On Monday, government forces, backed by pro-regime militiamen, launched a major offensive on opposition held areas in the central city of Homs. Evidently, regime forces are also attacking north of Latakia, in an effort to push back rebels to the north as well. As the government losses territory around Aleppo and to the East around Raqqa and the Jazira, the regime seems to be fattening up the region around the Alawite Mountains.

Dozens of Syrian troops killed in Iraq ambush  – al-Jazeera

At least 42 Syrians and seven Iraqis are killed in Anbar by an attack on a convoy carrying troops who crossed into Iraq.

Syrian Rebels Capture Most of Northern City
2013-03-04 By BASSEM MROUE

Beirut (AP) — Syrian rebels pushed government troops from most of the northern city of Raqqa Monday, and then scores of cheering protesters tore up a poster of President Bashar Assad and toppled a bronze statue of his late father and predecessor, activists said.

Der Spiegel: EU May Provide Weapons Training to Syrian Rebels
2013-03-04

Officially, the statement released by Brussels last week on the European Union’s amended sanctions against Syria referred merely to supplying rebel fighters with “non-lethal military equipment” and “technical assistance for the protection of …

Syria President Al-Assad’s Interview with The Sunday Times
By Bashar al-Assad
The full interview has been copied by Global Research, March 03, 2013, Sunday Times and SANA

Sunday Times: Mr. President your recent offer of political dialogue was qualified with a firm rejection of the very groups you would have to pacify to stop the violence: the armed rebels and the Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition alliance.

So in effect you are only extending an olive branch to the loyal opposition, mostly internal, that renounce the armed struggle, and who effectively recognizes the legitimacy of your leadership, who are you willing to talk to, really?

President Assad: First of all, let me correct some of the misconceptions that have been circulating and that are found in your question in order to make my answer accurate.

Sunday Times: Okay.

President Assad: Firstly, when I announced the plan, I said that it was for those who are interested in dialogue, because you cannot make a plan that is based on dialogue with somebody who does not believe in dialogue. So, I was very clear regarding this…..

Hague dismisses Assad as ‘delusional’ –

March 3 (Telegraph) — William Hague described Bashar al-Assad as “delusional”, after the Syrian President accused Britain of funding terrorism inside the country. The Foreign Secretary said the embattled dictator was “presiding over this slaughter” in Syria whilst Britain is “sending food and shelter and blankets to help people driven from their homes and families in his name.”

“This will go down as one of the most delusional interviews that any national leader has given in modern times,” he told the BBC….

Khatib visits Aleppo villages as Syria opponents vote for council

Opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad voted on Sunday to elect 29 provincial council members to run rebel-held areas in the northern province of Aleppo, organizers and participants told AFP. “For the first time, Aleppo will have a freely elected provincial … Read More

LA Times [Reg]: Syria’s president says rebels must disarm before talks
2013-03-04

Exposing a rift in policy between US and Saudi Arabia – Wash Post

Kerry met Monday with Saudi diplomats who staked out a more aggressive posture on providing arms to Syrian rebels, exposing a rift in policy between the two regional allies. …“Saudi Arabia will do everything in its capacity. We do believe that what is happening in Syria is a slaughter — a slaughter of innocents,” Prince Saud al-Faisal said during a visit by Secretary of State John F. Kerry. “We cannot bring ourselves to remain silent. Morally there is a duty.”….“There is no guarantee that one weapon or another might not, at some point in time, fall into the wrong hands,” Kerry said a news conference with the veteran Saudi diplomat.

US should focus aid on Syrian refugees
By Juliette Kayyem | Globe, March 04

The numbers of people who have fled to neighboring countries can no longer be sustained, and keeping them safe will pay dividends long after the war in Syria is over.

Ra’s al-Ain and Patchwork Alliances in the Kurdish areas of Syria – BBC

Ras al-Ain – or Serekani in Kurdish – in north-east Syria is an area divided between Arab tribes and Kurds.

There are also other ethnic groups, including a few Chechens and Ingush, whose ancestors migrated there from the North Caucasus in the beginning of the 20th century.

After about four months of absence, Walid Didigov – a Syrian of Ingush origin – appeared suddenly by instant message on my Facebook page.

He popped up a few days after Syrian rebels and a Kurdish militia, who have been fighting each other for months in a town near the Turkish border, signed a ceasefire.

I responded immediately. He was using a very slow internet connection and apologised for interruptions, which were also due to frequent power cuts.

“The ceasefire allowed me to reconnect,” he told me. “This time I have joined the rebels, alongside my brothers and relatives. We have to choose between right and wrong and we choose to be on the righteous side: against the regime.”

Mr Didigov says that he and his Chechen-Ingush relatives co-ordinate with “all armed groups in the area that are fighting against Kurdish militants supported by regime”….

Rebels accuse Syria’s Kurds of exploiting the war in Syria to assert control over parts of the north-east.

Mr Didigov says: “We are fighting alongside various groups in Ras al-Ain: the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Ghuraba al-Sham, Ahrar al-Sham – sometimes we co-operate with al-Nusra front.”…. “Turkey is afraid of Kurdish independence in Syria, and will make allegiances with anyone to stop them, therefore they are supporting the armed groups in Ras al-Ain against Kurdish militias,” he says. The FSA, he says, wants the fighting to continue in Ras al-Ain to keep Turkish support coming….

Al-Nusra jihadists, however, are remaining neutral in this fight in Ras al-Ain. “They are wining hearts and minds by reopening bakeries and providing gas for people,” Mr Didigov tells me.

The leader of al-Nusra in the area is a Kurd himself and Mr Didigov asked him why they are staying neutral. The leader said that they “need Kurds to help us to advance in Qamishli (north-east), which is dominated by Kurds.”

‘Bullying’ Britain fanning the flames, warns Assad; In a rare interview, the Syrian leader says the West is supporting terrorism and vows revenge on Israel
HALA JABER DAMASCUS, 3 March 2013, The Sunday Times

AFTER 23 months of a conflict that has ripped his country apart, the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, was in no mood to contemplate giving up the fight and going into exile.

“No patriotic person will think about living outside his country. I am like any other patriotic Syrian,” he said in an interview last week, when I asked if he would leave to improve the prospects for peace. In any case, he said, it was nonsense to suggest that the conflict was about the president and his future.

“If this argument is correct, then my departure will stop the fighting. Clearly this is absurd, and recent precedents in Libya, Yemen and Egypt bear witness to this.” Assad spoke softly throughout the hour-long interview, his first with a western newspaper for more than a year, but he had harsh words for his opponents. He vowed that Syria would retaliate against Israel for an airstrike on a research centre in Damascus last month.

He accused John Kerry, the American secretary of state, of wasting time by trying to ease him out of power, saying his leadership was an internal matter, “so I am not going to discuss it with anyone who is coming from abroad”.

His most withering criticism, however, was directed at Britain. Instead of pushing for peace talks, he said, David Cameron’s “naive, confused, unrealstic” government was trying to end an EU arms embargo so that the rebels could be supplied with weapons.

This, he said, would fan the flames of war at a time when an al-Qaeda-backed element of the uprising, Jabhat al-Nusra, was already “killing, beheading, torturing and preventing children from going to school”. “We do not expect an arsonist to be a firefighter,” he said, dismissing any suggestion that Britain could help to resolve the conflict.

“To be frank, Britain has played a famously unconstructive role in our region on different issues for decades, some say for centuries … The problem with this government is that their shallow and immature rhetoric only highlights this tradition of bullying and hegemony … “How can we ask Britain to play a role while it is determined to militarise the problem? How can we expect them to make the violence less while they want to send military supplies to the terrorists?” Yet Assad adopted a conciliatory tone towards the Syrian opposition, inviting it to join in a national dialogue aimed at ending the crisis.

“We are ready to negotiate with anyone, including militants who surrender their arms,” he declared. “We are not going to deal with terrorists who are determined to carry weapons, to terrorise people, to kill civilians, to attack public places or private enterprise and to destroy the country.” He concluded: “We have opposition that are political entities and we have armed terrorists. We can engage in dialogue with the opposition, but we cannot engage in dialogue with terrorists. We fight terrorism.”

I WAS waiting in a first-floor reception room at Al-Muhajireen palace, a relatively modest building where Assad often works, away from the grandeur of the main presidential palace, when I was told to look out of the window. An ordinary black saloon car with tinted windows was coming up the drive. I realised it could be the president but I was surprised to see him emerging not from a rear door opened by a chauffeur, but from the driver’s seat. He was the only person in the vehicle and there was no sign of a security convoy.

It was explained to me that despite regular explosions, Assad insists on maintaining a normal lifestyle including — to his security chief’s dismay — driving to the office in the morning. He has apparently told his security men that if ever he has to wear a flak jacket to move around Damascus, he might as well step down.

We met in a room with artisanal chandeliers and window frames inlaid with mother of pearl. Through the open shutters, one could see residential buildings on the other side of a courtyard. It was a quiet morning, with a lull in the shelling of the suburbs that can be heard daily from the city centre.

More than 3m Syrians have been driven from their homes and, as the death toll soars, barely a family in Syria has been left untouched — not even the president’s.

His brother-in-law, General Assef Shawkat, was blown up last July in a bombing that also killed three other senior members of the security forces. Had this made Assad fear for his own life, I wondered? Did he lie in bed at night, listening to the explosions and worrying about the security of his British wife, Asma, and their children Hafez, 10, Zein, 9 and Karim, 7? “Can anybody be safe, or their family be safe, if the country is in danger?” he replied. “In reality, no. If your country is not safe, you cannot be safe, so instead of worrying about yourself and your family, you should worry about every citizen and every family in your country.”

The interview was timed to coincide with Kerry’s first foreign tour as secretary of state. Kerry met Syrian rebels in Rome last Thursday and announced that £40m of “nonlethal” US aid would go directly to them for the first time.

“The intelligence, communication and financial assistance being provided is very lethal,” Assad countered, pointing out that “non-lethal” technology had been used to deadly effect in the 9/11 attacks. William Hague, the foreign secretary, is expected to announce a package of British assistance this week.

“The British government wants to send military aid to moderate groups in Syria, knowing all too well that such moderate groups do not exist in Syria,” Assad said. “We all know that we are now fighting al-Qaeda, or Jabhat al-Nusra, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, and other groups of people indoctrinated with extreme ideologies. “This is beyond hypocritical,” he added, echoing Hague’s comment about him.

“A recent survey in the UK showed that a good proportion of the British people want to ‘keep out of Syria’ and they do not believe that the British government should send military supplies to the rebels. In spite of this, the British government continues to push the EU to lift its arms embargo on Syria and to start arming the militants with heavy weapons. That is what I call detached from reality — when you’re detached from your own public opinion.”

Today Kerry is due to visit Saudi Arabia before moving on to Qatar. Both countries actively support the rebels, who have seized large swathes of northern Syria and appear to be advancing in parts of Aleppo, the biggest commercial centre, while being beaten back in Damascus.

The best way for anyone to help Syria, Assad said, would be to “go to Saudi Arabia and Qatar and tell them: stop financing the terrorists in Syria”. Support for the opposition could backfire now the extremists were in the ascendant, he warned. Jabhat al-Nusra has been blamed for a series of bombings, including one in Damascus 10 days ago in which the president said 300 people had been killed or injured. The “irreversible” spread of al-Qaeda’s ideology was even more dangerous than its armed attacks.

Describing Syria as “a melting pot of religions, sects, ethnicities and ideologies”, he added: “We should be worrying about the majority of moderate Syrians who, if we do not fight this extremism, could become the minority — at which point Syriawill cease to exist. If you worry about Syria, you have to worry about the Middle East, because we are the last bastion of secularism in the region. If you worry about the Middle East, the whole world should be worried about its stability.”

WITH the conflict about to enter its third year, a change of attitude on both sides towards peace talks has brought a glimmer of hope, albeit a tiny one. Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, the president of the opposition alliance Syrian National Coalition, was reported last month to have dropped his insistence on the departure of Assad before any talks could take place.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN and Arab League envoy to Syria, said Khatib’s proposal had challenged the government to show it was ready for a peaceful settlement. However, rifts in the opposition have since emerged, with some saying Assad must step down.

Assad himself said he wanted to include many groups in talks. “The dialogue is about the future of Syria. We are 23m Syrians and all of us have the right to participate in shaping the country’s future,” he said.

He criticised the West for promoting the rebel Free Syrian Army as a unified entity when in reality it consisted of “hundreds of small groups”.
I asked whether his demand for fighters to lay down their arms would prevent talks from getting under way. Had this been his plan all along, as his critics suggested, because he knew that negotiations would lead to his downfall? The opposite was true, Assad claimed. “They say that dialogue will bring the downfall of the president and I am inviting them to the dialogue. Why don’t they then come to the dialogue to bring about downfall?” Could there ever be a negotiated settlement while he remained in power? “We have a plan and whoever wants to deal with us can deal with us through our plan,” he replied.

Some of Assad’s opponents want to see him stand trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Court as the person ultimately responsible for his army’s actions. I asked if he was troubled by this. “Are they going to take the American and British leaders who attacked Iraq in 2003 and claimed more than half a million lives?” he retorted. “They are not going to do it. The answer is very clear.”

He was equally unhappy with the UN, which has estimated the death toll in the conflict at 70,000. The figures had been manipulated to justify outside intervention, he claimed, just as they had been in Libya before French and British airstrikes two years ago. “You have noted those figures as though they were numbers from a spreadsheet,” he told me. “We see thousands of families who have lost loved ones and who unfortunately will grieve for many years to come. Nobody can feel this pain more than us.”

I recalled meeting a boy aged seven who had lost an arm, a leg and five members of his family in an explosion caused by the Syrian military. What could he say to such a child? “Children are the most fragile link in any society and unfortunately they often pay the heaviest price in any conflict,” Assad replied.

“As a father of young children, I know the meaning of having a child harmed by something very simple, so if they are harmed badly or if we lose a child, it is the worst thing any family can face.

“Whenever you have conflicts, you have these painful stories that affect any society. This is the most important and the strongest incentive for us to fight terrorism.” The fear of many in the Middle East since the conflict began has been that it would draw in surrounding countries. I asked Assad if he would retaliate against Israel for last month’s airstrikes on the research centre.

Some reports have said the dead included an Iranian general working with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Assad said Syria had always retaliated for Israeli actions, “But we retaliated in our own way, and only the Israelis know what we mean. Retaliation does not mean missile for missile or bullet for bullet. Our own way does not have to be announced.” He refused to elaborate. Nor would he discuss claims that Syriahas been moving its chemical weapons, apparently to prevent them from falling into the hands of extremists.

“We have never, and will never, discuss our armaments with anyone,” he said. He denied reports that Russia, Hezbollah and Iran had sent soldiers to Syria, saying: “Russia has been very constructive, Iran has been very supportive and Hezbollah’s role is to defend Lebanon, not Syria. “We are a country of 23m people with a strong national army and police force. We are in no need of foreign fighters to defend our country.”

In conclusion, Assad warned of grave consequences if the West armed the rebels, directly or indirectly. “You know the crime is not only about the victim and the criminal but also the accomplice providing support, whether it is moral or logistical support,” he said. “Syria lies at the fault line geographically, politically, socially and ideologically. So playing with this fault line will have serious repercussions all over the Middle East.

“Any intervention will not make things better. It will only make them worse. Europe and the United States and others are going to pay the price sooner or later with the instability in this region. They do not foresee it.”

My troops did not target courageous Marie Colvin President Bashar al-Assad has said the Syrian state cannot be held responsible for the death of Marie Colvin, the Sunday Times correspondent killed last year when the army shelled a media centre in the city of Homs. Colvin, 56, travelled to the Baba Amr district of Homs with a group of activists to report on the plight of 28,000 civilians trapped there after the rebel enclave came under severe bombardment.

Assad said he regretted her death but denied she had been personally targeted because of her reporting. “When a journalist goes into a conflict zone to cover a story and convey it to the world, I think it is very courageous work,” he said. “If you enter illegally, you cannot expect the state to be responsible.” Paul Conroy, the photographer working with Colvin, said he had no doubt from the pattern of explosions that the media centre had been targeted.

The Syrian Crisis: Can Dialogue Still Prevail Over Violence?
By NIKOLAOS VAN DAM

Syria – A Decade of Lost Chances. Repression and Revolution from Damascus Spring to Arab Spring. By Carsten Wieland, Cune Press, Seattle, 2012, 336 pp.

This is a fascinating and highly readable book, providing one of the most detailed accounts of the dramatic events in Syria over the past decade and before. Carsten Wieland gives an original and critical in-depth analysis of modern Syrian history with a refreshing approach.
Since the start of the Syrian Revolution in March 2011 various other relevant books have been published on Syria, but none of these has thus far dealt with Syria’s past decade so much in detail and in-depth as Carsten Wieland’s “A Decade of Lost Chances”. If you really want to be well informed about why things did not go well, or went wrong, time and again, during the epoch of Bashar al-Asad, Wieland’s book is a must.

….. [Full text available through: http://www.aljadid.com]

This is not only an academic reference work, helping us to better understand Syrian history; it could also be used as a tool for future policy-making, and to help evaluating what foreign governments might have, or should have done differently during this past “decade of lost chances”.

….. [Full text available through: http://www.al.jadid.com]

Wieland ends his book by concluding that “the Syrian people cannot afford and do not deserve another decade of lost chances. If the most grim scenarios unfold, however, the next decade may be much worse for many Syrians than it was, prior to the Arab Spring, under the rule of Asad.” It appears as if these most grim scenarios have already started to unfold. The big question is whether there might still be a possibility to get out of this situation through dialogue instead of bloodshed. The answer is in the hands of the Syrians.

AL JADID Vol. 17, no. 64, pp. 30-31. © Copyright 2013 AL JADID MAGAZINE

Hundreds die in Syria police academy battle

Hundreds of Syrian troops and rebels were killed in a weeklong battle for a police academy in the northern province of Aleppo, with insurgents seizing control of most of the complex, a monitoring group said… “Rebels have seized most of a police academy in Khan Al-Assal in Aleppo province … after eight days of fighting that left 200 troops and rebels dead,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based group said at least 120 army troops were among those killed in the battle for one of the regime’s last remaining bastions in the west of Aleppo province. On Sunday alone, rebels had killed more than 34 troops at the facility.

A police source in Aleppo confirmed that much of the academy had fallen into rebel hands, reporting that 40 troops were believed dead. As many as 300 rebels were among those killed, he said.

Amateur video shot by fighters and distributed by the anti-regime Aleppo Media Center showed a black flag flying over one of the academy buildings, while a large poster of President Bashar Assad had been torn.

Another video showed rebels aboard a captured military vehicle and stashes of ammunition seized from the academy.

Elsewhere, three mortars hit an area near the army general command headquarters and a customs complex in the heart of Damascus, said the Observatory….

Was Syria ever the secular, non-sectarian state we are led to believe it was? February 26th, 2013

SYRIAN REBELS TAKE FULL CONTROL OF AL-RAQQAH CITY: ARABIYA

This Week in Syria, Deeply

Hezbollah, Syrian opposition clashes intensify, raise fears in Lebanon – Wash Post
By Babak Dehghanpisheh,

Syrian Rebel Leader Deals With Ties to Other Side
Daniel Etter for The New York Times“I don’t want to fight against them; I don’t want to see them killed or injured. I hope they leave before we attack.” GEN. SALIM IDRIS, By NEIL MacFARQUHAR,  March 1, 2013

……General Idris, soft-spoken and humble compared with many military men, said he received hundreds of telephone calls daily, some angry, from commanders across Syria.

He dispatches what he can. But he described a mysterious system whereby unknown donors pay money to arms dealers within Syria. When he requisitions supplies, the black marketers fill the orders if the accounts are full. He can usually get the Kalashnikov bullets, rocket-propelled grenades and small mortars that he needs. But if the accounts are empty, he gets nothing.

Many rebel battalion commanders were civilians before the uprising. Having organized a brigade from men in their villages, they balk at taking orders and refuse to coordinate attacks.

“They want everything from the chief of staff — weapons, ammunition, money,” General Idris said. “But if you ask them what did you do with the ammunition and weapons, and how did you spend the money, well, they don’t like any commander to ask them what they are doing. But we cannot work in this way.”

General Idris said he could work with most of the Islamist factions fighting in Syria, putting their number at about 50 percent of the rebels. The exception was al-Nusra Front, blacklisted by the United States. He said that they were helpful in the fight — estimating that they had 3,000 men — but it was the only group he labeled extremist.

For security, General Idris rarely sleeps in the same place for two nights running. He takes the dangers he faces with a little black humor, interrupting the interview to call his wife “to tell her that I am still alive.”

Over all, General Idris said he thought the war was progressing well for the rebels. The government was resorting to tactics like long-range Scud missile attacks because it lacked soldiers, he said, but the rebels need the supplies promised by Western and Arab leaders more than ever.

“I would like to say to the decision makers in these countries, you cannot only listen to the news about Syria and watch the TV, to see the massacres and the destruction and wait,” he said. “If you still delay the decision to support Syria, you might take the decision when it is too late. Then Syria will be like Somalia.”

Kerry scolds Turkish leader for comment about Zionism

ANKARA, Turkey —Secretary of State John F. Kerry scolded Turkey’s leader Friday for likening Zionism to a “crime against humanity,” saying such remarks complicate efforts to forge Mideast peace.

Give Us the Weapons We Need to Beat Assad
The chief of staff of the opposition Syrian Military Joint Command calls on the United States to provide arms, not just non-lethal aid.
BY SALIM IDRIS (Commander of the Military Joint Command of the Free Syrian Army)| MARCH 1, 2013 – FP

…The Syrian Military Joint Command has built strong links with FSA brigades around the country in order to develop a countrywide military strategy. But there is only so much that can be done without the determined support of the United States. What Syrians need today to bring an end to the conflict are anti-aircraft weapons systems, not more words…..

Syria crisis: European countries expected to start arming rebels
Syrian opposition representative in UK says ‘breakthrough’ is expected after relaxation of EU rules
Julian Borger, The Guardian, Friday 1 March 2013

William Hague at the Friends of Syria meeting in Rome, where he stressed that military aid was possible in future.

Some European countries are expected to break with Washington and start supplying the Syrian rebels with weapons in the next few months, the representative of the Syrian opposition in Britain has told the Guardian. The National Coalition’s London representative, Walid Saffour, predicted that by the next meeting of the western and Arab Friends of Syria group in Turkey, due in late spring or early summer, “there will be a breakthrough that will end the restrictions of the European countries”.

Heartbreaking: young man describes what happened to his neighborhood, family and friends in Aleppo scud attack

Paul Mutter — “I’d just like to note that the $60 million in aid Kerry has promised the rebels is equal to one week’s worth of US direct military aid to Israel and sixteen days worth of direct military aid to Egypt.”

U.S. vow of non-lethal aid for Syrian rebels fails to satisfy Assad opposition
By Hannah Allam and David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers

Kerry visits Turkey for talks as Syrian opposition blasts U.S. aid announcement – FP

The Syrian opposition responded to the announcement by Kerry, and the expectation that Britain will provide combat gear, as insufficient; they have been appealing for weapons supplies. In recent months, senior U.S. officials have advised President Barack Obama to send arms to moderate factions within the Syrian opposition. However, the White House continues to refuse over fears that the weapons will end up in the hands of Islamist radicals. Head of the opposition coalition, Sheik Moaz al-Khatib stated, “The media pays more attention to the length of the beards of the fighters than the massacres.” He said the opposition is working to appoint the head of an interim government that will operate inside Syria, and attempted to quell fears that an Islamist government will take power. A meeting on the transitional government was scheduled for March 2 in Istanbul, but has been delayed for “logistical reason.”

Kerry has also said that he will criticize Erdogan for recent comments comparing Zionism to fascism, anti-Semitism, and Islamophobia.

Putin told reporters that while there was a significant gulf between the two countries’ approaches to the Syrian conflict, this might be resolved “only with a bottle of vodka, or a bottle of fine wine”.

CBS News: McCain: U.S. is “raising a generation of Jihadists” in Syria,  2013-03-01

(CBS News) On Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry extended non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, promising food and medical supplies to rebels in the first offer of direct aid since the Syrian conflict erupted two years ago. Kerry said the aid is …

Syria’s Foreign Legions – Sada Journal

Mona Alami: Who are the jihadis in Syria—and where are they coming from?

Syria’s Hard Landing, by Marc lynch – february 2013 – Policy brief – CNAS

Rebel cooperation in Syrian town shows challenge of isolating Islamists
Syrian rebels and their weapons cropped
By David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers

KFAR NBOUDA, Syria — Sophisticated new weapons now in the hands of rebels in north-central Syria underscore how difficult it will be, once more lethal aid begins to arrive, to keep those weapons from Islamist extremists who’ve become key to rebel military advances throughout the country.

Rebels who belong to the Victory Brigade – a group whose alliance with the Hama provincial military council makes it acceptable to U.S. officials who are deciding where aid should go – were giddy as they showed off their new weapons this week. They included Russian-made RPG-27s – shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenades capable of piercing the armor on the Syrian military’s most advanced tanks – and RG6 grenade launchers, another Russian-designed weapon, this one capable of spewing projectiles that explode on contact.

But the brigade doesn’t fight alone, and a video that another rebel group, the Islamist Ahrar al Sham, posted to YouTube this month showed fighters using the same kinds of weapons in an assault that was coordinated with the Victory Brigade.

“Of course they share their weapons with us,” said Ali Ankir, a spokesman for Ahrar al Sham. “We fight together.”

Indeed, Victory closely coordinated its offensive in December to seize the town of Kfar Nbouda from forces loyal to President Bashar Assad not just with Sham, but also with fighters from the Nusra Front, which the State Department has designated a terrorist organization aligned with al Qaida in Iraq.
Nusra and Sham share the goal of establishing an Islamist state in a post-Assad Syria, and unlike Victory they don’t recognize the authority of the Hama military council.

Victory rebels were cagey about how they’d gotten the new weapons. “We have our ways,” said Ahmed Darwish, a brigade leader. The timing of the weapons’ arrival suggests they were part of a recently publicized shipment brokered by Saudi Arabia from Croatia. The RG6 rounds the rebels displayed this week were manufactured in Serbia…..

WSJ [Reg]: Islamists Gain Momentum in Syria, 2013-02-28

BEIRUT—Extremists intent on establishing an Islamist state in Syria have gained power within the rebel insurgency, while moderates have lost clout since moves by Washington late last year aimed at the opposite result, U.S. officials and rebel …

WSJ [Reg]: Fouad Ajami: John Kerry’s Syrian Second Chance
2013-02-28

Not so long ago, the new secretary of state was among those who saw hope in reasoning with Bashar Assad.

Syrian rebel put his dreams on hold in civil war
By BEN HUBBARD | Associated Press

…. “I try to ask myself where I’ll be after the revolution, and I can’t imagine myself anywhere but in the grave,” Qadi told me the last time I saw him in person.

I saw Qadi again earlier this week: As I sat at my computer in Beirut, a YouTube video flashed across the screen showing his body after he had been killed in northern Syria during government shelling and airstrikes. The video, posted online by the rebels, declared him a “martyr” in the fight against President Bashar Assad…..
Ben Hubbard, an Associated Press correspondent based in Beirut, interviewed rebel fighter Abdullah Qadi during reporting trips into Syria. Here is his remembrance of the young brigade commander who died this week while fighting in northern Syria.

The Economist (@TheEconomist) – 2/28/13, 5:50 PM

Not everyone agreed with our Syria cover last week. A young Syrian designer’s more optimistic version went viral econ.st/ZMumIE

Manaf Tlass is in Russia (arabic) Here is English

Fighting Shortages, Syrian Civilians Take Reins in Rebel Areas
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, February 28, 2013 – NYTimes

TILALYAN, Syria — Bundled in a thick overcoat against the frosty afternoon, Mohamed Moussa watched with concern as the town baker worked by flashlight to repair the conveyor belt on his aging oven, the town’s principal food source.

Miles from the front lines of the Syrian civil war, Mr. Moussa, the 33-year-old English teacher who leads the new governing council of this rebel-controlled town, spends his time locked in a more mundane battle against desperate shortages of almost everything.

Until about three weeks ago, Tilalyan’s roughly 3,800 residents had bread at most twice a week, and its appearance set off a fierce melee among hundreds of families. There was no consistent supply of electricity or water, to say nothing of medicine or heating fuel.

“The people get crazy,” he said. “They will have a revolution against the revolution because they are so hungry.” …

LA Times [Reg]: Damascus in the grip of a tense stalemate
2013-03-01, BEIRUT

Rebel forces have dug in to the north, east and south of Syria’s capital, occupying stretches of suburban and rural terrain and threatening to break through to the heart of Damascus. Government troops have largely pulled back to a well …
Many were still too afraid of Mr. Assad to link their names to a rebel government.

“Not to be slaughtered with their families,” Mr. Moussa said, chuckling. “The old people think Bashar Assad is very strong and he will never leave,” he said. “But we think they are not thinking the right way, because we see every day that he is vanishing and going away.”

Exasperated, Mr. Osman made a surprise announcement late last year at Friday Prayer: a new council had already been set up and was ready to hear complaints. Two hours later Mr. Osman summoned Mr. Moussa and four others: the job was theirs, the imam told them, by his own unilateral appointment.

All are bookish graduates of Aleppo University with little aptitude for combat. Two are 26, one is 27; the oldest is 34. Until then, their only involvement in the war was forming a “media committee” to spread information. (Mr. Osman and the town’s military leader, Mustafa Jaber, 38, sit on the council as well.)

The elders were scornful. “I need men standing in front of me, I need men to talk to, I don’t need children!” one patriarch complained, as Mr. Moussa, the imam and others recalled.

The local military brigades resisted more forcefully.

“The civil council takes away some of their power,” Mr. Moussa said. “They say, ‘Where did we see you when they were shooting at us? Where were you when we were outside in the cold? You were in your house and going to work, so shut up!’ ”

Each brigade, most of them loosely organized under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, now has its own rival relief and political wings to position itself for post-Assad Syria, and at one point the Tawhid Brigade from the town of Marea confiscated about a ton of flour from Tilalyan’s dwindling supply.

Ahmad Khatib, in charge of relief efforts for the Tawhid Brigade, said Mr. Moussa had no right to make demands since his town had paid so small a price in the fight.

“If you bring them 10 prophets from God they will still keep complaining!” Mr. Khatib said of Tilalyan’s young council.

But the young civilians quickly shouldered their mandate. With $1,000 given to the council by the Western-backed Syrian national coalition, they fixed damaged converters to restore electricity, needed to power the well in the town. They then set out to negotiate for electricity. A brigade from the town of Al Bab had recently seized control of the hydroelectric generators at the Tishreen Dam but initially refused to share the power. How did they know that the council was not a pack of thieves, the brigade demanded?

Then the larger neighboring town of Tal Rifaat was hogging all the electricity, refusing to allow any to pass through to Tilalyan or Marea, Mr. Moussa said. But when it came to electricity, Marea’s powerful brigade and civilian leaders stepped in to help; Marea and Tilalyan are on the same power line.

To supply bread, the council pleaded in vain for flour from the international groups camped at the Turkish border. Then they tried to buy it through Tal Rifaat and finally in the battle-torn provincial capital, Aleppo.

The answer, council members said, came from Jabhet al-Nusra, the Islamist militia that the United States recently classified as a terrorist organization. The group has distinguished itself not only through its battlefield prowess, aid workers say, but also through its determination to capture resources like wheat silos from the government, so that the group could dispense the spoils as patronage.

“They give us flour at less than 20 percent of the real price from the black market,” said Mr. Moussa, surveying the 14 metric tons stored in the Tilalyan bakery, enough for 13 days.

Adhan Naser, 34, another teacher on the council, interrupted him.

“Jabhet al-Nusra now controls the most important things for life — like flour, water and electricity — to make the people see Jabhet al-Nusra as the model, the perfect thing,” he said. “This plan is very clear to all of us. But this kind of game is not going to work, because our future is not Jabhet al-Nusra. We don’t need Afghanistan in Syria.”

To end the daily melee for bread, the council counted the town’s 3,824 adults and children and arrived at a ration of two loaves of flatbread per person and arranged to have it delivered for five Syrian pounds — less than a dime. By then, the council had spent all of its $1,000 in seed money and $300 more from its own pockets. …

Syrian Rebel Leader Deals With Old Ties to Other Side
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: March 1, 2013

ANTAKYA, Turkey — Gen. Salim Idris, convinced that the last stand of the Syrian Army in the long, grisly fight to control Aleppo will take place soon at the Academy of Military Engineering, dreads the moment.

It is not just the 2,000 or so well-armed soldiers already holed up there, inside the square-kilometer campus on Aleppo’s eastern outskirts. Nor is it the reinforced concrete bunkers built under every building to withstand an Israeli air raid.

The toughest part for him is his fondness for both the officers in charge and the campus itself. When he defected in July 2012, General Idris, now chief of staff of the rebel forces, was a brigadier in the Syrian Army and dean of the academy after teaching there for 20 years.

“I cannot imagine that we will attack the academy,” General Idris said in a wide-ranging interview in a hotel cafe. “All the officers inside the academy are my colleagues. I don’t want to fight against them; I don’t want to see them killed or injured. I hope they leave before we attack.”

General Idris, 55, a stocky figure with a neatly trimmed mustache who was wearing a dark suit and tie, said he planned to deploy outside the academy when the fight begins, to make one last-ditch attempt to persuade his old colleagues to defect.

“We cannot do anything about it if they don’t,” he said with a shrug.

Much of Syria’s future rests on General Idris’s success on the battlefield. Critics say the newly unified command structure he presides over lacks both the ground presence and the heavy weapons that are so desperately needed. Without both, they say, it will be impossible for him to forge a cohesive force from the thousands of fractious, fiercely independent rebel brigades arrayed against the still formidable military of President Bashar al-Assad.

Under intense pressure from Western and Arab backers, hundreds of Free Syrian Army commanders gathered in Turkey last December to select a 30-member Supreme Military Council, which in turn chose General Idris as chief of staff.

They unified, grudgingly, because they were promised heavy weapons, they said, in particular antiaircraft and antitank weapons, and other, nonlethal aid.

Some has materialized, although not nearly enough to transform the rebel effort, General Idris said. He spoke before Secretary of State John Kerry pledged $60 million in additional nonlethal aid and training this week.

Previous American aid seemed to amount to a trickle of small, odd lots. The Americans gave him nine ordinary black and gray Toyota pickup trucks, for example. General Idris kept three to move around with his staff and turned over the rest to field commanders. The communications equipment provided is too weak to reach across the country, he said, so he uses Skype. There were enough fatigues from the United States for 10,000 soldiers, which were nowhere near enough, given the roughly 300,000 rebel fighters, he said.

In addition to planned training efforts by the Americans, General Idris is urging Washington to train handpicked commando teams to help secure Syria’s suspected stock of chemical weapons if the government teeters. As for financial support, General Idris said very little had been forthcoming.

“We were promised a lot,” he said, “but when the moment of truth arrives, they think a lot and give very little.”

General Idris and various aides say that some 70 percent to 80 percent of the field commanders are loyal to the joint military command, but other opposition leaders and rebel commanders say the number shrinks continuously because of the credibility gap created by the lack of a reliable weapons supply.

“He is excellent, well respected and well liked — he has a clean past,” said Emad ad-Din al-Rashid, an opposition leader in Istanbul. “But the problem is that the Supreme Military Council is not a good representative of the battalions on the ground.”

There is also no shortage of field commanders who say the council leaders are too identified with the Assad government and have too little battlefield experience.

“He is a professor, not a soldier, “ said Abu Abdelrahman al-Suri, the pseudonym of a commander of Ahrar al-Sham, a jihadi fighting movement.

General Idris and his officers bristle at such criticism, rattling off their years of military training and pointing out that they defected at great personal risk

Turkey, the Unhelpful Ally By Halil M. Karaveli | The New York Times
The Arab Revolutions’ Reality Check By Joschka Fischer | Project Syndicate
Islamists Gain Momentum in Syria By Nour Malas | The Wall Street Journal (Subscription Required)

U.S. Intervention in Syria Expert Q & A | Salman Shaikh | March 1, 2013 – Brookings – “the situation is critical and notes that the Syrian people need more than simply “biscuits and band aids” they need U.S. leadership.”

What does Kerry really plan to do for Syria? More non-lethal aid – body armor and night vision goggles – does not merit the headlines that suggest the US is preparing a major shift in its policy. Syria remains a difficult policy problem.

The United States has other vital foreign policy objectives that make it difficult to double down on Syria. Kerry’s Rome talks with Syrian opposition groups coincide with the need for delicate diplomacy with Syria’s two main supporters: Iran and Russia. Not only is the US resuming negotiations on Iran’s nuclear ambitions that convened Tuesday in Kazakhstan after an eight-month hiatus, but Washington is struggling to maintain civil relations with Moscow — Syria’s key ally — if it wants to withdraw troops from Afghanistan via Russian territory over the next two years. The US has to balance its interests in Syria with those of maintaining a civil relationship with Russia. To underscore the importance of US-Russian relations the result of a meeting in Berlin between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during which Russia called for the United States to urge for the Syrian opposition to drop President Bashar al-Assad’s resignation as a precondition for direct talks with the Syrian regime.

Also, Egypt is headed toward bankruptcy, and the US will have to help it through that process and the political violence that may well be a result of the cruel privations that such a process will visit on the impoverished masses as their bread and fuel subsidies are snatched from them.

WSJ [Reg]: Kerry Calls Time on Assad Regime, 2013-02-27

PARIS—New U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the time has passed for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to leave power. His first official meetings with France’s leadership …

WSJ [Reg]: U.S. Is ‘Developing Ways’ to Hasten Ouster of Assad, 2013-02-27

Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that the Obama administration and its allies are “developing ways” to hasten the ouster of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, a vow that came as U.S. officials said they are considering sending non-lethal aid …

Kerry has made repeated indirect references to a policy  shift during his travels. He told a group of German students Tuesday that while the United States wants a “peaceful resolution” in Syria, if its leaders refuse to negotiate and continue to kill citizens, “then you need to at least provide some kind of support” for those fighting for their rights.  On Monday in London, he said: “We are not coming to Rome simply to talk. We’re coming .?.?. to make decisions about next steps.”

The Syrian Coalition’s Closing Statements: Cairo, Egypt. February 18, 2013.

The Syrian Coalition’s General Assembly has decided to form an interim government for Syria that will carry out its duties from within the Syrian territories. The Coalition set a date of March 2nd, 2013 to select a prime minister from amongst the candidates nominated by the General Assembly, within the agreed upon parameters and after consultation with Syrian opposition forces and the revolutionary movement.

Fox News: AP Interview: Iraqi premier warns fall of Syria’s Assad would will spark war in Iraq, Lebanon, 2013-02-27

BAGHDAD – Iraq’s prime minister cautions that a victory for rebels fighting to overthrow the government in neighboring Syria will spark a sectarian war in his own country and Lebanon That would create a new haven for al-Qaida that would …

John Kerry should challenge the hawks on Syria
The US secretary of state should resist the SNC and Washington’s lobby and push for talks, not more arms
Jonathan Steele.  The Guardian, Monday 25 February 2013

….The western-sponsored opposition grouping, the Syrian National Coalition, has rejected a meeting with Kerry that was due in Rome on Thursday. It accuses the US and its allies of being complicit in the destruction of Syria by not intervening militarily, either by arming the rebels or by direct intervention as in Libya…..

What makes their unexpected hardball doubly awkward is that they coupled it with a repudiation of their own president Moaz al-Khatib‘s recent initiative in coming out in favour of talks with Bashar al-Assad’s government. The SNC’s general assembly says it, alone, has the right to propose any initiatives and the end of Assad’s regime remains the top priority…..

As a man who saw the folly of the Vietnam war in his youth, Kerry should have the wisdom to choose a better course. Where his predecessor was a hawk on the issue, he needs to confront the SNC and the Washington rightwingers who back them, and say Khatib had the better vision.

Jerusalem Post: Syria claims Turkey enabling al-Qaida, 2013-02-27

NEW YORK – Syria submitted a letter of complaint last week to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon alleging that Turkey is enabling “Al-Qaida, as well as the Nusra Front and other terrorist organizations, to assemble, take refuge, receive …

U.S. weighs plan to provide direct, nonlethal aid to Syrian rebels
Karen DeYoung FEB 26 – Wash Post

In a shift, the Obama administration could provide body armor and other equipment to anti-Assad forces.

A string of ballistic missile attacks carried out by the Syrian government killed 141 people, including 71 children, in Aleppo last week, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch that raised the death toll much higher than previously reported.

LA Times: Failure on the part of Washington to come to the embattled Syrian people’s rescue could irreparably undermine U.S. credibility. It could also embolden Assad to press on with a murderous campaign that has already killed about 70,000 people, drive rebels fighting for democracy into the arms of Islamic extremists and create what the Economist called “a new Somalia rotting in the heart of the Levant.”

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Of myths, monsters and gods in modern Syria
Rita from Syria 12 February 2013 – Open Democracy

…..Assuming that I was an Alawi, she shared some fuzzy images from her mobile phone, shedding light on the kind of ideas that were circulating amongst this closed Alawi Damascene community –originally from the coastal mountains.

” Al-Khidr is here finally!!! It is he who is the light in Tahrir square in Cairo!! It is he who is holding aloft Dhul-fiqar, the sword of Imam Ali! He has arrived on his horse to rescue us from oppression and to stand by the president Bashar al-Assad against the enemies” – The video was taken in Tahrir square, the poor picture quality playfully blended the light and shadows so as to present an image of what could quite easily be interpreted as a man on a horse!!!

……A priority of any revolution is to overthrow all threadbare and retroactive beliefs. Before fighting Alawis who deify al-Assad and kill in his name, we should work to stop the systematic corruption of the Alawi faith, which has far more to offer than making deities out of killers and criminals. This is a burden to be carried by Alawi religious leaders and opposition activists who must play a greater role in raising awareness among their communities.

Syria Willing to Talk with Armed Opponents, Foreign Minister Says
By ANNE BARNARD, February 25, 2013, NYTimes

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syria’s government is willing to hold talks with members of the armed opposition on ending the country’s nearly two-year-old civil war, the Syrian foreign minister said on Monday.

It was the first time that a high-ranking Syrian official had signaled that the government is open to talking with Syrian rebels who have taken up weapons against the armed forces. Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, called in January for talks to resolve the conflict, but appeared to rule out dialogue with armed opponents.

The foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, made the statement during a visit to Russia,…

Saudis Step Up Help for Rebels in Syria With Croatian Arms
By C. J. CHIVERS and ERIC SCHMITT

Weapons that Western officials say were bought by Saudi Arabia and funneled to opposition fighters in Syria have been a factor in the rebels’ small tactical gains this winter against President Bashar al-Assad.

Weapons From Former Yugoslavia Spread Through Syria’s War

Globe Mail [Reg]: How did Syria’s rebels get their hands on powerful new weapons?
2013-02-26

A long-standing complaint from rebels affiliated with the so-called Free Syrian Army has been that they lack weapons and ammunition with which to fight. In some parts of Syria that seems to be changing. Earlier this month video footage (whose …

Is Iran essential to Syria’s future?
By Loren White Monday, February 25, 2013 – FP

…Iran has reportedly begun forming large sectarian militias in Syria to bolster the regime in the short term, and also to preserve its influence should Assad be overthrown. With so much at stake, Iran will only continue to increase such efforts as the regime’s position becomes more vulnerable. These militias pose a huge threat — it is imperative that the United States and the international community try to prevent the formation of a Syrian style-Hezbollah by bringing Iran into peace mediations led by the U.N. Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi….Senior advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Ali Akbar Velayati, said as much when he publicly stated that the overthrow of Assad was a “redline” for Iran. Iranian cleric Hojjat al-Islam Mehdi Taeb went even further, referring to Syria as Iran’s 35^th province and claiming that if Iran lost Syria it could not keep Tehran…..Iran has shown interest in bringing the Syria subject into the nuclear negotiations with the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. With a new round of nuclear negotiations approaching, conceding a role in Syrian negotiations to Iran may be the good faith gesture needed to motivate Iran to reciprocate with a more conciliatory stance on its nuclear file and help end the current nuclear stalemate….Getting Iran to cooperate with the international community on Syria and getting the United States to relinquish its desire to see Iran isolated by Assad’s fall will be an uphill battle. Yet with the stakes so high in Syria a novel and pragmatic approach is badly needed.

Syria: Thinking Strategically by Frederic C. Hof | February 19, 2013 – Atlantic council. Hof spells out the seven things the US wants from Syria.

What, in the end, do we want of Syria? A Syria fundamentally inclined to cooperate with the United States in the region and beyond: that is the objective. Fundamental cooperation is not necessarily an alliance. It has nothing to do with patron and client. It has everything to do with shared values. It means a minimum of mutual suspicion and a basic agreement on the big things….Replacement of corrupt, incompetent, and brutal family rule with something reflecting modernity and decency would make possible elements three through seven of fundamental bilateral cooperation from the US standpoint: a Syria that terminates all military, intelligence, and terror relationships with Iran and Hezbollah; a Syria that rejects terror as a state instrument and tolerates no terrorists on its territory; a Syria that supports comprehensive Middle East peace and commits itself to the peaceful, diplomatic pursuit and resolution of its claims on Israel; a Syria that respects the territorial integrity and independence of each of its neighbors; and a Syria favorably disposed toward ridding itself of weapons of mass destruction.

FT- Editorial Leader
Monday, February 25, 2013
For Syrian peace, prepare for war
Kerry should push the case for arming rebels

John Kerry, US secretary of state, believes there may be a window of opportunity for a negotiated solution to the bloody civil war in Syria. As a new member of Barack Obama’s cabinet, he is right to explore all the options on his first foreign outing. However the rising death toll, now at more than 70,000, is a grim reminder that time is not on his side.

The US secretary of state may be hoping to take advantage of recent comments by senior members of both opposition and regime forces that they would be open to dialogue. He may also want to exploit growing frustration in Moscow with Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, who relies on Russian support to stay in power. It is encouraging that the noises out of Moscow are positive about a co-ordinated effort with Mr Kerry despite otherwise tense relations with the US. Nonetheless, this is a road that has been travelled before.

Mr Assad is well versed in the game of appearing to concede in order to gain time. Meanwhile, Russia will resist any effort that smacks of regime change and Mr Assad has said he intends to stay until the next election in 2014. Finally, the political opposition remains disconnected from fighters on the ground, who refuse talks while he is in power. The battle is at a desperate stalemate. Mr Assad has been unable to regain control of Syria, while the disparate rebel forces cannot topple the regime as long as the west refuses to deliver the weapons they need. In the interim, the civil war is being hijacked by jihadist forces positioning themselves for a post-Assad era.

A negotiated settlement would be the ideal solution. But the chances of striking a deal appear remote. In this context, the new secretary of state cannot allow talks to drag on interminably. He should also press President Obama to re-examine his refusal to consider arming rebels.

If Mr Kerry is to have any diplomatic force in discussions he must be able to threaten an alternative. Mr Assad has cynically exploited the west’s reluctance to intervene to stay in power. This bluff has to be called. This applies equally to the EU, which last week rejected a UK call to lift its arms embargo to allow shipments to rebels.

If western powers continue to stand on the sidelines, the war will drag on. The longer it continues, the more likely it is that jihadis will build a bridgehead in the eastern Mediterranean that will contaminate the region and beyond. In that case, the west may have intervention forced upon it.

In Syria, new influx of weapons to rebels tilts the battle against Assad
By Liz Sly and Karen DeYoung, Wash Post, February 25, 2013

The Washington Post reports: A surge of rebel advances in Syria is being fueled at least in part by an influx of heavy weaponry in a renewed effort by outside powers to arm moderates in the Free Syrian Army, according to Arab and rebel officials.

The new armaments, including anti-tank weapons and recoilless rifles, have been sent across the Jordanian border into the province of Daraa in recent weeks to counter the growing influence of Islamist extremist groups in the north of Syria by boosting more moderate groups fighting in the south, the officials say….

Syria rebels say they don’t have the weapons to end the war
Opposition leaders mostly blame the U.S., which they believe is pressuring Persian Gulf allies to keep heavy weapons out of rebels’ hands.
By Raja Abdulrahim, Los Angeles Times
February 19, 2013, 5:10 p.m.

BEIRUT — Just when they expected a flood of heavy weapons to help them make a major push against the forces of President Bashar Assad, rebel commanders in Syria say, arms shipments from outside the country have instead slowed, prolonging a conflict now nearing the end of its second year.

Though rebels have made gains in the north and east, seizing military bases and checkpoints, opposition figures who had made predictions of quick victory now say their arsenal is at a level that can support only a war of attrition.

“There will be no quick and practical end,” said Nabil Amir, spokesman for the Damascus Military Council, a key rebel group.

Although arms for the Syrian opposition have come primarily from Arab states in the Persian Gulf region, rebel commanders almost uniformly blame the slowdown on the United States, which they suspect of exerting pressure on its regional allies.

Commanders of Syria’s fractured opposition said they believed they had been promised weapons as an incentive to unite. In December, provincial councils in the Free Syrian Army, an opposition umbrella group, gathered from across the country under the banner of a Supreme Military Council at the behest of Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

“We were promised that if we unified our ranks that we would be given legitimacy as well as salaries and heavy weapons,” said Col. Qassim Saad Eddine, a member of the 30-member council. “But from that day we have gotten nothing.”

The reluctance of Arab and Western countries to arm the rebels is based at least in part on concern that the weapons would fall into the hands of groups that those nations view as extremist. But it has paradoxically served to increase the influence of Islamist fighters in Syria, who have emerged as the best-armed members of the insurgency.

Strong and better disciplined, the Islamists have had more success in capturing Syrian military weapons. Some people suspect they also benefit from wealthy supporters, possibly linked to Al Qaeda.

Top Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, recently revealed that they had supported a recommendation last summer by the State Department and CIA to arm the rebels, but were overruled by the White House.

And on Monday, the European Union decided to continue its arms embargo against both sides in the conflict.

Syria: Behind Rebel Lines (CBC, 9 p.m on Doc Zone )
by Rania Abouzeid (Time magazine) and directed by Sylvene Gilchrist

From a review in the Globe and Mail

…It is a rare look inside Syria as it is now. It’s a fine piece of journalism rather than a carefully crafted documentary with a forged story arc. And because of that, it is all the more galvanizing….

Rania Abouzeid tells us, “There is chaos in the Syrian civil war.” She says there are shadowy groups of foreign fighters in the country and “criminal elements” who engage in kidnapping for ransom, looting homes and taking every advantage of the lawlessness.

With two million people displaced and thousands fleeing every week, the chaos has allowed warlords to emerge, but we are told that the current political situation is “like a marketplace.” That is, people can pick and choose their allegiance from the elements among the rebel forces.

She meets a group of men she describes as “Islamists who want an Islamic state.” Their leader is a charismatic figure who had left Syria for Italy and returned when the Hosni Mubarek regime fell in Egypt. He believed the Assad regime would fall next. A former champion discus-thrower, he’s now battle-hardened, claiming to have dozens of pieces of shrapnel in his body, and he has a broken jaw.

To the camera he says, “Yes we are mujahedeen, holy warriors until the fall of the regime. After the regime, everyone can display their wares. I want to stress this point. We will display our wares, not force them on anyone. The people will decide.” He also claims to be wary of foreign influences in Syria’s future. “We started with a stick and a pump-action shotgun and we will return to the stick rather than allow anyone to force anything on us.”

We meet a man, a former civil servant, who now makes rockets for the rebel forces. And we meet a female fighter with the rebels. The woman, who fights on the front line with an AK-47, says she tried to form a women’s brigade, but other women weren’t interested. An extraordinary figure, she has a personal message for Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria – that’s she is coming for him .

There are many vignettes that make the program interesting . But the overall portrait is what makes it memorable and a formidable act of reporting. The war in Syria goes on and on, in bleak outposts where the regime hangs on, having laid waste to the area; on stretches of highway that are controlled by one side, then another….

The Syrian foreign minister said that his government is willing to sit down for talks with armed rebels.

According to Syrian state media, a football player was killed after two mortar shells hit the Tishreen stadium in Damascus’s al-Baramkeh district. The attack came a day after two mortars reportedly exploded outside one of President Bashar al-Assad’s palaces in the capital’s northwestern district of Muhajireen. Opposition activists said that the Free Syrian Army fired up to seven mortar rounds at the Tishreen Palace. No casualties have been reported. Assad has two other palaces in the city. Opposition fighters previously claimed to have fired rockets at the presidential palaces, but the attack on Tuesday was confirmed by the Syrian government. Meanwhile, the death toll from Monday’s rocket attack on Aleppo has risen to an estimated 31 people.

Musa al-Gharbi: Is authoritarianism anti-democratic?

“The international community must allow for the emergence of illiberal democracies, or even a popular rejection of democracy altogether”

Last updated: February 25, 2013

How an ordinary Syrian became a Kalashnikov-wielding fighter
Sunday, February 24, 2013
by Daniel Lippman

Brothers in arms: the 10 brothers fighting for the Syrian uprising

From peasant sons of the northern plains to rebels at the heart of the Syrian uprising: a family at war
Martin Chulov, The Guardian, Friday 22 February 2013

Syrian rebel commander on a post-Assad Syria
by David Ignatius on February 22, Wash Post

…The commander of the Free Syrian Army, encouraged by recent successes on the battlefield, said that he is ready to meet with military officers from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to “discuss how to keep order in the country” should Assad give up power.

Brig. Gen. Salim Idriss, who became commander in chief of the rebel forces three months ago, made the surprising offer of talks in a telephone interview Friday from Turkey. His comments follow a similar proposal last month by Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, the head of the coalition of political opposition groups, to meet with officials of the regime to discuss a political transition.

Idriss’s comments were the first clear sign that the Free Syrian Army command is making serious plans for how to stabilize the country if Assad falls. His statements are likely to reassure top U.S. officials, who have been debating in recent days whether to support Idriss’s private request for training and weapons.

“We can say in the Free Syrian Army that we are ready to meet any parties in the [Syrian] army who didn’t have any role in making decisions to kill Syrians,” Idriss said. He specified two conditions for such talks: Assad must state publicly that he is stepping down, and there must be trials of security-force commanders who killed unarmed Syrian protesters.

The Missing Journalists of Syria’s War: The Struggle to Save Those Who Bear Witness
By Andrew Katz – Time

An Al-Nusra Preacher giving his Khitab in Aleppo ?? ??? ?????? ??? ?????? ???? ?????? ?? ??? ???? ???? ?????? ????? ?? ????2013

Syrian Economy Loses $48 Billion in 22 Months
Report Shows War’s Impact On Syrian Economy
By: Samar Ozmichli Translated from Al-Hayat (Pan Arab).

A report by a Syrian research center has estimated the economic losses of the Syrian economy over the last 22 months at about $48.4 billion — equal to 81.7% of the country’s GDP for 2010. The losses impacted a number of sectors, with 50% being attributed to a loss in GDP and 43% a result of damage in capital stock. The report, entitled “The Socioeconomic Roots and Impact of the Syrian Crisis,” was prepared by the Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR), which is affiliated with the Syrian Society for Culture and Knowledge. The report noted that Syria has lost nearly two decades’ worth of human-development achievements and that the level of economic collapse was “substantial” even when compared to conflict losses in other countries.

The report predicted that the crisis would lead to an 18.8% decrease in GDP for 2012, while the deficit balance is expected to reach 18.5% of GDP for the same year. This means that the crisis will have a strong negative impact on the balance of payments, bringing the cumulative deficit to $16 billion. This deficit has been financed by net foreign assets, which declined from approximately $18 billion in 2010 to $2 billion by the end of 2012.

The report estimated that the losses in Syrian capital stock amount to nearly $42 billion, concentrated in three components. First, there is a decrease in net investment equal to $12.4 billion. Second, there are losses due to poor capacity utilization and idle capital stock, which no longer contribute to the production process. The mining and tourism sectors are particularly affected. The estimated loss due to this component is $8.9 billion. The final component is the partial or full damage to capital stock (destroyed firms, equipment and buildings), and these losses are estimated to amount to $20.8 billion.

Macroeconomic indicators

In a report prepared for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), Syrian experts reported that the country’s GDP had decreased by about 35% (approximately $20 billion), and predicted that this figure would see an 18% decrease each year. They noted that as soon as the crisis ends, Syria will need approximately $45 billion to fund reconstruction efforts. If the crisis continues, the reconstruction process will face many challenges, both in terms of cost and capabilities. In the event that the crisis persists until 2015, unemployment rates are expected to rise to 60%.

The SCPR report, however, estimated that by the end of 2012 the Syrian GDP had lost $24.1 billion — equaling 45.7% of the 2010 GDP….

Prolonged crisis drives up divorce rate in Syria
2013-02-20

Feb. 20, 2013 (Xinhua) — Divorce rate has gone up 45 percent and marriage rate has dropped over 40 percent in Syria since the outbreak of mass protests against the government almost two years ago, according to a recent survey by local media….

INTERVIEW: Tlass: Regime fall could turn Syria into another Somalia By DPA correspondents
2013-02-21

Paris (DPA) — The defection of General Manaf Tlass in July was a bitter, personal blow to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Tlass, a Republican Guard commander and son of a former defence minister, was a childhood friend of al-Assad.    Now based in Paris, Tlass’ phone never stops ringing. Since his defection he has been taking part in military and political moves to support the uprising that began almost two years ago against al-Assad’s regime….. dpa: What scenario do you see for a solution?

Tlass: There is a risk that the regime’s fall will lead to chaos, reprisals and a civil war that could turn the country into another Somalia. The regime has not taken any serious steps towards (implementing) any initiative requiring al-Assad’s resignation and a transitional government, and it is not going to. That is because it has not come under any real international pressure.    We must work hard to create a protective network, a sort of united umbrella organization that involves Syrian society in all its diversity, before and not after the fall of the regime, so we can avoid the fall of the state and society along with it – which is what the regime is betting on.    This is why I say that it must be Syrian society, with all its components and national minorities, that brings down al-Assad, in the framework of a national project aimed at preventing a collapse into civil war…..

Syrian regime battles rebels for control of highway to its safe haven
Lebanon appears closer than ever to getting dragged into Syria’s war as the regime and rebels battle just over the border and Hezbollah’s growing involvement raises rebel ire.
By Nicholas Blanford, Correspondent / February 22, 2013 – CSM

….“If Assad gets driven out of Damascus… Qusayr will be very important as it links Damascus with the Alawite mountain. The highway will be crucial,” says Joshua Landis, professor of Middle East history at the University of Oklahoma and author of the influential Syria Comment blog.

The Qusayr pocket is a microcosm of Syria’s tangled sectarian demographics, where Lebanese and Syrian Sunnis and Shiites live beside Syrian Christians and Alawites. Some 23 villages and 12 farms west of Qusayr are inhabited by Lebanese Shiites, even though the area lies inside Syria. Border restrictions here are historically lax and there are numerous trails, tracks, and small paved roads used by smugglers and residents alike to move across the frontier…..

A critical corridor

Some analysts suspect that the Shiite villages to the west of Qusayr could eventually form part of a corridor linking Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon’s northern Bekaa Valley to the southern edge of an Alawite enclave that could stretch up the coastal mountain chain to the port town of Latakia. If such a corridor were secured, it would have significant strategic consequences. It would allow Hezbollah to help the remnants of the Assad regime defend the enclave from attacks by Sunni groups. It could also become a new conduit for the flow of arms to Hezbollah.

Traditionally, the bulk of Hezbollah’s weapons are smuggled into Lebanon from Syria. The fall of the Assad regime, however, would complicate Hezbollah’s ability to bring in arms and, more critically, restock its arsenal in the aftermath of a future war with Israel. The theoretical Alawite enclave would have access to the sea through the ports of Tartous, Banias and Latakia, allowing for the potential import of weapons which could then be trucked to Hezbollah in Lebanon via the secured corridor….

Time: Assad’s Big Ally: How Deeply Entrenched Is Iran in Syria?
2013-02-26

The killing last week of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander near the Lebanon-Syria border has rekindled speculation about Iran’s activities in Syria, particularly its ties to the militia groups fighting alongside the Syrian …

Time: Syria 1940
2013-02-26

The ongoing chaos and violence that have come to define the Syrian civil war — a war that has now raged for close to two years, with no signs of abating — not only forced the names of ancient cities (Aleppo, Homs) back into today’s headlines, …

When doing nothing is a policy
By Richard Cohen, Published: February 25

In the movie “Lawrence of Arabia,” the attempt to unite the Arabs comes apart in Damascus. Lawrence bangs on his desk with the butt of his gun to bring the assembly to order, but to no avail. Chaos erupts. Now something similar is happening in Syria. 1e62-7f77-11e2-b99e-6baf4ebe42df_story.html

Fox News: As atrocities pile up, Syrians collect evidence
2013-02-26

Syrian activist Yashar hopes the security agents who tormented him during five months of detention will one day be put on trial.

Hawks in Syrian Opposition Resist Dialogue Initiative – Al-Monitor

Syria opposition mulls 5 candidates for “premier” – NOW

“Friends of Syria” ramp up pressure on Assad, call for enhancing sanctions against Syria – NOW 

Jordan Prepares for Return Of Salafists From Syria – Al-Monitor

Conflict between Sunni and Shia Muslims seen as escalating across Middle East – globalpost.com

Syria’s Armenian minority flees from conflict – Toronto Star

In 2010 the UN estimated that 32% of Syrians were living in poverty, estimated at 2$ a day or less – that was before the currency had fallen by half, the economy collapsed, strict economic sanctions were placed on Syria, and fighting engulfed the country. In all probability, a conservative percent of Syrians living in the direst poverty has surpassed 50% or more than 11 million people.

A rocket strike has leveled buildings and killed at least eight people in a neighbourhood of Aleppo, activists say. The source of the attack on Jabral Badro appeared to be a ground-to-ground missile, possibly a Scud. Another report said 20 people were killed with 25 missing.

U.N. numbers on Syrians in need of help far too low, survey suggests
By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers

ISTANBUL — The first detailed survey of the humanitarian crisis in northern Syria suggests that the United Nations has grossly underestimated the number of civilians in dire need of assistance, a situation that experts say plays down the scope of the catastrophe.

“Syria is the largest IDP crisis in the world,” said Clare Spurrell of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, the leading body monitoring internally displaced people worldwide. “The longer we underestimate the reality of what is happening on the ground, the further we are getting from an appropriate response.”

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees released new figures Monday showing 2.08 million people in urgent need in six provinces of northern Syria. That’s way below a partial survey of the same provinces that the Syrian opposition and 10 international aid agencies conducted over four weeks in January.

That survey, undertaken by teams of researchers who met with local relief committees, religious leaders and local police, among others, estimated that the number of people in urgent need totaled at least 3.2 million in those provinces: Idlib, rural Aleppo, Latakia, Raqqa, Hasaka and Deir el Zour. That’s nearly three-quarters of the provinces’ estimated population of 4.3 million.

Of those, the survey found that 1.1 million are people who’ve been forced from their homes, making them dependent on others for food, shelter, health care and clean water.

And the situation is almost certainly worse than that: The researchers completed the survey in only about 40 percent of the provinces’ area and excluded the city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, where fighting has raged since July. Once the survey is completed in the remaining 60 percent, the numbers are expected to go up.

Newly Displaced Syrians Head For Turkish Border
Deborah Amos and Rima Marrouch
February 18, 2013, All Things Considered – NPR

Syrian people wait at a customs gate at the Turkey-Syria border near Reyhanli, Turkey, last week. Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing central Syria, heading to southern Turkey. Enlarge image

Syrian people wait at a customs gate at the Turkey-Syria border near Reyhanli, Turkey, last week. Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing central Syria, heading to southern Turkey.
Gaia Anderson/AP

A new surge of Syrian refugees is swamping humanitarian aid agencies in southern Turkey, where official refugee camps are full.

But the newcomers may be just the tip of the iceberg. In central Syria, civilians under attack by combat jets, tanks and artillery have fled towns and villages north of the city of Hama, and thousands are on the move.

“What they do now, they burn everything ahead of them. They bomb this area with everything they’ve got,” says Hossan Hamadah, a Syrian-American from Texas.

He’s seen firsthand the devastation of the new army offensive. He was in central Syria a few days ago to deliver bread and blankets to families on the run, but found only burned and abandoned houses.

“And I’m telling you, it’s a very, very weird feeling when you walk into a place and there’s not even a cat,” he says. “I just want to see something alive moving. Nothing.”….

Sharmine Narwani: Unreliable data can incite and escalate a conflict – the latest UN-sponsored figure of 60,000 should not be reported as fact
guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 February 2013

….Casualty counts during modern wars have become a highly politicised business. On one hand, they can help alert the outside world to the scale of violence and suffering, and the risks of conflict spreading both within a country’s borders and beyond them. On the other, as in Syria, Iraq, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere, death tolls have routinely been manipulated, inflated or downplayed – a tool for the advancement of political interests.

As if to underline the point, Libya’s new government recently announced that death tolls had been exaggerated during the 2011 Libyan civil war; that there had been around 5,000 deaths on either side – a long way from the reported tens of thousands of casualties that set the scene for Nato’s “humanitarian” intervention, or the 30-50,000 deaths claimed by opponents of this intervention.

While physically present in Iraq, the US and British governments were unable to provide estimates of the numbers of deaths unleashed by their own invasion, yet in Syria, the same governments frequently quote detailed figures, despite lacking essential access.

Syria’s death toll leapt from 45,000 to 60,000 earlier this year, a figure gathered by a UN-sponsored project to integrate data from seven separate lists. The new numbers are routinely cited by politicians and media as fact, and used to call for foreign intervention in the conflict…..

Counting the Dead in Syria
By Armin Rosen in Atlantic

Syria’s strategic stalemate, made worse by US inaction
Tony Karon, Feb 20, 2013 – the National

Not only is the Obama administration no longer convinced that Syria’s armed rebellion is about to topple President Bashar Al Assad, a rebel military victory does not even appear to be Washington’s preferred outcome.

A little over a year ago, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the Assad regime as “a dead man walking”, and President Barack Obama expressed confidence, in his 2012 State of the Union address, that “the Assad regime will soon discover that the forces of change can’t be reversed”.

This year, by contrast, Syria barely rated a mention in the same speech, with Mr Obama vowing only to “keep the pressure on the Syrian regime … and support opposition leaders that respect the rights of every Syrian”.

The rebels clearly can’t win the war with the current level of support being offered by outside powers. Moreover, Mr Obama has reportedly dismissed proposals from within in his administration for arming insurgents, and Monday’s European Union rebuff of efforts by the UK, France and Italy to lift an embargo on arming the rebels reinforced the sense of western reluctance to invest in a rebel military victory.

The policy logic underlying these decisions was articulated on Sunday by new Secretary of State John Kerry, who said his goal in Syria was “to see us have a negotiated outcome and minimise the violence”. He admitted that achieving that goal remained exceedingly difficult, but insisted that it was in the best interests of “the Syrian people, and the region and the world, to make every effort to explore ways to achieve that negotiated outcome”.

Pursuing a military solution, Mr Kerry warned, risked the “implosion” of the Syrian state, with far greater regional risks.

Two years into the rebellion, Syria’s civil war remains locked in a strategic stalemate, reports of a renewed rebel offensive notwithstanding. The slow but steady erosion of the regime’s grip on much of the countryside underscores the fact that the rebellion has become an irreversible political-military fact, but its failure to capture a single major population centre suggests the regime’s better-equipped forces have lost neither the will nor the ability to fight.

Western powers want Mr Al Assad out, but not to be replaced by those leading the armed rebellion, many of who are hostile to US regional interests. Many of the rebels’ most impressive tactical gains are being recorded by jihadists such as the Jabhat Al Nusra group, branded by the US as an “international terrorist organisation” and Al Qaeda affiliate…..with the political influence on the ground of Mr Al Khatib’s organisation unproven, the US appears in no hurry to pursue the military victory of which he speaks. And the Obama administration has recognised that the factors maintaining the regime – its security forces have not collapsed precisely because most of the Alawites and other key minorities see the rebellion as mortal threat to themselves – are unlikely to change any time soon.

Even if the regime were dislodged from Damascus, that would be unlikely to end a civil war that threatens the survival of the Syrian state….Even as the rebels make new tactical gains on the ground – downing two regime aircraft, capturing an oil town and the Al Furat hydroelectric dam in the north-east, and an airbase in the north, as well as launching a new offensive in the suburbs of Damascus – a substantial shift in the strategic balance does not appear forthcoming….

Worldview: Kerry’s plan for Syria is sadly familiar
Trudy Rubin, Inquirer Opinion Columnist, Sunday, February 17, 2013

Heaven help John Kerry! The newly minted secretary of state has already announced he’ll launch a fresh initiative aimed at ending the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Last spring, then-Sen. Kerry appeared to grasp what was needed to break the deadly stalemate. But his current approach, and the White House’s deep antipathy toward any serious U.S. involvement in Syria, mean Kerry is embarking on a mission impossible. Unless, that is, the secretary can persuade the president to change his mind.

Before I get to Kerry’s approach, let me remind my readers why any of this matters. Despite early White House expectations that Assad would fall, the Syrian struggle is now mired in a bloody stalemate in which more than 70,000 people have died and a country is being pulverized. Barring a new approach, neither side is likely to triumph in the foreseeable future.

“The more probable outcome,” according to the astute Syrian opposition activist Amr Al-Azm, “is the collapse and fragmentation of the state,” and possibly a sectarian genocide. The blowback could affect Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, and Israel.

A failed Syrian state also would provide a power vacuum into which outside jihadis could flow, permitting them to radicalize local Islamists and obtain dangerous weapons from captured regime arsenals. And once a state collapses – as we know from the Iraq experience – it is very difficult to rebuild.

Back to Kerry. He understands this danger and warned last week about an “implosion” of the Syrian state.

Kerry also understands why Assad won’t budge. “He thinks he’s winning and the opposition is losing,” Kerry said at his confirmation hearing. “We need to change Bashar al-Assad’s calculation,” he added.

Indeed, backed and armed by Russia and Iran, and aware that Washington won’t give crucial antitank or antiaircraft weapons to the rebels, Assad seems confident that his regime can survive the fighting. So does Moscow.

While the rebels have managed to take control of some rural areas, no city has fallen yet. “In Bashar’s calculus, he just needs to weather the storm,” Azm told me. “And he’s not necessarily wrong.”….

Last spring, Kerry talked of arming the rebels. Now, instead of charting a new strategy, he seems limited to repeating past (failed) efforts, urging Moscow to help him ease Assad into exile. Meantime, the regime’s planes bomb cities and towns into rubble, and the Syrian state rapidly collapses. The longer this goes on, the worse the outcome will be.

“To my knowledge no options have been entirely taken off the table,” Dempsey told journalists on the plane. However, there are no signs that Obama will reconsider the option of breaking the Syrian military stalemate. This means Assad will hunker down as Syria implodes.

In a small corner of Syria, rebels attempt to reconcile
Rebels and pro-government militias have agreed to stop shooting in Talkalakh, thanks to the efforts of Sheikh Habib
Jonathan Steele in Talkalakh – Guardian

…”I am religious and I have an idea – perhaps it’s crazy – of leadership via love”, said Habib….

“I used to work in real estate in Saudi Arabia, but came back here when the revolution started,” Abu Oday said. Anticipating my question, he went on: “I’m not religious. I only have a beard because we have no time to shave. There are no foreign fighters with us. We are all local, 100%. This is a Sunni part of town and we are all Sunnis.

“We started here with peaceful demonstrations for justice. It was only when the regime responded with force that we started to call for freedom and the end of the regime. That’s what we still want. When they attacked us and made arrests we had to defend ourselves”, he went on. The regime’s claims that there were hardline Islamists in rebel ranks were only a ploy to blacken the rebels’ image, he said.

In spite of the ceasefire the sheikh had organised, – here Abu Odeh nodded appreciatively at the sheikh who nodded back – people on this side of town were afraid to cross the railway line to the other side in case they were detained.

And the ceasefire was being violated, he said. “We only control about three streets. Up there” – he pointed over the ruined petrol pumps to the mouth of a side-street – “there are snipers. The day before yesterday, in broad daylight, a lawyer was up on his roof feeding his pigeons. He was shot in the neck. The sheikh helped to get him safe passage to hospital.

“We have agreed a ceasefire, but we’re still not ready to trust the government,” he said.

He could not say when they would move to the next stage of the agreement and was not yet convinced the government did not want to drive Sunnis out of the town. His views made it clear that confidence-building in Talkalakh still has a long way to go.

Kurdish refugees have mixed feelings about Syria
By KARIN LAUB | Associated Press

DOMIZ REFUGEE CAMP, Iraq (AP) — Syrian Kurds who fled their country’s civil war have mixed feelings about a future without Bashar Assad: They hope to win a measure of autonomy after the fall of the regime, but fear chaos and the rise of Islamists could instead make their lives worse.

More than 81,000 Syrian Kurds have found refuge in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region in recent months and hundreds more arrive every day. Few seem in a rush to go home.

The Kurdistan Regional Government allows fellow Kurds from Syria to work and move freely in the three provinces of northern Iraq it controls. Some 30,000 refugees still live in a camp of tents and cinderblock shacks near the Syrian border, while the rest have found jobs and homes in towns across the autonomous region, some staying with relatives.

Even those struggling with the hardships of camp life say they prefer to stay in Iraq after the fall of the regime, until they have a better idea how Islamists and other groups in the Sunni Arab-dominated Syrian opposition will deal with Kurds, Syria’s largest ethnic minority.

“If the Muslim Brotherhood takes over and there are problems in the future, we want to stay here,” said Faroush Fattah, a 28-year-old laborer from the northeastern Syrian town of Qamishli who arrived in the Domiz camp three months ago.

The refugees’ ambivalence about the upheaval in Syria is shared by Iraqi Kurdish leaders, who have carved out an increasingly prosperous quasi-state in the autonomous region, aided by an oil-fueled economic boom.

Kurdish autonomy in post-Assad Syria, similar to the Iraqi model, could strengthen long-standing Kurdish demands for an independent homeland for the more than 25 million Kurds in parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq.

But the emergence of yet another autonomous Kurdish region would likely spook Turkey, a regional power that is key to plans by Iraq’s Kurds to export their oil riches directly, if necessary without permission from the central Iraqi government.

Turkey is home to an estimated 15 million Kurds, some with self-rule aspirations, and has been battling Kurdish insurgents for nearly three decades. Adding to Turkey’s concerns, the dominant Kurdish faction in Syria, the Democratic Union Party, or PYD, is seen as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the leader of the armed rebellion in Turkey.

The president of Iraq’s Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, has tried to exert influence over Syrian Kurdish groups, presumably in part to protect his strategic relationship with Turkey. Last year, he helped form an umbrella group of Syrian Kurdish groups that includes the PYD and smaller factions loyal to him.

“Barzani has some sway over Syrian Kurds,” said Washington-based Turkey expert Soner Cagaptay. “He has been reaching out to a spectrum of Syrian Kurds, including the PYD, to stop the hostile rhetoric and attitude toward Turkey.”

Falah Mustafa, in charge of the Barzani government’s foreign relations, said Iraqi Kurds want to make sure their Syrian counterparts are united when negotiating their role in a post-Assad Syria with the Sunni Arab-led opposition.

He said it’s up to all Syrians to shape their future, but that Kurdish rights have to be protected — an outcome he suggested is not assured. Asked in an interview if Syrian territory should remain intact at all costs, he said, “I do not believe that these borders have to be sacred, because these were artificial.”

Syria’s Kurds, who make up more than 10 percent of a population of 23 million, initially remained largely on the sidelines after the uprising against Assad erupted almost two years ago. They had been marginalized by the regime, but were also weary of the Syrian rebels, many of them Sunnis. Some prominent Kurds joined the Syrian political opposition in exile, while some younger Kurds joined street protests against Assad.

Kurds were pulled into the conflict on a larger scale when Assad’s forces unexpectedly withdrew from predominantly Kurdish areas in the northeast of the country last summer, enabling the PYD to take control there.

The pullback appeared to serve two objectives at the time — giving the PYD a higher profile to pressure Turkey, one of the most vocal backers of the Syrian opposition, and allowing thinly stretched government troops to move to hotspots elsewhere.

The PYD denies it is affiliated with the PKK or coordinates with the Syrian regime, even though in some areas, such as Qamishli, residents say both the regime and PYD forces maintain military posts. At the same time, the PYD has clashed with rebel fighters, particularly those from the al-Qaida-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra.

Some in the Domiz camp said the PYD protects Kurds against both rebel fighters and regime soldiers, while others described the PYD militiamen as regime sub-contractors terrorizing residents.

“The regime and the PYD work together,” said Abdel Khader Taha, a 37-year-old laborer from Qamishli who sported a colorful tattoo of Barzani on his chest. Taha said he fears all Kurds will one day be targeted by Syrian rebels because of the PYD’s perceived collusion with the regime.

Taha and others in the camp seemed ambivalent about Syria’s future.

While favoring Kurdish autonomy, they acknowledge that carving out a self-rule zone, like in Iraq, is difficult because Kurds are dispersed across the country. Refugees say they fear the Muslim Brotherhood, the pan-Arab Sunni movement driving the anti-Assad rebellion, will disregard Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities once Assad falls.

“We fear a big ethnic war in Syria,” said Ali Kalash, 57, a former Syrian civil servant, standing with a group of men in one of the tent-lined alleys of the camp.

On Patrol in Syria with Assad’s Most Disciplined Enemies
By Rania Abouzeid / Marshamsheh | Time

…There are 23 men in his Farouq unit stationed along the eastern flank of the Wadi Deif military base, one of the few remaining loyalist outposts in the northern Syrian province of Idlib in late January. His men are all from this front-line town of Marshamsheh, a desolate, devastated area that was once home to some 4,000 people but is now populated almost solely by a handful of diverse rebel groups. There’s nothing between it and Wadi Deif except an olive grove….

The forces ranged against the regime of President Bashar Assad are a varied crew: there are foreign fighters; Islamic extremists, both Syrian and from other countries; as well as criminal elements who kidnap for ransom or loot homes, exploiting the general lawlessness of war. There is a kinetic nature to the rebellion — of multiple pieces moving at once. In Aleppo further north, many of the rebels fighting there don’t know their way around the metropolis. They’re from the towns and villages around it.

But in many smaller places like Marshamsheh, it is still mainly local men like Hajji Zaki who are fighting in their hometowns. It is their homes that are being destroyed, their families displaced or killed. On the other side of this conflict’s increasingly intractable divide, there are also men loyal to Assad who are just as grounded in their local communities, fighting for what they believe is right and just, and also losing their lives and livelihoods. This is the nature of civil war.

It’s easy to get caught up in talk of weapons, of geostrategic interests and diplomatic maneuvers, but war, at its most basic level, is more intimate than that. It’s about people, mainly the terrible things they see and do or have done to them, but also the bonds they forge, the attempts to cling to the normalcy of their old lives and what they think about their new ones.

…The Farouq is among the largest, best organized and most well-known of Syria’s many military units. They take the name Farouq from Omar bin al-Khatab al-Farouq, a companion of the Prophet Muhammad, political architect of the caliphate and, historically, the second Caliph…..

From the Guardian Blog

• Russia has rejected a call by UN investigators for Syrian leaders identified as suspected war criminals to face the international criminal court. Deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov told a news conference that this was “not the path we should follow … at this stage it would be untimely and unconstructive”.

• The FSA has given Hezbollah 48 hours to cease attacks in Syria or face retaliation in Lebanon. The Lebanese Shia group has been accused of attacking Syrian villages near the border with Lebanon but has consistently denied involvement in the Syrian conflict. Syria’s ambassador to Lebanon also denied that Hezbollah was supporting the Assad government with attacks.

• Barack Obama could reconsider his decision not to arm Syrian rebels, the New York Times reports. The report, citing a senior administration official, suggested that, surrounded by a new national security team, the US president might come to a different decision.

Washington invites Syrian opposition leader
18 February 2013

Peter Harling via ft:

“There is a dual process of consolidation,” he said. “The opposition is consolidating in the north and east, and the regime is consolidating in central Syria and the coast and mountains.”

Even the loss of new swaths of territory and oilfields is unlikely to be a fatal blow to the regime however, argues Mr Harling. “This regime is bleeding from so many cuts,” he said, “it presumably will adjust, as always.”

Colonel Riad al-Asaad – Free  Syrian Army preparing for “final battle” for Damascus
13/07/2012, By Caroline Akoum, Beirut, Asharq Al-Awsat –

In light of the noticeable development in the Free Syrian Army [FSA]’s military operations, not to mention the escalated pace of defections from the regular army’s forces, the FSA has announced that it is gearing up to take the fight to the al-Assad regime in Damascus. Speaking exclusively to Asharq Al-Awsat, FSA commander Colonel Riad al-Asaad revealed that “preparations for the battle of Damascus are underway and are in full swing, particularly as this operation – which will be the final and decisive confrontation with the regime – requires special preparations and arrangements”. He added “this has led to the battle being postponed so far; however once it starts it will be resolved quickly, within a matter of weeks.”

European Foreign Ministers Reject Arming Syrian Rebels
Nick Ottens, February 18, 2013

Carl Bildt and William Hague, the foreign ministers of Sweden and the United Kingdom, talk with the European Union’s foreign policy chief Baroness Catherine Ashton in Brussels, December 13, 2010 (The Council of the European Union)

European Union foreign ministers agreed on Monday to keep sanctions against Syria in place for another three months, including an arms embargo that prevents them from arming the opposition in the country to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

A European official told the Associated Press anonymously that the United Kingdom had urged a change in the sanctions regime to allow weapons to be supplied to the rebels. Ahead of their meeting in Brussels, however, several European foreign ministers said that shipping more arms into Syria would be a mistake.

Besides the arms embargo, the European Union prohibits the import of Syrian oil and has enacted financial sanctions against various individuals and companies with ties to Assad’s regime.

Western powers have been reluctant to intervene in the civil war that has raged in Syria for nearly two years for fear of emboldening Sunni Islamists who comprise the backbone of the rebellion…..

As the Americans fail to do anything meaningful about Syria it´s the Europeans that have to act:
by Kristin Helberg

Video: Syria’s shifting strategic balance – Inside Syria – Aljazeera
with Elias Hanna, Joshua Landis and Khalid Salih, Opposition spokesman in Istanbul

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A leader of one of Syria’s Salafi militias – Sheikh Lu’ay – explains their strength, strategy and politics. He explains that little unity exists among the opposition on the ground and challenges the news anchor to name one militia that takes orders from Idris or anyone else. He insists that the revolution is a popular revolution and that the Salafis will take orders from the people and post-war government, whatever its shape if it is a true expression of the people’s will.

Around 40,000 flee heavy fighting in east Syria: U.N.
GENEVA | Fri Feb 15, 2013 (Reuters) –

An estimated 40,000 people have fled a town in eastern Syria after three days of heavy fighting between government troops and rebels, the United Nations food agency said.

Rebels seized al-Shaddadeh in Syria’s oil-producing east on Thursday after the clashes which killed 30 of their fighters and 100 Syrian government troops, a violence monitoring group told Reuters.

“A WFP (World Food Programme) team visited the area and estimated that around 40,000 people have fled al-Shaddadeh to al-Hasakah city (the regional capital),” the U.N. agency told journalists in Geneva on Friday.

Northeastern Syria was hit by four years of drought before the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad started nearly two years ago, resulting in high rates of malnutrition among children, WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said.

“The fighting and displacement only aggravates the misery of these people,” she said, adding the agency had sent extra rations to the area this week. Taking Shaddadeh brings the rebels closer to the provincial capital Hasakah, 45 km (30 miles) to the north in the surrounding Hasakah province…

ISW Outlines Syrian Army Capabilities

Washington, D.C. – Current estimates of Syrian opposition strength have generated confidence that the Assad regime will be defeated militarily. This assessment cannot be made without also estimating the real fighting power of the Syrian regime.

The regime’s military strength rests on many factors, such as the loyalty of troops, the status of equipment, and the number of casualties sustained. These variables have no meaning, however, if not compared to a valid baseline.

The Syrian Army: Doctrinal Order of Battle, written by ISW Senior Syria Analyst Joseph Holliday, establishes the composition of the Syrian Army, provides insight into the historical roles of particular units, and assesses the doctrinal order of battle of the Syrian Army as it existed in 2011. The report contains a graphic order of battle as well as doctrinal orientation maps.

Understanding the composition, history, and doctrinal order of battle of the Syrian Army is necessary to explain how the Assad regime prosecuted counterinsurgency operations in 2011-2012.

This report precedes the Institute for the Study of War’s upcoming report, The Assad Regime: From Counterinsurgency to Civil War, which will examine the ways in which Assad has deployed his forces in the ongoing campaign against Syria’s opposition.

post for comment this new Arabiya story claiming Druze clerics are switching sides and this Washington Post article from last week claiming shift in Druze community to opposition.  I’m in the midst of writing an article on the Druze for FPRI (your Shishakli piece invaluable) and I’m VERY VERY skeptical of the above claims.  I see the jabal gravitating toward a Kurd-like autonomy at best (and even this is a ways off), certainly not swinging into the rebel camp.  I keep checking your blog to see if I’m missing something!

Letter from a friend in Aleppo

We seriously need to go out today before tomorrow for the sake of the children not for me and Rxxxx. Things in Aleppo in particular are getting worse day after day and I don’t think it will hold on forever. It will fall soon as I see it. Rania is very depressed and under trauma, she does not sleep, she keeps crying, she needs psychological consultation but in our case it does not exist. She is so worried about the Fxxx and Jxxx, the same for me. Today a bomb falls on Fxxxx’s faculty — the faculty of science — and there is a sniper somewhere who is shooting people. He is of course at home safe but I asked not to go any more even if he looses his year. I don’t know how we can go out anywhere and what to do. Beirut for us is impossible to financially survive, it is a very expensive country plus the humiliation Syrians are experiencing. To Tartous we know no body there. To Damascus is not better at all. The airport is closed and almost falling down in the hands of the insurgents. We are in a prison, no electricity, no water, and no hope things will get better. It is a false vision. We thought sometime to go to Egypt but it is not easy also what to do there. Our only hope is a miracle from God. Pray for us

Foreign POlicy

Fierce clashes have been reported as opposition forces work to overtake Aleppo international airport. Fighting has been occurring at the airfield for weeks and on Wednesday opposition fighters took control of most of the “Brigade 80″ military base protecting it. According to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, regime warplanes have bombarded rebel positions near the airport with airstrikes. If opposition fighters overtake the airport, it will be a major setback for the regime, cutting off supply lines to Aleppo. Beginning his term as U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry said he will utilize his past relationship with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a strategy to get the ruler to leave power. Kerry said he understands the “calculations” that drive Assad and believes there are methods that can change them. He said, “Right now President Assad doesn’t think he’s losing — and the opposition thinks it’s winning.” Additionally he reaffirmed that the U.S. administration is seeking a political solution to the Syrian conflict rather than arming opposition forces. Meanwhile, U.N. special envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi’s deputy Mokhtar Lamani traveled to the country for the first visit of the team in months, meeting with the leader of the opposition Revolutionary Military Council as well as civilian and Christian leaders. They all expressed support for the recent initiative by the head of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, Moaz al-Khatib, to hold direct talks with the government.

Shopping Option C for Syria
Arming the rebels is not a Goldilocks idea, it’s just wrong.
BY MARC LYNCH | FEBRUARY 14, 2013

Last week’s revelations that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey had supported a proposal by then CIA Director David Petraeus and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to arm moderate Syrian rebels have galvanized the Syria policy debate. The Syria policy community, which for the most part these days yearns for more aggressive American action, is outraged that the White House overruled this plan. But the real story is that, for once, the inter-agency process actually worked: It vetted and discarded a scheme which rigorous analysis concluded wouldn’t work…..

Syrians Freed in Abductions That Stoked Fears of More Strife
By ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA SAAD

The recent kidnappings of more than 140 have demonstrated not only the high level of insecurity in the area, but also the determination of residents to defuse tensions….BEIRUT, Lebanon — The tit-for-tat kidnappings of more than 140 people have provoked fears of expanded sectarian conflict in Syria’s northern Idlib Province in recent days, but one set of hostages was released in good condition on Saturday after negotiations between residents of two of the affected villages, according to a rebel commander.

For Rebels, a Treacherous Road to Damascus
by Mike Giglio Feb 16, 2013

Syria’s opposition forces are amassing for a third attempt to control the capital. But Assad loyalist strongholds and natural advantages in the surrounding mountains, can they take it?

… The rebels have the momentum. And in their current Damascus offensive, according to analysts such as James Miller of EA WorldView, the opposition appears to be better organized than in the past and far better armed. But Assad still has two big advantages on his side as he fights to keep control of the capital, according to several experts tracking the conflict. Neighborhoods that house Assad’s most loyal supporters surround strategically critical points of interest, such as military installations and government institutions, mainly in the northwest. And in a city pressed against mountains, Assad also holds the key positions above. “The rebels don’t have a cohesive route into the center of the capital, because there are these enclaves of Assad support—and they’re protected by the military, the police, and also local militias,” Miller says. “And the regime holds all the high ground.”

The Damascus neighborhoods that remain bastions of Assad support are predominately Alawite—the offshoot of Shiite Islam that forms only 10 percent of the population in the majority Sunni country but makes up the backbone of Assad’s government. A recent report by the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, D.C., describes two such neighborhoods that help encircle the city’s heart in the west. One, Qudssaya, is known as the Lion’s Den because of its high density of Assad supporters, the report notes. Another, Mazzeh 86, is an “Alawite slum and the point of origin for many pro-regime militias.” Further in from Mazzeh 86, Mazzeh (sans the 86) is a wealthier concentration of Assad supporters, including many families of Alawite officers from the military’s senior ranks….

….On the other side of the city, Miller adds, a similar containment strategy is likely under way in Jobar, which the rebels might use as a gateway into the center from their strongholds in the east. The government has been targeting the neighborhood with intense bombing from its warplanes. But unlike suburbs such as Duma and Daraya, as The New York Times noted this week, Jobar is actually considered part of the main city.

The biggest advantage for government forces in Damascus might be measured in height. Firas Abi Ali, the acting head of MENA forecasting at IHS Exclusive Analysis, a risk-consultancy firm in London, points out that the government is dug in well with tanks and heavy artillery on Mount Qasioun, the mountain that looms large over Damascus. “It allows whoever’s sitting there to overlook the rest of the city and target the city with observed fire—which means that if your first shell doesn’t hit your target, then the second and third shell will,” Abi Ali says. “They’ve got the high ground, and the weapons on the high ground, and the rebels don’t have the ability to deal with that. And they’re not going to for quite some time.”

LA Times [Reg]: Iranian military general reportedly assassinated in Syria
2013-02-14

BEIRUT — A high-ranking member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was assassinated this week while traveling from Syria to neighboring Lebanon, the Iranian press reported Thursday, in the strongest indication to date that senior Iranian military …

Israeli Air Attack in Syria Killed IRG General
by Richard Silverstein on February 17, 2013

Free Syrian Army sources revealed several days ago that an Iranian general, Hassan Shateri (also known as Hussam Hush Nawis) was killed in Syria recently.  First reports made it appear he might’ve been killed by the FSA.  Iran, however, said that he was killed by Israel.  But since it didn’t add any further information, I couldn’t figure out how Israel would’ve done so.

Now, I’ve put the pieces together with the help of my own intuition, a Ynetnews report, and an Israeli source.  Israel killed Shateri two weeks ago in an air attack on an Iranian arms convoy that was carrying advanced weaponry through Syria, making its way to Lebanon.  Shateri, in fact, was responsible for the Iranian reconstruction project of rebuilding southern Lebanon after the 2006 war.  He even had a diplomatic position, which would mean that not only did Israel invade Syrian sovereignty in killing him, it also killed an Iranian diplomat.  There may be those who scoff at the notion that an IRG general may be a diplomat.  But there are many military attaches who serve in embassies around the world, yet enemies of these nations don’t generally go around offing them.  Israel holds that special distinction…..

Christians Squeezed Out by Violent Struggle in North Syria
By SUSANNE GÜSTEN, February 13, 2013

One mother told of the abduction of a neighbor’s child, held for ransom by rebel fighters in her hometown of Al-Hasakah, which prompted her family to seek safety for their three young sons across the border in Turkey. A young man demonstrated how he was hung by his arms, robbed and beaten by rebels, “just for being a Christian.”

Violence against Christians is escalating in the governorate of Al-Hasakah in northeastern Syria, which is home to tens of thousands of Syriac Christians, the refugees said.

The region, known locally as the Jazeera, encompasses the districts of Ras al-Ain, Qamishli and Malikiyah. With government forces, Arab rebels of the Free Syrian Army and Kurdish fighters locked in a three-way struggle for control, the area’s Christian population has found itself caught in the middle.

While fighting is sporadic, the region has succumbed to lawlessness, and Christians have become the target of armed rebel gangs, Father Gabriel Akyuz, the metropolitan vicar of Mardin, said in an interview in Mardin last week.

“The gangs are kidnapping people and holding them to ransom. They are perpetrating great injustices. That is why Syriacs are fleeing,” he said.

Several hundred Christian refugees have arrived in Turkey in recent weeks, with tens of thousands poised to follow if the region, currently held by the Kurdish, should fall to Arab militias, according to refugees, church officials and representatives of Syriac organizations interviewed in southeastern Turkey last week.

Bypassing Turkish refugee camps on the border, fleeing Christians have headed for the monasteries and towns of Mardin and Midyat in Tur Abdin, an ancient region in southeastern Turkey, less than 50 kilometers, or 30 miles, from the Syrian border that is the historical heartland of the Syriac Orthodox Church.

“They are afraid to stay in the camps. They feel safer with their own people,” said Father Joseph, a Syriac monk looking after four families and several single refugees in Mor Hanonyo.

“We are fleeing from the rebels, and the camps are full of rebels,” said the mother of the three little boys, a schoolteacher who did not want to be named for fear of rebel reprisals against relatives at home….While the Kurds remained in control of the Jazeera, most Syriacs would stay put, said one young man, who gave his name only as Gabriel. But if the region should fall to Islamist Arab rebels, “then not any Christian people will stay there,” he said.

Yusuf Turker, the administrator of the monastery, said Syriacs on both sides of the border were anxiously following the struggle between Kurds and Arab militias over the region.

“If Ras al-Ain falls and the militias overrun the region, God forbid, then 40,000 or 50,000 Christians will come over the border in one rush,” he said….“If we Syriacs keep on running, where will we end up?” Mr. Turker said. “It is time for us to make a stand.”

The Syriac federation hopes that it can persuade Turkey to grant citizenship to Christian refugees from Syria, enabling them to settle in Tur Abdin.

It says the road to naturalization in Turkey should be easy for Syriac Syrians, most of whom are descended from earlier generations of refugees from Tur Abdin who fled Turkish persecution and a local famine in the first half of the 20th century. They settled in what was then the French mandate of Syria, leading to the establishment of the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of Jazeera and Euphrates in Al-Hasakah, where it remains to this day.

“Most of the refugees’ ancestors are still on record here in Turkey, so they could be naturalized on those grounds: That is what they told us,”…Hannibal, a 36-year-old pathologist who fled Syria when his life was threatened by rebels, was not smiling as he talked: “As Christians in the Middle East, we live in misery and suffer many difficulties. We want nothing more than to emigrate to other places.”

http://world.time.com/2013/02/13/the-art-of-war-syrias-artists-find-pain-and-fame-on-the-frontlines/?iid=gs-main-lead

BBC: Lasting scars of Syria’s assault on Baba Amr
2013-02-14

One year ago this month, the Syrian army launched one of the most intense assaults of the conflict, with the bombardment of the Baba Amr district of Homs. The operation was meant to crush the rebel Free Syrian Army there, but thousands of civilians …

Syria: The Growing Power Of Jihadist Groups

Sky’s Stuart Ramsay meets an increasingly influential group which says jihad is spreading and will not stop at Syria.

The number of Jihadist groups flooding into Syria two years after the start of the uprising is threatening to eclipse the power of mainstream opposition groups as well as the authority of the Free Syrian Army.

One of the increasingly influential groups, Jabah al Haq (The Front for Justice), told Sky News that Jihad is spreading across North Africa and the Middle East and will not stop at Syria but will include Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and even Israel….

CNN: Syrian official: ‘We have already won’
2013-02-14

Damascus, Syria (CNN) — As both sides in Syria’s bloody civil war claimed advances, one high-ranking member of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime expressed confidence in ultimate victory. Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Maqdad, in an …

Hackers Expose U.S. False Flag to Frame Syria – February 13, 2013 – American Free Press
• Mercenary emails indicate U.S. may have proposed “false flag” chemical attack

Hacked emails from a British mercenary company were posted online, leading to claims Washington was backing a dirty war against Syria in which a chemical attack on Syria could be blamed on the Syrian regime, thereby strengthening the case for immediate intervention on the part of the United States military.

British mercenary company, Britam Defence, has since admitted it was hacked but claimed the hacker, who posted his online name as “JAsIrX,” had maliciously and cleverly used hacked material to generate forgeries to destroy the company’s reputation and make it look like it was involved in shocking behavior.

According to a spokesman for the company, it was really a “risk management firm” and not a mercenary company like those hired by the U.S. Defense Department to carry out military operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, the sheer volume of hacked documents from Britam demonstrates that the UK firm has a hand in more than just paper-pushing. It is clearly a company with tentacles that reach into all parts of the military-industrial complex in the UK and overseas.

One of the hacked emails that has resulted in the most embarrassment for the U.S. government concerned Syria. The email reads as follows:

Phil, we’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved in Washington. We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell [sic] from Libya similar to those that Assad should have. They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record. Frankly, I don’t think it is a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

Kind regards, David

The “Phil” referred to in the email is purported to be Philip Doughy, Britam’s founder. The “David” is the director of development, David Goulding. The “CW” in the email refers to Chemical Weapon and the “g-shell” implies a gas-warfare-type shell.

The company claims the email was a forgery. Nevertheless, its release coincided with warnings by Israel and the Obama White House that Syrian leader Bashar al Assad was liable to use his chemical weapons on the Arab revolutionaries and Islamist militias trying to overthrow his government. Israel has insisted it reserves the right to attack Syria’s chemical sites and the issue has encouraged neocons to argue it is time for the U.S. and its allies to get more directly involved in overthrowing Assad. Russia has insisted Assad has given it an assurance he will not use chemical weapons on his people.

In all, 423 megabytes of zip files were hacked from Britam. Aside from the one on Syria, there were others related to Iran that have caused considerable controversy.

For example, one file folder contained outlines of plans for varying types of military actions to be undertaken as part of an attack on Iran. The topics listed in the files were under headings such as “Fix enemy forces and lure them to the killing zones.” Another had the title, “Move from their garrisons to occupy AA at Grid (1556) (IAW Movement Order).” The IAW stands for “in agreement with.”

The hacker, who posted the files, said he hacked Britam’s website after discovering it was on a Malaysian server and that its files indicated it had plans for the invasion of Syria and Iran. He described it as a private military company. To prove his case, he also released copies of emails and files with titles such as “WMM Baghdad 5” and “Iran issue” with the date, 24-01-2013.

One file contained a listing of many of Britam’s clients, including Halliburton with which it has an ongoing $16M contract for what it terms “risk assessment, planning and close protection of personnel” in oilfields in parts of Iraq. A similar contract worth $11M is with BP. […]
http://americanfreepress.net/?p=8544

Jabhat Al-Nusra Communiqué Describes Group’s Takeover Of Al-Shadadah, In Hasaka Province

In a February 15, 2013 communiqué, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihad group Jabhat Al-Nusra describes its takeover of the city of Al-Shadadah in Syria’s Hasaka province. The communiqué was released by the organization’s media company, Al-Manara Al-Baida, and posted on the jihadi website Shumoukh Al-Islam. The following are its main points. The organization states that “the lions of Jabhat Al-Nusra” are making daily gains in their war against the tyrant Bashar Al-Assad and his troops, and that its forces in the east of the country have managed to liberate Al-Shadadah completely after launching a comprehensive attack on it and on all the checkpoints and military posts surrounding it.

Al-Qaeda Flag, Sign Reading ‘The Islamic Emirate’ Hung On Display In Tripoli, Lebanon

On February 8, 2013, the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported that in Al-Najma Square in Tripoli, Lebanon, an Al-Qaeda flag was hung on display where there had previously been a picture of former Lebanese president S’ad Al-Hariri.

Ten anti-Tank rockets have been acquired by the Syrian Supreme Military Council, led by Brigadier Selim Idris. Each costs between $20 to 25 thousand. This is a photo of one taken today.

Addendum: Pirouz writes:

 This is a M79 Osa (Wasp) 90 mm portable anti-tank rocket launcher, a Yugoslavian/Serbian modernized variant of the French-made LRAC F1 -unguided rocket

The weapons have been handed over to Abu Ali Sulaibi, commander of the front-line, Saif al-Dawla area of Aleppo. “He lives in the district with his wife, Um Ali, three daughters, a son, and a cat named Sanjoob, or Squirrel,” wrote Ghaith Abdul Ahad.  Fifty metres from Abu Ali’s sector, across the Saif al-Dawla Boulevard, an array of shattered buildings is occupied by government troops. They are close enough that during lulls in the shooting they can continue the conflict by shouting abuse.

Why have these weapons been supplied now? Who approved them? We don’t know. It is said that these weapons may have come from Libya and have been sitting in Turkey for some time but approval “may not have been” given for them to be released. It seems that this has changed as of late.

Abdul Ahad writes of Abu Ali:

Abu Ali’s brothers had actively opposed the rule of Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, joining the Muslim Brotherhood in the 80s. In their fight against the state, one of the brothers was killed and another spent 15 years in jail.

Abu Ali chose a different path, training to be an assistant engineer. He got a job with the government. Life was good. “I had a good income, my own car and my own house,” he says. “My kids used to go to the best schools and we had a perfect family life.

“When Bashar [al-Assad] came to power I disagreed with my father and brother. I said he would be good, that things would change.”

But little did change, and when the revolution came in 2011, Abu Ali was one of the first people to take up arms in Aleppo. With a group of friends he formed a small armed unit to target security forces.

“See this pistol,” he says, pulling the weapon from his belt and placing it on the floor. “The first bullet in Aleppo was fired from this pistol.”

The small girl grabs at the shiny gun but he snatches it away. “I knew there wouldn’t be a revolution without violence, and the people of Aleppo needed someone to drag them into the revolution.”

“He was the first who carried weapons and I encouraged him,” says Um Ali, who trained as a mechanical engineer. “His parents and family blamed me and still blame me. He was hesitant in the beginning because he had three children, but I encouraged him.

“He used to go out without telling me where, but I knew it was to do with the revolution. I used to pray for him and felt ashamed in front of God because I was praying only for him.”

He has been hit several times in the fighting: he shows two shrapnel wounds on his head and pulls up his T-shirt to reveal a depression under his right shoulder blade where a machine gun bullet struck him. He is often referred to as the “majnoon” – the madman – for his reckless bravery….

… After dinner he becomes reflective: “I mix everything. Filth with honesty. Street language with religion. I have mixed all the revolutions in me. I am the Bolshevik revolution, the French revolution. I am the modern Guevara.

“Do you know, I am so special. My wife hates it when I say this, but I have had angels fight with me. Many times. In battle, I can feel myself flying,” he says. “Flying above the ground.”

Here is video of the Saif al-Dawla district at the very outset of the revolution before it had been destroyed by fighting

Ahrar Al Sham – attacking an Army checkpoint in Saif al-Dawla, Aleppo –  Sep 30, 2012

Smoke rises over Saif Al Dawla district in Aleppo on Tuesday. Several districts in Aleppo were also bombed.

The Avoider
Barack Obama’s State of the Union address makes one thing clear: The world is no longer America’s problem.
BY AARON DAVID MILLER | FEBRUARY 13, 2013 – FP

….Not the Destroyer and Rebuilder of Worlds

Surprise, surprise: There was scant mention of Syria in the president’s speech — just one throwaway line about supporting Syria’s opposition. Obama did not disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan only to plunge America into new black holes in the Middle East.

Obama isn’t worried about boots on the ground in Syria. That was never on the table. Instead the question is this: Given the uncertainty about the end state in Syria and the risks of providing serious weapons to the rebels (and a no-fly zone) that might alter the arc of the fight against the regime, the president saw and continues to see no purpose in America providing arms of marginal utility. That course would either expose him to be truly weak and ineffectual or lead to calls to do more. So he’s going to provide non-lethal support and is apparently prepared to take the hits from critics who see the president’s policy as passive, cruel, and unforgiving, particularly now that we know that members of his own cabinet clearly wanted to do more…..

It’s the Middle Class, Not the Middle East

Spoiler alert: Barack Obama might still be a consequential foreign-policy president if he’s lucky, willful, and skillful. But it’s his domestic legacy that will make or break his presidency. Health care — his signature legacy issue — will look much better if the economy improves, driven by a revived housing market and rising employment, and of course if some broader deal can be struck on entitlements and taxes. Immigration reform and gun-control legislation driven by a functional bipartisanship would cement that legacy. He’d be an historic rather than a great president…

The Middle East is violent and volatile and may yet suck him in, but if he can avoid it, he’ll try. This was a State of the Union address that stressed fixing America’s broken house, not chasing around the world trying to fix everyone else’s. The future of America isn’t Cairo or Damascus; it’s Chicago and Detroit.

Fred Hoff – The President’s Decision-Making on Syria  – former Special Advisor for Transition in Syria at the US Department of State.

….The Clinton-Petraeus-Panetta-Dempsey story is probably mortifying for all concerned, including the president. Ideally this tempest-in-a-teapot would somehow facilitate reconsideration of the current approach to Syrian policy rather than entomb it in concrete. Historians will, in time, examine why President Obama, knowing that the prospects for a peaceful, managed Syrian political transition were receding to the vanishing point, chose not to enter the arena where the struggle for Syria was actually being waged. In the fullness of time scribes may conclude that by the time the United States tried to influence the course of the armed struggle (if indeed a policy adjustment was ever made) it was too late. They may well write about the bloody minded determination of Moscow, Tehran and Hezbollah to win in Syria. But no one can really know what scholars will be writing years from now. Without a crystal ball the United States must do its best, with the imperfect tools at its disposal, to mitigate the damage done by a ruling family willing to burn a country and imperil its neighbors, including important American allies and friends. Standing clear of Syria and its associated wreckage will not be possible and should not be seen as a policy option. That which was reportedly decided months ago should be urgently reconsidered. Our supposed lack of influence will surely be confirmed if we opt to believe we have none.

Kerry Seeks to Change Assad’s Thinking on Syria
2013-02-13 18: By MATTHEW LEE, Washington (AP)

Secretary of State John Kerry says he has some ideas on how to change Syrian President Bashar Assad’s calculations on remaining in power and will raise them with European and Mideast leaders on his first official overseas trip.

In Speech, Obama Tempers Expectations of Syria’s Future
By SCOTT SHANE, February 13, 2013, NYTimes

WASHINGTON – Having overruled top advisers who had argued for arming the opposition in Syria, President Obama appeared to moderate his expectations for change in that war-torn country in Tuesday’s State of the Union speech.

“We will keep the pressure on a Syrian regime that has murdered its own people, and support opposition leaders that respect the rights of every Syrian,” Mr. Obama said. He made no predictions about where that support might lead.

A year earlier, in his 2012 address, Mr. Obama had expressed confidence that the end of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was near. Noting that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator, had been ousted by a popular revolt, the president said then: “And in Syria, I have no doubt that the Assad regime will soon discover that the forces of change can’t be reversed, and that human dignity can’t be denied.”

State of the Union: 4 Takes on Afghanistan, Syria, President’s Style
By: Larisa Epatko – PBS

….Joshua Landis

Anyone who was hoping that President Obama would follow a more muscular policy on Syria during his second term was disappointed. Obama believes that previous presidents have over-committed the United States in the Middle East. He is trying to draw down troops in Afghanistan, stay out of Iraq, finesse demands that he solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and do everything possible not to get sucked into Syria. The potential for mission-creep in Syria is enormous as the country slips into civil war and the opposition splinters into emulous factionalism and becomes dominated by Islamists.

From earlier interviews on 60 minutes and with the New Republic, President Obama made it clear that he does not believe that saving Syria is America’s responsibility, or even within the capability of the U.S. His non-committal and anodyne statement in the State of the Union address that the U.S. would “stand with citizens as they demand their universal rights and support stable transitions to democracy,” could not be read as a battle cry or promise of greater U.S. involvement.

Most of Ahrar al-Sham’s fighters are Syrian nationals

Ahrar al-Sham jihadists emerge from shadows in Syria
Victories of Ahrar al-Sham jihadists, trumpeted on Internet, have been accomplished thanks to financial backing from Gulf Arab countries.
Middle East Online, By Herve Bar – ATME (Syria)

Jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham is emerging from the shadows of the larger rebel outfit Al-Nusra Front as key player in northern Syria, playing up its nationalist roots and more moderate form of Islam.

Fighters from the group, whose name means in Arabic the “Free Men of Syria”, are mainly to be found on the battlefields in the northern provinces of Idlib, Aleppo and central Hama alongside some 30 other jihadist organisations.

For a long time it was eclipsed by the hardline Al-Nusra Front which has claimed responsibility for the majority of deadly suicide bombings in Syria’s nearly two-year conflict and is blacklisted by Washington as a terror outfit.

But in recent months Ahrar al-Sham has begun unleashing its fighters across the battlefronts, especially in Idlib where they played a leading role in advances around the city of Jisr al-Shughur, a reporter said.

Its fighters are also on the frontlines of the battles around the city of Idlib and further south in Maarat al-Numan.

Their victories have been trumpeted on the Internet and, rebel sources say, have been accomplished thanks to financial backing from Gulf Arab countries.

At the end of December, Ahrar al-Sham announced the creation of an Islamic front grouping a dozen of other organisations including Ansar al-Sham, Liwa al-Haq and Jamaat al-Taliaa.

On January 31 several other groups announced on a statement posted on the Internet that they had joined forces with Ahrar al-Sham to form a broader coalition dubbed “Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya” (The Islamic Movement of Ahrar al-Sham).

Although some Arab jihadists fight amongst their ranks, most of Ahrar al-Sham’s fighters are Syrian nationals while the group’s founders, according to a source close to it, were former political prisoners released in an amnesty.

“The founders of the movement are all former political prisoners who were detained in the infamous Sednaya prison near Damascus,” the source said.

“For years they lived and suffered together in jail (but) were set free as part of an amnesty ordered by the regime in May 2011.”

The group appears to be well-structured although the names of their commanders are not in the public domain. However, a fighter known as Abu Anas is the leader for battlegrounds in northern Syria.

One of Ahrar al-Sham’s strengths is that it has deep roots in northern rebel-held territory, where unlike the shadowy Al-Nusra Front, its men enjoy grassroots support because some are from the villages and cities of the region.

The group’s approach to Islam is less rigid that the position of Al-Nusra Front — which Washington says has links to Al-Qaeda in Iraq — with group leaders insisting they oppose “fanaticism.”

Ahrar al-Sham supports the creation of an Islamic state in Syria but one that is based on sharia, Islamic law that would guarantee the rights of minorities including Christians.

“Their rhetoric is loaded with Islamic references but… deep down their goal is to restore the sovereignty of the Syrian people and do away with dictatorship,” said Jean-Pierre Filiu, an expert on jihadist movements.

On the ground Ahrar al-Sham fight sometimes alongside the mainstream rebel Free Syrian Army and Al-Nusra, joining in attacks on regime military targets — but apparently refrain from taking part in suicide bombings.

Like other jihadists their fighters wear black turbans and their beards long, and fly a white flag with an eagle soaring over the name of the group on their checkpoints.

Jihad in Syria ~ Reaching an international level ? [Translation of video made by Chechen Jihadis]
Feb 10 by pietervanostaeyen

Jihad in Syria seems to have reached a new level. As already known for a longer while international Jihadism in Syria is growing stronger. There have been multiple reports of foreigners from all over the Arab world fighting (and dying) in Syria. Even Western (European, American and Canadian) Jihadi’s have been reported fighting Bashar al-Assad’s army.

This one appears to be new however. This video, made by Chechen Jihadi’s, points out that more and more foreign brigades are being active in Syria. Their agenda ? To spread international Jihadism and topple the regime. Their means ? To call out for international financial support…..

Saudi Arabia: Eastern Promises
February 12, 2013 Frederic Wehrey – Sada

…The reverberations of Syria on Saudi society have not helped reform coordination. As the officially sanctioned clergy frame the civil war in sectarian terms—demonizing the Alawis—the Shia of the Eastern Province have likewise come under increased pressure. Many are believed to sympathize with the Assad regime, despite the fact that Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, perhaps the most outspoken of the Shia clerics, has called for the downfall of Bashar. The statements of Syrian (and Iranian) officials have not helped matters; these governments typically speak about the affairs of the Eastern Province to advance their own self-serving regional agendas. For example, in March of last year, the Syrian delegate to the United Nations proposed sending Syrian troops to protect the population of Qatif after the Saudi delegate suggested Saudi troops should be sent to Syria to stop the massacres against the Syrian people….

UN Security Council Needs Solid Position on Syrian Crisis — Saudi FM
By Asharq Al-Awsat | Asharq Alawsat

Syrian Rebels Loot Artifacts to Raise Money for Fight Against Assad
By Taylor Luck | The Washington Post

Insight: Divided Damascus confronted by all-out war
By Samia Nakhoul
DAMASCUS | Wed Feb 13, 2013

…Just as loyalist forces seem unable to regain control of the country, there looks to be little chance the rebels can storm the center of Damascus and attack the seat of Assad’s power.

For most of last week the army rained shells on the eastern and southern neighborhoods of Douma, Jobar, Zamalka and Hajar al-Aswad, using units of the elite Republican Guard based on the imposing Qasioun mountain that looms over the city.

The rebels, trying to break through the government’s defense perimeter, were periodically able to overrun roadblocks and some army positions, but at heavy cost.

Jobar and Zamalka are situated near military compounds housing Assad’s forces, while Hajar al-Aswad in the south is one of the gateways into the city, close to Assad’s home and the headquarters of his republican guard and army….
NOWHERE NEAR OVER

Ordinary Syrians are convinced their ordeal is nowhere near over. While they believe Assad will not be able to reverse the gains of the rebels, they cannot see his enemies prevailing over his superior firepower, and Russian and Iranian support.

“The regime won’t be able to crush the revolution and the rebels won’t be able to bring down the regime,” said leading opposition figure Hassan Abdel-Azim. “The continuation of violence won’t lead to the downfall of the regime, it will lead to the seizure of the country by armed gangs, which will pose a grave danger not only to Syria but to our neighbors”.

“Right now no one is capable of winning,” said a Damascus-based senior Arab envoy. “The crisis will continue if there is no political process. It is deadlock.”

Other diplomats in Damascus say the United States and its allies are getting cold feet about arming the rebels, fearing the growing influence of Islamist radicals such the al-Nusra Front linked to al-Qaeda, banned last year by Washington.

Some remarks recur again and again in Damascus conversations: “Maybe he will stay in power, after all”, and, above all, “Who is the alternative to Assad?”

“At first I thought it was a matter of months. That’s why I came here and stayed to bear witness to the final moments,” said Rana Mardam Beik, a Syrian-American writer. “But it looks like it will be a while so I am thinking of going back to the U.S.”

Loyalty to Assad is partly fed by fear of the alternative. Facing a Sunni-dominated revolt, Syria’s minorities, including Christians and Assad’s own Alawites – an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam – fear they will slaughtered or sidelined if the revolution succeeds and Sunni fundamentalists come to power…..COSTLY WAR

Alongside sectarian hatreds, class and tribal acrimony is also surfacing. Wealthy Sunnis in the capital are already in a panic about poor Sunni Islamists from rural areas descending on their neighborhoods.

“When they come they will eat us alive”, one rich Sunni resident of Damascus said, repeating what a cab driver dropping him in the posh Abou Roummaneh district told him: “Looting these houses will be allowed.”

Yet many activists feel protective of the revolution, despite the brutal behavior of some Islamist rebels.

“People talk about chaos and anarchy after Assad, but so what if we have two years of a messy transition? That is better than to endure another 30 years of this rule,” said Rana Darwaza, 40, a Sunni academic in Damascus.

Prominent human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni said the suffering is a price that had to be paid. “Those on the ground will continue to fight even with their bare hands”, he said.

He said there are thousands of prisoners in horrific conditions in Assad’s jails. Some suffocate in overcrowded cells while others die under torture or from untreated wounds. “They don’t give them medical treatment or pain killers or antibiotics. They leave them to die,” he said.

Close watchers of Syria predict that if there is no settlement in a few months the conflict could go on for years. Yet the economy is collapsing, leaving the government to rely on dwindling foreign reserves, private assets and Iranian funds.

There is no tourism, no oil revenue, and 70 percent of businesses have left Syria, said analyst Nabil Samman. “We are heading for destruction, the future is dark”, he added….

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad – a must read – in the LRB

….We in the Middle East have always had a strong appetite for factionalism. Some attribute it to individualism, others blame the nature of our political development or our tribalism. Some even blame the weather. We call it tasharthum and we loathe it: we hold it as the main reason for all our losses and defeats, from al-Andalus to Palestine. Yet we love it and bask in it and excel at it, and if there is one thing we appreciate it is a faction that splinters into smaller factions. Yet even by the measure of previous civil wars in the Middle East, the Syrians seem to have reached new heights. After all, the Palestinians in their heyday had only a dozen or so factions, and the Lebanese, God bless them, pretending it was ideology that divided them, never exceeded thirty different factions……

‘The Americans gave their blessing,’ Abu Abdullah said, ‘and all the players converged and formed an operations room. It had the Qataris, the Saudis, the Turks and Hariri.’ In their infinite wisdom the players decided to entrust the running of the room – known as the Armament Room or the Istanbul Room after the city where it was based – to a Lebanese politician called Okab Sakr, a member of Hariri’s party who was widely seen as divisive and autocratic. The plan was to form military councils to be led and dominated by defectors from the Syrian army – this in order to appease the Americans, who were getting worried about the rising influence of the Islamists. All the fighting groups, it was assumed, would eventually agree to answer to the military councils because they were the main source of weapons.

At first, the plan seemed to be working. As summer approached military councils sprang up in Aleppo, Homs, Idlib and Deir al-Zour and some major battalions and factions did join in. Better weapons – though not the sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft equipment the rebels wanted – started entering Syria from Turkey. Until this point, most of the weapons smuggled from Turkey had come in small shipments on horseback or carried on foot by intermediaries and the fighters themselves, but these new shipments were massive, sent by truck…..

What path now for Syria?
By David Ignatius, Tuesday, February 12, 2:52 PM

Syrian opposition fighters appear to be making significant gains on the battlefield this week, following an offer by their top political leader for negotiations with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

This military and diplomatic news may appear positive. But Syrian sources caution that the battlefield advances may accelerate movement toward a breakup of the country, as Alawite supporters of the regime retreat to their ancestral homeland in the northwestern region around Latakia. And there’s no sign that either Assad or his Russian patrons are paying any more than lip service to a political settlement.

One potential game-changer is a request for U.S. help in training elite rebel units, which has been drafted by Brig. Gen. Salim Idriss, the new commander of the opposition Free Syrian Army. In a letter dated Feb. 4, he seeks U.S. assistance in “training for:…

The al-Jarrah air base, about 30 miles east of Aleppo, which appears to have been overrun by fighters from Ahrar al-Sham, a battalion based in Idlib. Videos posted Tuesday by the rebels showed them walking past derelict Syrian warplanes and inside a fortified hangar containing what appeared to be two Czech-built ground assault planes. On camera, the rebels displayed dozens of bombs racked in a warehouse, and other ammunition and spoils of war….

[JL. Here is the video – the capture of the airport– the captured ammunition. Read about Ahrar al-Sham here. and here]

…One Syrian who works closely with the Free Syrian Army explained how creating an elite commando force could help check Syria’s drift toward becoming a failed state: “We still believe FSA on the ground is still needed badly to tip the power and support other parallel solutions, including the political one. But FSA [has] become a jungle. .?.?. My recommendation is .?.?. to start working on elite [forces that can] .?.?. initiate key attacks plus help as a buffer from potential warlords and fights among fragmented FSA factions. Plus, this unit can handle other key tasks, like securing chemical weapons.”

At Carnegie Foundation  (via Syrian Support Group Policy Blog)

The End of the Syrian Conflict – Paul Salem
Syria is not transitioning; it is dissolving. The war is bringing to an end almost a century of integration that followed the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, and the cohesive nationalism that was fostered in the Levant by European mandates. The rebels will not be able to defeat the regime in the near future, nor the regime the rebels, meaning that the conflict will be prolonged and hatred and suspicion will grow deeper. We will in the future be dealing with a failed state of scrambling power plays and violence in an area once known as the Syrian state.

On Arming the Opposition
Frederic Hof: The possibility of success for Brahimi’s plan or any type of political transition is almost nonexistent. The outcome of the conflict “will be determined by men with guns.” The U.S. should not seek to micromanage the Opposition in an attempt to bring about a desired conclusion to the war–it is far too late for that–but rather recognize the militarized fate of the conflict and influence its outcome by determining the best logistical systems for arming and supporting the FSA. This is now what the White House is wrestling with.

Emile Hokayem: There is a demand for U.S. leadership in the region. The Syrian conflict has exposed Gulf states’ weaknesses in that they seem unable to develop proxies on the ground in the way that Iran can. If the U.S. does not act now, it will be forced into a role of using drone strikes to target the most malevolent Islamist militias when the conflict inevitably dissolves into duels between competing religious factions. This is not ideal. The U.S. should decide who to support, or at least seek out the proper conduits for support to moderate groups.

Henri Barkey: The Opposition should not be armed; arms will proliferate to extremists. The Opposition is too fractured, and the U.S. will not make any friends on the ground at this point. Regional actors should become more heavily involved, but the U.S. should maintain a minimal role of humanitarian support and, perhaps, provision of intelligence.

Syria’s Battle Royale
The struggle for Damascus looks poised to transform this bloody conflict.
BY EMILE HOKAYEM | FEBRUARY 11, 2013

….There is an old adage that both Assad and his opponents no doubt know well: Whoever controls Damascus controls Syria. For that reason, the battle for the capital will be long and costly. Assad could check his opponents there, or exit the stage altogether. Given the ongoing fragmentation of the country, however, a rebel victory won’t be the end of this struggle. At the end of this battle for Damascus, it just may be that nobody controls Syria.

Bombing on Syria Border May Have Targeted Opposition Leader
By Raja Abdulrahim and Patrick J. McDonnell | Los Angeles Times

Syria finds means of financial survival – FT.com

Syria’s government is under growing financial pressure but is surviving through a mixture of help from allies, severe spending cuts, money from wealthy businessmen and the country’s remaining…

Syrian minister offers to meet opposition leader overseas
Ali Haidar raises prospect of free elections in response to surprise change of line by Syrian National Coalition leader
Jonathan Steele in Damascus, guardian.co.uk,

The Syrian government is ready to send a minister abroad for talks with Moaz al-Khatib, leader of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, who recently threw rebel politics into turmoil by coming out in favour of dialogue with the regime.

“I am willing to meet Mr Khatib in any foreign city where I can go in order to discuss preparations for a national dialogue”, Ali Haidar, the minister for national reconciliation, told the Guardian….

Syria’s Floundering Rebel Alliance
Daniel R. DePetris | February 5, 2013 | National Interest

The Syrian National Coalition has eclipsed the Syrian National Council as the opposition’s political bloc, but it is difficult to see where they are different.

In a new setback to opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, the rebel coalition tasked with providing Syrians with a political alternative failed for the second time to form a transitional government that would administer parts of Syria free from the army’s control. Delegates who participated in the meeting, which was conducted in Turkey, were forced to cut the deliberations short after the coalition was unable to agree on who would lead the newly-formed body and what role the group would play after Assad is defeated.

For those who have been seeking Bashar al-Assad’s ouster for nearly two years, putting pressure on the Syrian army has only been one half of the strategy. The other half, and one in which outside powers have tried to jump start for well over a year, has been to formulate a united bloc that could mold into an internationally-endorsed transitional government for Syrians. The rationale is simple: only through a confident and assertive opposition leadership will all Syrians feel comfortable to enough to switch sides.

Unfortunately, trying to create a body that would draw more Syrians away from the Assad regime has proved to be an immeasurably difficult task. In fact, it is primarily Assad’s actions—not the opposition—that have hurt the Syrian strongman the most.

The Syrian National Council—an organization created and endorsed by prominent Syrian dissidents earlier in the conflict—was designed to put a transition plan into action. But after months of arguing about what needed to be done and on how strongly they would push for outside intervention, members of the council found its credibility fatally weakened. The perception increased when rebels fighting in the name of the Free Syrian Army openly expressed their frustration about the exiles to anyone who would listen. The United States and its Western and Arab allies quickly lost faith in the council to do anything but bicker amongst themselves as the people they were supposed to represent continued dying in massacres and air strikes.

Realizing that Syrians would need better political representation if they had any chance of forging a post-Assad future, Western powers, Turkey, and Qatar managed to get the activists to reorganize. At first, the reorganization appeared to work; elements who stayed inside Syria were now given a say in what the country would look like after Assad was overthrown. The United States, Britain, France, and the Gulf Cooperation Council followed up with formal diplomatic recognition, bestowing upon the coalition the title of “legitimate representative of the Syrian people.”.. The Free Syrian Army is not even sure that the SNC can deliver, and the jihadists that are becoming more vocal and aggressive on the ground have dismissed them entirely.

All of this dysfunction has left Syrians who are in the middle in a terrible situation—stuck, with nowhere to go. Do they stick with a regime that is killing civilians in an unprecedented scale, or risk throwing their support to a rebel leadership that is still fighting about the very basics of democracy? The United States as well as its Western and Arab partners are rooting the opposition on. But all should be asking the same questions.

Saddam and the U.S. failed, so why should Maliki think he can control Iraq by force?
via War in Context on February 11, 2013

Patrick Cockburn writes: The civil war in Syria is destabilising Iraq as it changes the balance of power between the country’s communities. The Sunni minority in Iraq, which two years ago appeared defeated, has long been embittered and angry at discrimination against it by a hostile state. Today, it is emboldened by the uprising of the Syrian Sunni, as well as a growing sense that the political tide in the Middle East is turning against the Shia and in favour of the Sunni.

Could a variant of the Syrian revolt spread to the western Anbar Province and Sunni areas of Iraq north of Baghdad? The answer, crucial to the future of Iraq, depends on how the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, responds to the seven-week-long protests in Anbar and the Sunni heartlands. His problem is similar to that which, two years ago faced rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria. They had to choose between ceding some power and relying on repression.

Damascus on Edge as War Seeps Into Syrian Capital Damascus on Edge as War Seeps Into Syrian Capital
By an employee of The New York Times in Damascus, Syria and ANNE BARNARD, February 10, 2013

…“I didn’t see my family for more than a year,” a government soldier from a distant province said in a rare outpouring of candor. He was checking drivers’ identifications near the railway station at a checkpoint where hundreds of soldiers arrived last week with tanks and other armored vehicles.

“I am tired and haven’t slept well for a week,” he said, confiding in a traveler who happened to be from his hometown. “I have one wish — to see my family and have a long, long sleep. Then I don’t care if I die.”….

But even stationed here in Damascus, the heart of the government’s power, the soldier at the checkpoint — who was steady on his feet — said he felt vulnerable.

“It is very scary to spend a night and you expect to be shot or slaughtered at any moment,” he said. “We spend our nights counting the minutes until daytime.”…

Eyewitness account of 2 doctors who traveled to Syria to save lives

Wash Post…By Karen DeYoung and Joby Warrick
Iran and Hezbollah build militia networks in Syria in event that Assad falls, officials say Iran’s strategy, a senior Arab official agreed, has two tracks. “One is to support Assad to the hilt, the other is to set the stage for major mischief if he collapses.”

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

The fragmentation of Syria along religious and tribal lines is a growing concern for neighboring governments and the administration, as the civil war approaches its third year with little sign of a political solution or military victory for either Assad’s forces or the rebels….

Abdel Qader Salih of the Liberation Front

Noah Bonsey to Aron Lund, [See the last two posts for their contributions and dialogue about the relative strength of Syria’s two principle rebel-militia alliances.]

Excellent point on the Liwa al-Islam/Tajammu’ Ansar al-Islam split in your last post.  I have not been following the Damascus militant scene as closely recently and completely missed that.

It seems that we agree on the central point:  The Supreme Military Command [the formation of which was announced in December as a counterpart to the Opposition Coalition put together in Doha] holds little direct influence, Free Syrian Army figureheads even less, and the Liberation Front currently represents the closest thing to a mainstream national militant alliance. 

You make an interesting point regarding the Liberation Front having lots of fighters but no real leadership.  Certainly it is true that they have no single leading figure or faction, and–unlike the Islamic Front–they lack a defined ideological or political platform.

I think both of these apparent weaknesses, however, result largely from the individual strength of the alliance’s leading components.  Liwa al-Towhid, al-Farouq, Saqour al-Sham and Liwa al-Islam have all proven to be among the most powerful groups within their respective areas of operation over the last six months (and in some cases longer).  The Liberation Front’s situation thus differs from that of the Islamic Front, in which Ahrar al-Sham is clearly the dominant faction (and was so even before it absorbed Harakat al-Fajr, et al) and is thus well positioned to steer the coalition toward adopting concrete political and ideological stances in line with its own agenda. 

Also, while the Liberation Front lacks a single body capable of leading the alliance as a whole, it is richer than the Islamic Front in terms of charismatic, publicly recognized individual leaders.  This may prove important down the road, as neither Ahrar al-Sham nor any of its junior partners has anyone who can compete on the national stage with Abdul Qader Saleh.

In any case, again much enjoyed your post and look forward to your full report.

Best, Noah

Syrian Rebels Capture Country’s Largest Dam
2013-02-11
By BARBARA SURK, Associated Press

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels captured the country’s largest dam on Monday after days of intense clashes, giving them control over water and electricity supplies for much of the country in a major blow to President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The rebels had already seized two other dams on the Euphrates River. But the latest conquest, the al-Furat dam in northeastern Raqqa province, was a major coup for the opposition. It handed them control over water and electricity supplies for both government-held areas and large swathes of land the opposition has captured over the past 22 months of fighting….

Rami Abdul-Rahman, a Britain-based anti-regime activist, said rebels took control of al-Furat dam around midday after successfully pushing out a group of Assad loyalist from the control room. Most of the regime troops in the area had stopped fighting on Sunday following the fall of the nearby town of al-Thawra, Abdul-Rahman said.  Hesaid, “This is the biggest economic loss for the regime since the start of the revolution.”

The rebel assault on the dam was led by al-Qaida-linked militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been fighting alongside the rebels trying to oust Assad. Al-Nusra Front is considered the most effective fighting force on the anti-regime side….

The government did not confirm it has lost control of the dam….

Syria Report writes:

The Tabqa Dam, the country’s largest hydro-electric dam, fell in the hands of the Syrian opposition earlier today, a development that is highly symbolic but that has limited economic importance.

According to various news reports rebels took control of the dam, also called in Syria the Euphrates Dam, and of the nearby town of Al-Thawra between yesterday and today. All the operations at the dam are apparently continuing to function normally.

Inaugurated in 1978 by late President Hafez Al-Assad, the Euphrates dam was at the time of its completion hailed as a major achievement not only for the Baath Party but for Syrians as whole.

The town of Tabqa, where the dam is located, was renamed Al-Thawra, or the revolution. Across Syrian society, the project was seen as a sign of the prowess of Syrian engineers and of the economic and social development potential of the country.

The dam was expected to contribute significantly to the country’s food independence through the irrigation of more than 640,000 hectares of land and to the generation of some 800MW of electricity.

In practice, however, it never fulfilled its expectations and both land irrigated and power generated are at around a fifth of their capacity. Problems associated with the project included low water flows from Turkey, lack of maintenance and poor soil quality in reclaimed areas.

The main importance of the dam is the fact that Lake Assad, which was created behind the dam and is the largest water reservoir in the country, is a major source of drinking water for the city of Aleppo.

The Tabqa dam together with two other dams on the Euphrates, Tishreen and Al-Baath, are managed by the General Organization of the Euphrates Dam, which is affiliated to the Ministry of Water Resources.

The opposition Syrian National Coalition’s leader Moaz al-Khatib made a statement on his Facebook page in which he wrote that the Assad regime had “lost a chance to engage in a dialogue” to end the nearing two year conflict. Khatib had made an offer for talks with the government, but the government did not issue an official response. On Friday, Syria’s Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi said the government was open to holding talks, but without preconditions. Khatib had called for the release of 160,000 political prisoners, beginning with women whom he pushed to be released by Sunday.

The Alawis – An excellent program produced by Damian Quinn
BBC, 30 minutes, February 2013

The government of President Assad of Syria is under threat. So too is the secretive Shia sect known as the Alawis – or Alawites – to which he and many of the governing party and security officials belong.

Hostility towards the minority Alawi population is such that one leading commentator predicts they are likely to be the victims of the world’s next genocide.Presenter Owen Bennett Jones investigates the Alawis’ origins,….

Presenter Owen Bennett Jones investigates the Alawis’ origins, history and culture and asks how these once marginalised people came to power in a Sunni majority state. He discovers that for many their fortunes changed fifty years ago when the Baath party seized power in a coup d’etat. Alawis were dominant among the army officers who took control. They set about modernising the country and rolling out a secular agenda.

Now, as Syria’s revolution has morphed into a civil war, many Alawis believe their only choice is to kill or be killed. Are the majority of Alawis right to be convinced that the Assad regime is all that stands between them and a return to second-class status, or worse? If the opposition wins in Syria, are warnings about pogroms against the Alawis alarmist, or inevitable?

NATO head: No Syrian intervention coming
2013-02-11,  BRUSSELS, Feb. 11 (UPI) —

NATO’s secretary general said  the military alliance will not become involved in Syria’s civil  war unless member-state Turkey is attacked.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Belgium told EUobserver it wasn’t the purpose of the trans-Atlantic defense alliance to solve every military crisis in the world.  “NATO cannot act as the world’s policeman. We cannot travel from country to country to solve every conflict. It’s simply not possible,” he said. “The essence of being a defense alliance is that we are here to ensure the territorial defense of our member states.”

Homs’ displaced residents begin to return
after year of sustained bombing Syrian city is guarded about relative calm as governor calls for unity against al-Qaida and intense fighting continues elsewhere
Jonathan Steele in Homs, guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 February 2013

A Homs taxi is stopped at a checkpoint by the Syrian national defence. Five hundred women are being trained for duty at checkpoints. Photograph: Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images

A year after this city captured the world’s attention as the victim of the worst shelling that Syria’s civil war had yet seen, Homs has become a – relatively – safe haven. Hundreds of families who fled to other Syrian cities in fear last February have loaded their belongings and returned. Civilians from Aleppo and Deir el-Zour – where fighting is still intense – are moving to Homs because they have heard it is more livable.

“It’s the only case I know of in Syria where people are returning after a long period of displacement. Homs may be quieter than Damascus”, Khaled Erksoussi, the head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent’s emergency response team told me in the capital before I set off on the 100-mile drive north. He was right. The boom of heavy shelling, promptly followed by the screeching of birds in panic, repeatedly fills the Damascene sky. It was in full and murderous throat again when I returned. Yet for 24 hours in Homs I heard only a few explosions, apparently directed towards targets beyond the ring road. In the city centre the street markets are thronged with shoppers. Groups of students wander in and out of the university, or stand around chatting. Checkpoints at several cross-roads create minor traffic jams but the soldiers seem relaxed and perfunctory as they check ID cards and car-boots, no doubt happy to be assigned to minor tasks rather than be sent to risky, remote areas. Homs even boasts a number of armed women in uniform who have volunteered for a newly created home guard.

Homs is Syria’s third largest city and local officials estimate about 150,000 of its 2,300,000 people are thought to have left and not returned. In human terms the figure is huge but it is a smaller exodus in proportional terms than Damascus or Aleppo have suffered….While the rest of his testimony could only be taken on trust, his point that Homs was enjoying a virtual ceasefire was confirmed by many other people I spoke to in the city. Whether this city, which was once a byword for wanton destruction, could one day be a model for the rest of Syria remains to be seen.

Syria’s Salma scarred by war
DW.DE

Build on a hill’s slope, the village of Kurt used to be half Alawite, half Sunni – a religious diversity unusual in the rest of the country where small communities tend to be predominantly Sunni, Alawite, Druze or Christian.

Mohamed Abul Abed, a 30-year-old Sunni, grew up with Alawite friends. Like any other neighbors, he says they would routinely visit each other, share tea and play ball.

But Mohamed says his friends grew apart as the revolution unfolded. “They told me they were afraid they’d be persecuted if the regime falls,” Mohamed says. “I told them no. We are against the regime, not against Alawites. But whatever I said, they were convinced their fate was tied to that of the regime. Because that’s what the Assads have put in their mind.”
The Road to Latakia City: Copyight: DW/M. Olivesi The Road to Latakia City: The coastal town is a stronghold of the Assad regime

When the Free Syrian Army took control of Kurt last spring, Alawites stayed put at first and life went on. Then weeks later, a resident spotted a group of young Alawites from the village manning a government checkpoint far from Kurt. Neighbors accused them of working as “Shabihas,” the name for the regime’s militiamen.

Mohamed says he can’t imagine his childhood friends doing any harm. “I think they didn’t kill anyone…” He pauses. “I hope they didn’t.”

Even so, Mohamed blames them for enabling the regime to turn the revolution into a civil war. And he says he’ll probably never forgive them.

Did the CIA Betray Syria’s Rebels?
Feb 12, 2013 12:00 AM EST
Americans didn’t keep promises to opposition leaders. Now they’ve turned against the U.S. By Mike Giglio.

In mid-August, a well-connected Syrian activist drove to the border city of Gaziantep in southern Turkey to meet two officers from the CIA. The officers had set up shop in a conference room at a luxury hotel, where representatives from a handful of opposition groups lounged in the lobby, waiting for their turn at an audience.

The activist, who had been a journalist before the conflict, came with three colleagues from Aleppo, the Syrian commercial capital that had recently turned into the main theater of the war. Inside the room, two casually dressed Americans were rolling up maps from the previous meeting. The Americans introduced themselves as CIA officers and said they were there to help with the overthrow of Syria’s authoritarian president, Bashar al-Assad.

The activist declined to be named for this article, because he didn’t want to be connected publicly to U.S. intelligence. He is respected in Aleppo, and I first met him, in another southern Turkey hotel, at a State Department–funded training seminar for activists, where he was a keynote speaker. According to the activist, the officers questioned the group about creeping Islamism in the rebel ranks. Were Aleppo rebels supportive of democracy? Hostile to the West? What about al Qaeda? Then the officers asked how they could help. The activists wanted armed support for the rebels in Aleppo—in particular, surface-to-air missiles—but the officers explained that America worried such weapons could fall into the hands of extremists. “Let’s leave military matters aside,” one of the officers said. The group made a list of things like satellite phones and medical supplies, and the officers promised to be back in touch soon. “We are here to help you bring down Assad,” one of the officers repeated.

However, in the months since, that activist, as well as many senior figures in the rebellion, have begun to suspect that the United States has no intention of living up to its promises. In a turn of events resonant of Iraq, many who had once been eager to work with the Americans feel betrayed, and some see meetings like those in Gaziantep as little more than a hostile intelligence-gathering exercise.

At the time of the meeting, the war against Assad had been intensifying, and the big question was whether the international community would step in to help the rebels with weapons or even a no-fly zone. In the absence of an intervention, official U.S. policy was to provide only nonlethal support—and that policy remains. But in Gaziantep, sources said, the CIA officers blurred that line.

I spoke with three of the men present when the rebel battalion Liwa al-Fatah met with the CIA in August, just before the Aleppo activists were in the room; two of them—Haytham Darwish, a defected Syrian colonel who led the battalion at the time, and a civilian liaison named Ali Badran—agreed to let me use their names. The men said the officers proposed a two-step plan. First, they would supply Liwa al-Fatah with telecommunications equipment. If the rebels proved reliable, weapons would then be sent their way. The officers didn’t say who would provide the weapons, but Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two U.S. allies, were known to be channeling support to rebel groups. “They said, ‘We can’t promise you now, but in the future, the weapons will be there,’” one of the meeting participants told me. “Which is a promise, actually.” The officers, these rebels added, said the communications equipment would arrive in a matter of weeks.

The Gaziantep meetings had been arranged by Firas Tlass, a Syrian businessman who once had deep ties to Assad. Tlass’s father, Mustafa, had been the country’s feared minister of defense for three decades, while his older brother, Manaf, was a close friend and top aide to Assad before a highly publicized defection in July. Firas Tlass had done well under Assad, but he too had switched sides, vowing to spend his own money to help fund the revolution.

In a phone interview in January, Tlass told me he had been present at the meetings with the Aleppo activists and the Liwa al-Fatah rebels, and he confirmed their accounts. He said that he had arranged a number of similar meetings with the CIA, and that promises like the ones the officers made in Gaziantep were commonplace—including the indirect promise of arms. “They promised to provide telecommunications devices, and afterward, if the rebels proved effective and honest, then they would [help] provide military support,” he said. Tlass told me that the Americans had kept none of those promises, that not even the communications equipment or hospital supplies had materialized. He then accused America of pushing a dark agenda in Syria—working to keep the war going instead of helping with the overthrow of Assad. “America,” Tlass said, “is trying to prolong the Syrian revolution.”…

Obama’s Post-Election Pivot on Syria
U.S. President Barack Obama calls on Congress to pass a small package of spending cuts and tax reforms that would delay the larger, automatic “sequester” cuts from going into effect during an announcement in the White House briefing room in Washington Feb. 5, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Joshua Roberts)
By: Geoffrey Aronson for Al-Monitor. Posted on February 6.

Soon after re-election Obama explained that Washington will not support an expansion of existing military efforts to topple the regime: “In a situation like Syria, I have to ask: Can we make a difference? Could it trigger even worse violence or the use of chemical weapons? What offers the best prospect of a stable post-Assad regime? And how do I weigh tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?”

The Congo standard for U.S. intervention closes the door on the  strategy announced by the president in August 2011. In its place a far more sober and nuanced effort is unfolding, one that retains the prospect of harnessing Washington’s considerable power in support of a diplomatic outcome. This is not leading from behind, nor is it a a policy of simply arming the opposition, or winking at those who do.

Obama has evidently tired of waiting for others to do the self-evident “right thing.” Washington remains as committed as ever to a democratic transition that results in Assad’s departure, but it has now opened the door in support of negotiations with all parties to achieve it. In the past, the suggestion that Assad was prepared to lose an election in 2014 could not be made in polite company. No longer. This change does not insure success, but at the very least it helps to establish a formidable and broad-based diplomatic counterweight to the killing.

Washington’s pragmatic reassessment is not occurring in a vacuum. Leading members of the Syrian opposition and the government itself have made conciliatory statements in support of a diplomatic engagement. Moscow and Tehran have also added their voices to the chorus.

Obama’s Congo standard however carries a more ominous message. Millions have died in the heart of Africa. There has been no pivot, where interests are defined and protected as part of a new order. The Congo has been abandoned to its fate. Woe to Syria if Obama treats it as he does the Congo.

Aid doesn’t reach camp for displaced Syrians just outside Turkey
At Azaz camp for displaced Syrians, more than 12,000 are housed in the 1000 tents, but there’s a waiting list for 1400 more tents, and in the meantime families must live in nearby villages, which are subject to government bombing raids. | Andree Kaiser/MCT
By Roy Gutman | McClatchy Newspapers

ATMA, Syria — From a distance, the tents look like an unfurled streamer, a wave of white filling the olive grove and crawling up the barren hillside on the Syrian-Turkish border, almost a work of environmental art.

This is Syria’s biggest camp for the internally displaced, and the flimsy tents shelter more than 20,000 people who have nowhere else to go.

In its poverty and dire shortages, its poor hygiene and lack of utilities, Atma’s white wave has become a symbol of the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who’ve fled the fighting in their country.

The United States has deferred to the United Nations in distributing food and other aid to Syria’s displaced, but the U.N. won’t enter any part of Syria without the government’s permission. That’s even more ironic here because Atma is directly across the border from Turkey, with no checkpoints or roadblocks. Yet U.N. agencies haven’t come even for an inspection.

“We know about Atma,” said Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a little-known U.N. agency. “In order to get to these parts of northern Syria you have to cross the border,” she told McClatchy on Wednesday. “We have to work with the government of Syria in order to cross the border.”

Three hundred or more civilians, often with only the clothes on their back, drive up the winding, rutted road every day, traveling in the cargo bays of open trucks, which they hire for the trip. Then comes the letdown: There are no more tents, and the only place to sleep is in the small mosque.

Syria is not Iraq
07 Feb 2013

Shadi Hamid writes: More than a year ago, a real debate began over whether to intervene militarily in Syria. Here in The Atlantic, Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations was one of the first to propose taking military action – or at least thinking seriously about it. When Cook wrote his article (which, […]