggings and a bra. She will step into a rented dress and then spend three more hours waiting on a floor mattress in the heat before meeting her husband between caravans, in a field of pebbles that extends to the horizon in all directions.

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