This is the saddest Friday demonstration video- town of Binnish. via Ben Hubbard

Syrian foreign ministry in a letter to UN claims that more than 1000 factories have been dismantled in Aleppo and sold to Turkey by rebels and gunmen. I have asked an Aleppine factory owner if this is true. His answer:

“I don’t know about the numbers, but many factories have been stripped and sold. Of course, Assad is responsible for this by not offering to step aside and setting in place a process for a smooth transfer of power.” My own factory has not been stripped, but the safe box with all operating expenses was taken by the local militia commander. My foreman negotiated with him and he has since protected the factory building. It is closed and all employees have been dismissed. A factory near to mine, which is owned by a Christian who was known to be close to the regime, has been stripped.

Speaking of distressing, read what Ribal and Rifat al-Assad are trying to do to Chris Doyle and his wonderful wife, Rim. Extra-ordinary. Thuggery reaches into the British parliament. MP Daniel Kawczynski has taken up the Assad cause and savaged the Doyles on Rifat’s behalf. Why would he do that? See Syria: Lies and slurs for those who dare to challenge Ribal and Rifat Assad – Global Arab Network.

Video: Latest developments in Syria following Assad’s speech – Aljazeera presenter Hazem Sika discusses with guests Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Centre and professor of International Relations at London School of Economics; James Jatras, a former US diplomat and a senior fellow at the American University in Moscow; and Shashank Joshi, an associate fellow at Royal United Services.

“Assad still confident that he can control Syria,” by Liz Sly in Wash Post

First Legislative council established by National C0uncil for Idlib province

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“Securing Lebanon’s Offshore Energy Fields Raises New Security Challenges.”  by Nick Heras – Jamestown

Syria: A jihadi paradise
By Pepe Escobar, Jan 11, 2013, Asia Times

….If you want to know what’s really going in Syria, look no further than Hezbollah secretary-general Sheikh Nasrallah. He does tell it like it is.

Then there’s what Ammar al-Musawi, Hezbollah’s number 3 – as in their de facto foreign minister – told my Italian colleaguem Ugo Tramballi. The most probable post-Assad scenario, if there is one, will be “not a unitary state, but a series of emirates near the Turkish border, and somebody proclaiming an Islamic state”. Hezbollah’s intelligence – the best available on Syria – is adamant: “one third of the combatants in the opposition are religious extremists, and two-thirds of the weapons are under their control.” The bottom line – this is a Western proxy war, with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) acting as a “vanguard” for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Rebel area shows limits of rebel push for Damascus
By By BEN HUBBARD | Associated Press

Twin airstrikes by government jets on a large, rebel-held suburb of Damascus on Thursday sheered the sides off apartment towers and left residents digging through rubble for the dead and wounded.

The bombing of Douma came amid a wave of attacks on rebellious districts of the Syrian capital, part of the government’s efforts to keep rebel fighters out of President Bashar Assad’s seat of power. Late Thursday, a car bomb exploded at a gas station inside the city itself, killing at least nine people, activists said.

Douma, the largest patch of rebel-held ground near Damascus, illustrates why the opposition’s advance on the capital has bogged down. Despite capturing territory and setting up committees to provide basic services, the rebels lack the firepower to challenge Assad’s forces and remain helpless before his air force….In November, residents formed a civilian council to provide services for the estimated one-third of Douma’s residents who have not fled the violence….Douma has more than a dozen rebel brigades, and the city’s fighters have joined battles in many other areas around the capital….

The Syrian Conflict Is Not About Democracy

Post by Extension Blog

October 22, 2012

Mark Tomass, former research fellow at the Harvard Center for Middle Eastern Studies, provides insight into the Syrian civil war and a suggested path ahead for US policy. Tomass was born and raised in the Assyrian Quarter of Aleppo, Syria. He lived through the Muslim Brother’s rebellion of 1979–82 and the Lebanese Civil War of 1975–90.

The truth about US support of Syrian rebels

…The administration is betting this kind of qualified support will help overturn the regime. And the United States will appear to be on the side of victors. Its real motive is to weaken Iran’s regional influence by a proxy war that would destroy its ally….US support for the rebels and those who call for an interventionist US policy are under the illusion that the antigovernment rebellion is a prodemocracy one. But the rebels have no conception of freedom and democracy in the Western tradition….

“Iraq War Poll Finds Most Think War Was Mistake” (Huffington Post)

Syrian refugee’s astonishing story of survival – BBC

…”I was stopped at a checkpoint. The (pro-government) gunmen asked me where I was from. They asked for my passport and ID. They took everything I had on me: my phones, my gold rings. They put me in the boot of a car – four other guys were already in it. And they took us to an air force intelligence building.

“After three days with no food or water, late at night, the gunmen told us that they would take us to another station. They took us and they put all of us into a car – there were 21 of us. They drove us to a deserted area.”

Second life

Mohammed peeked from his blindfold.

“They put us all on our knees – all 21 of us. They began firing. I passed out when they shot at us. I woke up after 10-15 minutes and saw the gunmen’s car leaving. I saw that everybody around me was dead.”

Mohammed was seriously injured.

“I was hit by five bullets,” he says, pointing to each of the wounds in turn. “One of them hit my ear, one went into my shoulder. Two hit in my leg, and another hit my hip.”

He rolls up his trouser leg to show the wounds in his ankle.

“I got up and started walking but kept falling every 10 metres. I knocked on a door and a woman answered…

Hospitals targeted in the Syrian war as the wounded face dwindling options – CNN International

Syria conflict: Brahimi says Assad can’t be part of transition – live updates – Via Matt Weaver

Beirut (DPA) — Syria’s state-run media Thursday lashed out at United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, calling him a “puppet” of the West after he criticized a plan by President Bashar al-Assad to end the country’s nearly two-year conflict.

“Why didn’t Mr. Brahimi, when he visited Syria last month, express such views to President al-Assad? He waited until he got his instructions from the Western countries and made his statement on Wednesday,” Syrian television said.

Al Watan, a state-run newspaper, said Brahimi “has taken off the mask of impartiality he has worn” since he was appointed for the mission in August.

Syria And Iraq: A Five State Solution?
January 9, 2013, By Jacob Wolinsky

…Split up Iraq and Syria into five separate states. A druze state in southern Syria, Alawite state on the coast, a Sunni state spanning across the borders, a Shia state in Southern Iraq, and a Kurdish state across the Northern borders of both countries. As noted, I do NOT want the US or Europe to do this, but it could be an option for the citizens of each country to implement. I doubt the five state solution will happen, but want to throw out the idea as one way to decrease a tension in the region….

Role of Syrian Women Evolves as War Rages On By Carol Morello | The Washington Post

…because the men in their lives urged them to stay away as the revolt turned into a much more dangerous civil war — they are playing a more traditional role in humanitarian relief, bringing food, medicine and clothing to refugees. The fighting is almost exclusively the province of men, and relatively few women are among opposition political leaders….

But at the grass-roots level, few women attend the political conferences held around Turkey to discuss building a transitional government and institutions if Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is toppled. “About 200 people were at a conference I attended. Maybe 10 of them were women,” said Rania Kisar,….“A lot of women could do a great job in politics,” she said. “But society, and the traditional culture, won’t take them seriously.”

Karen Leigh  –  January 08, 2013 – Syria Deeply
An Alawite Nurse in a Sunni Hospital

Traveling through rebel-held parts of Latakia province, in the Jebel Turkman region, we met 34-year-old Umyara, an Alawite nurse working in a field hospital. In Latakia, a stronghold of President Bashar al-Assad, Sunnis and Alawites have lived side by side for centuries. Now, with intense fighting in the Alawite-led regime and the mostly Sunni-led Free Syrian Army, many fear that the animosity could spread to civilians across the religious divide.

The nurse, who asked us not print her full name or photo, speaks on the stairwell outside the hospital’s new surgery room, built with donations from two American medical NGOs. She met us alongside Dr. Mohammed, the Sunni orthopedic surgeon who serves as her boss and the chief of this hopsital.

The hospital has only been open for 20 days; the surgical unit is located underground for safety, as the area is heavily bombed and rocketed by regime forces.

A hospital in Homs, courtesy of Shaam News Network

“Before I came here, I worked for 14 years in the Assad Hospital in Latakia City,” she says. Now her husband and five children have moved to the mountains with her, to hide from regime forces who might be angry with her defection to a Sunni hospital in FSA territory. “I never feel any tension working here – we’re all people with the same degrees, no difference between Sunnis and Alawites in the hospital. We are one medical team.”

But the fact still stands that should Assad be removed from office, Alawite civilians like Umyara could face reprisals from angry Sunnis. “I am surely afraid for my safety after Assad falls,” the nurse says, despite assurances from local FSA leaders.

For now, within the hospital walls, Dr. Mohammed doesn’t see a distinction.

“Most of our patients are Sunni, but it’s no problem with us if someone who comes in is an Alawite…this is why she came to work with us.”

Every day, he says, his staff sees 20-35 patients, most of them injured in the war. A few days ago he treated a patient with cancer and has seen others with diabetes and hypertension. But the hospital doesn’t have have the medicine or resources to properly treat those patients – part of what he describes as a crisis in specialized care, one that now affects nearly every Syrian city.

When we met the doctor had just performed surgery on a young rebel fighter whose palms had practically been blown to pieces in an explosives accident.

The nurse says that as a Sunni fighter, his treatment would have been varied, at best, at her old regime-supported hospital. “I am working here now to help people, all people. Before, the treatment was specialized just for the Alawites.”

At the Assad Hospital, they might treat Sunnis, “but afterwards, the Assad forces come and get them and take them away. This has happened since the beginning of the revolution, since March of last year. I feel better now,” working here….

Dr. Haj was gentle and polite, but spoke with bitterness at how he hears the West assess Syria’s war. “They say that chemical weapons are the red line,” he said, referring to President Obama’s public warning to Syria’s government that a chemical strike might prompt an American military response.

“But we are dying from other ways. It is not good enough to die from shelling or disease? The international community laughs at our suffering.”…

Mr. Saleh rattled off what he and his family faced: No heat, no electricity, no money, no medicine, no doctor and no home, except this unlit, borrowed room.

The children sat silently, under shared blankets, bundled in thick clothes. Their father’s soft voice filled the space.

“We don’t know how we will survive the winter,” Mr. Saleh said. “We wait for the mercy of God.”

Forming a Syrian Opposition Government: The Time is Now
Frederic C. Hof| January 08, 2013 – At

The Syrian Opposition Council (SOC) formed in November 2012 faces no shortage of dire challenges as it tries to organize itself and give desperately needed political leadership to a heterogeneous hodgepodge of armed and unarmed opponents of the dying yet lethally venomous regime of Bashar al-Assad.  How to uphold the primacy of citizenship in an increasingly sectarian struggle?  How to maintain credibility with those who are fighting and dying?  How to reach out to minorities and other fence sitters inside Syria?  How to prepare for the practicalities of transition and governance?  How to shape and influence international support for Syria’s revolution rather than being shaped and influenced by outsiders?  How to eclipse internal rivalries and policy differences with selflessness and a unifying sense of mission encompassing a broadly acceptable vision of what the new Syria will be and how it will function?

In a just world, Syrians emerging from an induced political coma of some 50 years would not be faced with such daunting tasks.  Starting with the 1958-1961 Egyptian-run United Arab Republic, Syrians have become accustomed to the heavy hand of intelligence services on political discourse.  Over the years, frank political discussions even within families became guarded and circumscribed, a condition not significantly altered by the “Damascus Spring” experiment over a decade ago.  Now it is all out there for discussion and decision.  Syrians who, not long ago, could only choose among silence, torture, and departure are now being asked to practice teamwork, transparency, and compromise.  There is nothing fair or just about this situation.

Yet fair or not, ready or not, Syria requires a government.  For more than 40 years the Syrian Arab Republic Government (SARG) was the transmission belt for the desires of a narrow, family-based clique.  That government is now neutered—the geographical scope of its assigned writ having shrunken dramatically over the past 21 months.  Yet a functioning bureaucracy will be central to any transition plan due to the need for continuity of government.  Ministries, departments, and agencies—including the security services—employ people and provide services, albeit often ineffectively and corruptly.  The preservation of these organs, as imperfect as they are, can facilitate the rapid dispersal of international assistance post-Assad and reassure millions of Syrians who fear the chaos of revolutionary rule.  Reform will come in time.  It is important to distinguish government and its associated bureaucracy from the ruling clique, which has become a militia, willing and even eager to risk destroying Syria to try to save itself.

As I have written previously the old expression, you can’t beat something with nothing, applies in spades to Syria.  No one—not even Bashar al-Assad himself—doubts the corruption, incompetence, and brutality of what remains of the old system.  Yet millions of Syrians grudgingly adhere to “the Doctor.” They do so partly because they fear his jailers and torturers, but largely because they know not what comes next.  This is the obstacle that a provisional government formed by the SOC can address and overcome

A provisional government led by the SOC would be a key step on the way to a national unity transition government that could and should include serving, non-criminal officials of the current and previous SARGs.  Provided it consists of respectable individuals whose revolutionary credentials neither alienate nor frighten the cowed and undecided, a provisional government would in large measure answer the “what’s next?” question that immobilizes millions of Syrians.  Provided it can establish itself in liberated parts of Syria and facilitate effective local governance while expediting external humanitarian assistance and the restoration of essential services and infrastructure, it can reflect credibility.  Indeed, to the extent that such a government would attract recognition from abroad as the government of Syria it could be the legitimate recipient of security assistance.  If and when the time comes to negotiate with the SARG on the formation of a transitional national unity government to take full executive powers from the regime, the provisional government would be the SARG’s sole legitimate interlocutor.

Would the formation of a provisional government be a panacea?  No.  One has to assume that the regime will fight hard to hold onto Damascus and that Iran and Hezbollah will assist in that effort.  Would the formation of such a government be easy?  On the contrary—battles for privilege and position could be discouraging and even debilitating.  Yet here a hard question must be posed: if the very process of establishing a clear alternative to the regime fatally wounds the unity of the Syrian Opposition Council or splinters the opposition more generally, then what is the opposition really?  And, as a practical matter, if there are to be fights over who gets to be minister of finance, defense and so forth, is it not better to have these fights now, before the regime vaporizes and before someone actually has to try to govern Syria?

No doubt the endeavor to form a provisional government would be fraught with difficulties and could indeed end badly.  Yet as the Assad poison pill of sectarianism slowly paralyzes and kills the idea and the reality of a united Syria, time is of the essence.  The United States correctly opposed calls for a provisional government in mid-2012; the Syrian National Council would have been a disastrously weak and narrow foundation for such an effort.  Reservations on the part of the US administration are understandable even now.  Yet Syria is dying, and Syria’s death would have dire implications not only for its 23 million citizens but for the entire region.

The way forward will be replete with risks.  Yet the riskiest of approaches in Syria’s hour of peril could be for the United States and others to hold the Syrian Opposition Council at arms-length and ask it to jump through bureaucratic hoops rather than asking it to offer the Syrian people a visible, credible alternative to the Assad regime.  Time is the enemy. You can’t beat something with nothing.  If there is to be something, the time to create that something is now.

Frederic C. Hof is a senior fellow of the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council and the former Special Advisor for Transition in Syria at the US Department of State.

“Saving Syria from Assad” (Julian Lindley-French, Atlantic Council)

“an enduring Syrian peace will also only be possible if the conflict is detached from a wider regional Realpolitik. Iran has been supporting the regime with both expertise and munitions, with substantial evidence of direct involvement by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whilst Russia and China have blocked any direct outside intervention. Indeed, the regional strategic ambitions of Iran and its proxy Hezbollah-led conflict with Israel have critically exacerbated the war. Equally, whilst an arms embargo has been formally imposed evidence abounds that it exists in name only. The Coalition has been receiving directly or indirectly both small arms and man-held anti-aircraft missiles from the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia to counter the regime’s use of air power.

What would a ‘credible’ international presence on the ground look like and under what mandate? Arab League, UN, NATO, EU or a beefed up Contact Group? Experience of political transition in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya (hardly encouraging) suggests that early political reconciliation would be critical but only possible if reprisal killings are prevented and the humanitarian suffering of all alleviated. A new seat of government in Damascus would also need to be rapidly established and protected, committed to a political timetable for transition underpinned by the early disarmament and rehabilitation of combatants. The armed forces would need to be re-oriented and essential services and the judicial system preserved to provide stability. Critically, senior members of the Assad regime charged under law would need to get a fair trial and justice seen to work. National elections woven into a new constitution would also be vital with extreme elements in the opposition forced to face a choice; reconciliation or exclusion. Would Russia and China agree? Maybe this is the moment for a Tony Blair-type Sextet for Syria – America, Arab League, China, EU and Russia?”

“What if Assad Wins?” (Seth Mandel, Commentary Magazine)

“All throughout the Syrian civil war, analysts and human rights groups were at pains to point out the rising death toll and falling share of media and public attention. But underlying the legitimate frustration was a perhaps forced belief-straining under the weight of reality-in the conventional wisdom: the house of Assad will fall; the victims’ deaths will not be in vain.

But the standard rule of conventional wisdom-that it may be the former but is rarely the latter-applies here as well. As Emile Hokayem writes in the wake of Bashar al-Assad’s recent defiant speech:

More importantly, Western states should get off the sidelines. The illusion of a negotiated settlement is a consequence of Western indecision, not the cause for it. The United States in particular has squandered precious time and opportunities: The risks of greater involvement in Syria are certainly great, but the conflict has already overtaken the Iraq war in terms of regional and strategic impact, and Washington is at best marginal to its dynamics. U.S. Sen. John McCain only slightly exaggerated when he said last month: “In Syria, everything we said would happen if we didn’t intervene is happening because we didn’t intervene.” Judging by Assad’s speech, Syria’s civil war is indeed about to become even more tragic as the world stands idly by.

That “illusion” is a Western creation, and more importantly it is not widely-and certainly not universally-shared. The “rebels” do not emit an air of encroaching victory, and to speak of patience and inevitability seems nothing less than vulgar. Can anyone explain why time is on the side of the rebels? It certainly doesn’t feel that way anymore, does it?”

• Syrian rebels release 48 Iranian hostages for 2,130 civilians

Time for a Syrian transitional government – By Radwan Ziadeh Tuesday, January 8, 2013

….Many Syrian opposition political forces still refuse to form an interim government on the ground, claiming that to do so would be premature. This may once have been true, but no longer. The preconditions which certain opposition members have demanded before forming the transitional government will never come to fruition. Therefore, the transitional government or government-in-exile should be formed immediately.The transitional government should aim to achieve a number of key objectives. First, it should support the creation of a central authority for the liberated areas to maintain control and to prevent chaos. Neither the Syrian National Council (SNC) nor the Syrian Coalition is currently capable of establishing such an authority. However, the longer the forming of the transitional government takes, the more chaotic the situation will be, the more difficult it will be to establish a central authority, and the more difficult it will be to provide the liberated areas with social services, judicial institutions, health services, and humanitarian assistance.

Second: on a legal level, the legitimacy of the Assad regime can be undermined by granting control to the transitional authority over Syrian embassies, which can only be taken by government representatives and not by political entities. Syrian government positions in international institutions such as the United Nations and the Human Rights Council should be handed to a transitional government as well. Third, this in turn would pave the road toward international recognition, which would allow the new government to ratify the Rome Statute, allowing the Assad regime to be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) with much greater ease….

Terrorist group fills power vacuum among Syria rebels
By Nada Bakos, Special to CNN, January 9, 2013

….An important differentiator between al Qaeda in Iraq and al-Nusra is one of its tactics: Zarqawi made a practice of indiscriminately killing Iraqi civilians, effectively terrorizing the Iraqi population, especially the Shiite minority. Zarqawi, despite identifying with al Qaeda, had a much thinner theological basis than al Qaeda central.

Key figures at al Qaeda central such as bin Laden and Zawahiri argued with Zarqawi over his tactics, complaining that alienating mainstream Muslims would not help achieve the over-arching goal of instilling Sharia law.

Al-Nusra is using some of the same tactics as al Qaeda in Iraq (e.g., suicide bombings, kidnappings and car bombs), but it appears to be trying to strike a balance Zarqawi was unwilling to make: Not only does it seem to be avoiding alienating—if not antagonizing—the larger population, but it also is providing the people of Syria with a range of goods and services such as food, water and medical care—basic necessities that people need to survive in the best of times, let alone when their country is in the throes of a civil war.

If this becomes a trend, it might signal that al-Nusra aspires to be more like Hezbollah or Hamas, organizations that defy neat categorization based on the range of social, political and military activities they engage in and the resultant legitimacy they have in the eyes of their constituencies.

In the Syrian uprising, the opportunity for meaningful U.S. intervention might have passed: Exhaustion from operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken their toll on the U.S. military, have taxed the national treasury, and sapped political will, especially as the state of the economy remains at the center of the debate in Washington.

Our absence from the fight is going to cost us if the al-Assad regime fails, leaving rebel groups like al-Nusra dictating the direction, pace and scope of a new Syria.

Given that managing affairs in the Middle East has never been one of our strong suits, the question at this point should be how can the United States, particularly the Department of State, best engage groups that might be inimical to U.S. values but necessary to our interests in the Middle East? For that, I am not sure there is a clear or simple answer.

One opportunity would be if the United States uses its designation of al-Nusra as both a stick and carrot, cajoling and encouraging it to enter into mainstream politics when (or if) the Assad regime falls.

My read of al-Nusra, however, is that, like Zarqawi, it does not aspire to be a political player and is unlikely to settle for a political role in the new government. Instead, it may aim to play the spoiler for any transitional government and use its resources and political violence to empower and encourage other like-minded extremists. With time and opportunity, al-Nusra could not only add to regional instability in the Middle East, but also rekindle global jihad.

Foreign Policy

Syria mixed chemicals at two storage sites at the end of November 2012 and filled dozens of bombs, likely with sarin nerve gas, and loaded them onto vehicles near air bases according to anonymous U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials. A public warning by President Obama, and private messages from Russia, Iraq, Turkey, and possibly Jordan coerced Syria to stop the chemical and bomb preparation. However, officials say the weapons are still in storage near Syrian air bases, and could be deployed in between two and six hours for use by President Bashar al-Assad. Meanwhile, on Tuesday the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) said it is unable to provide assistance to 1 million Syrians who are going hungry due to the 22-month-long conflict. According to spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs, the agency aims to help 1.5 million of the 2.5 million Syrians in need. It is not able to reach all the people requiring help because of continued fighting and the lack of access to the port of Tartus, where it had to remove its staff. The program also had to pull its staff from offices in Homs, Aleppo, and Qamisly. Additionally, the U.N. refugee agency said the number of refugees fleeing the fighting increased by nearly 100,000 in the past month. On Tuesday, a riot reportedly broke out in the Zaatari Syrian refugee camp in Jordan. Refugees attacked aid workers after the first winter storm in the camp caused torrential rains and winds that swept away tents. Nearly 50,000 people are housed in the Zaatari camp and they are becoming increasingly frustrated with conditions that one person called “worse than living in Syria.”

Insight: Aleppo misery eats at Syrian rebel support
By Yara Bayoumy | Reuters

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) – At a crowded market stall in Syria, a middle-aged couple, well dressed, shuffle over to press a folded note, furtively, into the hand of a foreign reporter.

It is the kind of silent cry for help against a reign of fear that has been familiar to journalists visiting Syria over the past two years. Only this is not the Damascus of President Bashar al-Assad but rebel-held Aleppo; the note laments misrule under the revolution and hopes Assad can defeat its “terrorism”.

“We used to live in peace and security until this malicious revolution reached us and the Free Syrian Army started taking bread by force,” the unidentified couple wrote. “We ask God to help the regime fight the Free Syrian Army and terrorism – we are with the sovereignty of President Bashar al-Assad forever.”

While they might not be all they seemed – agents of Assad’s beleaguered security apparatus want to blacken the rebels’ name – their sentiments are far from rare in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city and once vibrant hub of trade and industry, whose diverse urban communities now face hardship and chaos at the hands of motley bands of fighters recruited from surrounding rural areas.

As government forces fight on in parts of Aleppo, in large areas that have been under rebel control for six months or more complaints are getting louder about indiscipline among the fighters, looting and a general lack of security and necessities like running water, bread and electricity in districts that have been pounded by tanks and hit by Assad’s air force….

“There has been a lot of corruption in the Free Syrian Army’s battalions – stealing, oppressing the people – because there are parasites that have entered the Free Syrian Army,” said Abu Ahmed, an engineer who heads a 35-man unit of the Tawheed Brigade, reckoned to be the largest in Aleppo province.

Abu Ahmed, who comes from a small town on the Turkish border and like many in Syria would be identified only by the familiar form of his name, estimated that most people in Aleppo, a city of over two million, were lukewarm at best to a 21-month-old uprising that is dominated by the Sunni Muslim rural poor.

“They don’t have a revolutionary mindset,” he said, putting support for Assad at 70 percent among an urban population that includes many ethnic Kurds, Christians and members of Assad’s Alawite minority. But he also acknowledged that looting and other abuses had cost the incoming rebels much initial goodwill.

“The Free Syrian Army has lost its popular support,” said Abu Ahmed, who said the Tawheed Brigade was now diversifying from fighting to talking on civic roles, including efforts to restore electricity supplies and deal with bread shortages. His own wife was setting up a school after months without classes.

Hunger and insecurity are key themes wherever Aleppines gather this winter. Outside a busy bakery in one rebel-held neighborhood men complained of having to stand in line for hours in the hope of bread, and of feeling the need to arm themselves for their own protection on the streets of the city.

Schools are being stripped of desks and chairs for firewood….

Grim Prospects for the Middle East in 2013
by Patrick Seale
Agence Global
01 Jan 2013

The coming year is unlikely to be a happy one for the tormented Middle East. Although some dictators have fallen and many Arabs are now demanding their rights, there is no escaping the fact that the balance sheet of the past two years remains profoundly negative. In no country of the Arab Spring is there as yet any convincing sign of peace and reconciliation, of good governance, of a better standard of living for ordinary people, of an enhanced sense of citizenship, let alone of genuine democracy.

Some countries have suffered more than others. In Syria, the cries and tears of the martyred population — the tens of thousands killed, the hundreds of thousands wounded, maimed, starving and displaced — weigh heavily on the conscience of the world. Yet there is no end to the agony. To quote UN envoy Lakhdar al-Brahimi, Syria is in danger of descending into hell, if it is not there already.

Individual Arab countries are not the only casualties. The Arab political order has been dealt massive blows, and remains in great disarray. What does this mean? It means that the ability of Arab states to work effectively together has been greatly reduced. They find it difficult to affirm their independence from predatory foreign powers or defend Arab causes in the international arena. The Arab voice today carries little weight.

Some Arab countries have acquired great wealth, but it is no exaggeration to say that the Arabs as a whole — seen as a block of like-minded people sharing a language, a history and a system of beliefs — are not in much better shape than they were more than sixty years ago when Arab Palestine was lost to the Zionists in 1947-48, and when the Arab world was comprehensively defeated by Israel in 1967.

Why do I hold these pessimistic views? Look at the evidence….

The Syrian Stalemate
January 7, 2013 – the National Interest
by Robert G. Rabil [2]

Iran’s economic stake in Syria – FP

Jabhat al-Nusra: Jabhat al-Nusra li-ahl al-Sham min Mujahedi al-Sham fi Sahat al-Jihad.
A Strategic Briefing by the Quillam Foundation
Useful information.

With regard to a post-Assad strategy, JN are aware that a new phase of the conflict will begin as soon as the Assad regime falls. Their strategy for this period seems to have two parts:

• To galvanise all the jihadist forces under one umbrella to create a ‘jihadists vs. the rest’ situation. Although information on the advancement of this plan is lacking, a foreign fighter source seemed to think this was inevitable.
• To accept a possible influx of new fighters from Iraq. After processing all the available data, it appears that this new era of fighting will see JN adopt the Iraqi code of conduct from 2005, resulting in a surge in violence.

Jabhat al-Nusra (JN) has around 5000 official members, with another few thousand prospective members and independent jihadists fighting with them.

There is a strong presence of Arab fighters in JN, from many different countries. This is especially true in Reef Halab (the Aleppo countryside), in towns such as Medinat al-Bab and Jarabliss. Eastern neighbourhoods of Aleppo such as al-Sha’ar, Tariq al-Bab and Maysir also have considerable numbers of foreign fighters, as does Reef Idlib. At the beginning of the conflict, North Africans made up a large portion of the foreign fighters in Syria, but in recent months, large numbers of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) residents have joined the ranks of JN….

There is no truth in the notion that JN is an elaborate scheme developed by the Syrian government to frighten the international community into supporting the Assad regime over al-Qaeda. We have heard from their rivals, however, that the group has possibly been infiltrated by the Syrian security services, the mukhabarat. The secretive nature of the group does not help their case in this regard – the lack of transparency about their membership and operations makes it easy for rumours of mukhabarat involvement in their actions to catch hold. In 2003, the mukhabarat gathered significant intelligence about jihadists in Syria as they facilitated trips to Iraq to wage jihad against the foreign intervention. This provided the key for the mukhabarat to infiltrate JN, as the information gathered on key jihadists at this time can now be used to connect with JN leaders.

Another event which aids these rumours is the release of approximately 200 jihadist prisoners from Saidnaya prison in 2011, confirmed to us by an Arab jihadist source. These prisoners were arrested during the Iraq war for suspected involvement with al-Qaeda. Although this looks like cooperation between the Assad regime and JN, the reasons behind this move seem to be more complex, with the regime releasing these jihadist prisoners in order to create conflict amongst opposition groups and hoping to justify a violent crackdown on rebels by presenting them to the international community as al Qaeda-led. These two issues are shadowy enough for JN to be exploited by their enemies and spread mistrust of the group, although it seems likely that the mukhabarat infiltration is no more extensive in JN than in Syria’s other jihadist groups.

Wayne White – Syrian Crisis: Carnage to Intensify – Lobe Log, Jan 4

CNN: Morsy: Try al-Assad for war crimes, 2013-01-06

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy wants Syrian President Bashar al-Assad tried for war crimes, he told CNN on Sunday in an exclusive interview.

Syria’s Alawites Under Siege
By: Ali Hashem for Al-Monitor. posted on Fri, Jan 4.

…His father interrupted him, saying “Let us cut it short. FSA are the army of the Sunnis and we don’t want the Alawites to rule us anymore! Let them go, we don’t want them here.”

Such rhetoric is getting common among lower-class Sunnis. They feel they were oppressed for the past 40 years, and it’s time to take over.

“Masaken Barzeh” is a middle-class suburb; clashes took place here when the rebels attacked Damascus. Rouba is an Alawite resident who lives with her mother and sister there: “I know not anywhere but here as my home, we don’t know where to go.” She is still at her flat but neighbors had to lie to militants when they asked if she was Alawite, “They came to the building for us, but when all the neighbors denied we are Alawite, they left, but who knows when will they come back,” she added. “The army succeeded this time in pushing them out but they are still around.”

The most dangerous incident was the assassination of Bassam Hussein, an Alawite movie director. He was killed at his place in the mixed neighborhood of Jdeidet Artouz by unknown militants, the incident came to fuel concerns within the ruling minority that an act of sectarian cleansing might be on the way in a country hit by civil war that seem uncontrollable to many.

According to Zaidon Alzoabi, an opposition activist, “The regime holds part of the responsibility for the sectarian incitement….A Syrian official told me, on the basis of anonymity, “The best thing that might happen now is federalism.“ He added, “We can’t live together anymore, hatred is much more than we can bear.”…

Nusra Front reportedly leading Syrian rebels’ fight for key Damascus area
By David Enders
McClatchy Newspapers, Thursday, Jan. 3, 2013

BEIRUT — An Islamist rebel group that the United States has listed as a terrorist organization has taken the lead in fighting in Damascus, according to residents who’ve recently fled the violence there.

The reports that the Nusra Front, which the Obama administration last month declared to be an affiliate of al Qaida in Iraq, is at the forefront of the fighting in Syria’s capital underscores the deepening sectarianism inside Syria that many analysts feel is likely to thwart new U.N. efforts to promote a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

Residents of the southern Damascus neighborhood of Yarmouk said that fighters from Nusra, whose name in Arabic is Jabhat al Nusra, were at the forefront of a battle that has driven hundreds of thousands of people from the district since Nusra launched its offensive about two weeks ago. Other Islamist rebel groups also are playing a role in the combat, the residents said.

Supporters of rebels fighting to topple the government of President Bashar Assad say that groups like Nusra make up only a small minority of the anti-Assad fighting force. But Nusra increasingly is leading the fighting across Syria, a development that raises the prospects of sectarian bloodletting as rebels move from areas where the population, like the rebels, is predominantly Sunni Muslim to cities and towns where the residents are Shiite Muslim or Alawites, the Shiite sect to which Assad and Syria’s governing elite belong……

The Nusra offensive two weeks ago, however, added new momentum to the battle, driving Yamouk residents to flee and triggering fierce government bombardment in response.

Ahmed said he had dealt with Nusra fighters on a daily basis in Yarmouk and viewed them as more professional than other rebel groups, who’ve been accused of widespread looting in some parts of the country where fuel and food are in short supply.

“They were very honest people,” Ahmed said.

Nidhal, another young activist who fled Yarmouk for Lebanon last week, also said that Nusra had assumed a leading role in the fighting. Like Ahmed, he said he saw little room for pro-democracy activists like himself who first rallied against the Assad government in peaceful protests 22 months ago….

“Yarmouk is going to be like Baba Amr,” Nidhal said, referring to a neighborhood in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, which was devastated as government troops laid siege for months before finally driving rebels out of the area six months ago.

Nidhal said the sectarianism had grown on both sides, with the government increasingly replacing soldiers with pro-government militiamen drawn from the Alawite sect. Civil order in much of Damascus, Nidhal said, had largely broken down, with kidnappings for both ransom and politics now rampant….

China criticizes new U.S. sanctions on Iran
Tehran Times – 06 January, 2013

China has censured the United States for the imposition of new sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters in Beijing on Friday that her country “has consistently opposed” sanctions against Iran over its peaceful nuclear energy program.

She renewed China’s call for the resumption of talks between Iran and the P5+1 group — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany — about Tehran’s nuclear program.

“We have always seen negotiations and cooperation as the best way to solve the Iranian nuclear issue,” Hua said.

The new sanctions are included in the $ 633-billion military bill for 2013, which U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law on Wednesday night.

“Every Place Is Khalidiya” A trip to a Damascus grave as shelling started in Homs: http://long.fm/Wkd6mt (by Jennifer Mackenzie,

When we look at the group of protesters that sparked the revolutionary upheaval in the MENA region, we learn that many of them were women. Their participation in the squares, in online fora and behind the war front is impressive. However, their role in the outcome of these political transitions does not reflect their involvement and contribution in any way. How did this happen, and what to do now?

Kawa Hassan and Rula Asad assess the position of women in the so-called Arab Spring, with a special focus on Syria. Their article is published in Idee, the magazine of the Mr. Hans van Mierlo Stichting, the scientific bureau of Dutch political party D66. This special edition is devoted to civic activism in the Arab world.

Kawa Hassan is Knowledge Officer at the Knowledge Programme Civil Society in West Asia. Rula Asad is an independent Syrian journalist and women’s rights activist. She is a partner of Hivos.

Rep.Ros-Lehtinen: Assad’s Address Made It Clear That He Is An Enemy Of Peace & Will Continue To Plunge Syria Further Into
2013-01-07

(WASHINGTON) – U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), former Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and now serving as Chairman of the Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee, made the following statement regarding Sunday’s address by Syrian …

Any actions by the Obama Administration regarding Syria, however, must be taken cautiously. The recent designation of a Syrian rebel group as a terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaeda by the Administration means the U.S. must take the necessary precautions to conduct proper oversight and due diligence regarding this delicate situation.

“In order to end the ruthless killing and destruction, Assad must step down. The U.S. and responsible nations should advocate for a peaceful democratic transition in Syria to promote stability in the Middle East and support our ally Israel as she faces a growing threat of extremist elements stemming from this conflict. As recent experience has shown, we must not replace one dictator with another nor create a situation that will only further destabilize an already inflamed region.”

Swaida: resistance in quiet part of Syria
January 08, 2013
By Marlin Dick, The Daily Star

BEIRUT: The Druze-majority province of Swaida in southern Syria has been one of the calmest regions in the country during nearly two years of popular insurrection, but the last month has seen an upswing in pro-opposition activity.

The number of Druze and Christian opposition “martyrs” from Swaida, both civilian and military, is tiny when compared to the tens of thousands of people who have perished across the country, supporting the argument that the anti-regime forces haven’t attracted wide support from minority (non-Sunni Muslim) communities.

But the regime has yet to put out the fires that have been smoldering in the Swaida region, whether in the provincial capital or the more than a dozen surrounding towns and villages.

A series of demonstrations took place in December, ranging from silent sit-ins and small nighttime gatherings to larger rallies and confrontations with regime forces. Pro-uprising social media mourned the deaths of several people from the province, hailing them as evidence that minorities are part of the opposition ranks.

One was 22-year-old Nasser Beshara, a Christian from the village of Kharaba. He was killed in the next-door province of Hawran, where he had been fighting for more than a year in the ranks of a Free Syrian Army rebel unit.

He was fatally wounded on Christmas Day and died before reaching a field hospital in Jordan, where he was eulogized as a “martyr” of the uprising.

Videos posted on YouTube detailed Beshara’s treatment in the field hospital, his funeral and burial. As the coffin is carried to a graveyard, the clip shows a number of men lean in to stroke Beshara’s beard to signal that they consider him a martyr and gain his blessing, despite the fact that he happens to be from another faith.

Days later, in the village of Qraya, two Druze cousins – Bassel and Khaldoun Shqair – were shot to death in an olive grove in an attack opposition media said was carried out by the shabbiha, or pro-regime militia.

Hisham Bustani: Jordan – a failed uprising and a re-emerging regime
“Up to now, the regime has been successful in absorbing the movement and fragmenting it”
January 8, 2013 – Lund University – Your Middle East

President Bashar al-Assad’s speech in Arabic – Sunday January 6, 2013

Many people are saying that Bashar is in a bubble. By this they are insisting that his victory speech is bluster or based on bad intelligence and fawning officers who give him only good news. Certainly, he is in a bubble. But it is a mistake to overestimate the power of the rebels. They too have been in a bubble. They have thought that this was going to be much easier from the beginning – that Bashar would either roll over because he would not have the stomach for a real fight, or the international community would do a Libya, or that Syria would have a Tahrir moment.

The opposition has gotten stronger every month since the beginning of the uprising. But the destructive power of this regime has not played itself out by a long shot. It is responding to the changes on the ground and becoming more lethal as well. Patrick Seale in the Aljazeera show, copied below, argues that Syria could turn out to be like Algeria – with 200,000 killed and no rebel victory. I don’t believe Syria will end up like Algeria. I don’t believe that Bashar or his military can endure, precisely because of the emerging sectarian nature of this fight. But I also believe that Patrick is right to warn the international community and Syrians that worse may yet be waiting for them. The regime’s military remains powerful and has many weapons the opposition cannot match. They are killing the opposition in high numbers. Most opposition commanders have no or little military experience. They have little outside support and what they do have is fickle and irregular. What this means is that they will take an extraordinary beating before becoming a professional fighting force with the ability to destroy the Syrian Army and take Damascus and Syria’s other cities.

But in the end, the numbers are likely to be decisive. The regime does not have an infinite supply of supporters who can fight. The rebels probably do. But what will Syria look like when it is over? The thought is staggering.

Video: What does 2013 have in store for Syria? – Video
Seale, Bahout and Tabler on al-jazeera, on January 6, 2013

President Bashar al-Assad’s Speech Highlights video (English Subtitles)

 Excerpts from Syrian President Assad’s speech – text-Reuters

Russia’s reporting on the Speech – RT – “President Assad outlines political solution to Syrian conflict”

English transcript from Sana
President al-Assad : Out of Womb of Pain, Hope Should Be Begotten, from Suffering Important Solutions Rise
Jan 06, 2013

DAMASCUS, (SANA)_ President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday said if pain is pervading like a dark cloud over the country, the emotional state only, with its sublimity, is not enough to compensate the loss of the loved ones or the restoration of security and peace to the country or providing bread, water, fuel and medicine nationwide.

Delivering a speech on the latest developments in Syria and the region at the Opera House in Damascus, President al-Assad added “out of the womb of pain, hope should be begotten and from the bottom of suffering the most important solutions rise, as the dark cloud in the sky conceals the sun light, but it also carries in its layers rain, purity and hope of welfare and giving.”

President al-Assad said “These feelings of agony, sadness, challenge and intention are huge energy that will not get Syria out of its crisis unless it turns this energy into a comprehensive national move that saves the homeland from the unprecedented campaign hatched against it.”

“This national move is the only balm for the deep wounds which affected our society and were about to divide it as it is the only way that is able to keep Syria geographically and making it politically stronger,” the President added.

“At the beginning they wanted it a fake revolution but the Syrian people rebelled against them, then they tried to impose it by money, media and arms secretly and when they failed, they moved to the second phase through dropping the masks of a “peaceful revolution” and unveiled the cover of the weapons they were using secretly to use them openly starting their attempts to occupy cities as to pounce upon other cities,” President al-Assad said, adding that “their brutal behaviors didn’t deter our people, thanks to their awareness and steadfastness, to unveil their lies and reject them. Therefore they decided to take revenge on the people through spreading terrorism everywhere.”

The President stressed that the Takfiries were working at the back rows through bombings mass killing leaving the armed gangs at the front line but the unity of the Syrian people and army obliged them to move for fighting at the front lines where they led the rudder of the blood, killing and mutilation ship.

“Each citizen is responsible and able to provide something even if it is tiny or limited as he/she may consider, because the homeland is for everyone; we all defend it each with his/her capacity and capability, because the thought is a way of defense, the stance is a way of defense, construction is a way of defense and protecting people’s properties is a way of defense,” President al-Assad added.

“Since the attack is launched against the homeland with all its human and material components, the mindful citizen has certainly known that passivity, waiting for time or others to solve the problem is a sort of pushing the country towards the abyss, and not participating in solutions is a kind of taking the homeland backwards with no progress towards overcoming what the home is going through.

“They have killed civilians and the innocent to kill light and brightness in our country; they have assassinated the qualified and intellectuals to spread their ignorance on our minds; they sabotaged the infrastructure built with the people’s money to make suffering pervade into our lives; they deprived children of their schools to devastate the future of the country and express their ignorance and they cut off electricity, communications and fuel supply, leaving the elderly and children suffering from the cold weather without medicine, emphasizing their savagery. But their theft has been manifested through sabotaging wheat stocks, stealing wheat and flour to make the loaf like a dream for citizens and to starve people… Is it a conflict for power and post or is it a conflict between the homeland and its enemies? Is it a struggle for authority or is it a revenge on the Syrian people who did not give those terrorist killers the key word for dismembering Syria and its society…. continue

Syria’s Bashar al-Assad calls on foreign countries to end support for rebels
Opposition denounces president’s peace plan as ’empty rhetoric’ as Assad pledges to stay and continue fighting ‘terrorist’ violence
Ian Black, Middle East editor

State Dept: Asad’s Speech
2013-01-06
Asad’s Speech Press Statement Victoria Nuland Department Spokesperson, Office of the Spokesperson Washington, DC January 6, 2013

Bashar al-Asad’s speech today is yet another attempt by the regime to cling to power and does nothing to advance the Syrian people’s goal of a political transition. His initiative is detached from reality, undermines the efforts of Joint Special Representative Lakhdar Brahimi, and would only allow the regime to further perpetuate its bloody oppression of the Syrian people.

For nearly two years, the Asad regime has brutalized its own people. Even today, as Asad speaks of dialogue, the regime is deliberately stoking sectarian tensions and continuing to kill its own people by attacking Sunni towns and villages in the mixed areas of Jabal Akrad and Jabal Turkmen in Lattakia province.

Asad has lost all legitimacy and must step aside to enable a political solution and a democratic transition that meets the aspirations of the Syrian people. The United States continues to support the Geneva Action Group’s framework for a political solution, which was endorsed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, the Arab League, and the UN General Assembly. We will continue our efforts in support of Joint Special Representative Brahimi to build international unity behind it and to urge all parties in Syria to take meaningful steps toward its implementation

It was the first time in two years of revolution we have seen support for the Syrian leader so choreographed, accompanied by such fist-pumping chants from the audience.

Even the slogans were the same as the slain Libyan dictator: “God, Syria, Bashar, enough”.

Reminiscent too was the rambling delivery, leaping incoherently back and forth between vague peace proposals and unremitting imprecations against the opposition: “al-Qaeda”, “armed criminals”, “foreign terrorists” were also prominent in Col Muammar Gaddafi’s vocabulary.

Then there were the lapses into bizarre sentimentality, as when he announced: “I look at the eyes of Syria’s children and I don’t see any happiness” – something that would hardly surprise anyone who had watched the news over the last two years.

Mr Assad is no Gaddafi, of course. But his smoother, better-educated, more rational persona, lacking the Gaddafi instinct for the absurd, makes him in some ways even more of a mystery.

 Tabler on NPR – Assad in Bubble

President Bashar al-Assad to deliver a speech on Sunday. Jean Aziz at Lebanon Pulse on www.al-monitor.com writes about “a new proposal to resolve the crisis in Syria,” and the “roadmap to a solution” that Assad is expected to provide.

Andoni Lubaki/Associated Press A destroyed home in Aleppo, Syria. Some Syrians say they feel trapped by the government and the violence engulfing the country, but are afraid to take sides in the rebellion.

Syria Deeply – January 02, 2013
Q&A with Michel Kilo: Some Hope for a Solution

Michel Kilo is one of Syria’s famous dissidents, a political opponent of President Bashar al Assad. He rose to prominence in the Damascus Spring, a brief flourishing of political freedom and expression in 2000.

Kilo left Syria eight months into the revolution and now lives in Paris with his family. He answered questions from Syria Deeply via Skype. For more on his story we’ve included a link to a video interview about his time in prison, jailed for his prominent political dissent.

SD: Are you officially backing the Syrian National Coalition? What do you see as their strengths and weaknesses?

Kilo: I’m not a member of the Syrian National Coalition, because I think its weakness lies in the exaggerated representation of the Islamic movement. It does not represent the various trends of the opposition forces, especially democracy and secularism.

SD: When you look at the state of the war in Syria, what do you see?

Michel Kilo

Kilo: I see a slow shift in the power relations between the opposition and the regime, with a possibility of many surprise twists. That includes desperate operations [by the Assad regime], such as the use of internationally banned weapons, as it loses control of more Syrian land. Fighting has also arrived in Damascus, encircling the main centers of power.

SD: Do you have any hope for a negotiated solution? What is the best-case scenario?

Kilo: Yes, I have some limited hope of a negotiated solution. Some members of the system have disassociated themselves from the Assad regime and extended their reconciliation to the opposition, accepting a transition to a democratic system.

SD: How do you keep Sunnis and Alawites from fighting each other? Is there any way? Any hope?

Kilo: I do not know how we can prevent sectarian clashes without a national program that brings in all parties. This integrated program does not exist today, since the opposition had missed the opportunity of drafting and implementing it [early on]. Today I think we need a kind of program, that will encourage everyone to collaborate in a joint national project, in order to cut the route to a sectarian conflict or at least reduces the possibility [of it erupting].

SD: Are there members of the current system that you think could and should stay on in a future Syria?

Kilo: Yes, there are people in the system who can play a role in the future of Syria…some of those who are now in power, especially those who are defecting from power and Assad’s family to join the people.

SD: What is holding up the Assad regime today?

Kilo: The resilience of Assad’s military strength comes from Russian, Chinese, and Iranian support and the lack of a critical western position against it. That enables them to play that supporting role without real impediment, with a green light that allows Assad to oppress people and destroy Syria.

SD: Do you think the Assad regime would really use chemical weapons for its political survival?

Kilo: Yes, there is no doubt that he would use all kinds of weapons, including chemical weapons, because he does not respect the lives and rights of human beings. Otherwise he wouldn’t have destroyed his country.

SD: How do you think Assad will exit the picture?

Kilo: My fear is that we will move from a crisis to overthrow the regime to a new crisis, extending civil war and chaos, political and armed. Plus we shouldn’t forget that Syria is destroyed, and much of the people are homeless, hungry, or displaced, and this atmosphere will encourage chaos.

SD: What is your biggest fear in the coming phase in Syria?

Kilo: Assad wants to make a decisive victory over his people, this is the goal of the war waged since nearly two years ago. It excludes all kinds of political solutions that had been offered by the opposition. He fancies that he can still win the war.

SD: What does the international community need to do for Syria?

Kilo: The international community should develop clear, practical and applicable positions to stop the killing in Syria and work on a political solution to the crisis without hesitation. [World powers] have demonstrated their inability to do anything, abandoning their responsibilities under the pretext of a weak opposition and divided Syrian society.

SD: If you could tell US President Obama to make one change on Syria policy, what would it be?

Kilo: I’ll tell him committed to what I said repeatedly, that U.S. policy must be based on respect for human rights for people, everywhere.

SD: Should the international community enforce a no-fly zone over northern Syria? Should the world intervene to take out Assad’s forces from the skies?

Kilo: But I do not think we need it. The Syrian people have proved over the past two years that they can [defend] their homes without external interference and are supported by the minimum of weapons needed for victory. They no longer depend on foreign countries to get their freedom. They believe that Western countries don’t want Assad to leave, and that he’ll stay until he destroys the whole society and what holds it together.

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Rebellion at Stalemate, Waiting for Undecided Syrians to Make a Move
By ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA SAAD
Published: January 4, 2013, NYTimes

BEIRUT, Lebanon — At his government office in the Syrian capital, Damascus, the civil servant avoids discussing what Syrians call “the situation.” But he quietly ponders his own private endgame, toying with defecting to the rebels, yet clinging to his post, increasingly sure there are no fighters worth joining.

A multilingual former military officer, he says he is among many friends and colleagues who feel trapped: disenchanted with President Bashar al-Assad, disgusted by the violence engulfing Syria and equally afraid of the government and the rebels, with both sides, as he puts it, ready to sacrifice “the innocents.”

Mr. Assad remains in power in part because two years into the uprising, a critical bloc of Syrians remains on the fence. Among them are business owners who drive the economy, bankers who finance it, and the security officials and government employees who hold the keys to the mundane but crucial business of maintaining an authoritarian state. If they abandoned the government or embraced the rebels en masse, they might change the tide. Instead, their uncertainty contributes to the stalemate….

Syria’s Alawites Under Siege
By: Ali Hashem for Al-Monitor. posted on Fri, Jan 4.

…His father interrupted him, saying “Let us cut it short. FSA are the army of the Sunnis and we don’t want the Alawites to rule us anymore! Let them go, we don’t want them here.”

Such rhetoric is getting common among lower-class Sunnis. They feel they were oppressed for the past 40 years, and it’s time to take over.

“Masaken Barzeh” is a middle-class suburb; clashes took place here when the rebels attacked Damascus. Rouba is an Alawite resident who lives with her mother and sister there: “I know not anywhere but here as my home, we don’t know where to go.” She is still at her flat but neighbors had to lie to militants when they asked if she was Alawite, “They came to the building for us, but when all the neighbors denied we are Alawite, they left, but who knows when will they come back,” she added. “The army succeeded this time in pushing them out but they are still around.”

The most dangerous incident was the assassination of Bassam Hussein, an Alawite movie director. He was killed at his place in the mixed neighborhood of Jdeidet Artouz by unknown militants, the incident came to fuel concerns within the ruling minority that an act of sectarian cleansing might be on the way in a country hit by civil war that seem uncontrollable to many.

According to Zaidon Alzoabi, an opposition activist, “The regime holds part of the responsibility for the sectarian incitement….A Syrian official told me, on the basis of anonymity, “The best thing that might happen now is federalism.“ He added, “We can’t live together anymore, hatred is much more than we can bear.”…

The most grisly video so far. (I cannot watch) A Syrian friend writes:

Regime soldier died in Hama. Had cell phone on him. In it, regime guys took videos of atrocities that go beyond the shocking videos we have seen so far. This includes cutting off a penis and stepping on heads and smashing skulls of rebels. …

On December 29, 2012, the oppositionist Islamic website sooryoon.net cited “knowledgeable sources” as saying that over 150 field commanders in the Idlib area met and swore allegiance to a top commander in Jabhat Al-Nusra known as Ya’qoub Al-‘Umar.

A race to the bottom in Syria
By Victor Kotsev- Asia Times

The past few weeks have seen a dramatic shift in reports coming out of Syria. Whereas a month ago the government appeared to be losing the battle on all fronts, the civil war now seems to have entered a new stage – that of a race to the bottom in which victory hinges on endurance rather than strength.

Both the regime and the rebels are facing major challenges which threaten gravely their ability to function, and this explains in part the vastly divergent prognoses of different analysts. Meanwhile, as winter sets in and the death toll climbs (the latest United Nations report sets it at 60,000), civilians are paying the heaviest price.

Many observers continue to insist that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is on its last legs. ..

Syrian rebel leader talks victory and squalor
By Amir Ahmed and Ben Brumfield, CNN, January 5, 2013

(CNN) — Opposition fighters are celebrating success in Syria’s north but enduring cruel squalor in and around Damascus, where government forces are cutting off food and medical supplies, a rebel leader said Saturday.

Syrian rebels chipped away at President Bashar al-Assad’s air power in Idlib province Saturday as 800 fighters pummeled Taftanaz airbase for the fourth day with anti-aircraft guns and tanks.

They have taken control of 70% of the heliport, rebel leader Capt. Islam Aloush said from Damascus. Militia members killed the head of the base, he said. “There are still about 30 snipers and a few dozen regime forces, but the fight is closing in on them.”

Al-Assad’s forces use the base mainly to launch copter attacks on nearby towns. Syrian warplanes dropped cluster bombs on Taftanaz in a raid that led to the destruction of several buildings, the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said Saturday.

Since the push on Taftanaz began, they have exacted retribution on the nearby city of Binnish, where amateur video posted on the Internet has shown dozens of smoke plumes marking where ordnance has struck.

“The trouble with Idlib is that it has many military airports.” Aloush said his Liwaa Islam militia and other groups want to knock the bases “to minimize the reach of the regime’s warplanes.”

Opposition and government sources have reported that the extremist al-Nusra Front, which the United States has designated as a terrorist group, was taking part in the assault on Taftanaz.

As al-Assad has lost some ground in the far north, he has tried to maintain the reach of his firepower by launching long-range Scud missiles at towns near Turkey’s border…..

Between Syria’s Fronts A Two-Year Travelogue from Hell
By Christoph Reuters, Marcel Mettelsiefen/ DER SPIEGEL

Since unrest began in Syria in the spring of 2011, reporting from the country has been difficult. Former contacts are now dead or can’t be located, and the country lies in ruins. Now, amid harrowing conditions, the balance of power appears to have shifted, with rebels beginning to gain the upper hand….

All armies – the Syrian regime, the FSA and Islamist – are thieves
Rita from Syria 27 December 2012, Open Democracy

….He was surprised to see a picture of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri on the wall of the living room: but the greater shock was to hear the people of the village talking about the figureheads of al-Qaeda in glowing terms as if they were living saints.

Khaled’s village can be any of a number of conservative villages in Syria, but this does not necessarily mean that they support fundamentalist ideas in the mould of al-Qaeda. However, now the people of the village find themselves indebted to Jubhat al-Nusra – an armed group affiliated to al-Qaeda – which led the battle to liberate the village and its surrounding areas from the brutal bombing campaign of the  forces of the Syrian regime.

…..The events of last week in the Bostan al-Qasr neighbourhood of Aleppo, which saw Jubhat al-Nusra fighters attack peaceful protestors, is a scandalous indicator of the infighting between the armed groups – taking them away from the principles of the revolution. Witnesses at the protest told me that Jubhat al-Nusra combatants fired live bullets in the air and attempted to arrest an activist because the protesters were heard shouting “kull jaysh harami, nizami, hurr wa islami” [all armies are thieves: regime, FSA and Islamist’s]. The FSA failed to intervene despite being present at the protest. Social network forums were replete with angry criticism from both sides.

We need a great deal of maturity and awareness to overcome the differences and competing interests in Syria. It has become evident that the armed conflict in no shape or form is directed towards the interests of the Syrian people. We cling to the hope that time will eventually bring forth a genuine Syrian leadership which is able to save the revolution from the paralysis of opportunism.

A Syrian way out of the civil war
By David Ignatius, Published: January 4, Wash Post

To help oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an opposition group has drafted a plan for a transitional justice system that would impose harsh penalties against die-hard members of his inner circle but provide amnesty for most of his Alawite supporters….

As with everything affecting Syria, time is running out before the country collapses into an anarchic failed state. As rebels take control of areas, such as the northern suburbs of Aleppo, some commanders are already taking the law into their own hands. “Some Free Syrian Army are acting more like the shabiha they used to fight,” says one Syrian source.

Kurds Watch

KurdWatch: What exactly are the Kurdish National Council’s substantive conditions for joining the National Alliance?

Faisal Yusuf: Our requirements are the constitutional recognition of the Kurdish people and its identity as well as the guarantee of its legitimate national rights in accordance with international norms and conventions. In addition, in accordance with its share of the total population of Syria, the Kurds should have approximately a fifteen percent share of representation in the Alliance and its committees. All discriminatory practices and decrees affecting the Kurds must be repealed, the victims must be compensated, and the status quo ante must be reinstated. Moreover, Syria should officially be called the »Republic of Syria«, not the »Syrian Arab Republic«. Furthermore, we demand that the Alliance commit itself to supporting all national armed groups, not only the Free Syrian Army. Those are our demands of the National Alliance.

Khaled Mahmoud: A Prisoner in Lebanon Turns Emir in Syria
al-Akhbar By: Radwan Mortada, January 4, 2013

In the same vein, a Salafi sheikh told Al-Akhbar that the majority of young Lebanese men who go to Syria fight for three groups: al-Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham Brigades, and al-Fajr Brigades. The sheikh said that the three groups had no ties to al-Qaeda, but they nonetheless adopt methods similar to those pursued by the global fundamentalist movement.

The Salafi sheikh, who is close to al-Qaeda, said that in the past, the fighters who came through Turkey would exclusively join al-Nusra Front, while those who came from Lebanon went on to fight in the ranks of Ahrar al-Sham or al-Fajr Brigades.The sheikh pointed out that things have changed today, with al-Nusra Front enjoying a strong presence in Homs and al-Qasir.

This, he said, “began six months ago when al-Nusra Front was endorsed by many who have had a long history of jihad in Afghanistan and Iraq.” It should be noted here that the three fundamentalist militant groups are closer in ideology to the Islamic State of Iraq, which is an organization led by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, than al-Qaeda, which is led by Ayman al-Zawahiri.

According to security reports, large quantities of assault rifles were sent from an Arab country into Tripoli’s Bab al-Tabbaneh shortly after clashes with the neighboring Jabal Mohsen. Furthermore, large stocks of ammunition, particularly RPGs and mortar rounds, have also made their way to the area. According to the same reports, these weapons are stored deep in the area’s slums, even inside several mosques.

It is believed that a retired Lebanese army colonel is involved in funding such operations, and personally oversees the distribution of weapons to young fighters.

Tighter Iran Sanctions Hit Factories, Shops

A manager of Bam Shargh Isogam, an Iranian manufacturer of insulation sheets for rooftops, saw trouble ahead when a government official offered advice for surviving the crippling international sanctions: Reduce quality and cut back production. The manufacturer in Delijan, three hours south of Tehran, replaced the high-quality material imported from Europe with domestic material, dismissed more than half its 350 employees, and didn’t pay the remaining workers for four months, managers said. “From the owner to the line worker, no one is safe,” said Bijan, a manager, who asked that his last name not be used. “Our country is facing …

Independent: Syrian regime captures al-Qa’ida chief’s brother on ‘aid mission’
2013-01-04 19:35:38.590 GMT

A Message from Syrian Coalition President
In the name of God, the most Gracious, the most Merciful

World leaders,

Ending the massacre in Syria is the responsibility of the international community. It is not enough that the criminal regime is bombarding citizens by planes, rockets and heavy weapons, but has gone as far as to literally kneading the bread with the flesh and blood of innocent children. It has destroyed the bakeries, Mosques and fuel station, in addition to committing a mass genocide. There is no crime against humanity that this regime has committed.

You are all requested to hold international responsibility: politically and ethically. Meanwhile, we wish all the people of the world, a year full of tolerance, security and peace. May a bloodless dawn rise on us all.

Cairo 04-01-2013
President, Ahmad Mouaz AL KHATIB

Looking Past Assad
Joseph Eid/Agence France-Presse
By VOLKER PERTHES, NYTimes: January 4, 2013

AFTER almost two years of civil war, there are no longer two options for Syria, political or military. Both sides now rely on force.

The opposition activists who try to maintain the originally peaceful character of their uprising are still there, but the armed rebels are calling the shots. Those in the regime who wanted to engage the opposition in some form of dialogue were marginalized early on, when Bashar al-Assad chose to respond to the protests with force.

Eventually there will have to be a political process. But the conditions under which such a process will come about now largely depend on military developments on the ground — plus, to some extent, on the signals and actions of international players.

But if both sides are now using military means for political ends, the ends differ. For the opposition, the military struggle is a means to support the initially civilian uprising. It considers the civilian population, even in regime-controlled territory, as its base, and it aims to depose the regime by gaining military and political ground.

Many government officials are aware that the regime cannot win militarily — Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa said so much in a recent interview. But territorial losses and political setbacks have not made the regime core around Bashar al-Assad and his brother Maher more inclined to negotiate. Power sharing is simply not a concept in the Baathist world view.

Nor does Assad seem any more willing than a year ago to negotiate a safe exit from Syria. His political strategy is to stay, but it is no longer about the whole of Syria. Assad believes he can concentrate on retaining a few strategic areas — Damascus; the coastal mountains, which are mainly inhabited by members of his Alawite minority; the port of Tartus; and the land connections between these areas — while inflicting scorched-earth punishments on rebel-held territory.

Militarily, Assad is now relying almost totally on loyalists from his Alawite sect who dominate the senior officer corps. The mainly Alawite elite battalions and the air force are still largely intact, and supported on the ground by hastily recruited militias — the so-called shabiha — which have been responsible for most of the atrocities against civilians.

With the rising brutality, the war has increasingly turned into a sectarian conflict. Propaganda depicting the Alawites as the enemy has been on the increase among the majority Sunnis, and some extremist groups have targeted Alawites.

As a result, many Alawites are now prepared to fight on Assad’s side not out of conviction, but out of fear that if he falls they and their families will be slaughtered. Without assurances for their future, the elite battalions, air force, intelligence services and shabiha will fight on simply to secure the survival of their community, possibly in an Alawite enclave in the coastal mountains

Certainly the regime is to blame for the destruction of Syria’s social fabric, but this does not help to repair the damage. The more the opposition advances, the more it also becomes responsible for rescuing and rebuilding the state.

The opposition has taken an important step by forming the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. It now has a credible leadership with better contacts to the Local Coordination Committees and other civilian groups inside Syria, and it has made progress toward unifying the diverse forces of the Free Syrian Army and other armed groups under one military command

Parallel with the military struggle, though, the opposition has to present itself as a credible alternative to the regime. Among other things, the Coalition needs to start providing services in liberated areas, particularly by distributing relief aid to residents and refugees.

At the same time, the Free Syrian Army needs to distance itself from extremist forces. Opposition leaders obviously appreciate the fighting power of these groups. Politically, however, the opposition cannot win with forces whose actions and propaganda exacerbate the fears of those Syrians who oppose the regime but fear that its fall will lead to more bloodshed and repression

Thanks to their personal histories, leaders of the Coalition such as Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, Riad Seif and Suhair al-Atassi are well placed to offer a vision of coexistence to those, particularly Alawites, who have so far stuck with the regime. The appointment of an Alawite as ambassador to Paris was a good signal, but it is not enough to reassure the community that it will have a place in a post-Assad Syria.

International actors do have an impact in Syria, even in the opposition. The main means of strengthening those who want to build a democratic and inclusive post-Assad Syria is to unify the flow of money and material support. The better the Coalition and the Free Syrian Army are able to pay their soldiers and dispense the necessary equipment, other militias and groups will submit to their leadership.

This would increase civilian control over the military component of the rebellion, weaken extremist groups and improve chances for a political transition.

Volker Perthes is director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), Berlin.

Open Democracy names Syria Comment “one of our best blogs of 2012” opendemocracy.net/arab-awakening…— Arab Awakening (@openAwakening) January 4, 2013

Arabs are ‘losing faith’ in America: Lessons from Lebanon 1982
Ian Black – guardian

Exhibit A in How an Islamophobic Meme Can Spread Like Wildfire Across the Internet
AlterNet / By Sanam Naraghi Anderlini
The apparently fabricated story of a Saudi cleric issuing a fatwa condoning gang rapes in Syria is an object lesson in the pitfalls of breakneck online journalism.
January 2, 2013 |

Editor’s note: On January 2, AlterNet was one of several outlets that published what turned out to be an article based on a false report. We would like to apologize to our readers for the error.
On January 2nd, the story of a Saudi Sheikh issuing a fatwa that condoned ‘intercourse marriage’ or gang rape in Syria exploded over the internet.
According to various sources, Sheikh Mohammad Al-Arifi had stated that foreign fighters in Syria had the right to engage in short term marriages to satisfy their sexual desires and boost their determination to fight against the Assad regime. Syrian girls and women from age 14 upwards were considered fair game and apparently secured their own place in heaven if they participated in these ‘intercourse marriages’.
By the evening a simple Google search of the words, ‘Saudi Sheikh’ , Syrian, and ‘women’ brought up some 5 million references and at least 3 pages of links to articles spreading the news. Not surprisingly there was immediate online uproar too, though as one commentator put it, much of the discussion was about whether these arranged temporary marriages technically constituted ‘rape’. This in itself is worrying.

There was also skepticism from many quarters about the veracity of the report, particularly among savvy Mideast experts. Rightly so. The story, much like the one a few months ago about Egyptian Islamist MPs proposing laws that permitted sex with a deceased spouse up to 6 hours after his/her death, turned out to be a gross lie. Sheikh Al-Arifi has issued a denial via his Facebook page. Over the next few days, the various websites and media outlets that spread the story will no doubt issue their retractions. But the story also raises many questions. For starters, where did it come from? AlterNet inadvertently picked it up from the overtly anti-Islamic Clarion Fund site. Others pointed to the Iranian regime backed Press TV as the primary source on December 31 2012. But the earliest English language reporting comes on December 29 from an obscure YouTube news site called Eretz Zen, tagged as a YouTube channel by a “secular Syrian opposed to
having [his] country turned into a Taliban-like state.”….

Kurdish Iraq Considers Opening Border for Relief Supplies to Kurdish Syria – Rudaw

Kurdish groups had urged Robert Ford, the US ambassador in Damascus, to encourage and oversee the opening of a border crossing with Iraqi Kurdistan.The Kurdish National Council (KNC), an alliance of Kurdish groups in Syria, late last month officially asked the KRG to open its side of two border crossings with Syrian Kurdistan, saying people were deprived of basic needs and would be forced to evacuate cities without help.

While Kurdish Syrian refugees have flowed into Iraqi Kurdistan, getting food and urgent supplies to the other side has been more complicated.

Reports in recent months had said that armed members of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) — the dominant Kurdish party in Syria but with alleged ties to the Syrian regime — were imposing heavy taxes on food supplies, and that KRG authorities had closed borders in response.

TV Report On Foreign Jihad Fighters In Aleppo, Syria: Volunteers From France And Sweden Explain Why They Joined The Jihad – Memri

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Last year at this time, I argued that Assad would last until 2013 – Why the Assad Regime Will Likely Survive to 2013 – despite the many predictions that he was on the verge of falling in 2012. This year, I make a similar prediction that Assad will last until 2014. The reasons I give are outlined in the following two articles by Karon and Weaver, copied below.

Fred Hof’s article, excerpted below, is excellent. His worry that the Syrian opposition may fail to produce a convincing Syrian Nationalism or present a viable alternative to the  narrow Assad “rule by clan and clique” is the real problem. Assad has perfected rule by traditional loyalties and patronage combined with fear and intimidation.  The regime has survived for so long because Syrians have been unable to unify against it. Divide-and-rule has been the mainstay of this regime. So long as the opposition continues to squabble and Syrians remain deeply divided, and greater powers don’t intervene, the Assad regime will likely find a way to hang on. More importantly, as Fred Hof laments, “If in the end Syria is really akin to Lebanon in terms of the supremacy of sectarian identification, it is finished.”

Syria’s Rising Death Toll: The Darkness Before the Dawn or Sign of a Grinding Stalemate? By Tony Karon | Time

Abdlhamid Haj Omar, 70, a father who lost three sons and two grandsons in the ongoing Syrian crisis, prays as he visits their graves at the Martyrs’ cemetery in Azaz city, North Aleppo, Dec. 25, 2012.

….The rebels and Western analysts advocating for more muscular intervention remain confident that the regime’s collapse is imminent, and are skeptical of calls for negotiation. “The regime appears to have only a few weeks left before it collapses,” said Washington Institute of Near East Policy analyst Jeffrey White in late December. “As the end nears, its allies may issue desperate pleas for a U.N.-brokered ceasefire, but the rebels see absolutely no advantage in that approach.”…

“Absent some dramatic increase in external intervention, Assad could still be there in 2014,” says Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. “There’s nothing obvious in the current dynamic that’s going to force him out. He has barricaded the major cities with layers of security, allowing the impoverished periphery of some to fall into rebel hands, but then using his air power and artillery to devastate those neighborhoods. Almost two years into the uprising and despite the rebels’ recent momentum, they have not yet taken full control of a single major city or town. That’s a bad sign for the rebels.”

The sectarian character of the civil war has been underscored by Alawites — even many with grievances against the Assads — rallying behind a regime dominated by their minority sect for fear of their fate should the predominantly Sunni rebellion triumph. While opposition analysts predict that the regime will soon run out of money, rebel-controlled areas are even more starved of resources. And the regime, which still maintains an overwhelming advantage in weaponry, appears to be directing attacks in line with a strategy to exacerbate shortages of food and fuel in those areas, assuming that shortages and the competition for scarce resources will alienate the civilian population from the rebel fighters that control their areas — a dynamic that appears to be taking hold according to some reports from Aleppo and elsewhere…

“Despite the confident predictions coming from the rebels and their backers,” says Landis, “nobody in the opposition today can explain how they’re going to win. The regime has the unity, it has all the heavy weapons. Many of the rebels continue to operate on the assumption that the U.S. will intervene to tip the balance for them.”

But despite growing agitation by some in Washington for a more muscular U.S. role in helping topple Assad, there’s no sign that the Obama Administration, or any of the other Western powers, or key neighbors such as Turkey, are inclined as yet to assume the substantial risks involved in intervening to break Syria’s stalemate. And the rising death toll won’t likely change those calculations.

Assad to hang on till 2014
By Matthew Weaver – Guardian

Bashar al-Assad is likely to stay in power until 2014, according to Syrian watcher Joshua Landis, director of Centre for Middle East Studies at the Univesity of Oklahoma.

Many pundits predict that the Assad regime is nearing collapse and it is difficult to find any who think Assad will survive the year as president. But Landis, author of the widely-read blog Syria Comment, bucks the trend.

Asked to clarify remarks he made on Twitter earlier today about Assad’s prospects, Landis replied “Who is going to defeat him?”

He told the Guardian that rebels remain divided, under-funded and poorly equipped. He said:

Ethnic and sectarian divisions make victory difficult. Poverty hurts the regime, but also it hurts rebels, who are scavenging and beginning to cannibalize each other.

The Syrian army, by contrast remains cohesive, fully armed and with a clear command and control structure, Landis pointed out. It has also changed tactics to focus on protecting Damascus and the survival of the regime, Landis claimed.

It has learned it cannot control everything and has fallen back. The south and Damascus is much more difficult terrain for rebels than north and Aleppo.

Aleppo has been harder to defend because of its proximity to Turkey which offers rebels protection and short lines of retreat. “In the south [neighbouring countries:] Lebanon, Israel, Iraq and Jordan are all hostile to rebels and do not allow them refuge, comfort and resupply,” Landis said.

Landis also pointed out that international community remains divided over how to tackle the crisis. The US is concerned about supporting al-Qaida-linked groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra which is leading the fight against the Syrian government in many areas and which the US proscribed as terrorist organisation.

“The US has few interests in Syria and every incentive to stay out,” Landis said.

And the main regional opponents of the Assad government – Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – lack a co-ordinated approach and have not always worked in concert.

Joshua Landis @joshua_landis

UN: Data analysis suggests over 60,000 people killed in Syria

Syria’s chaos isn’t America’s fault
By Aaron David Miller, Published: January 1

Aaron David Miller is vice president for current initiatives at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and has advised Democratic and Republican secretaries of state on the Middle East. His books include the forthcoming “Can America Have Another Great President?”

Who lost Syria? Comments of some U.S. senators, analysts and journalists, including the editorial board of this newspaper, suggest there is no doubt: Bashar al-Assad and his thugocracy are primarily responsible for the killings, but the tragedy of Syria is also a direct result of a terrible failure of leadership on the part of the international community, and of the United States in particular.

Syria, it is charged, is Barack Obama’s Rwanda.

Don’t believe it.

The idea that Syria was anyone’s to win or lose, or that the United States could significantly shape the outcome there, is typical of the arrogant paternalism and flawed analysis that have gotten this country into heaps of trouble in the Middle East over the years.

One of the virtues of the Arab ­Spring/Winter is that Arab people came to own their politics — for better or worse. This sense of ownership was often painful to watch — democracy isn’t always liberal — but it brought authority and legitimacy to the political turbulence roiling that region since late 2010. That made change real and home-grown. The United States and Israel were not central to the myths, tropes and narratives of these historic changes, nor should they be.

Some have argued for intervention by attempting to draw a parallel to Libya: We helped the rebels bring down Moammar Gaddafi, this thinking goes. Why not do the same in Syria?

Three interconnected realities provide the answer. First, there was an international consensus for action in Libya, specifically through the United Nations and NATO. Second, Libya was low-hanging fruit from a military perspective: It had a weak regime, no effective air defenses, no weapons of mass destruction and no allies. The Libyan rebels also held discrete territory, from which it was easy to organize.

Syria is fundamentally different. It combines the worst aspects of three volatile elements: civil war, sectarian violence and manipulation by external powers. The argument that the United States created this mess makes sense only if there really were good options to intercede earlier that might have averted this fate.

Yet that was never the case. Yes, we could have done more on the humanitarian side and perhaps taken a more active role far earlier in helping to organize a political opposition, even covertly.

But since this conflict began in early 2011, all of the military options for intervention have been heavily skewed toward risk rather than reward. Given the Assad regime’s firepower, its allies (Russia and China blocking actions in the U.N. Security Council; Iran supplying money and weapons), Assad’s determination to do whatever it took to survive and his success in keeping much of his Alawite military, security and intelligence forces intact, none of the suggested military options was consequential enough to bring down the regime or to give the rebels a victory.

To stop the regime’s assault, let alone to topple it, would have required direct military pressure, most likely a massive air and missile campaign and probably an intervention force. Those, quite rightly, were never under serious consideration. Half-measures such as arming the rebels and instituting a “no-fly” zone carried risks but no identifiable rewards. It was never clear how a limited military response would shape events. U.S. planners could not be certain that a military response wouldn’t have pushed Russia and Iran to up the ante with more weapons. And with Washington seeking Moscow’s support to keep pressure on Iran’s nuclear program, a major escalation over Syria wouldn’t have helped.

And who, exactly, would we have been arming? Once the United States backs a particular rebel group, Washington would be responsible for its actions. Neighbors such as the Saudis and Qataris may have a stake in arming Sunni fundamentalists in Syria, but the United States does not. As for the Turks, the Obama administration did not prevent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan from acting militarily. Erdogan faced serious internal constraints: Neither the general public nor 15 million Turkish Alevis aligned ethnically with Syrian Alawites wanted war with Damascus.

The tragedy of Syria is that too much blood has flowed to imagine a negotiated settlement between the regime and the opposition — yet the horrors have not been enough to force a divided, preoccupied and self-interested international community to intervene.

We will never know about the “what ifs” had the United States intervened in a more aggressive way. But to blame the arc of this crisis on Washington or to suggest that the Obama administration made it worse fails to understand the cruel nature of the Syrian tragedy and the limits of U.S. power and our national priorities. The United States is coming out of the two longest wars in its history, in which the standard for victory was never “can we win?” but “when can we leave?”

As recent polling on the prospect of intervention in Syria shows, the American people understand this, even if those who call for more aggressive U.S. action do not. We should not be the world’s top cop or caseworker, charged with fixing every calamity. We don’t control history. And it’s time we attend to our own broken house instead of running around the world trying to repair everyone else’s.

Read more on this debate: John McCain, Joseph I. Lieberman and Lindsey O. Graham: Syria’s descent into hell The Post’s View: U.S. impotence on Syria Jackson Diehl: Watching Syria’s descent

SLIDESHOW: Syria’s rising displacement crisis – IRINnews.org

“status of women in Syria under Hafiz al Assad” Lakshmi Priya, an Indian researcher, wants you to fill out this questionnaire for research. Respondent’s identity will be kept confident. Lakshmi Priya

‘The people of Aleppo needed someone to drag them into the revolution’
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Aleppo, guardian, 28 December 2012

Abu Ali Sulaibi was one of the first people to take up arms in Aleppo. Now he controls two shattered blocks on the frontline where he lives with his wife, four children and Squirrel the cat…

“I can’t believe that this is my mother’s living room,” he says. Then, to the men: “Wake up, you beasts!”

As no one stirs, he pulls a pistol from his belt and fires into the ceiling, bringing down a chunk of plaster. The men jump from their mats, grabbing their guns. “That was Abu Ali’s wake-up call,” he says.

Outside, Abu Ali sits on a broken plastic chair set amid the rubble. His fighters, bleary-eyed, sit around him, making Turkish coffee and smoking. There is no food. The men live on one meal a day and many have not eaten since lunch the day before.

A trickle of civilians who braved the sniper fire to reach Abu Ali’s headquarters now come forward, as they do each morning, to ask favours of the chief. Some are trying to salvage their food or furniture, others come to ask permission to scavenge or squat in the empty apartments.

On this morning, six civilians stand sheepishly in front of him: a man in his 50s and his teenage son; a lanky man in a coat that is too big for him; a young engineer in rimless glasses and a bald man with his sister, who wears a black hijab. The civilians stay at a distance out of respect or fearing his unchecked anger.

“What do you want?”

“We want to collect some of our stuff, Abu Ali,” the older man says.

“Not today. Come back on Saturday.”

“But you told us to come on Wednesday.”

“I changed my mind. You should know that this is the state of Abu Ali Sulaibi.” He roars out his catchphrase as much for the benefit of his men as the civilians.

“You are all informers,” he tells the scared civilians. “I know you cross back to government side and report on us.”

“We are not,” says the bald man. “Our hearts are with you.”

“When you say that, I know you are an informer.” Turning to one of his men he says, half-joking: “Wasn’t he the one who was chasing us when we were out demonstrating?” The bald man’s face turns pale.

Abu Ali keeps the civilians waiting for two hours. Then, like a true autocrat, he quickly changes his mind and summons two of his men to take them where they want to go.

Al-Rashed Predicts al-Assad’s Fall in March 2013 – 01/01/2013
By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed – As-Sharq al-Awsat

What if our hopes our disappointed and a third year passes with Bashar al-Assad still clinging on to power in Damascus?

At this point we would have no other choice but to apologize, stop writing, or pay the price for our mistaken analysis of the situation. Although I am being careful not to predict particular dates for al-Assad’s fall, all information confirms that his regime cannot last long, and the only predication that I am comfortable making is that he will fall by the end of the second year of the Syrian revolution. …

Increasing Barbarity Gaining a Clearer View of the Syrian Civil War
By Christoph Reuter – Spiegel

…What these foreigners in Aleppo have in common, says one member of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, is less a hatred of Assad than a conviction that they must fight against all Shiites, whom they consider traitors to Sunni Islam. “When this is over,” the man says, “they want to continue on and fight against the Hezbollah.” These men with beards and Kalashnikovs, constantly shouting “Allahu akbar,” do fit with a certain framework, but that framework doesn’t exist anymore. Nor does the image of the ultra-warrior apply to all who adorn themselves with the al-Qaida logo. …

The true danger, the one we sense growing with each trip we make to Syria, is the increasing brutality and barbarism on both sides. The question is no longer simply how this conflict will end, but also at what price…. Tens of thousands of people have died. They are civilians, soldiers and rebels. Gangs massacre their way through suburbs and villages. Half a million people have fled abroad, and far more are desperately on the move within their own country, afraid to stay where they are, but fearing death around every next corner.

A year ago, Homs, Aleppo, Rastan, Talbiseh, Douma, Zabadani, Deir el-Zour, Idlib and hundreds of other cities and villages did not yet look like small Mediterranean Stalingrads. The irresistible pull of revenge increases with each wave of killing, for both the Alawites and the Sunnis.…

Analysis: U.N. confronts failure of diplomacy in Syria December 29, 2012. REUTERS

“It’s understood that Bashar al-Assad’s regime will not last long,” said Georgy Mirsky, a Middle East expert at the Institute for World Economy and International Relations in Moscow.

“But this does not mean that Russia is ready to join the West, the Turks and the Arabs and demand that Assad go? That would be senseless. Syria is lost (to Russia) anyway,” he said.

At least Russia “will be able to say that we do not abandon our friends,” Mirsky said.

Syrian war leaves children traumatize
By Carol Morello, Wash Post

Kids who fled the country find different ways to deal with the things they saw in their homeland…..

Violent Acts by Regime Supporter– Video (Very graphic) Syria video shows stabbing and stoning blamed on Assad militia, BEIRUT | Wed Jan 2, 2013 (Reuters)

Syria begins year with more air raids, clashes
Gulf Times – 02 January, 2013

Syrians woke up to air strikes near Damascus on New Year’s Day and the closure of Aleppo airport due to rebel attacks, hours after dozens of people took to the streets of the capital calling for the regime’s ouster.

The violence came a day after activists reported finding dozens of mutilated bodies, another sign of the gruesome nature of the 21-month conflict… There have been continued attempts by opposition militants to target civilian aircraft, which could cause a humanitarian disaster,” an airport official said…. The Observatory said 30 bodies were found in Barzeh district, while the Syrian Revolution General Commission said 50 bodies were found with their heads “cut and disfigured to the point that it was no longer possible to identify” them….

Laying Groundwork for Life After Syria’s Assad: As Regime Teeters, Jews Mull Outreach to Rebel Fighters
By Nathan Guttman, January 01, 2013, Forward

Future Leaders?: With Syrian rebels close to tipping the balance against strongman Bashar al-Assad, Jews are starting to think about their next steps…. Notably absent from most discussions of Syria’s future is the question of its relations with Israel…. “There are many in the opposition who believe that Israeli concerns over change in Syria are, in part at least, behind the lack of a more proactive response by the international community to the situation in Syria,” said Ammar Abdulhamid,

the Arab Spring made it clear that Arab democracy does not necessarily entail more openness to relations with Israel, at least in the absence of any progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front and other territorial disputes between Israel and its neighbors.

“The agreed line by the opposition is that the status quo in the Golan Heights will be maintained until conditions permit for organizing peace talks,” said Abdulhamid, referring to Israel’s occupation of that area since the 1967 Six Day War..

…after Assad’s fall, “a potential military-terrorist threat to Israel will likely emerge in the transition period, which will be marked by governmental instability and a lack of central control over at least some of the fighting forces.” Radwan Ziadeh argued that such concerns should not deter the community from getting involved. “It is better to invest in the future than to hang on to the old regime,” said Ziadeh…  Ziadeh talks about the role he sees for American Jews in helping the Syrian cause. “Now is the time for the Jewish community and for Israel to push the Obama administration to take action,” said Ziadeh, who supports American military intervention aimed at helping the opposition…

“Jews will always be used by one side or another” in the conflict, Gaer argues in response. But the circumstances in Syria are so harsh and clear, she said, that there is no room for concern about Jewish support de-legitimizing the opposition. “If we speak to this issue we will not hurt the effort,” she said. “Turning an eye away from what’s going on, that is what can be seen as not legitimate.”

Syria Deeply  –  December 05, 2012
Conversations: A Road Trip to Idleb

As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and a Syrian university student. She’s from a conservative Sunni family in Aleppo. She hopes to leave the country, but first had to get a passport from her family’s registered home address in Idleb. She told us her observations about the road between Aleppo and Idleb.

The driver took us to Idleb from all the “liberated” villages. We passed from a village called Kafar Halab, which has a big hill nearby. The landscapes there were amazingly beautiful. I want to buy a house there after the revolution..

There was graffiti everywhere we passed through. Some of the writings support the regime and others are supporting the opposition. Each one of them tries to erase the other one and write in its place. It is very childish. You can never trust anyone of them.

I saw the shamsin bread factory on my way and there was an unbelievable crowd in front of it. There were thousands of people fighting and pushing each other for bread. Then I saw the Magic Land restaurant complex. It has a billboard, that now reads “We are a nation whom Allah gave the pride of Islam”.

We passed from a Free Syrian Army checkpoint, and then we reach the Icarda intersection, where was located al-Nusra Front Islamic jihadist group’s checkpoint. Surprisingly, they were nice to us. Perhaps they saw my hijab and modest clothing and they respected that. We passed from Binnish and Taftanaz, both are targets of heavy aerial bombardments, however, life is still normal there and people seem not bothered at all from living under shelling. They are insisting on not leaving their homes. Some university student girls from Binnish joined our vehicle and told their stories of how they are going to Idleb everyday for their lectures, fearing all the way that a shell, a barrel or a car bomb will take their lives…

Finally we reached Idleb, but my passport wasn’t ready yet. I wandered around and had a tea near the souk. They have a nice souk (covered market), which is exactly a smaller copy of our old souk in Aleppo. There were a lot of people and life was bustling there, just like it used to be in Aleppo before the big fire in the old city and the historic souk two months ago. I bought a Derby chips (a very famous Syrian produced potato chips) and the seller started to chat with me when he heard my Aleppo accent.

He asked me about the situation in Aleppo and I replied that it is still not good. He replied saying that when they were being shelled in Idleb we were making barbeques and eating kebab in Aleppo! I got mad and left the place.

I bought some bread from there to bring it home with me, because there is no bread in Aleppo. Before, we used to bring home sweets and other luxuries from our trips, but now a piece of bread is more valued than anything else… I hold the bread with both hands the entire road as if it is a treasure. On my way back to Aleppo, in the front seat of the bus there was very obsequious man, who used to greet every checkpoint we were stopped by. He sucked up to them whether if they were army or rebel checkpoints.

We reached Saraqeb, which is perhaps the most bombarded town in all of Syria. If not all houses are destroyed then they are half destroyed. We saw a shepherd with his sheep in the beautiful nature near the town. I saw a lot of people who had lost their young sons and children, their relatives, but somehow they were still hopeful [things would get better].

I cannot say how my heart was tearing apart on the road every time I saw these people and our beautiful country burning everywhere. I am sick of all the propaganda, applauses, analysis, and everything from both sides. What I saw on the road was enough for me.

This people want to live!

Jabhat Al-Nusra’s Emir: America’s Designation Of The Group As A Terrorist Organization Is Merely An Expression Of Its Failure In The Region

On December 27, 2012, the Syrian jihadi group Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN) released a 23-minute audio-recorded message by its Emir, Abu Muhammad Al-Julani, in which he responds to American’s recent move of designating JN a terrorist organization. Al-Julani says that the designation is an expression of America’s failure in the region, and thanks all those who stood by JN following this move, noting that their support is an indication of JN’s popularity among the Syrian people. It is noteworthy that Al-Julani’s address was posted on JN’s Facebook page, since the Shumoukh Al-Islam forum, JN’s usual outlet for publishing its materials, has been offline for several days.

U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands
By JAMES RISEN, MARK MAZZETTI and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
Published: December 5, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.

Envoy to Syria Warns of Slide to Hellish Fiefs With Huge Toll
By KAREEM FAHIM and HWAIDA SAAD
December 30, 2012

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The international envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, drew a grim portrait on Sunday of the country’s future in the absence of a political solution, warning of a state carved up by warlords and a death toll that would rapidly surge, while conceding that there was little sign that the antagonists intended to negotiate.

At a news conference at Arab League headquarters in Cairo, Mr. Brahimi said the violence, which has already killed tens of thousands of people, could claim 100,000 lives over the next year.

“People are talking about a divided Syria being split into a number of small states like Yugoslavia,” he said.

“This is not what is going to happen. What will happen is Somalization — warlords,” Mr. Brahimi said, according to a transcript of his remarks. Without a peace deal, he added, Syria would be “transformed into hell.”….

Remember the days when we thought Egypt’s path to democracy was a done deal? Western-trained Mohamed Morsi had invited the people to come and meet him in Hosni Mubarak’s former presidential palace, the old military toffs in the “Supreme Council of the Armed Forces” had been pensioned off and the International Monetary Fund was waiting to bestow some of those cruel deprivations upon Egypt that would ready it for our financial benevolence. How happy the Middle East optimists were by mid-2012.

Next door, Libya produced a victory for nice, pro-Western secularist Mahmoud Jibril, promising freedom, stability, a new home for the West in one of the Arab world’s most fecund oil producers. It was a place where even US diplomats could wander around virtually unprotected.

Tunisia may have an Islamist party running its government, but it was a “moderate” administration – in other words, we thought it would do what we wanted – while the Saudis and the Bahraini autocracy, with the purse-lipped support of Messrs Obama and Cameron, quietly suppressed what was left of the Shia uprising which threatened to remind us all that democracy was not really welcome among the wealthiest Arab states. Democracy was for the poor.

Closing in

So, too, in Syria. By the spring of last year, the Western commentariat was writing off Bashar al-Assad. He did not deserve “to live on this earth”, according to French Foreign Secretary Laurent Fabius. He must “step down”, “step aside”. His regime had only weeks to go, perhaps only days. This was the “tipping point”.

Then by summer, when the “tipping point” had come and gone, we were told that Assad was about to use gas “against his own people”. Or that his supplies of chemical weapons might “fall into the wrong hands” (the “right hands” still presumably being Assad’s).

Syria’s rebels were always “closing in” – on Homs, then Damascus, then Aleppo, then Damascus again. The West supported the rebels. Money  and guns aplenty came from Qatar and Saudi Arabia, moral support from Obama, Clinton, the pathetic Hague, Hollande, the whole factory of goodness – until, inevitably, it turned out that the rebels contained rather  a lot of Salafists, executioners, sectarian killers and, in one case, a teenage head-chopper who behaved rather like the ruthless regime they were fighting. The factory had to put some of its machinery into reverse. The US still supported the good, secular rebels but now regarded the horrible Salafist rebels as a “terrorist organisation”…..

The Post’s View
U.S. impotence on Syria
by Editorial Board, December 29

AS 2012 COMES to a close, Syria is headed toward a bloody and chaotic end to what began as a peaceful uprising against an autocratic regime. This would be a catastrophe that could destabilize much of the Middle East, provide al-Qaeda with a new base of operations, and lead to the transfer or even use of chemical weapons.

Above all, the crisis is the result of the brutality and ruthlessness of ruler Bashar al-Assad and the family clique around him, and their supporters in Iran and Russia. But it is also reflects a massive failure of Western — and particularly American — leadership, the worst since the Rwandan genocide two decades ago.

 

A friend on Alawites:

I remain skeptical regarding the Alawite community’s plan B. in my view there is no plan A, no plan B and no plan C. to make things worse there is no Alawite community. the original community’s communal structures, its forms of leadership, its elites, its identity, its religion and its rapport to its own territory have all been gutted, to a large extent, by the regime. This explains in part why Alawites both loath Bashar and desperately cling to him. they have nowhere to go, no alternative, no ability to organize enough to produce one of their own. They are confused by their absorption into a state that has proved to be a fiction. they are offered no exit by an opposition of eradicators who whisper nice words and think murder. I believe — and was just in Damascus — that the regime will go down fighting, in the capital, which it will destroy in the process. that doesn’t preclude other struggles in other places, such as Latakia. of course, and as always, I hope I’m wrong.

The Secular Idiot’s Guide to Syria’s Jihadist Groups [an absolute must read] Even Syria watchers need an honest laugh sometimes.

The dollar crossed the 100 pound threshold in black market trading this week in Damascus.

Syrians’ Moscow visit seeks Russian rejection of Ibrahimi points regarding limited future Assad authority and ineligibility for third term. — Murhaf Jouejati (@mjouejati) December 28, 2012

Two Syrian Air Force generals, five colonels, two majors, two captains, four lieutenants, three major sergeants and their families entered into Turkey at the border village of Bükülmez in Hatay’s Reyhanl? district.  With the latest defections, the total number of defected Syrian generals Turkey is housing has risen to 49. – Zaman

Regime warplanes have carried out four attacks on Darya, rural Damascus, 28-12-2012 so far today, dropping missiles and cluster bombs on residential areas near the town centre. At least one martyr, a youth named as Tariq Mahmoud, has been confirmed killed in the brutal aerial bombardment. Moadamiyeh, Damascus, 28-12-2012: Moadamiyeh is under bombardment by MiG warplanes in conjunction with heavy artillery shelling by the regime’s notorious Fourth Division.

Syria jihadists eye post-Assad Islamic rule – AFP

In an audio tape posted online on Friday the head of the group, Abu Mohammed Al-Jawlani, said clearly – and repeatedly – that Islamists must rule in post-Assad Syria.

Assad’s Roll of the Dice: Is Winter Coming for the Syrian Rebellion? – Dec 24, 2012
By Tony Karon: Time Magazine

…. “The greatest challenge facing the rebels is providing the basic necessities of life to Syrians living in areas no longer controlled by the state,” says Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. “That’s why the regime is trying its best to disrupt food supplies in rebel-held areas. It needs them to fail, even to starve while they’re living under rebel control. The regime can’t allow the rebels to establish a workable alternative that pays salaries and is able to provide for those in its domain in the way that the state currently serves as the key provider to many millions of Syrians.”….

Syrian rebels sidetracked by scramble for spoils of war
Looting, feuds and divided loyalties threaten to destroy unity of fighters as war enters new phase
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in Aleppo, The Guardian, Thursday 27 December 2012

Syrians carry a desk out of a school in the Saif al-Dawla district of Aleppo. Photograph: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

It wasn’t the government that killed the Syrian rebel commander Abu Jameel. It was the fight for his loot. The motive for his murder lay in a great warehouse in Aleppo which his unit had captured a week before. The building had been full of rolled steel, which was seized by the fighters as spoils of war.

But squabbling developed over who would take the greater share of the loot and a feud developed between commanders. Threats and counter-threats ensued over the following days.

Abu Jameel survived one assassination attempt when his car was fired on. A few days later his enemies attacked again, and this time they were successful. His bullet-riddled body was found, handcuffed, in an alley in the town of al-Bab.

Captain Hussam, of the Aleppo military council, said: “If he had died fighting I would say it was fine, he was a rebel and a mujahid and this is what he had set out to do. But to be killed because of a feud over loot is a disaster for the revolution.

“It is extremely sad. There is not one government institution or warehouse left standing in Aleppo. Everything has been looted. Everything is gone.”

Captured government vehicles and weapons have been crucial to the rebels since the start of the conflict, but according to Hussam and other commanders, and fighters interviewed by the Guardian over a fortnight in northern Syria, a new phase has been reached in the war. Looting has become a way of life.

“Spoils” have now become the main drive for many units as battalion commanders seek to increase their power.

The problem is particularly pronounced in Aleppo, according to Abu Ismael, a young lieutenant from a wealthy family, who ran a successful business before joining the fight against Bashar al-Assad.

Many of the battalions that entered the city in the summer of this year came from the countryside, he said. They were poor peasants who carried with them centuries-old grudges towards the wealthier Aleppans….

Fleeing Civil War, Syria’s Kurds Enter Another Geopolitical Minefield
By Jay Newton-Small / Dohuk, IraqDec. 27, 2012 – Time

Samira Selo cradled her 2-year-old on her hip and looked across the low valley toward Syria, a country that until a month ago she called home. Some sheep and goats grazed nearby. Behind her, in the old tiny tent she, her husband and three kids call home, her family’s possessions were rolled up under two thin mattresses still damp from a week’s worth of rain. The floor of her tent was mud, the same mud that formed, often knee-deep, every lane zigzagging through the Domiz refugee camp in the north of Iraqi Kurdistan……

Thus far, the Syrian Kurds have remained somewhat neutral in the civil war ravaging Syria. Some splinter groups seem to be supporting Assad, and others the opposition, but for the most part, the Kurds have sat out the fight. “As far as the Syrian Kurds are concerned, the opposition is as bad as the regime,” Talabani says. Until the opposition pledges to respect Kurdish rights and grant them full representation in the new government, the Kurds will remain wary.

In fact, the refugees are suspicious of anything and everything except the Kurdish government in Iraq. Kurdish flags fly from dozens of tents. “I won’t fight for Assad or against Assad,” says Shanki, “but I will lay down my life for Kurdistan.” The group of men surrounding him all murmur — and some shout — in agreement.

Battle for Aleppo shows both sides’ weaknesses
NYTimes, 28 Dec 2012 Via War in Context

C.J. Chivers reports:…. has also left rebels vulnerable to allegations of corruption, including the theft of much needed food and other aid.

Simultaneously, the fighting has exposed the government’s seemingly fatal miscalculations. For all of its statements to the contrary, and no matter its effort to mass soldiers and firepower here, Mr. Assad’s government has mustered neither the popular support nor the military might to stop the rebels’ slow momentum, much less to defeat them.

These days rumors circulate of Mr. Assad’s dilemma — will he flee Damascus, Syria’s capital, or die behind the palace gate? — while it is rebels who speak with confidence.

“Now we are making very good progress,” said Col. Abdul Jabbar al-Okaidi, a former Syrian military officer who is now one of the senior rebel commanders in the Aleppo region. “Almost all of the military bases and regime forces in Aleppo have been surrounded.”

As winter descends, intensifying the humanitarian crisis for Aleppo’s civilians, the battle’s direction has decisively shifted….

Alawite cleric: Assad duped us into sectarian war
Sharq al-Awsat, 28 Dec 2012 via War in Context

Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat on the condition of anonymity, an opposition Alawite religious cleric who recently fled to the Turkish town of Antakya revealed that “the Alawite community is living in a state of great fear, after we have become aware that the collapse of the al-Assad regime is imminent, which will […]

Taking Syria back from the extremists
By Mohammed Alaa Ghanem, Thursday, December 27 – Wash Post
Mohammed Alaa Ghanem is senior political adviser, strategist and government relations director for the Syrian American Council in Washington.

Raqqa Emergency Appeal
Damascus 26-12-2012 – Building the Syrian State

An increasing number of reports indicate that armed anti-regime brigades are surrounding the city of Raqqa in northeast Syria with the plan to enter it. There have already been some attacks on the outskirts of the city. Raqqa is among the few relatively safe areas in Syria that civilians can still to escape to. As a result, the city is now heavily, densely populated hosting nearly three million people more than half of whom are internally displaced living in very dire conditions.

Pushing the city into armed conflict will result in a tragedy to add to the countless tragedies the Syrians are already suffering. It is even more tragic considering that the city will probably not play any strategic role in settling the conflict in Syria.

The location of Raqqa near Tabaqa military airport, which is under the control of the regime, ensures that the city will be under immediate threat of aerial bombardment by regime

Assad Cultivates Support from Minorities. CBS visits Jabal Druze

Syria: interview with a Jabhat al-Nusra official
Time: 26 Dec 2012

Abu Adnan, a 35-year-old religious scholar and Shari’a law official in Jabhat al-Nusra’s leadership in the Aleppo area, gave an interview with Rania Abouzeid for Time magazine.

The interview took place in a town in northern Syria, in the countryside outside Aleppo. I was not blindfolded nor subjected to a physical security check. I was picked up at a northern Syria border post, driven for about 15 minutes inside the country before the vehicle stopped in front of a black pickup truck waiting in the middle of an otherwise empty stretch of road. There were three men in the vehicle, including Abu Adnan, who silently approached the car I was in, and sat in the backseat. He did not introduce himself until I asked who he was later.

We drove to a small cold concrete room with a tiny window that barely let in any light from an already overcast sky. We sat among boxes of long-life milk and bags of blankets and winter clothes waiting to be distributed. Our host, the driver, tried to start a portable gas heater, but there was no gas.

“America has called us terrorists because it says that some of our tactics bear the fingerprints of al-Qaeda in Iraq, like our explosives and the car bombs,” Abu Adnan said, his breath condensing as he spoke. “We are not like al-Qaeda in Iraq, we are not of them.”

Jabhat al-Nusra does count Syrian veterans of the Iraq war among its numbers, men who bring expertise — especially the manufacture of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) — to the front in Syria. Still, Jabhat al-Nusra is not the only rebel outfit to use IEDs and other groups — some so-called moderates operating under the loose umbrella of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have also allegedly used suicide bombers who were either willing or unwilling (i.e prisoners). Like Jabhat al-Nusra, a number of other Islamist groups also want to install an Islamic state in Syria, while even secular rebel units increasingly speak in ugly sectarian terms that demonize minorities, particularly members of Assad’s Alawite sect. Yet only Jabhat al-Nusra’s tactics were designated as “terrorist” by a U.S. administration that admits it is still trying to understand the various armed elements in the Syrian conflict, fueling all manner of theories about why Jabhat al-Nusra was slapped with the description. Also why time the announcement just as rebels as a whole seem to have gained a renewed momentum? The key, it seems, is the alleged links to al-Qaeda in Iraq….

He said that if anything, Jabhat al-Nusra was keeping itself in check. “Many of the people who are wanted by us, who we have scores to settle with, very important people are present in Turkey, in areas close to the border, we can easily reach them. It would be very easy for us, but we won’t do this and yet they still call us terrorists. We are fighting in Syria, and who are we fighting? The security forces, the shabiha [proregime thugs also listed as terrorists by the U.S.] and those who help the regime.”

At the same time as announcing plans for an Islamic state in Aleppo, Jabhat al-Nusra has begun undertaking relief efforts in the neighborhoods of the city it is based in, seeking a stronger foothold in the local community, even though paradoxically like many rebel groups operating in Aleppo, its fighters are largely not from the city. It has distributed much needed supplies of petrol, diesel, and flour to bakeries. “We are keeping the price of bread at 15 lira [about 21 U.S. cents], which was its true price,” Abu Adnan said, adding that transgressors would be punished according to Shari‘a. (Jabhat al-Nusra has also thus far avoided indiscriminate civilian casualties.)

That’s not to say that Jabhat al-Nusra does not have fierce critics, especially within rebel circles. In addition to its civilian detractors, many more secular-minded fighters are wary of the group’s social conservatism, but insist that its brand of ultraconservative Islam will not find a home in any post-Assad Syria. These fighters often say that they will “deal” with conservative groups like Jabhat al-Nusra later, but that right now they need them in the fight against Assad. Other rebels view Jabhat al-Nusra as a transient jihadi group that will move onto foreign fronts like Afghanistan or Gaza after the fall of Assad.

Abu Adnan smirked when asked to comment about such sentiments, especially by fellow Sunni fighters, whom he dismissed as “the brainwashed.” He repeated that “the idea that we are a global organization or that we have some other goal elsewhere after the fall is not true.” He was emphatic: “We are Syrians.” He admitted that “we also have foreigners who came from other countries, but,” he explained, “that is because the wounds in the Arab lands are the same wound, and the oppression is the same oppression.”

Rocky transition expected in Syria
Karen DeYoung DEC 24 Wash Post

Planning for post-Assad transition has become a race against time that proponents of a democratic Syria fear they are losing. …

“Even secular-minded people who acknowledge the jihadis are a potential threat to them say they’re the only people who helped us and you didn’t help us,” said Malinowski, who returned last week from rebel-held areas of Syria. “There is not much time left to demonstrate to Syrians that the United States was with them when they needed it most.”

U.S. officials say they recognize the urgency of the situation, as rebel military forces increase their hold on Syrian territory amid escalating civilian deaths and mounting humanitarian needs. “But there are legal issues involved” in moving beyond humanitarian aid, a senior administration official said.

Providing the rebel military with the same kind of organizational and training aid being given outside Syria to the political opposition is just as illegal as handing over weapons or sending troops, U.S. officials said.

Without an international mandate from the United Nations or approval from Congress, the United States has no basis on which to aid or interact with the Syrian rebels, under the legal opinion on which the administration has based its policy….

“If we speculate that the regime collapses soon, we have to recognize that we would see a period of fairly intense political competition in which actors on the ground who had established credibility would have a significant advantage” over anyone or anything coming from the outside, Heydemann said. “Military commanders in many cases would assert their authority, at least temporarily.”

“Ultimately, I think, this work has to be understood as an effort to avoid worst-case scenarios, not as an effort to develop ideal structures that will permit Syria to transition immediately and seamlessly into a popular parliamentary democracy. I don’t think anyone envisions that.”

‘This is going to be messy’

What worries Rami Nakhla and others is that the hands-off approach adopted by the United States and its European allies may be ensuring the chaotic outcome they say they seek to avoid. Nakhla’s own apocalyptic prediction is that powerful armed elements, including extremists, will look for a new enemy to retain their power after vanquishing Assad and will settle on neighboring Israel. The West will inevitably oppose them, and “the Syrian people will start to view the international community as their enemy,” Nakhla said in a telephone interview from Turkey. A Damascus university student who slipped out of Syria just as the uprising began in early 2011, he spent months hiding from Syrian intelligence in Beirut while disseminating video and updates from protesters inside Syria to the outside world on the Internet….

Recruited to work on USIP’s project, he is now in Istanbul to set up the independent Day After organization to provide technical assistance to the coalition.

No Easy Route if Assad Opts to Go, or to Stay, in Syria
By ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA SAAD
Published: December 24, 2012

BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria sits in his mountaintop palace as the tide of war licks at the cliffs below.

Explosions bloom over the Damascus suburbs. His country is plunging deeper into chaos. The United Nations’ top envoy for the Syrian crisis, Lakhdar Brahimi, met with Mr. Assad in the palace on Monday in an urgent effort to resolve the nearly two-year-old conflict.

How Mr. Assad might respond to Mr. Brahimi’s entreaty depends on his psychology, shaped by a strong sense of mission inherited from his iron-fisted father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad; his closest advisers, whom supporters describe as a hard-line politburo of his father’s gray-haired security men; and Mr. Assad’s assessment, known only to himself, about what awaits him if he stays — victory, or death at the hands of his people…..

Kurds

Dr. Nikolaos van Dam, the Netherlands’ former ambassador to Iraq, tells Rudaw (listen) that in order to avoid conflict and bloodshed it is better for Iraq’s Kurdistan Region to remain “de facto independent” than to fully claim it. Author of The Struggle for Power in Syria, van Dam believes that, whatever the outcome of the conflict in Syria, the country’s Kurdish population need not fear renewed persecution on ethnic grounds, as in the past. Here is his interview:

The commander of Syria’s military police has defected from President Bashar-al Assad’s government and reportedly fled to Turkey. Lt Gen Abulaziz al-Shalal is one of the highest-ranking officials to join the uprising against the Syrian regime. The army had failed to protect Syrians and turned into “gangs of murder”, the general said […]

Women, the forgotten victims
By Aida Dalati – December 28, 2012

Why haven’t you addressed the lack of Syrian women representatives in the future new Syria coalition ( not from the cliché Islamic point of view just intellectual because we women want to go forward after all we are full participants in this revolution) and why are the big issues like rape and the taking of women as hostages to fish out the freedom fighters not been talked about either in the media.

There is an ugly dirty war against women being perfected by the regime and I think this is a subject (as in Bosnia) that will haunt the world and specifically President Obama’s legacy because the Americans in Washington misunderstandings of today’s Syria is a gigantic foreign policy failure….

My personal story in short

I ended up in Damascus for a year in 2011 as my father died and I was left to deal with probate and burial. [Here is] a glimpse of what a person like myself who is not in bed with the regime is going through. Land and homes [around Damascus] started getting confiscated and rewarded to Shabeeha thugs as early as May 2011,…

A hot shot with the help of my father’s foremen in the Ghouta decided to grab our land just like Assad’s father grabbed my grandfather’s land (40% of it) and I fought back which got me and my brother arrested but not convicted three times. Our properties are in the eastern Ghouta. My brother has established a prosthetic clinic there but with all the trouble we eventually left when the armed Shabeeha began touring the streets of Malki sporting machine guns. My brother ended up going to Idlib by way of Turkey to fit victims of the thousands landmines and the locally made TNT barrel-like  bombs. He returned to the US last week.

Syrian women live in miserable conditions and on top of it all they are without prenatal care and are either victims of rape which is not talked about or worse kidnapped and then tortured and some are hung from a rope to make the freedom fighters talk. If they survive all of this then they may well lose a limb. My brother has seen many amputated incorrectly. The systematic bombing by the regime has done untold harm.

The most destructive weapon is starvation. It is the latest method…. to starve the women and children then leave them out in the cold to freeze to death… This is how the regime hopes to control us.

So many still births from the trauma, so many dead infants because the regime has shut off the electricity from incubators in what is left of our still standing hospitals….

I strongly feel that honest clean aid with accountability under an American/Free Syria umbrella is where President Obama can do good for all mankind. This revolution must not get stolen from the original clean hearted reformist Syrians who started it all. Why is America’s policy always late? Of course this makes it so expensive to mop up especially now that Washington has decided to engage at the tail of the revolution.

Social services for the women and children are issues every red blooded American woman and man will support…congress needs to draft a comprehensive plan to address the silent 50% women of the revolution who are either working in the underground or are direct victims.

Aida Dalati in Beit al-Kamar, the house she restored in Old Damascus.
See her blog

An Alawite woman speaks out against the current situation in Syria. Comparing Assad to Hitler and criticizing his stance as destructive to the Alawite sect. She recounts the brutal mistreatment of 4 girls taken from Homs.

Alawites in the Syrian Revolution  – This Facebook page provides bios of numerous Alawites who have defected or joined the Revolution – ?????? ?? ?????? ???????