Robert Wright (Bloggingheads.tv, and Joshua Landis

• How Syria’s Alawites created their own worst enemy   7:06
• Is there a way out for the Assad regime?   5:09
• The anti-American perspective of a Syrian rebel   6:32
• Why a no-fly zone ain’t happening   5:28
• Joshua: Washington doesn’t care about Syria   5:28
• When Assad might use chemical weapons   1:34

In Ravaged Syria, Beach Town May Be Loyalists’ Last Resort
By an EMPLOYEE of THE NEW YORK TIMES in SYRIA and NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: December 22, 2012

There are no shellings or air raids to interrupt the daily calm. Families pack the cafes lining the town’s seaside corniche, usually abandoned in December to the salty winter winds. The real estate market is brisk. A small Russian naval base provides at least the impression that salvation, if needed, is near.

Many of the new residents are members of the Alawite minority, the same Shiite Muslim sect to which Mr. Assad belongs. The latest influx is fleeing from Damascus, people who have decided that summer villas, however chilly, are preferable to the looming battle for the capital.

“Going to Tartus is like going to a different country,” said a Syrian journalist who recently met residents there. “It feels totally unaffected and safe. The attitude is, ‘We are enjoying our lives while our army is fighting overseas.’ ”

Should Damascus fall to the opposition, Tartus could become the heart of an attempt to create a different country. Some expect Mr. Assad and the security elite will try to survive the collapse by establishing a rump Alawite state along the coast, with Tartus as their new capital.

There have been various signs of preparations.

This month, the governor of Tartus Province announced that experts were studying how to develop a tiny local airfield, now used mostly by crop-dusters, into a full-fledged civilian airport “to boost transportation, business, travel and tourism,” as the official Syrian news agency, SANA, reported…..

Azzam Dayoub, the head of the political office in Beirut, Lebanon, for the underground revolutionary council in Tartus, said there were at least 230,000 war refugees in the city. Others said the population of the entire province, once around 1.2 million, is now closer to two million. Most are Alawites, including countless government employees who have returned to their home province. But many are Sunnis, Christians or others close to the government who no longer felt safe elsewhere.

Mr. Dayoub said Alawites in the town have barred other minorities and members of Syria’s Sunni majority from entering their neighborhoods, and the two sides no longer frequent each other’s stores. The Sunni population has been collecting weapons to fight any future attempt to drive them out, he said…..

Privately, some Alawites dismiss the chances of having their own state. Abu Haidar, 55, the owner of a small import and export business in Tartus, said dreams were one thing, but reality was something else. “What do we have in Tartus Province that would aid us to stand alone as a state?” he asked. “We have neither the infrastructure, nor the resources. It is basically lemon and olive orchards along with a small city with simple services.”

But until the day of reckoning arrives, Tartus seems bent on blocking out the war raging over the horizon….

Air strike on Syria bakery ‘kills dozens‘ – al-Jazeera

At least 90 people queuing at a bakery in the town of Halfaya in Hama were killed in the attack, activists say.

Syria Rebels Threaten To Storm Christian Towns Of Mahrada, Sqailbiyeh
By BASSEM MROUE

Rebels have threated to storm two predominantly Christian towns in central Syria if residents do not “evict” government troops they say are using the towns as a base to attack nearby areas.

A video released by rebels showed Rashid Abul-Fidaa, who identified himself as the commander of the Ansar Brigade for Hama province, calling on locals in Mahrada and Sqailbiyeh to rise up against President Bashar Assad’s forces or prepare for an assault.

“Assad’s gangs in the cities are shelling our villages with mortars and rockets destroying our homes, killing our children and displacing our people,” said Abdul-Fidaa, who wore an Islamic headband and was surrounded by gunmen. “You should perform your duty by evicting Assad’s gangs,” he said. “Otherwise our warriors will storm the hideouts of the Assad gangs.”…

Ethnicity and Naming: Yamin writes

“The Salafi Emirate of Ras al-Ain” by independent journalist Jehad Saleh caught my attention. As a 5-8 year old child, I visited Ras al-Ayn (Ras al-Ein or Ras al-Ain) often before the Baath Party took power in Syria in 1963. My family, relatives, and friends are from Assyrian, Syriac, Armenian, Arab, and Kurd ancestry. I have always heard them saying “Ras al-Ayn”. The 1915-16 Armenian death camps were documented to be in “Ras al-Ayn”. I have never heard the ancient name of “Serekani” being used. Serekani was founded by the Assyrian and Syriac civilization thousands years ago. Now the Kurds want to spread this name which is fine but they should not claim it as a part of their history. This is annoying. It is Ras al-Ayn or the ancient Assyrian town of Serekani. It is Semite not Indo-European. The Arab Baath Party did not invent the name Ras al-Ayn.

At least 200 members of a Syrian regime force deployed to protect Damascus’ international airport have defected as clashes broke out near the presidential palace in the capital, a member of the opposition military told Al Arabiya channel yesterday.

Memri

Abu Ahmad (right, in civilian clothes)

In a December 15, 2012 article in The National, an English-language daily published in the UAE, journalist Balint Szlanko presents an interview with Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a high-ranking military commander of the jihad group Jabhat Al-Nusra in Syria. In the interview, Abu Ahmed describes his vision for a Syria ruled by Shari’a law.The following is the full text of the interview:

“The man wearing the balaclava had eyes that never stopped smiling. Reclining on a pillow in an otherwise empty room, this burly, 41-year-old commander of Jabhat Al-Nusra – the most fearsome jihadi group in Syria – exuded an almost disturbing calm, in marked contrast to the loud, chatty air that often characterises more mainstream groups of the Free Syrian Army…”

An Al-Hayat report presents information on the Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihad group Jabhat Al-Nusra (JN), which is operating in Syria, based on interviews with its operatives and with field commanders in the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The following are the main points of the report.

On December 18, 2012, Khatab, a member of the leading jihadi forum Shumoukh Al-Islam, announced that Muhib Ru’yat Al-Rahman, a prominent writer on the major jihadi forums, had died in Syria. Khatab, described as a “student at Shumoukh’s College of Media,” provided no further details about the death of Muhib, whose last post was dated from two weeks ago, a day or two prior to the shutdown of all major jihadi forums.

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Tunisian fighter in Syria Claims that the Syrian Free Army Killed 124 Tunisian and Libyan Fighters in Homs – Arabic (Tunisian TV)

Rigorous new sanctions against Iran’s banking, shipping and industrial sectors took effect yesterday, as part of the European Union’s effort to force Tehran to scale back its nuclear programme….they include bans on financial transactions, sales to Iran of shipping equipment and steel, and imports of Iranian natural gas, adding to earlier bans, including on the Opec producer’s oil. They reflect heightened concern over Iran’s nuclear goals and Israeli threats to attack Iranian atomic installations if diplomacy and other measures fail to deliver a solution.

The Triumph and Irrelevance of Meta-Narratives Over Syria: “Rohna Dahiyyah”
Dec 17 2012
by Bassam Haddad

….The claims put forth by myself and the myriad of other Syrian analysts, including the “instant” and “sudden” analysts who keep popping up like popcorn from the oddest places (I found two in my bathroom closet), can be right or wrong, or conditionally so. But they might be on- or off-mark for the wrong reasons to the extent that one is divorced from the local context, and divorce comes in shades, from the cold calculating “methodist,” to the uninformed sympathizer, to gatekeepers of interests far removed from the well-being of Syria and Syrians. Yet, they all participate and play with equal enthusiasm. Syria is a game now, played by states, institutions, analysts, activists, journalists, bloggers, tweeters, and artists who are often only remotely connected to the real lives of real people enduring real conditions there. We produce snapshots of reality that are divorced from the cumulative history of pain and experience that have led to that reality…..Thanks to the armed groups who have now perfected—and sometimes surpassed on individual counts—the perennial brutality of the regime, one is hard-pressed in Syria to find a cause or a foreseeable scenario to cling to. Under such conditions, daily matters reign supreme over meta-narratives that are not necessarily unimportant, but have become thoroughly irrelevant for most Syrians. Hence, that smile that many local Syrians draw on their face in the face of meta-narratives spewed by all of us on the other side—to which people click “like,” or not.

Syria ‘secures chemical weapons stockpile’ – AL-jAZEERA

Russia says government in Damascus consolidated its chemical weapons in “one or two” locations amid rebel onslaught.

To Save Syria, We Need Russia
By DIMITRI K. SIMES and PAUL J. SAUNDERS NYtimes Op-Ed Contributors
Published: December 21, 2012

Letter from Europe
In Paris, Longing for Damascus
By CELESTINE BOHLEN
Published: December 21, 2012

PARIS — Maha Assabalani can’t get Damascus out of her mind.

A Yemeni citizen of Iranian origin and living in Paris, Ms. Assabalani, 27, spent just two years in the Syrian capital before she had to flee on a snowy day last February, crossing the border to Lebanon, with little idea of where to go next.

Yet Damascus has marked her forever. The day before she left, she watched in horror as Syrian security forces rounded up 15 friends and colleagues at the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. Five are still in Syrian prisons, held without charge. ….. She was released and went first to a friend’s house, before returning home at midnight to face her father. “He wasn’t happy,” she said. Not only had she lied to him about her job, but she had crossed a forbidden line. “He never wanted any of us to be in politics, and he considers activism to be politics,” she said.

The next day, she left Syria, borrowing money from friends. Her father refused to help. To this day, he will not speak to her. …

Can Turkey’s ‘Soft’ Power Work in Syria?
Huffington Post 12/20/2012
Daniel Wagner and Giorgio Cafiero

Neo-Ottomanism and Kemalism are competing ideologies that have driven Turkey’s foreign policy for many years. Neo-Ottomanism is focused on promoting ‘soft power’- ensuring Turkey is well-placed diplomatically, politically and economically to take on a larger role in the Middle East and beyond. Kemalism seeks to preserve the secular legacy of Turkey’s founder (Atatürk), and is focused on the Kurdish nationalist threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity and regional security. Foreign relations have for years been conducted with the goal of minimizing this threat and preserving the secular foundation of the modern Turkish state…..Until the onset of the Spring, Turkey’s soft power engagement with the Middle East was reasonably successful.

Since that time, it has been as powerless to shape the course of events as virtually every other nation – and its zero problems foreign policy has become a foreign policy filled with problems, from the crisis in Syria to a resurgent Kurdish movement to ongoing tension with Israel. Ultimately, Turkey is now in the same boat as the majority of Western countries, and other countries in the region – it does not know how the evolving political change in the region will ultimately turn out, whether the ultimate successor regimes are likely to be pro-Western or Turkish, or what the impact on the regional power balance will be…..21 months into the Syrian uprising, the limits of Turkey’s capacity to influence the course of events inside Syria have been demonstrated.

If the Syrian crisis leads to the establishment of a semi-autonomous Kurdish state in northern Syria, whereby the Kurdistan Workers’ Party acquires a safe haven from where it may launch attacks against Turkey’s armed forces, the ongoing turmoil in southeastern Turkey could greatly expand. If a desperate Assad wages a chemical attack in Aleppo – prompting a NATO military operation in Syria – Turkey could find itself at war with forces supported by the countries Turkey depends on for natural gas imports – Russia and Iran. Furthermore, if radical Salafist factions (including Jabhat Al-Nusra, the Ahrar Al-Sham Brigades or the Suqur Al-Sham Division) were to acquire power within Syria, new security dilemmas will arise for all states in the region.

In sum, the Syrian crisis has pushed Turkey away from its idealistic “zero problems with neighbors” approach to foreign policy and more toward a pro-democracy, moderate, Sunni Islamist foreign policy….. Turkey is betting that Assad will fall, and it wants to be first in line to influence the successor government. There’s nothing ‘soft’ about that approach to foreign policy, nor is it likely to result in zero problems going forward. It may all backfire, depending on who takes control in Damascus.

Which Islamists?: Religion and the Syrian Civil War
Adnan Zulfiqar Interviewed by Haroon Moghul,December 19, 2012

Zulfiqar recently traveled to Turkey, meeting with Syrian opposition figures, religious scholars, rebel fighters, Turkish officials and Turkish think tanks, in an effort to get a handle on what’s happening in the Syrian civil war as it approaches the two-year mark.

How did Salafis come to take such a dominant role?

does the Syrian opposition in general want a more democratic Syria?

With the rebel push for Damascus, is Syria about to fall? Everyone is bracing for a prolonged fight. But Assad cannot hold power without Sunni support, so a seemingly intractable situation could change if the Sunnis of Damascus begin to openly abandon him.

Some fear that if the regime falls, there will be a repeat of Afghanistan, with competing militias and warlords. I think these are uninformed predictions.

When speaking of Islamists, for example, the first question should be “which ones?” There’s a fair amount of diversity among Islamists despite some ideological similarities.

Across the Middle East, people strongly identify with Islam and in many countries this identification has been suppressed in one way or another by authoritarian regimes. Having secured their freedom, it shouldn’t be surprising that the people, in places like Egypt and Tunisia, are strongly asserting their religious identity.

Syria’s Next Problem
By Adnan A. Zulfiqar, December 22, 2012, Diplomat

Sectarian conflict might dominate coverage of Syria today, but internal Sunni dynamics will define its tomorrow. Tensions between Alawis and Sunnis won’t be settled over night, but the demographics in Syria do not suggest a prolonged conflict similar to Iraq or Lebanon.

…An impending power vacuum is inevitable so focus must shift to the competitors aiming to fill that space. The common consensus is that the opposition’s political and military factions are poised to battle for authority. In reality, this competition highlights a more fundamental confrontation: traditionalist Sunnism versus its more puritanical Salafi strain. …Al-Khatib, a Sunni traditionalist, can counter the growing appeal of Salafism. Rebel militias are dominated by an ideological spectrum of Salafi fighters, but are united by both the cause and their interpretive approach to Islam’s foundational texts. Despite Salafism never having mass appeal in Syrian society, there is potential for that to change.

….. Salafis do dominate the fighting force, but revolutions only involve a fraction of the people; elections involve many more. As Egypt has taught us, people’s support for revolution is not always an endorsement of the revolutionaries. It is also true that Salafism has never had mass appeal in Syria and, more importantly, opposition to it has been rooted less in sensational caricatures than in its religious heterodoxy. Yet, prolonged conflict changes a society. Already support for Salafis appears to be far higher than before; people may not always reward revolutionaries, but they don’t often discard them either.

… The revolution is rebranding Syrian Salafis, even the extreme ones…..The United States’ recent labeling of Jabhat al-Nusra, the most prominent Salafi militia, as a terrorist group only bolstered its mass appeal. As the conflict prolongs, the Sunni balance of power will shift resulting in serious long-term consequences. A speedy end to the conflict must be the highest priority.

…First, we should increase our support for local councils in opposition-held northern Syria. Not only is the north a vital safe haven for Syrian civilians, but its security will contribute to Syria’s future stability.

Second, we must engage in symbolic acts of public diplomacy. High profile visits to refugee camps or inviting Mu’az al-Khatib to the White House…

Finally, a forward-located embassy near the Syrian border in Jordan or Turkey would not only demonstrate serious engagement,

Adnan A. Zulfiqar is a Fellow at the Truman National Security Project.

Syria bags Pyrrhus victory on the soccer pitch
By James M. Dorsey

Supporters of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad portrayed this weekend’s winning of the West Asian soccer championship by defeating Iraq as a unifying, national achievement against all odds. Yet, Syria’s success 22 months into an increasingly brutal civil war hardly constitutes the equivalent of Iraq’s winning of the Asian Cup in 2007 at the peak of that country’s sectarian violence.

Syrians turn to black humor amid misery

The letter from a Syrian child offers Santa Claus some advice for his visit this year. He should not come in his sleigh, because “not even a fly” can now survive the fight for the skies going on between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and rebel opponents. But most important of all, Santa must not wear his traditional outfit.

Can Lebanon Survive the Syrian Crisis?
Paul Salem Paper, December 2012, Carnegie Paper

From Bartolo’s excellent new blog: Syria News – Dec 23 (Take a look)

• Russia: Chemical weapons under control by the Syrian government – Yahoo! News
• Lavrov says neither side will win Syrian civil war, Russia would be unable to persuade Assad to quit if it tried – Yahoo! News
• Syria’s ‘No-Nonsense’ Air Defenses Praised by Russian General – RIA Novosti
• US – Russia reach agreement on al-Assad ouster: Opposition sources – Asharq Alawsat 
• Execution of Ukrainian woman in Syria postponed until December 26: Voice of Russia
• Syrian TV cameraman assassinated outside Damascus by ‘armed groups’ — RT
• Car bomb kills five in Damascus: Syrian Observatory – Yahoo! News
• VIDEO: Islamist Insurgents Announce ‘Syrian Islamic Front’  – YouTube
• VIDEO: Turks in Antakya Protest Against Turkish Government Interference in Syria – YouTube
• Qatar Provides Syrian Terrorists with US-Made Stinger Missiles – abna.ir

Foreign Policy: Syrian rebels gain ground in Hama province

Syrian rebels gained ground in the central Hama province on Thursday, taking control of parts of the strategic town of Morek, which lies along the route from Damascus to Aleppo. Victory over President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Morek would allow the rebels to cut off government supply lines into the northern Idlib province, where rebels have made sizeable gains. Rebels also laid siege to the Alawite town of al-Tleisia, contributing to fears that the conflict could become even more deeply sectarian.

Meanwhile, additional reports emerged detailing the use of cluster bombs by government forces, including a Dec. 12 attack on the town of Marea, which deliberately targeted civilians. The Syrian army has also resumed firing Scud ballistic missiles at rebel strongholds, the New York Times reports. In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin, long a stalwart ally of Assad, further distanced himself from the Syria government, saying Russia would not defend it “at any price.” Putin remained steadfastly opposed to foreign intervention, but told journalists, “We are not concerned with the fate of Assad’s regime.”

A new U.N. Human Rights Council report warns of widening sectarian conflict in Syria. It said that communities are arming themselves because they feel at risk, and “ethnic and religious minority groups have increasingly aligned themselves with parties to the conflict, deepening sectarian divides.” The most severe division is between Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority and President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect, a Shiite Muslim minority. However other sects are increasing getting pulled into the conflict. Many opposition fighters interviewed in the inquiry were aligned with Islamist militias rather than the Free Syrian Army. Additionally, al Qaeda is capitalizing on deteriorating conditions in Syria and is building its presence. The al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front, recently designated by the United States as a terrorist organization, is exploiting divisions and recruiting Sunnis. The Islamist militant group has claimed responsibility for deadly bombings in Damascus and Aleppo.

Turkey plans to start transporting troops to and from domestic military bases by air, following a string of deadly attacks on convoys by the PKK.

U.N. seeks $1.5 billion to help Syria residents and refugees

A Syrian-American sent me this argument for why he believes Damascus will take longer to fall than Aleppo.

The Syrian regime wants to continue fighting to keep its Sunni supporters. An Alawi will face 5 to 6 Sunni in a future Syria if the opposition triumphs. Now he faces 3 to 4 or 4 to 5. Alawites and minorities have the support of almost their size in Sunnis. The Syrian Regime even today has the support of 30 percent of the Sunnis in Lebanon. I think this is why the Syrian Regime will continue to fight in Damascus, Homs, and Hama where the Syrian Regime has advantages. It anchors to the mountains to the west of Hama and Homs. The Damascus battle is difficult for the opposition as the Syrian Regime there anchors to Israel and Lebanon. Assad will continue fighting until the elections in 2014 when he will have half the Syrians with him.

Damascus is anchored to Lebanon and connected to Iran through the Shiites in Iraq and thus Damascus can not be taken from the Syrian Regime. Aleppo and the north are anchored to Turkey and this is why the Free Syrian Army has the advantage there. Also Damascus has popular committees, Alawite neighborhoods, and considerable supporting neighborhoods. Aleppo has considerable supporting neighborhoods but no popular committees and Alawite neighborhoods. These are the differences between the battles in Damascus and Aleppo.

Assad’s Cash Problem: Will Syria’s Dwindling Reserves Bring Down the Regime?
By Vivienne WaltDec. 21, 2012 – Time

With more than 40,000 people killed in Syria’s devastating war, and about three million people driven from their homes, Western and Arab leaders are grappling with one question: How and when does all this end? The answer, say some, might lie not in the horrific bloodshed but in a simpler factor: money. Economists say President Bashar Assad’s regime has effectively gone broke, and is running out of ways to raise revenues and keep most of its soldiers properly fed and paid. “The economy is the basis of everything,” says Samir Seifan, a prominent Syrian economist who fled last year. He spoke by phone from Dubai. “Without services, boots, money, you cannot do anything. If the government cannot finance the army, they [soldiers] will simply go away.”

That tipping point, in which the government faces all-out financial collapse, seems to be drawing near—between three to six months from now, according to the calculations of Seifan and others who have examined Syria’s finances. Already, Assad has abandoned about 40% of the country’s territory to rebel forces, withdrawing his troops from the ground while his jets continue aerial bombing, apparently because the army is too thinly stretched to defend both rural areas and the government-held pockets of Damascus and Syria’s most populous city, Aleppo. And while Assad appears still to have considerable resources in Damascus, the economic indicators suggest his country is in free-fall, and that he has little way to generate fresh cash—at least not without appeals to allies. …..

Al Qaeda grows powerful in Syria as endgame nears
ReutersBy Khaled Yacoub Oweis | Reuters – Thu, 20 Dec, 2012

…..”NOT A MONOLITHIC GROUP”

The identity of al-Nusra’s leadership is not clear. A shadowy figure known as Abu Muhammad al-Golani – whose nationality is not known – has been named by some as the head.

But an Islamist opposition campaigner who toured northern and central Syria a few days ago and met Nusra commanders said the group operates more like an umbrella organisation with little coordination between units in different regions.

“They are not a monolithic group. The nature of Nusra in Damascus is more tolerant than Idlib. They have a real popular base in Idlib, where most Nusra members are Syrians, as opposed to Aleppo and Damascus.”

He said it did not appear to be seeking to impose Taliban-style control. “Many rebels I have met say they joined al-Nusra because the group has weapons, mostly seized from raids, and that they will go back home after the revolt,” he added.

But many centrist opposition campaigners fear that al-Nusra will turn its guns on any non-Islamist order that could come if Assad was deposed. “The big question is how to contain Nusra in a post-Assad Syria,” said an opposition figure linked to jihadist groups, who did not want to be identified.

“Al-Nusra is the type of group that could declare the most pious cleric a heretic and kill him in the middle of a mosque just because he does not share its view,” he said.

Nusra members are estimated to number in the thousands and are particularly strong in the northern region of Aleppo and Idlib, where they have joined or carried out joint operations with Islamist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham and Liwa al-Tawhid unit.

In and around Damascus they are fewer in number but remain potent, and are only 20 kilometers (12 miles) at some points from the Golan Heights front with Israel.

Abu Munther, an engineer turned rebel who operates on the southern edge of Damascus and goes to Jordan to meet other rebels, said in Amman that al-Nusra numbered hundreds of people in Damascus, as opposed to thousands in the north.

But those numbers could grow. Al-Mujahideen brigade in the southern Tadamun neighborhood of Damascus declared its allegiance to al-Nusra after dissatisfaction with Arab-backed military groups headed by defector officers.

Another opposition figure, who did not want to be named, said international intelligence agencies were trying to curb Nusra’s influence in Damascus and the southern Hauran Plain, where they are near Israel and close to the Jordanian border.

“Western intelligence agencies are realising that the Nusra is the biggest threat in a post-Assad Syria and are devoting more resources to deal with the threat,” he said.

“For the first time al Qaeda is within striking distance of Israel,” he said. “Many are realising that the best that could be done for now is to contain them in north Syria – even if the area risks becoming an Islamist emirate of sorts – while trying to build a civic form of government in and around Damascus.”

All (Syrian) Politics Is Local
How jihadists are winning hearts and minds in Syria.
BY HASSAN HASSAN | DECEMBER 20, 2012

…. Jabhat al-Nusra currently controls most of the vital sectors in Deir Ezzor, including oil, gas, sugar, and flour. Its source of funding is unclear, although I was told by residents that Gulf nationals with tribal links to the region support most of the fighting groups in the province. According to residents, the group’s local emirs are typically foreigners, while the majority of the rank-and-file are Syrians from the region. Many people are drawn to the group by virtue of its effectiveness in fighting the regime and delivering public services….

Jabhat al-Nusra is also cultivating links with local communities. It maintains a relief program that works to win hearts and minds among the population, in tandem with its military operations. Its fighters also have a reputation for professionalism: While the Free Syrian Army (FSA) tends to accept volunteers regardless of their personal merits, Jabhat al-Nusra’s cadres are perceived to be more disciplined and concerned with local communities’ needs….

As the Assad regime crumbles, all Syrian politics is now local. If the world wants to ensure that the country is not a breeding ground for extremists or another dictatorship, it should reach out to local leaders determining events on the ground. Victory in Syria does not only mean winning the battle in Damascus, it means establishing good governance in hundreds of cities and towns, like those dotted across Deir Ezzor.

New FSA chief facing resistance from local commanders, says Al Nusra fighers “are not terrorists”- alarabiya.

Exclusive: Has Syria Become Al-Qaeda’s New Base For Terror Strikes On Europe? – Die Welt

Syria Unleashes Cluster Bombs on Town, Punishing Civilians
By C.J. Chivers | The New York Times

Caught Between al Qaida and Iran, U.S. Struggles Over Syria Conflict
By Hannah Allam | McClatchy Newspapers

The bloodshed in Syria has continued for so long that extremist forces have taken charge, with U.S. officials saying they now face two familiar enemies in the struggle to find a resolution: al Qaida in Iraq cells and Iranian-backed sectarian militias…. opposition groups who control the Aleppan countryside are deploying a vice-and-virtue police to enforce a deeply conservative interpretation of Islamic law.

The opposition insists that the new force is the revolution’s version of a civilian police squad, whose primary purpose is to fight crime, particularly those committed by undisciplined members of the armed factions. In fact, there are those who support its creation for this very reason.

One local resident, for example, argued that “there were a number of transgressions committed by some Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters, and this police force will punish those involved – their door is open to whoever wants to lodge a complaint. We shouldn’t judge them before we’ve tried them.”

Then, rumors began to circulate that such a formation was patrolling the streets of the town of al-Bab in Aleppo’s countryside and herding people into mosques during prayer time and preventing women from driving cars. The opposition quickly denied the news…..Secular opposition activists were shocked by the news, with some suggesting that the whole affair was fabricated by the regime.

Syria: Religious Police Patrol Aleppo’s Countryside
Al Akhbar English – Basel Dayoub

The Syrian opposition groups that have taken control of Aleppo’s countryside are deploying a religious police force to enforce new laws, such as barring women from driving and making prayer compulsory…..

Putin: Assad fate not main concern

Russian president seen to be distancing himself from Syrian counterpart as he says Syria’s fate is more important.
Putin said he wanted to ensure that any solution to the conflict in Syria must prevent the opposition and government forces just swapping roles and continuing to fight indefinitely.

“We are not concerned about the fate of Assad’s regime. We understand what is going on there,” Putin said.

“We are worried about a different thing – what next? We simply don’t want the current opposition, having become the authorities, to start fighting the people who are the current authorities and become the opposition – and (we don’t want) this to go on forever.”

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Worldview: Time Nearly Gone to Lead on Syria
By Trudy Rubin, Inquirer Opinion Columnist
The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday, December 16, 2012

As President Obama enters his second term, Syria has become the most urgent test of his foreign policy leadership and style

If Obama finally takes ownership of the effort to unseat Bashar al-Assad (which would not require U.S. troops or planes), there’s still a chance of preventing a Syrian implosion. If the administration leads from in front, it may be possible to head off a strategic disaster that would endanger Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Israel.

Yet early signs indicate that Obama will continue the muddled Syria policy of his first term, while continuing to lead from way, way behind.

Our Syria policy is unclear to both our enemies and our allies, as well as to the Syrian rebels. The administration has long called for Assad’s ouster, but has not really pursued it. It has chased a diplomatic option, even though Assad’s main ally, Moscow, won’t dump him until it believes he is virtually defeated. As for sending Patriot missile batteries to Turkey, that has symbolic value, but it won’t affect the situation on the ground in Syria.

Washington has outsourced the arming of rebel groups to Gulf states that prefer Islamist fighters. Meantime, the United States won’t help arm secular and moderate rebel commanders. So do we want Assad gone or don’t we? Do we want an Islamist Syria or don’t we?

Ordinary Syrians are also cynical about the U.S. “red line” on the use of chemical weapons. They feel it gives Assad a virtual green light to use any other weapon against civilians.

No wonder a Turkish official told me during a recent visit to Ankara: “We want more clarity in the United States position. People expect more from the United States.”

This lack of clarity haunts U.S. policy even after the election. Last week, the United States, with European and Arab allies, recognized a new Syrian civilian opposition council that it had helped godfather. The hope is that this group will provide a means to funnel more humanitarian aid into Syria. (Since U.S. and allied officials were able to organize this group after our presidential election, one wonders why they couldn’t have done it before.)

However, U.S. policymakers still insist this new civilian group – not the rebel fighters – is the key to overthrowing Assad. The new council supposedly will be able to convince Assad’s Alawite sect and other minorities that they can safely abandon their support for the regime. U.S. officials also hope the council will be able to assert civilian control over rebel fighters

Such hopes are badly misplaced. Civilians alone cannot determine the Syrian endgame. Unless Obama’s policy becomes more robust – and more convincing to the region – the Syrian conflict will spiral out of control.

The arguments for not arming the rebels are long outdated. If we were concerned weapons might fall into the wrong hands, we should have put more resources into vetting rebel commanders. U.S. officials have been permitted to meet with Free Syrian Army commanders only in the last few months. And from what I hear, the amount of CIA resources devoted to the task is still underwhelming.

Even now, there is plenty of information about key Syrian rebel commanders who are secular or moderate Muslims to whom weapons could be directed. But they are skeptical at best, and hostile at worst, about U.S. intentions.

Col. Abdul-Jabbar Akidi, a secular senior rebel commander in Aleppo, told me in November: “Syrians believe that America is with Bashar Assad. America does not support us.”

It’s no wonder he feels that way, since we have outsourced delivery of weapons to the Qataris and Saudis. By doing so, we’ve ensured that the lion’s share goes to hard-line Salafi militias or those linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Saudis were handed control of a major meeting of Free Syrian Army commanders last week in Turkey with the goal of setting up a unified command. Early reports say the command includes many with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists. Why should we be surprised?

Perhaps the strongest indicator of a policy muddle was last week’s designation of the Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist organization. True, the group has some al-Qaeda links. But it has waged and won some of the toughest battles against Assad’s forces, which is why most rebel commanders oppose the U.S. designation.

Echoing many other rebel commanders, Col. Akidi told me: “We are not united with jihadi groups, but we fight together with all people who fight Assad.” For the same reason, the president of the new civilian rebel coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib, disagreed publicly with the blacklisting of the group.

If the United States were arming non-Islamist rebels, they wouldn’t need Jabhat al-Nusra’s help. If the administration weren’t outsourcing to the Saudis and Qataris, non-Islamist fighters would be in a stronger position.

Instead, U.S. officials have sowed confusion over whom they support. They have undermined secular fighters and given a boost to those with beards. And they have confused our friends and opponents as to our aims, making a negotiated settlement less likely as neither Moscow nor Tehran thinks we are serious about ousting Assad. The Syrian dictator probably doesn’t think so, either, which will encourage him to try to hold on in Damascus.

The longer this conflict lasts, and the stronger the Islamists become, the more likely it is that sectarian war will spill over Syria’s borders. The only chance of preventing that is to speed up the endgame. That would require Obama to convince all parties, friend and foe, that he wants Assad gone.

Rhetoric will be no substitute for concrete actions. The time remaining is short.

Dear Syria, Save Damascus’ Old City
Graeme Wood
December 18, 2012 |

I am confident that my favorite places in the Old City of Damascus still exist—after all, they’ve been there for centuries—but I am less confident that they will exist in recognizable form in a month or two. The rebels are at the gates of the Old City, and there is reason to doubt that the impending assault on Damascus will spare it. When confronted earlier in the war with the danger of pulverizing Syria’s heritage, the Assad regime has achieved a perfect record of unsentimentality. The Crac des Chevaliers—the world’s best-preserved Crusader castle—suffered shelling, and the ancient center of Aleppo has been pounded into dust. (Assad’s lack of sentimentality about the more than 40,000 dead civilians goes without saying.)

Damascus’s Old City easily surpasses these other sites for cultural importance, and it too could face ruin. So far, almost no fighting has reached the Old City. But its population is diverse, and its Christian Quarter includes religious minorities who have profited from the secular Baathist regime. In addition, much of the Old City’s inhabitants immigrated in recent generations from impoverished rural areas such as Hauran, and the from the outskirts of the capital. These areas are rebel strongholds—notably Daraa, the birthplace of the rebellion. This mix of rebel sympathizers and regime loyalists could make the Old City contested ground……

Breaking the Syria Stalemate
Amr Al-Azm
December 18, 2012

There are two possible trajectories for the current Syrian crisis. The first is a purely military scenario in which the opposition forces engage the regime in a bitter war of attrition until its annihilation. The success of such a course of action, however, is difficult to guarantee, and the cost to the country…is likely to be catastrophic. In fact the more probable outcome is a protracted bloody stalemate, leading to the collapse of the state, sectarian genocide and the fragmentation of the country with significant blowback into neighbouring states such as Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

The second trajectory would feature a political resolution. Negotiations would bring about the departure of the Bashar Assad’s regime along with a peaceful transition to democracy. Such a political outcome is the one clearly favored by the international community and was strongly endorsed at the latest friends of Syria meeting held in Marrakesh on December 12 both in statement and in action (by not publicly agreeing to the provision of any military assistance to the Syrian opposition). It is also the option that should be favored by the Syrian people since they too have no interest in seeing their country succumb to the fate described above.

There are certain conditions that must prevail in order for the preferred political outcome to have any chance of success. …

First, the regime and its core pillars of loyalist military support have yet to acknowledge that their situation has become critical, let alone perilous…..

In order to bring about such a significant shift, the opposition military forces need to acquire the necessary qualitative resources to topple those first dominoes and break this military stalemate.  Advanced anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons as well as secure communication equipment are a prerequisite but not sufficient. More importantly, the opposition must have in place a credible negotiating body to engage the Assad regime and hold them accountable for the enforcement of whatever provisions for a peaceful transition are agreed upon, notably the safety of the core Alawite areas and their protection from retribution attacks. This last point is of major concern to the Alawite minority that forms the rump of the loyalist forces to regime. It is likely to be a deal breaker if it cannot be guaranteed….

Recently some progress has been made with regards to the emergence of a credible negotiating body from the opposition.  The National Coalition for Revolutionary Forces and the Syrian Opposition, also known as SOC, was formed in Doha on November 8-11. SOC represents the unification of various opposition factions under a twelve-point agreement plan…

The unfortunate overpopulation of SNC members in the coalition means that the SNC’s rampant malfeasance and personal bickering will be transferred to the new coalition. The SOC will be stricken with the very malaise that afflicted its predecessor.

Such challenges have significantly hampered the ability of the coalition to agree on the makeup of a transitional technocratic government. In spite of cajoling and intense pressure that had been brought to bear on the SOC leadership, no transitional government was established in time for the December 12 Friends of Syria meeting held in Marrakesh….

it would also need to have some sort of command or influence over the opposition’s armed components. At the very least, the technocratic entity must be able to guarantee the acceptance of any binding agreements made on behalf of the opposition as a whole.

The formation of this joint military council is significant because it enables coordination between the SOC, the emerging technocrat government, and the opposition’s brigades. There are indications of efforts toward uniting the main military brigades of the opposition, with the recent announcement of the formation of the Higher Council Joint Military Command headed by General Salim Idriss. In their press statement the council declared its commitment to freedom, justice and equality and identified itself as Islamic and moderate. The new joint military council has five regional commands covering operations across Syria.

So, if slowly, the conditions needed to bring about the Syrian regime’s necessary shift in position are gradually being checked off, such as the apparent coalescence of the opposition’s disparate political and military entities, along with their latest advances on the ground around Aleppo and Damascus….

The Salafi Emirate of Ras al-Ain
December 20, 2012 – Fikra Forum
by Jehad Saleh

Serekani is a small Kurdish town whose name was Arabized and dubbed “Ras al-Ain” under the dictatorship of Hafez al-Assad. With a population under 50,000, the majority of whom are Kurdish, in addition to Arab and Christian, Ras al-Ain was considered one of the exemplary cities of the peaceful, civilian-led revolution. Since the beginning, along with other Kurdish regions, it has reflected the true civilian face of the revolution and the desire to establish a civil state in Syria through protests, local councils, and aid to refugees fleeing from bombings and massacres committed by the regime in Deir al-Zour, Homs, Raqqa, and other cities. Today, however, Ras al-Ain has been transformed into a Salafi emirate, perhaps under Turkey’s tarbush….

Turkish government fears the popular armed groups loyal to the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and their attempts to act as an alternative governing and administrative body to the region, in addition to their support of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Therefore, Turkey supported fighters and Islamic-Salafi brigades through an agreement with the heads of Arab clans living in Istanbul to control the Kurdish area, whose gateway is the city of Ras al-Ain.

Another Turkish concern with regards to Syria’s Kurdish region is its wealth in oil, gas, and grain, its racial and ethnic diversity, and its geographic and geopolitical reach toward both Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey’s Kurdish majority areas. Strategically, Turkey is motivated to create ethnic tension between the Kurds, the Arabs, and the Christians in order to weaken the Kurds politically within the revolution, and therefore distance them from participating in the post-Assad era to determine the future of Syria.

It seems possible that, with the help of Turkish intelligence, the jihadis entered the city from the Turkish border under the pretense of fighting the regime and liberating the province of Hasaka, when in reality, the goal was to fight the PKK and create chaos within the Kurdish community. This angered the Kurdish people, as well as Arabs and Christians, who refuse to coexist with jihadis under the name of the FSA who will turn the region into a battlefield for settling accounts and confrontations between Turkey and the PKK.

Caught between the jihadi forces, Turkey, and supporters of the regime in this grave situation, the region is heading for an unknown fate, which could result in ethnic war in the interest of the regime and Turkey, and against the true goals of the revolution.

Jehad Saleh is an independent Syrian Kurdish journalist based in Washington, DC.

Is an Alawite State in Syria’s Future?
December 20, 2012 By Cecily Hilleary @VOAHilleary

It is an idea that was first introduced more than a year ago: If President Bashar al-Assad were to fall or be remove himself from power, would Alawites, for decades a ruling minority in Syria, retreat to their traditional western mountain enclaves and form a breakaway state?  As rebels gain more ground in Syria, so too does the idea of an Alawite homeland as an antidote against sectarian violence that could become, in the words of one former U.S. diplomat, “the world’s next genocide.”  Senior reporter Cecily Hilleary spoke about the prospects of an Alawite retreat from Syria’s capital, Damascus, with Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies and associate professor at the University of Oklahoma.

Vote on new poll, displayed in left hand column of Syria Comment: “Will Assad have lost Damascus by June 1, 2013?”

In Hama, all the battalions and brigades of the city’s countryside are now participating in the battle for liberation, according the the Hama Revolutionists Command Council, including those from Kafranbooda, Kernaz, Kafarzeita, Helfaya, Tayebt al-Imam, Qal’at al-Madeeq, al-Ghab Plain, al-Latamne and Khattab. Government helicopters and artillery are bombarding rebel held towns.

Scorched Earth Policy

“Will Damascus be destroyed?” a friend asked. The regime increasingly seems to be pursuing a scorched earth policy.  Assad will dig in to retain Damascus as rebels try to take the city, leading to its destruction, much as happened in Aleppo. Assad may believe that Damascus must be reduced to rubble before he abandons it, otherwise the rebels will have gained a goose capable of laying the proverbial golden egg. He cannot abandon to the rebels anything that produces money or is able to sustain a large population. If he does, defeat of his army becomes more likely. Because Alawis fear they may be destroyed, they are likely to weaken their opponents in every way possible, even if it means pursuing a scorched earth policy. Fortunately, Syrians are not known for executing plans or policies in any systematic way.

Latakia will surely become the focal-point of the Sunni-Alawi contest for power. It is hard to imagine that there will not be ethnic cleansing. At least %60 of the city’s inhabitants are Sunni, but it is the capital of the predominately Alawi coastal region. Today it is calm, but the storm is gathering.

Latakia is a key port for the Syrian Hinterland and Aleppo. It is necessary for exporting the farm and industrial output of the city and its hinterland. The port of Alexandretta used to be the main port for Aleppo, but it was replaced by Latakia once the Turks took Antioch and Alexandretta in 1938. For this reason, Sunnis will need to make a drive for it. They will also understand that it is the key to any future Alawite enclave and must be denied to Assad and his army.

The Alawites see Latakia to be essential to their future in Syria. It is the political capital of the Alawite region. Qurdaha, the Assads’ hometown, is a village of Latakia, dependent on it in every way. Latakia is the home of most of the Shabiha elites as well as leading Alawite families.

It is the political capital of the Alawite coastal region and thus essential to the future of the coastal region that the Alawites will fall back on. It was the capital of the Alawite State under the French Mandate and remains psychologically central to the Alawite community, which is based along the coast.

Syrian rebels cut off Bashar al-Assad’s escape route
By Ruth Sherlock, Latakia province, 17 Dec 2012, Telegraph

Could the West buy Assad’s Plan B?
HUSSEIN IBISH, December 18, 2012

….There’s almost no chance the regime of Bashar al-Assad can survive, as even its Russian sponsors are beginning to publicly admit. The de facto resurrection of some version of the Alawite mini-state of the 1920s and 30s seemed a deeply implausible option at the outset of the conflict. But as the government has enforced the logic of sectarian and communal massacre, atrocities and fanaticism, prospects for such an outcome are no longer so far-fetched.

If such an arrangement could preserve Russia’s military base in Tartous and other interests, it could well get Moscow’s support. If the Syrian conflict continues to degenerate into ever-deeper bestiality, the idea might even be sold to the West as the only way to avoid Balkan-style communal slaughter and save the Alawite community from revenge massacres.

However, there is still a Sunni majority in Latakia, which would surely be the de facto capital of such a mini-state. This demographic reality was one of the key reasons why, unlike Lebanon, the Alawite mini-state wasn’t able to achieve independence under the French mandate, and was reincorporated into Syria in the 1930s.

This means that if the current Alawite power structure does resort to trying to impose such a Plan B, it will almost certainly involve significant atrocities and communal cleansing, particularly in Latakia and its surroundings.

Rebel fighters claim they have taken full control of the Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus as Syrian forces surround Palestinian camp.

Fuel shortage blocks aid support in Syria, UN warns. Russia sent warships to the Mediterranean to prepare a potential evacuation of its citizens from Syria, a Russian news agency said on Tuesday, a sign President Bashar al-Assad’s key ally is worried about rebel advances that now threaten even the capital. David Cameron said there a “strategic imperative to act” because “Syria is attracting and empowering a new cohort of al-Qaeda-linked extremists”.

Who knew that you could find our who is Googling you: White House Googles Kerry’s Record on Iran.

NBC reporter, Mr. Engel, was freed by Islamist rebels after being taken from captors at a road block. Initially, it was said that the  captors have not been identified but, but Mr. Engel says that his captors were clearly shabbiha loyal to the regime, who wanted to use them for a hostage trade. “They made us choose which one of us would be shot first. When we refused, there were mock shootings. They pretended to shoot him several times,” he said, referring to producer Gazi Balkeez. Hearing a gun fired while blindfolded “can be a very traumatic experience,” he said.

Public Says U.S. Does Not Have Responsibility to Act in Syria
Overview
As fighting in Syria rages on between government forces and anti-government groups, the public continues to say that the U.S. does not have a responsibility to do something about the fighting there. And there continues to be substantial opposition to sending arms to anti-government forces in Syria.

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 5-9 among 1,503 adults, also finds little change in the public’s sympathies in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians: 50% say they sympathize more with Israel while just 10% sympathize more with the Palestinians.

Only about quarter of Americans (27%) say the U.S. has a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria; more than twice as many (63%) say it does not. These views are virtually unchanged from March.

Similarly, just 24% favor the U.S. and its allies sending arms and military supplies to anti-government groups in Syria, while 65% are opposed. These opinions also are little changed from March.

Comparable majorities of Republicans (66%) , Democrats (61%) and independents (65%) say the U.S. does not have a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Syria, and all partisan groups also oppose arming anti-government groups.

Those who have heard a lot about the situation in Syria offer modestly more support for U.S. involvement than those who have heard less (35% vs. 22%), but still, on balance, say the U.S. does not have a responsibility to get involved.

Opinions about the United States’ responsibility to act in Syria are similar to views about obligation to act in Libya, before the U.S. and its allies launched airstrikes against Moammar Gadhafi’s forces. In March 2011, just 27% said the U.S. had a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Libya — the same percentage that says that about Syria today. Higher percentages said the U.S. had a responsibility to do something about the fighting in Darfur in 2006 (51%) and fighting between Serbs and Bosnians in Kosovo in 1999.

There has long been little public interest in the conflict in Syria. In a separate survey conducted last week (Dec. 6-9), just 19% say they are paying very close attention to political violence in Syria, while 28% say they are following this story fairly closely. About half (52%) are paying little or no attention to developments there.

Turkey Can’t Afford Over-Involvement in Syria
Turkey’s Western-backed interventions in Syria could affect its security
Mohammed Ayoob, YaleGlobal, 17 December 2012

Turkey could threaten its prosperity with excessive entanglement in Syria’s civil war, warns international relations professor Mohammed Ayoob. The fall of the Assad regime in Syria could result in sectarian divide and anarchy spilling across Turkey’s borders as well as alienation of Iran, the country’s major energy supplier. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the US that support regime change in Syria may step back from the fray, and Turkey and possibly other neighbors in the region, too, would suffer most from regional instability. ….

In the final analysis, Turkey’s improved relations with the West in 2012, including the American decision to deploy two Patriot missile batteries to Turkey’s border with Syria, are unlikely to compensate for problems Turkey faces to its east – problems likely to become more acute in 2013 if Ankara does not rapidly reevaluate its policy. With the Syrian stalemate unlikely to be broken in the immediate future, Turkey could anticipate low-intensity warfare with the Syrian regime for a considerable period, thus draining its resources and upsetting economic prospects in the long run.

If the Assad regime falls, Turkey could face partition of Syria into several ethnic and sectarian-based statelets, including a Kurdish one on Turkey’s borders that could stoke Kurdish irredentism in the country. Such an outcome would likely include a continuing civil war of horrific proportions among sectarian and ethnic groups much as has happened in Afghanistan since the Soviet withdrawal and the fall of the communist regime.

Ankara should rethink its policy… as time goes on, it will become difficult to pull away from the Syrian quagmire.

There is attendant danger that, in this event, foreign backers of the Syrian opposition, especially the United States and Saudi Arabia, would pull out and leave Syria to its fate as happened with Afghanistan in the 1990s. These powers have their own agendas related more to weakening Iran than democracy promotion in Syria, objectives achieved with the fall of Assad regardless of what happens to the Syrian people….

– YaleGlobal

“Sectarianism and civil conflict in Tripoli, Lebanon,” by Nick Heras.

 Tripoli’s restive Sunni neighborhood and Jebel Mohsen is the new training ground of an aspiring generation of Lebanese Salafist fighters looking to emulate the model of their Syrian compatriots….Tensions on both sides of the firing-line, Alawite and Sunni, are inflamed by each community’s increasing sense that this battle, for control of Tripoli, is an existential conflict that they both must engage in. … Alawites, numbering 60,000 in a city of almost half a million potential Sunni enemies, and surrounded on all sides by neighborhoods that they are locked in seemingly interminable combat with, identify more strongly with the Alawite-led Syrian government than ever before. As the Syrian Civil War has progressed, and expressions of sectarian hatred and bloodshed between Sunni opposition forces and Alawites has increased, the Lebanese Alawite community of Jebel Mohsen has become even more convinced that it is resisting its potential annihilation at the hands of committed Tripolian Salafist fighters…..

The battle between Tripoli’s restive Sunni neighborhood and Jebel Mohsen is the new training ground of an aspiring generation of Lebanese Salafist fighters looking to emulate the model of their Syrian compatriots. A constant presence of armed Syrian opposition members, and their families, in these Sunni front-line neighborhoods and the constant inspiration they provide Tripoli’s Sunni fighters.

Local Salafist fronts, such as the “Martyr Commander Khodr al-Masri Brigades,” named after a slain Bab al-Tabbaneh sectarian fighter and now local folk hero, are examples of the developing neighborhood fighting groups being built.

Learning from the example of the armed opposition groups in Syria, Sunni fighting organizations such as the Khodr al-Masri Brigades are beginning to post videos on YouTube. …. This ultimately includes developing a highly-motivated, battle-tested, and committed fighting force that could in time confront the Shi’a parties of Hezbollah and AMAL, and their political allies inside of Lebanon. …

Activists mourn ‘model’ FSA officer
December 18, 2012 12:53 AM
By Marlin Dick
The Daily Star
Abu Furat, second from left, flanked by FSA fighters.

BEIRUT: Syrian rebels seized another government military facility in Aleppo over the weekend, but lost a charismatic field commander in the process.

Col. Youssef Jader, aka Abu Furat, was a defected army officer who fought with the Tawhid Brigade of the Free Syrian Army.

A native of the town of Jarablous, northeast of Aleppo, he spent most of his military career in Latakia before taking part in Tawhid’s prominent role in fighting regime forces in the north.

….. Another video makes plain Abu Furat’s desire to avoid sectarian bloodletting. In a noisy room, he greets an Alawite defector who is off camera, presumably to protect his identity.

Abu Furat addresses Syrian President Bashar Assad, accusing him of “dragging” his Alawite sect into a war and forcing them to hate Sunnis.

“But in spite of you, we will coexist,” he says defiantly. He adds that after having lived for 22 years in the Latakia region, he knows many Alawites who are poor, and “good people,” meaning they have not benefited from the Assad regime’s grip on power.

He addresses the “Alawites living in the mountains” of the coast, as someone who has lived with them.

“And you know me,” he adds, pointing at his chest. “I’ve drunk mate with you,” he says, referring to a South American tea that is heavily consumed in parts of rural Syria, and particularly by the Alawites.

Abu Furat stresses that the uprising doesn’t mean that the Alawites are being targeted as a sect.

“We’re partners in this nation,” he says, praising the example of Sheikh Saleh al-Ali, an Alawite rebel chief from the 1920s who rejected both French colonial rule and a separate Alawite state.

Abu Furat says the regime left officers like him with two choices: “Kill, or kill.” Officers were not allowed to resign their posts in protest at being asked to violently suppress street demonstrations, and were thus forced to choose between killing for the regime, and killing in self-defense. He says he was ordered, as a tank commander, to shell the Sunni-majority town of Haffeh in rural Latakia.

Asked about the feelings of military personnel who are shooting or shelling civilians, Abu Furat mentions an acquaintance “named S. – because he hasn’t defected yet.”

He says the man would cry after firing his artillery piece, and argues that not everyone who is fighting for the regime should be blamed for his acts.

“They’re being told that [the rebels are] Afghanis, Pakistanis,” he says.

The video concludes with a light tone. Abu Furat tells the story of a friend who decided to count every time state television claimed that government troops had destroyed a Russian Dushka heavy machine gun supposedly belonging to the rebels.

It turned out the rebels had, according to the regime, the absurd figure of 32,000 such pieces of heavy equipment, causing Abu Furat to grin mischievously. “Damn you, you’re such a liar.”

War is raging in Aleppo but in a classroom 40km away, there are grounds for hope
Luke Harding – Guardian, December 17, 2012

I had come in search of families displaced by Syria’s war. But when I entered Qabbasin secondary school I was surprised to discover lessons were going on. Two months ago head Nasar Mamar decided to reopen.

There was fighting going on down the road in Aleppo. But Qabbasin, some 40km away, was comparatively safe – safe, if you ignored the regime jets flying overhead. “We need Syria to be an educated country. We should not be afraid,” Mamar explained, taking me on a tour of his classrooms.

Downstairs I found 30 boys in the middle of an English lesson. Written on the blackboard was some useful vocabulary: “library” and “explorer”, and examples of the present continuous tense – “I am eating. I am reading” – with a neat translation in Arabic. Their teacher was 30-year-old Abu Hassan. Hassan said he had fled from Aleppo. He was now working as an unsalaried volunteer. “I want to teach. It’s my job,” he said.

Hassan was melancholic when I asked him about the destruction of Aleppo – “my lovely city”, as he put it. Much of it is now a smouldering ruin: the medieval souks dating back to the 14th century part-destroyed; the old citadel the frontline between embattled government troops, the Free Syrian Army and jihadist militias.

Syria’s war reached Aleppo nearly six months ago. Since then the city’s cosmopolitan charm has been snuffed out; it is a place of hunger, cold, misery and death from the sky, he said.

I asked Hassan whom he thought was responsible for his Syria’s collapse, moral and social. He thought for a moment, then replied: “For me, all of us. All of us have wrong actions. I wish everything would be back how it was.” Hassan said he was an English graduate from Aleppo University. He declined to give me his full family name. “I’d rather not,” he said. I left Hassan’s classroom – lit only by a weak winter sun – urging the boys to study hard….

Qabbasin has a mixed population of Arabs and Kurds, and despite tensions elsewhere is a model of inter-ethnic co-operation. Mamar, the head, is a Kurd; most of his staff are Arabs; the headteacher at the girls’ school next door is a Turkman….

by Aron Lund for Syria Comment

A group of jihadi foreign fighters in Syria has published photographs of militants posing with a Soviet-designed 9K38 Igla SAM system, a man-portable anti-aircraft weapon similar to the American Stinger missile. The recently established group, known as Kataeb al-Muhajerin, or ”the Migrants’ Brigades”, appears to have been created by Swedish volunteers, working alongside radical jihadi movements. Its logotype shows a map including Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine, the region known in Arabic as ”Sham”, or the Levant.

Earlier, on November 21, a group of Swedish Islamists calling themselves Mujahedeen Fi Ash Sham (”Holy Warriors in the Levant”) had published a Swedish-language video statement calling for a ”jihad” against the Assad regime, and encouraging Swedish Muslims to join them in Syria. (English transcript.) This network seems to have been present in the Turkish-Syrian border region for at least a few months. On a Facebook page, one member of the group has claimed that it is comprised of some forty people, including many from the city of Gothenburg. This figure may be too high: SÄPO, the Swedish security service, has indicated that there are indeed some Swedish volunteers fighting in Syria, but seems to put their number well below forty.

Kataeb al-Muhajerin evolved out of this network, although it may also include other members. ”Kataeb al-Muhajerin was launched on Facebook on December 1 by the Swedish Mujahedeen Fi Ash Sham”, explains Per Gudmundson, a journalist and editorial writer for the Svenska Dagbladet daily, who has tracked the online communication of Swedish jihadis. ”The following day, a separate Facebook account was set up.” Material from the group has also been posted to various online jihadi forums, such as Ansar al-Mujahedin and Hanein.

Using these channels, both the Mujahedin Fi Ash Sham group and Kataeb al-Muhajerin have been posting information about the same operations, including identical photographs. This indicates that the two groups either work very closely together, share members, or are in fact two faces of the same network. Ideologically, the group appears to be solidly salafi. A Facebook post condemns the Free Syrian Army (FSA) leadership for seeking democracy in Syria, arguing instead that Muslims must fight for an Islamic theocracy.

Recently, photographs and reports on websites connected to the network have shown members of Kataeb al-Muhajerin participating in the assault on the 111th Regiment at Sheikh Suleiman, north-west of Aleppo. That base was the last major pro-Assad stronghold in the northern Aleppo countryside, infamous for shelling the surrounding rebel-held villages. By the time Kataeb al-Muhajerin arrived in the area, Sheikh Suleiman had been under siege for weeks, surrounded and continually bombarded by a number of rebel groups active in the area. They had cut all roads to the base, and were using anti-air missiles and AA guns to prevent resupply by air. (Kataeb al-Muhajerin’s SAM missile pictures date from this period, immediately preceding the fall of the base. They seem to have been uploaded on December 7, 2012.)

The Sheikh Suleiman base was finally overrun on December 9, 2012, in a joint operation including several different groups. The force encircling the base prior to the attack included both jihadis, independent rebels, and FSA fighters from local villages. Correspondents speak of numerous foreign jihadis involved in the attack, including Uzbek fighters under the command of one “Abu Talha”. Some reports indicate that FSA units had been active in the siege, but that jihadi groups bolstered by foreign fighters then carried out the final attack. One statement mentions the attacking Islamist groups as Jabhat al-Nosra, Katibat al-Batar, Kataeb al-Muhajerin and Kataeb Muhajeri al-Sham.

While the other three organizations are small and virtually unknown, Jabhat el-Nosra is the most infamous of Syria’s extremist groups. This radical salafi-jihadi organization was recently designated a terrorist organization by the US Department of the Treasury, which accuses it of acting as a local front for Iraq’s al-Qaeda leadership. According to media reports, Jabhat al-Nosra fighters did most of the heavy lifting during the assault, having already claimed credit for downing a helicopter on November 27. In the days following the fall of Sheikh Suleiman, Jabhat al-Nosra seized the base for themselves, including the arms stockpile inside. They then set up a perimeter and prevented outsiders from entering without permission, including other rebels, although it appears that groups allied to them were allowed some access.

At least some of the Swedes in the Mujahedeen Fi Ash Sham/Kataeb al-Mujaherin network took part in the attack. They have posted propaganda images from the base in the aftermath of the battle, depicting themselves with the corpses of regime soldiers, guarding prisoners-of-war, and trying out heavy weapons from the base arsenal. They make no mention of Jabhat al-Nosra, but disparage the FSA’s role in the attack: ”Not only did the Free Syrian Army try to steal our spoils of war, but they have also claimed all the credit in the media…”

These images do not mean that the Swedes have joined Jabhat al-Nosra – most likely, they have not. Jabhat al-Nosra maintains a tight messaging discipline, releasing statements only through its own specialized media wing, al-Manara al-Beida. After a May 2012 controversy involving a fake Jabhat al-Nosra statement, the group has been particularly insistent on this, stressing that any statement on its behalf made outside of the al-Manara al-Beida framework should be considered a forgery. If Kataeb el-Muhajerin were formally part of Jabhat el-Nosra, it is unlikely that they could release statements separately, and under their own banner. It therefore seems likely that the Swedish Mujahedin network has set up shop in northern Syria on their own, and are working independently alongside other fighters who share their ideology, rather than as formal members of a larger group.

In the larger scheme of things, the Swedish group of fighters is tiny and will not be a major influence on the Syrian uprising. But the images posted by Kataeb al-Muhajerin after the attack include heavy weaponry, such as AA guns. ”Judging from the pictures, they’re very happy with the arms captured in Sheikh Suleiman”, notes Gudmundson, interviewed for Syria Comment via e-mail.

The pictures give an idea of the kind of weaponry now available to jihadis in northern Syria. The man shown carrying the Igla SAM launcher cannot be identified, and it is not clear whether he is a member of Kataeb al-Muhajerin or an allied group; probably the latter. But the photos themselves appear to be unique to Kataeb al-Muhajerin, proving that, at the very least, the group has been present where these arms were stored and used. If a small group of Swedish volunteer fighters now has such close access to anti-air missiles, then, clearly, so does Jabhat al-Nosra and other jihadi groups.

The United States and other governments have long worried about the proliferation of modern military technology and know-how among Syrian Islamist rebels, in particular anti-air missiles. They fear that such weapons could be turned against themselves in the future, whether in the Middle East or by returning foreign fighters. While helping to arm the rebellion, these states have therefore held back from providing such weapons to the Syrian rebels, despite their obvious need for a countermeasure to Assad’s air superiority. In recent months, anti-air weapons have started to appear in northern Syria anyway, whether as a result of this strategy being relaxed or for other reasons. However, pictures from Sheikh Suleiman show that heavy weaponry is also slipping into jihadi hands from the other direction – by being captured from Syrian regime stockpiles.

Mazout prices have shot above 100 pounds a liter, as sanctions and violence take their toll on Syria. The pound has dropped in value rising above 90 per dollar again. Farouq al-Sharaa, Syria’s vice president called for a settlement of the uprising that would lead to the formation of a “national unity government with broad powers.” He claimed that neither side could prevail militarily. A series of bombings in Iraq targeting ethnic minorities and Shiite pilgrims, killed 17 and wounded dozens.

A reporter friend, present at the Morocco, Friends of Syria Conference, writes:

As the conference was taking place, I was in touch with a number of anti-government civilians and Free Army fighters who all expressed displeasure with the decision [to declare the Nusra Front a terrorist organization], saying while they might have ideological differences with Al-Nusra, they are happy to fight alongside them as effective fighters making a solid contribution to toppling Assad. I would add that  in follow up conversations, this sentiment has even extended to distinct lack of trust towards Americans and derision toward the coalition supposedly representing them  – as, in the words of one civilian: “another U.S. plot.”

Syrian jet fires rocket at Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus – Thousands flee and dozens feared dead after attack on Yarmouk camp as Palestinians in Syria are caught up in civil war. At least one rocket from a Syrian air force jet has killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians in the largest refugee camp in Damascus. Palestinians in Syria had enjoyed the protection of the government for much of the past 40 years. However their loyalties have been tested as the civil war has intensified. The large majority of the Palestinian population in Syria is Sunni, as is the opposition movement which is attempting to oust the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, whose Alawite sect is aligned to Shia Islam.

Roughly half of Syria’s Palestinian refugees are thought to remain supportive of the regime, while the other half have grown hostile to it as the 21-month crisis has escalated.
The attack is believed to have occurred after sporadic fighting inside the camp over the past fortnight between rebel units and Palestinian factions loyal to Assad, headed by Ahmed Jibril, a veteran local leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine general committees.

CrossTalk on Sunni-Shia Conflict: House Divided w. Landis, Moufid Jaber, and Alireza Nader

Patrick Cockburn writes that “The victims have not been identified” in reference to beheading posted to YouTube that went viral recently.  One of the two Alawite officers to have their heads chopped off has now been identified as Brigadier General Fouad Abdel Rahman – GRAPHIC pic.twitter.com/EqtUXn68. He is from a village named Qarfais near Jable on the coast.

Was there a massacre in the Syrian town of Aqrab?
Alex Thomson, All Channel 4 News blogs
Friday 14 Dec 2012

….We do not say what follows is the truth. But we can say it is the first independently observed story of Aqrab from the first outside journalist to reach this area.

We interviewed three key eye-witnesses in three separate locations. They could not have known either of our sudden arrival, nor did they know the identities of the other two eye-witnesses.

What is striking is that their accounts entirely corroborate each other, to the last detail. And their accounts are further backed up by at least a dozen conversations with other Alawites who had fled from Aqrab….

All three agree – as do the rebels – that rebels attacked Aqrab on Sunday 2 December. Madlyan says: “They had long beards. It was hard to understand what they said. They weren’t dressed like normal Syrians.”

I press her and she is adamant that their Arabic was not from Syria.

The youth Ali told us: “They all had big beards and came in four or five cars, from the direction of al-Houla.”

They all insist, as did everybody else we met, that the rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) corralled around 500 Alawite civilians in a large red-coloured two-storey house belonging to a prominent businessman called Abu Ismail.

They then say they were held – around 500 men, women and children – in this building until the early hours of Tuesday 11 December. Nine days.

In that time they say almost no food was delivered, and women were hitting their own children to try and stop them crying. When it rained, they were holding rags out of the window to soak up and drink the moisture.

Hayat says that the rebels told everybody: “We are your brothers from al-Houla and al-Rastan, your Islamic brothers. We won’t hurt you.”…

At that point, shooting broke out, the rebels firing through the windows and shouting that they had booby-trapped the building. The eye-witnesses say that the shooting died down at about midnight, after which a deal was done. In screaming night-time chaos and intermittent shooting, three vehicles took around 70 of the prisoners to safety in the nearest village a mile away…..

To the beach: Assad prepares for last stand in home town
Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv

Video: Syrian support for Jubhat al-Nusrah and opposition to Western intervention
by Aljazeera on December 15, 2012

US Jubhat Al-Nusrah “Terrorist” Label Backfires 12-14-12 Syria Protesters “A

Danger rising that extremists could seize Syria’s chemical weapons
Craig Whitlock and Carol Morello DEC 16 – Wash Post

The Syrian military is losing control of bases, including sites where chemical arms were produced in the past.

Former US Official Urges Military Intervention in Syria
[Fred Hof, a former US State Department official who works on Syria, arrives at the headquarters of the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow, June 8, 2012. (photo by REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov)]
By: Barbara Slavin.

He said the US provision of so-called non-lethal assistance, including communications gear, to the rebels had been significant in preventing the “Syrian revolution from being strangled in the cradle” and that US officials had gained crucial knowledge over the past 20 months.

“I presume that the US government has done all of its due diligence and knows how to do this,” Hof said of his recommendation that weapons now be sent. “I suspect the provision of nonlethal assistance has been a good laboratory for figuring out how to get things into Syria — who’s reliable.”

Later Thursday, at an appearance at the Atlantic Council, Hof said that while he wished diplomatic efforts would end the conflict without US intervention, “guns will likely decide the outcome and those who want to influence and shape the outcome must get into the arena. This is not about messaging; this is about doing.” He also clarified that he meant providing Russian and other former East bloc weapons, not American arms.

No water, power, cash: Syria rebels run broke town
By By KARIN LAUB | Associated Press

MAARET MISREEN, Syria (AP) — The anti-regime locals who have thrown together a ramshackle administration to run this northern Syrian town have one main struggle: Finding money to keep their community alive. Like other nearby rebel-held towns, Maaret Misreen is broke.

Many of the town’s 45,000 residents are out of work. There’s no cash to keep water or electricity running, so they come on only sporadically. Prices have skyrocketed. Long lines form at the only working bakery for miles around, creating vulnerable potential targets for airstrikes.

This week, the town’s main mosque preacher, Abdel Rahim Attoun — who now doubles as the town judge — appealed to worshippers to chip in to buy fuel for communal water pumps. He asked each family to donate 200 Syrian pounds, a little under $3, the cost of a large bunch of bananas.

But even that’s too much for many residents, so no one is being forced to donate, said 29-year-old Amer Ahmado, who is an electronics engineer but was picked by the newly formed local council for the job of managing the town’s meager finances.

The situation is repeated across the swath of rebel-controlled territory in northwestern Syria, said Zafer Amoura, a lawyer who represents Maaret Misreen in an emerging provincial council. Communities are now cut off from the national government that helped keep them running, and locals forming impromptu administrations try to meet the needs of daily life amid the civil war.

At the same time, the rebels in charge of Maaret Misreen are preoccupied with the 21-month-old battle against Syrian President Bashar Assad. Some of Assad’s troops are positioned just a few miles away, in the provincial capital of Idlib, while regime warplanes and combat helicopters continue to strike Maaret Misreen and its surroundings.

On a recent afternoon, a helicopter flew above the town’s only working bakery, where a long line had formed, sending some people running for cover. Regime aircraft have targeted breadlines before. A bomb crater outside the Maaret Misreen bakery’s bread distribution window witness bore witness to what residents say was a deadly attack several weeks ago.

Still, many were so eager to keep their place in line that they didn’t budge when they heard the whirring of the helicopter’s rotors.

“People are afraid, but they got used to it,” said Yasser Bajar, a 35-year-old laborer and father of three who last had a paid day of work four months ago. He had been in line since the morning and had just collected his bread when the helicopter appeared overhead, then veered away.

Outside the bakery, rebel fighters acting as policemen enforced an orderly line — women to the left, men to the right — as customers advanced to buy the maximum per person allotment of 24 pieces of flatbread.

Even as they complain about hardship, residents say they don’t want to go back to the old days, before the outbreak of the revolt against Assad in March 2011. Their stomachs were full then, but the regime controlled their lives, they said.

“We just need to get rid of him (Assad) and then get some rest,” said Omar al-Helo, 23, who stopped working as a carpenter months ago for lack of demand and now ekes out a living selling fruit in a small outdoor market.

Maaret Misreen, a 30-minute drive from the Turkish border, is surrounded by vast stretches of olive groves and is the main town providing services for about three dozen hamlets in the area.

The Syrian military didn’t have a presence in town and rebels took control in October 2011, as local regime representatives gradually slipped away, residents said….

In an odd twist, the regime continued for months to pay salaries of civil servants in rebel-held areas, including in Maaret Misreen, where local officials estimate at least one-third of working adults hold government jobs.

One of Maaret Misreen’s 22 garbage collectors said that while some of his colleagues have quit, he and others are still getting paid. However, the regime is starting to clamp down, said Amer Bitar, a 50-year-old former judge.

Civil servants are now required to pick up their salaries in person in Idlib, and many from Maarat Misreen won’t make the trip, fearing arrest as rebel sympathizers at regime checkpoints, Bitar said. Bitar himself quit his job as a criminal court judge in Idlib several months ago for fear of arrest.

Another resident said he still commutes daily to work in a state-run company in Idlib, passing through government checkpoints.

“If someone is not wanted, they leave him alone and don’t say anything,” he said of the regime…..Bitar said foreign aid is the only way out for rebel-run communities if the regime hangs on….

Syria: The Descent into Holy War
World View: The world decided to back the rebels last week, but this is no fight between goodies and baddies
By Patrick Cockburn, December 16, 2012 “The Independent”

I have now been in Damascus for 10 days, and every day I am struck by the fact that the situation in areas of Syria I have visited is wholly different from the picture given to the world both by foreign leaders and by the foreign media. The last time I felt like this was in Baghdad in late 2003, when every Iraqi knew the US-led occupation was proving a disaster just as George W Bush, Tony Blair and much of the foreign media were painting a picture of progress towards stability and democracy under the wise tutelage of Washington and its carefully chosen Iraqi acolytes.

The picture of Syria most common believed abroad is of the rebels closing in on the capital as the Assad government faces defeat in weeks or, at most, a few months. The Secretary General of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said last week that the regime is “approaching collapse”. The foreign media consensus is that the rebels are making sweeping gains on all fronts and the end may be nigh. But when one reaches Damascus, it is to discover that the best informed Syrians and foreign diplomats say, on the contrary, that the most recent rebel attacks in the capital had been thrown back by a government counteroffensive. They say that the rebel territorial advances, which fuelled speculation abroad that the Syrian government might implode, are partly explained by a new Syrian army strategy to pull back from indefensible outposts and bases and concentrate troops in cities and towns.

At times, Damascus resounds with the boom of artillery fire and the occasional car bomb, but it is not besieged. I drove 160 kilometres north to Homs, Syria’s third largest city with a population of 2.3 million, without difficulty. Homs, once the heart of the uprising, is in the hands of the government, aside from the Old City, which is held by the FSA. Strongholds of the FSA in Damascus have been battered by shellfire and most of their inhabitants have fled to other parts of the capital. The director of the 1,000-bed Tishreen military hospital covering much of southern Syria told me that he received 15 to 20 soldiers wounded every day, of whom about 20 per cent died. This casualty rate indicates sniping, assassinations and small-scale ambushes, but not a fight to the finish.

This does not mean that the government is in a happy position. It has been unable to recapture southern Aleppo or the Old City in Homs. It does not have the troops to garrison permanently parts of Damascus it has retaken. Its overall diplomatic and military position is slowly eroding and the odds against it are lengthening, but it is a long way from total defeat, unless there is direct military intervention by foreign powers, as in Libya or Iraq, and this does not seem likely.

This misperception of the reality on the ground in Syria is fuelled in part by propaganda, but more especially by inaccurate and misleading reporting by the media where bias towards the rebels and against the government is unsurpassed since the height of the Cold War. Exaggerated notions are given of rebel strength and popularity. The Syrian government is partially responsible for this. By excluding all but a few foreign journalists, the regime has created a vacuum of information that is naturally filled by its enemies. In the event, a basically false and propagandistic account of events in Syria has been created by a foreign media credulous in using pro-opposition sources as if they were objective reporting.

The execution video is a case in point. I have not met a Syrian in Damascus who has not seen it. It is having great influence on how Syrians judge their future, but the mainstream media outside Syria has scarcely mentioned it. Some may be repulsed by its casual savagery, but more probably it is not shown because it contradicts so much of what foreign leaders and reporters claim is happening here

A top rebel commander in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo was killed in a major battle for a military academy on Saturday, his brigade said. “It is with pride that Liwa al-Tawhid (brigade) announces the death in combat of the hero martyr, Colonel Yusef al-Jader (Abu Furat),” the brigade said on its Facebook page. Abu Furat was killed during battles pitting troops against rebels trying to “liberate” a major military academy at Muslimiyeh, just north of the embattled city of Aleppo.Abu Furat welcomed and provided cover to several AFP teams covering Syria’s conflict in Aleppo. On Saturday, rebels came close to scoring a significant victory as they captured large parts of the military academy, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “This is one of the most important military academies in all of Syria,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

From Josh Rogin’s interview with Hagel:

“We’ve got to understand great-power limitations. There are so many uncontrollable variables at play in Syria and the Middle East,” Hagel said. “You work through the multilateral institutions that are available, the U.N., the Arab league. The last thing you want is an American-led or Western-led invasion into Syria.”

Marsha Cohen on why the hawks are aflutter about Hagel.

Syria’s Unified Armed Opposition: Internal Divisions, External Ties
By: Nasser Charara – al-Akhbar

In an effort to sideline jihadi Islamists, the US wants to centralize the armed opposition in Syria under a single military command. Will the armed opposition’s internal divisions and foreign backers permit such an endeavor?

Amidst the Syrian opposition’s meetings in Doha and Marrakesh, the finishing touches were placed on an international effort to unite many of Syria’s armed rebel groups under one leadership.

It was clear from the Doha meeting that Washington would not recognize the newly formed opposition National Coalition (NC) until it proved itself capable of forming a united military command for the armed factions operating in Syria.

Washington maintained that the jihadis – which it estimated to constitute a third of the armed groups – would be kept out, while the other two-thirds would be integrated under a central military command that is accountable to the NC.

Sure enough, a supreme military council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) was formed, comprising many of the factions engaged in the armed uprising under the leadership of Salim Idriss. Among those excluded was the hardline Islamist al-Nasra Front, which Washington recently placed on its list of terrorist organizations.

On paper at least, it seems that the opposition succeeded in removing two key obstacles to Western military assistance: the infiltration of al-Qaeda elements, and the wayward and sometimes criminal behavior of some factions due to a lack of accountability and discipline.

Chances of Success

Will Washington’s plan succeed?….

McClatchy story about the humanitarian crisis in Syria. by Roy Gutman

Published Friday, December 14, 2012

The Revolt of Islam in Syria
Jonathan Spyer, Jerusalem Post, 14/12

The United States this week became the latest country to recognize the Syrian National Coalition, formed in Qatar a month ago, as the legitimate leadership of the Syrian opposition. The formation of a joint military council aligned with the coalition was also announced in Antalya, Turkey. At the same time, Washington designated Jabhat al-Nusra, the powerful Salafi armed group in Syria, as a terrorist organization.

All of these moves indicate that a coherent US and western policy toward the rebel side in the Syrian civil war is now emerging. This policy is in line with the Obama Administration’s broader regional orientation, and meets with the approval of key EU governments. It is also the preferred direction of Turkey and Qatar, the two countries who led the international response to the Syrian rebellion during the long period that the west preferred not to get directly involved.

The intention is to align with and strengthen Muslim Brotherhood-associated elements, while painting Salafi forces as the sole real Islamist danger. At the same time, secular forces are ignored or brushed aside….A Reuters report on the new joint military council calculated that the Muslim Brotherhood and their allies account for about two thirds of the 263 men who met in Antaliya and formed the new body. Salafi commanders are also there….

The focus on Jabhat al Nusra should not obscure the fact that the better-organized, non-Salafi, home grown, Muslim Brotherhood elements that the US is backing are no less anti-western and no less anti-Jewish…..the force now facing the retreating Assad regime is split between differing brands of Sunni Arab Islamism, some aligned with the west, some directly opposing it, but all holding fast to fundamentally anti-western ideologies….

Adnan Arour: anyone who refuses to have “God is Great” on the Syrian flag is a heretic

Into the Quagmire: Turkey’s Frustrated Syria Policy
Briefing Paper – Chattam House
Christopher Phillips, December 2012

• After a decade of cooperation and closeness with Syria, Turkey’s policy has changed radically as a result of the 2011–12 crisis in Syria. It is now openly calling for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and actively sponsoring the opposition.
• Since March 2011 Turkey has escalated its policy towards Syria in four stages: trying to persuade Assad to reform; cutting diplomatic ties; supporting regional and international political solutions; and, supporting and aiding Syria’s political and armed opposition. While advocating a fifth stage – direct military intervention against the Assad regime, such as a no-fly zone or humanitarian corridor – Turkey is unwilling to act unilaterally.
• Turkey has already received over 135,000 Syrian refugees, has been bombarded by Assad’s forces and fears the use of chemical weapons. Any further disintegration of the Syrian state could provide a launch pad for Turkish Kurdish separatists and might raise questions about Turkey’s own territorial integrity. Economic concerns have also been raised should the crisis spread into the key market of northern Iraq.
• Turkey has recently proposed talks with Russia, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to help resolve the Syria crisis. While unlikely to lead anywhere in the foreseeable future, such a multilateral process may be needed to help stabilize Syria and prevent state collapse if and when Assad eventually falls.

The Russians of said that the rebels may win, but that does not signify that they will roll over on Bashar. Moscow remains unwilling to recognize the new National Coalition, which would allow the US to take it to the Security Council of the UN for international recognition to replace Assad’s government. Such recognition would give the National Coalition much greater leverage over militias, because any loans, new passports, visas, etc. would all have to go through the new government. But that still seems far off.

Predictions of the Assad regime’s demise still seem iffy. The rebels have made great advances but they are far from taking Damascus. Assad is showing growing signs of desperation, but he faces a very fragmented rebel front.

NATO chief says regime in Syria is ‘approaching collapse,’ fall now ‘just a matter of time’.

King Abdullah of Jordan said that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad “can hold for two years at the military level, but not more than four months at the economic level.”

The king said that “Jordan was severely damaged as a result of frequent interruptions of Egyptian natural gas, which cost the state treasury about 5 billion Jordanian dinars [$7.04 billion],” stressing that the interruption of gas ”is the real reason behind the economic crisis plaguing the country.”

Syria’s Agony: The Photographs That Moved Them Most
Monday, December 10, 2012 | By TIME Photo Department |

Russia admits Assad may be ousted by Syrian opposition – Guardian
13 Dec 2012

Russia has acknowledged for the first time that the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is losing control of the country. “One must look the facts in the face: the tendency is that the regime and government of Syria is losing more and more control and more and more territory,” Mikhail Bogdanov, […]

Foreign Policy

Russia denied reports insisting its stance on Syria has not shifted and the foreign ministry reported Friday that Boganov had “issued no statements and given no special interviews in recent days.” Russia has maintained there must be a political solution to the conflict and have criticized the international recognition of the opposition coalition under Mouaz al-Khatib saying it is undermining diplomacy. Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta approved sending two batteries of Patriot missiles and 400 military personnel to Turkey to protect its border with Syria. The U.S. batteries will add to four from Germany and the Netherlands in a NATO effort and are set to be operational by the end of January.

CNN’s Arwa Damon has a Syrian mother (whose father was the former Syrian prime minister Muhsin al-Barazi) – Vogue Mag

115 countries & 9 intl orgs (incl UNHCR & UNOCHA) attended today’s Friends mtg. $143m was pledged to #SOC to use as humanitarian aid.

Syria Deeply

Exclusive with US Ambassador Robert Ford on the decision to name Jabhat al Nusra a terror group, a look at What’s Next After Marrakesh with opposition architect Yaser Tabbara, and our first cross-post with the Council on Foreign Relations, an expert roundup asking What Should US Policy Be in Syria?

We also had a long talk with Joshua Landis on Assad, Alewites, and the future of Syria. 

Syrian People Not Swayed by New Coalition – al-Monitor

It is as though the Syrian public is fated to suffer from the weakness and fragmentation of an opposition that seeks to replace the regime, which has the most to gain from a transboundary division of the opposition. This comes at a time when optimism — which prevailed among the opposition masses after the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces was created — has seemingly gone with the wind….

Wolfgang Danspeckgruber and Archbishop Mar Gregorios
Outline Strategy for Ending War in Syria in a Financial Times Editorial

A new Financial Times editorial by LISD Director, Wolfgang Danspeckgruber co-authored by Archbishop Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, the Syrian Orthodox Metropolit of Aleppo, on “Syria’s Agony Can End After All Parties Talk,” (FT.com registration required) discusses the role of the US, Russia, Iran, and China, as well as regional powers, in ending the war in Syria. The editorial outlines three critical steps necessary for ending the war. The three steps call for 1) an immediate ceasefire, 2) the delivery of humanitarian assistance to all Syrians, and 3) the beginnings of negotiations among domestic and international parties involved. Danspeckgruber and Mar Gregorios write, “The only effective way forward is an immediate, concerted, and unified international strategy that engages those whose interests have prolonged the battle thus far.”

As part of the international strategy, the authors also argue for the creation of a “Syria Contact Group” in a step similar to the Dayton Process and efforts to resolve the Yugoslav crisis in the 1990s. While urging concerted effort among global powers to facilitate a ceasefire in Syria and to mitigate regional spill-over of the conflict, Danspeckgruber and Mar Gregorios also note that any solution to the current crisis must be undertaken in cooperation with Syrians with an eye toward domestic political realities. “[S]teps by the international community should occur in tandem with an internal political process that is not only inclusive of all Syrians, but also led by Syrians,” they argue. “This includes religious leaders of all faiths, as these faith leaders ensure the continuation of a functioning societal fabric in Syria and help soften any radical rhetoric that may hold the political process hostage.”…..

Don’t Blame Obama for Syria
What’s happening in Syria is a tragedy. But John Hannah needs to recognize that the civil war was never ours to win or lose.
BY AARON DAVID MILLER | DECEMBER 14, 2012

Syria is a tragedy. Too much blood has flowed to imagine a negotiated transition and apparently not enough to warrant an effective intervention by a divided, cautious, and self-interested international community. And it may well be that the real struggle for Syria — the one that determines its future character — has yet to begin.

But to lay this bloody mess at President Barack Obama’s doorstep, as John Hannah (a guy I respect and admire) does in his recent post for FP, is both wrong and unfair.

I write this not so much in defense of Obama’s policies as in recognition of the cruel reality and terrible choices the United States has faced with regards to the Syrian uprising and civil war.

During this entire two-year debate on what Obama should or shouldn’t have done on Syria, I have yet to hear a single military strategy that the administration could have adopted that would have been feasible, effective, and consequential in altering the bloody arc of this crisis for the better….

Members of Assad’s Sect Blamed in Syria Killings
By LIAM STACK and HANIA MOURTADA
Published: December 12, 2012

Scores of Syrian civilians belonging to President Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite sect were killed Tuesday in the first known Alawite massacre since the Syrian conflict began. But the killings, in the village of Aqrab, happened under circumstances that remain unclear.

Rights organizations researching the massacre said Wednesday that members of the shabiha, a pro-government Alawite militia, were the killers. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad group based in Britain with a network of contacts inside Syria, said 125 to 150 civilians died.

The accusation, if confirmed, would be a shocking episode of Alawite-on-Alawite violence in a conflict punctuated by violence between sects.

Fred Hof

The United States’ former point person on Syria admits that there is practically no chance diplomacy will ever remove Bashar al-Assad.

Former Ambassador Frederic Hof told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday, “My sense is that this will be ultimately decided through force of arms on the ground” – despite the Obama administration’s reluctance to give heavy weapons to rebels.

Syria’s Local Leadership
DECEMBER 13, 2012 Hassan Hassan
Carnegie Foundation, Thursday, December 13, 2012

After the anti-regime uprising began in Syria almost two years ago, the role of community leaders inside the country is still largely unappreciated. Currently, the opposition’s political leaders include mostly either Syrians living abroad or people who claim to represent their communities. Efforts to form truly representative opposition bodies have so far focused on whether all religious, political and social groups are represented. But a more prudent approach would be to reach out to local leaders to help maintain law and order after the regime falls. Local figures that have influence over communities—whether tribal, ethnic, religious, or business—are already playing an increasingly important role in organizing and mobilizing their communities for a post-uprising Syria. This is already the case in the province of Deir Ezzor, a predominately tribal area in the eastern part of the country…..

The Syrian conflict: a war photographer’s story
Associated Press photographer Narciso Contreras describes the harrowing situation on the ground in Aleppo and tells the story behind some of his powerful images

A Syrian civilian falls down on the street after being shot by a Syrian army sniper

I have been covering the situation in Aleppo since August. When I first arrived here, I was taken to the Hullok and Hananu districts – areas that were subject to heavy bombing. Since then, I have known what to expect. It scared me.

My time is spent photographing the situation faced by civilians in Aleppo, how they cope with hardly anything and how they deal with their tragedy. There is no electricity, no petrol, there is a lack of bread. It is also now winter and the city is freezing.

The people here are divided over the war: some support the insurgency, some don’t. A large number of the population are desperate, they want this war to end; at least in the area controlled by the rebel fighters, which is constantly under heavy shelling and suffers from a lack of supplies. Most of the areas controlled by the rebels are working-class neighbourhoods. There is no place for them to go. They continue with their daily lives as far as they can, leaving everything in the hands of Allah. They call themselves martyrs and are open to sacrifice themselves.

The most brutal situation that I have witnessed has been the shelling of civilian neighbourhoods. It has been indiscriminate. The bombs and mortar artillery can land anywhere at any moment. It is too dangerous to dare to stand on the street for any length of time.

I once went to the hospital to photograph victims of the shelling. There was not enough space, so all the wounded and lifeless bodies were just lying on the floor. I felt dizzy when I saw one child lying on the floor, weeping, bleeding from his foot while holding a coin in his hand. He was injured while queuing for bread and a mortar hit the bakery. He was terrified. When his mother came to find him he opened his hand, giving back the coin and said, “Please mum, don’t send me out for bread again, I don’t want to go and buy bread any more.”

My three part essay is now complete.
Part 1 is on Refugees:
Part 2 is on Neighbors:
Part 3 is on Western Plans:

I argue why Obama is right to proscribe Jabhat al-Nusra even though it hurts the rebels militarily.

Elias Critiques my argument in an email, December 12,

Mr. landis,

I have to disagree with your theory that Syria will end in a Lebanese model. [Elias is referring to this interview] Syria is not Lebanon; in Lebanon, all factions were equally responsible for the violence and none lived under the brutal regime of the other (like Sunnis under Assad’s) for 42 years. In Lebanon no faction could roll the other back.

The Alawite hand is too bloody to shake and they are now on the defensive with no foreign help in sight! Assad’s militia cannot hold out in the Alawite mountains!–no economy or infrastructure there, plus the sanctions will cripple them in 2 months max.! Assad’s militia depends on planes and helicopters and infrastructure and offensive tactics to fight; Even with all those things Assad’s militia is getting beaten!–No FSA is going to let shabiha run around along the coast unpunished, drinking coffee and tea in some cafe! The shabiha are not accustomed to rebel fighting and are already dead tired!

Even if it takes 50 years the Alawites are going to have to kiss the hand and the butt and shine the shoes and clean the toilet of the Sunnis for decades to have an even small chance of survival in Syria! Too much has happened for the Alawites to escape this round! Alawites will only have control over if whether to use chemical weapons and if that happens, are bets are off and their complete annihilation will be certain! Syria is not going to have militias because Syria is 75% Sunni Arab and they have a common goal!

Turkey is going to deal with the PKK in the Syrian Kurdish area and the KDP of Barzani is going to help turkey because they fear an alliance between Maliki and Erdogan over the Kurdish issue in Syria and then in Iraq! Christians and Druze and Ismaelis have learned to kiss the hand on who ever rules in Damascus!

—You are also wrong about Israel being stronger now! Arabs are no longer going to sit and watch Gaza bombed like they used to do! their governments have to deliver now, not just keep the lid on for the USA! Israel can only survive by continuing to deport Palestinians. that wont happen anymore and the demographics are changing as long as al jazeera and world media and the Arabs oppose these deportations, Israel is creating its own demographic time-bomb. Without a peace agreement, Israel in 25 years will have to choose to adopt Assad tactics or get out of the 67 borders.
Palestinians are going nowhere and are getting stronger every day. Israel has new fronts to deal with now. Arabs are now more likely to work together and get more support from china and Russia. before the cooperation was a fake one, based on photo gatherings of presidents only.

you are also wrong about Arab monarchies (morocco and Jordan) being more stable than republics. Morocco and Jordan have always prided themselves on being more democratic/modern than the Arab republics. that is no longer true when both morocco and Jordan see Tunisia and Libya pass them by. the Moroccans and Jordanians wont accept anything less than a little bit more than what the Tunisians and Libyans already have! Morocco is dealing with a huge crisis as they have a large population in Europe who are westernized and bring in western influences into the country. Jordan’s king Abdullah is playing a game similar to Assad in fooling his people; this is also not working anymore; the people want bread, not Rania and Abdullah lecturing the west on the middle east and vacationing along the french riviera. There is going to be a cross-border development of democracy whereby one population is going to influence the other in their demand of democracy and freedom and jobs etc.

Three hospitals in Aleppo were put out of service in November.

It started with the rebels blowing up the French Hospital located in the Syrian Army zone in a suicide attack (a private hospital at the edge of the Christian area) in the north half of Aleppo and ended with the Syrian Air Force bombing a public hospital in al-Shaar in the south half of Aleppo. In between, the Free Syrian Army took over a public hospital near Bustan al-Basha and the Syrian Army attacked leaving it in complete ruins.

Several bomb explosions reported in Damascus: Car bomb and two explosions at main gate of Interior Ministry, after earlier blast at Palace of Justice, state TV says.

Syria Fires Scud Missiles at Insurgents, U.S. Says – NYTimes

….fired from the Damascus area at targets in northern Syria.  “The total is number is probably north of six now,” said another American official, adding that the targets were in areas controlled by the Free Syrian Army, the main armed insurgent group.

It is not clear how many casualties resulted from the attacks by the Scuds — a class of Soviet-era missiles made famous by Saddam Hussein of Iraq during the first Persian Gulf war. But it appeared to be the first time that the Assad government had fired the missiles at targets inside Syria.

American officials did not say how they had monitored the missile firings, but American intelligence has been closely following developments in Syria through aerial surveillance and other methods, partly out of concern that Mr. Assad may resort to the use of chemical weapons in the conflict.

The Obama administration views the Assad government’s use of Scud missiles as a “significant escalation” of the conflict, said a senior official. ….Military experts said that move might reflect the Assad government’s worries that its aircraft have been vulnerable to rebel air defenses. In recent weeks, rebel forces have captured Syrian military bases, seized air-defense weapons and used some of them to fire at Syria warplanes. But one expert said that the government may have decided to use large missiles in order to wipe out military bases — and the arsenals they hold — that had been taken over by the opposition.

Foreign Policy

The “Friends of Syria” also formally recognized the opposition council and called for President Bashar al-Assad’s resignation. The group will create a relief fund “to support the Syrian people” but there was no commitment for supplying arms to the opposition fighters, although that was not ruled out for the future. The National Council said recognition is nice, but called for “real support” including humanitarian assistance and military equipment. Meanwhile, between 125 and 300 people were killed in bombings and gunfire in Hama province in the predominantly Alawite village of Aqrab, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. According to opposition activists, the civilians were being held hostage by Shabiha, pro-government militiamen, in a building that was bombed by government warplanes. Activists said the Free Syria Army was making a siege on the building. These accounts cannot be verified as there have been conflicting reports, and the Syrian government has not made any statements on the incident.

Stratfor

Two years into Syria’s civil war, and the tables have turned – the Syrian government is collapsing, and President Bashar al Assad has been reduced to a warlord. The rebels continue to make substantial gains, but they are having a hard time unifying.

Even though al Assad’s forces still control a sizable portion of the country, they probably will not retake the country entirely. More likely, Syria will face a similar fate as Lebanon – where various factions struggle to govern the country – after an eventual rebel victory.

Find out how the U.S., Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia will vie to become the next major international influence in the new Syria:…

The decision to blacklist al-Nusra, an important fighting force in the uprising, has already triggered criticism from the powerful Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. A senior Brotherhood official said it was wrong and hasty.

“They are seen as (a group that) can be relied on to defend the country and the civilians against the regular army and Assad’s gangs,” Brotherhood deputy leader Farouq Tayfour told Reuters on Tuesday.

Alkhatib said it was “no shame” if Syrian rebels were driven by religious motives to topple Assad. “Religion that does not liberate its people, and does not eliminate repression, is not authentic religion,” he said.

“The fact that the military movement is Islamic in its color is generally positive. Jihad in the path of God, has long been a fundamental motivator for human rights.”….

Syrian opposition urges U.S. review of al-Nusra blacklisting
By Samia Nakhoul and Khaled Yacoub Oweis
MARRAKECH, Morocco | Wed Dec 12, 2012

(Reuters) – The leader of Syria’s opposition coalition urged the United States on Wednesday to review its decision to designate the militant Islamist Jabhat al-Nusra as a terrorist group, saying religion was a legitimate motive for Syrian rebels.

“The decision to consider a party that is fighting the regime as a terrorist party needs to be reviewed,” Mouaz Alkhatib told a “Friends of Syria” meeting in Morocco, where Western and Arab states granted full recognition to the coalition seeking to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

“We might disagree with some parties and their ideas and their political and ideological vision. But we affirm that all the guns of the rebels are aimed at overthrowing the tyrannical criminal regime.

Khatib also called on Syria’s Alawite minority on Wednesday to launch a campaign of civil disobedience against Assad, an Alawite facing a mainly Sunni Muslim uprising against his rule…..

la décision américaine d’inclure Jabhat al-Nusra sur la liste des organisations terroristes internationales est une erreur
by Thomas Pierret

….l’inscription de Jabhat al-Nusra sur la liste des organisations terroristes internationales est un merveilleux cadeau fait à Assad, qui a qualifié ses opposants de terroristes islamistes dès les premiers jours de la révolution…. l’inscription de Jabhat al-Nusra sur la liste des organisations terroristes est perçue comme une ultime trahison par une grande partie des Syriens. Il faut bien comprendre que ces derniers ne perçoivent pas le groupe jihadiste du point de vue de la guerre américaine contre le terrorisme, dont ils n’ont que faire dans les circonstances actuelles, mais plutôt sur la base de leurs réalités quotidiennes. Dans cette perspective, Jabhat al-Nusra est perçue comme un groupe défendant la population contre les forces d’Assad et cela en raison de son efficacité redoutable sur le plan militaire. …

The Assad regime’s brutality has created an environment inside Syria that al-Qa’ida in Iraq (AQI) is working hard to exploit. In an effort to establish a long-term presence in Syria, AQI is trying to rebrand itself under the guise of a group called al-Nusrah Front. By fighting alongside armed Syrian opposition groups, al-Nusrah Front members are seeking to hijack the Syrian struggle for their own extremist ends. Today, the United States announced that it will list al-Nusrah Front as another alias used by the Foreign Terrorist Organization AQI, and will designate it under Executive Order 13224. These actions against al-Nusrah Front underscore its connection to AQI so that everyone, especially the Syrian people, can distinguish between armed opposition groups that are fighting for a more unified, just, and pluralistic Syria and terrorist elements whose extremism has no place in a post-Asad Syria….We call on all responsible actors to speak out against and distance themselves from al-Nusrah Front, Shabiha, Jaysh Al-Shaib, and other violent extremists who seek and intend to hijack this Syrian struggle. Assad must go – but the new government that replaces him should not be a new group of tyrants who reject the tolerance that made Syria the unique and remarkable country that it was and can be again…..The American people and our international partners stand with you during this struggle. This is your revolution, your country, and your future – not al-Qa’ida’s.

Syrian opposition sees Jabhat al-Nusra as stronger asset than the U.S.
Lindsey Hilsum, 12 Dec 2012

They’re happy, but they’re not happy. Pleased that President Obama announced last night that the US recognises the new Syrian opposition coalition as the “legitimate representative of the Syrian people.” Unhappy that one of the fiercest fighting forces on the ground, Jabhat al-Nusra, has been designated by the USA as a terrorist […]

Turkey weighs pivotal oil deal with Iraqi Kurdistan

ANKARA, Turkey — American diplomats are struggling to prevent a seismic shift in Turkey’s policy toward Iraq, a change that U.S. officials fear could split the foundations of that fractious state.
The most volatile fault line in Iraq divides the semiautonomous Kurdistan region in the north from the Arab-majority central government in Baghdad. As the two sides fight for power over territory and oil rights, Turkey is increasingly siding with the Kurds.

Israel Envoy Favors Assad Ouster Even If Sunni Radicals May Gain
2012-12-12 By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) — Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren said the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would be a boon to Israel and the Mideast, even if radical Islamists try to fill the vacuum left by his departure. “There’s the possibility that you’ll have Sunni extremist elements who will try to come to the fore,” Oren said yesterday in Washington. “Our opinion is that any situation would be better than the current situation” in which the Syrian regime has a strategic alliance with Iran and the Lebanese Shiite Muslim terrorist group Hezbollah, he said.

BRISTOL, UK DECEMBER 13th, 2012: Games have been growing in force as a medium but still tend to be seen as pure entertainment. That perception is being challenged by a new release that explores the war in Syria in an interactive form, titled ‘Endgame Syria’. Developed as part of the new project GameTheNews.net, creators Auroch Digital are using rapid-game development methods to build games quickly in response to real-world events. Created in a development time of two weeks, the game allows users to explore the options open to the rebels as they push the conflict to its endgame……

The game free to download for Android via Google Play and is available to play on the GameTheNews.net website as a HTML5 game and also due out on iPhone, iPad and iPad Touch imminently. Full details can be found athttp://bit.ly/endgamesyria.

In Syria, the Challenges of Sanctioning a Rebel Group
Dec 12, 2012 | Stratfor

The United States’ Dec. 11 decision to recognize the Syrian opposition coalition will likely lead to increased involvement with the opposition, but Washington’s announcement earlier in the day that it would blacklist Islamist extremist opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra will make it difficult to overtly fund and supply Syria’s other rebel forces in the future. By designating Jabhat al-Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization, Washington has made it illegal for a person in the United States or under the jurisdiction of the United States to knowingly provide material support or resources to the group. However, it is unclear how the United States would go about distinguishing Jabhat al-Nusra from other rebel units.

Analysis

Jabhat al-Nusra officially formed in January 2012 when it began to claim responsibility for large vehicle-borne improvised explosive device attacks against Syrian security and intelligence facilities in Damascus and Aleppo. Since that time, the group has claimed hundreds of attacks against regime forces and infrastructure.

Visit our Syria page for related analysis, videos, situation reports and maps.

There is still a great deal about the group — its size, leadership, organization, foreign supporters and the nationalities of its members — that is unknown. Stratfor has received indications that Saudi Arabia is one of the group’s foreign backers. However, one thing that is evident is that Jabhat al-Nusra has grown considerably since its inception, with some estimates of its current membership between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters. This growth occurred in part because the group has demonstrated that it has the organization, funding and expertise to execute large attacks on the Syrian regime. These qualities allowed the group to quickly supplement its forces with members from other rebel units.

However, not all rebel factions agree with Jabhat al-Nusra’s tactics. The group has shown indifference to collateral damage so long as security forces are killed. In addition, some rebels are religiously and ideologically opposed to the group, which wants to establish a government based on Sharia law once President Bashar al Assad is removed. Nonetheless, the group has unmistakably emerged as one of the major players on the Syrian battlefield.

Challenges of Enforcement

Now that the United States has designated Jabhat al-Nusra as a foreign terrorist organization, the question is what capabilities Washington has to distinguish the group from other rebel factions. Since the United States is not presently providing support to the group, the addition of the group to the U.S. blacklist does not have any direct ramifications for Jabhat al Nusra’s operations at the moment.

However, the designation would play a role if Western countries decided to begin overtly funding and supplying the Syrian opposition. U.S. President Barack Obama’s announcement Dec. 11 recognizing the Syrian opposition coalition as the representative of the Syrian people — the first Syrian group to receive such a recognition from the United States — paves the way for an eventual provision of arms to the rebels. Should the United States become more involved in supporting rebels inside Syria, it would face the difficult task of distinguishing more secular rebel fighters from groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and other Islamist extremists. Members of Jabhat al-Nusra do not look or sound different from other rebels, many of whom are themselves Islamist.

Even if the United States were able to determine each rebel’s affiliation, there is no reason to believe it would be able to assure that weapons or funds would remain in the hands of the intended. Considering these challenges, the United States will probably continue to work covertly through countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan to supply the rebels in the short term.

Realities on the Ground

In addition to the difficulties of enforcing the blacklist, the United States can expect to see a backlash to the announcement within Syria. Already rebels have criticized the move, recognizing that Jabhat al-Nusra’s contribution is needed in the fight against al Assad’s forces. Twenty-nine Islamist and Salafist groups stood in solidarity with the group after the U.S. decision was made.

The designation also highlights the looming reality that when al Assad is no longer in power, even if some of the rebels are brought in to negotiate a transition, an insurgency by Islamist extremist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra will continue, since their overarching objective is to set up an Islamic state in Syria. Even if an Islamist government comes to power, there is a significant difference between Islamist representation in parliament and an Islamic state. Any Islamist presence in government would likely come from Muslim Brotherhood-style Islamists, who are at odds with strict jihadist doctrine. Therefore, even if the al Assad regime is removed and replaced, additional unrest and insurgency can be expected.

US recognises Syria opposition coalition says Obama

Worldview: Why is U.S. still refusing to arm rebels?
By Trudy Rubin
The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday, Nov. 9. 2012

Now that the U.S. elections are over, the Obama administration is applying a full-court press for a political solution in Syria. Finally.

But U.S. officials still refuse to openly engage with, or give military aid to, Syrian rebel commanders, who will exercise major influence after the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Instead, the Obama team has been outsourcing the role of aiding military rebels to Saudi Arabia and the tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar, with the Saudis now taking the lead.

At a meeting last week in Antalya, Turkey, more than 300 commanders from the rebel Free Syrian Army agreed under pressure from Saudi Arabia and Qatar to form a unified command structure, in return for promises they would get more advanced weapons. Yet secular Syrian rebel officers told me during my recent trip to Turkey and Syria that Washington’s past reliance on the Gulf states has meant that most military aid has gone to Islamists.

Previous U.S. decisions to outsource the job of arming Muslim rebels to Gulf states also backfired. Qatar reportedly turned weapons over to Islamic militants during last year’s conflict in Libya, and the Saudis gave weapons to the worst militants in the Afghan war against the Soviets. In both cases, our outsourcing of responsibility harmed our own security interests.

So why are we making the same mistake in Syria?

One reason is President Obama’s extreme reluctance to get involved in another Mideast war, even if the U.S. role were confined to helping Syrians do the fighting. Instead, U.S. officials have insisted that the Syrian conflict can only be resolved politically. Apart from humanitarian aid, the United States has provided only nonlethal assistance to unarmed rebels. It has stuck to that position even as the real battle for Syria is being fought on the ground.

After two years of failed efforts to unify the Syrian political opposition, U.S. and European officials, along with Qatar, have now godfathered a new Syrian transitional leadership body. The United States is set to recognize the Syrian Opposition Council, or SOC, this week.

This is good news. If the SOC holds together, it can provide a channel through which to funnel desperately needed humanitarian aid to liberated areas of Syria. Such aid could in turn strengthen the hand of civilian leadership councils that have emerged in areas freed from Assad’s rule.

U.S. officials also hope this new council will exert civilian control over the rebel military forces and ultimately help negotiate the exit of Assad. But the military struggle is fast outpacing efforts to broker a political solution.

As rebel fighters gain ground, they may have little time for the Cairo-based SOC or the wishes of U.S. officials who have given neither weapons nor money. They are more likely to listen to Gulf countries that provide both – and whose interests differ from ours.

Consider what has happened over the last two years. For months, opposition activists have urged the United States to vet and help secular opposition commanders, including high-level army defectors.

Instead, this task was outsourced, mainly to Qatar, which never managed to create a centralized military leadership structure. Money and weapons – some from Gulf states, some from wealthy religious Muslims – flowed directly to local commanders, many of them militant Islamists.

Militia leaders and individual fighters grew militant-style beards to get weapons. Mohammed Ghanem of the Syrian American Council recounted asking a fighter at a checkpoint near Aleppo why he was working with Jabhat al-Nusra, a jihadi group connected with al-Qaeda. The man angrily retorted, “They are the ones with the guns.”

U.S. officials repeatedly refused to supply the ground-to-air weapons the rebels desperately needed to repel massive government bombing attacks on civilians, even when groups such as the SSG proposed detailed control systems. The administration feared such weapons might fall into the wrong hands. Now rebel commanders have overrun Syrian army bases and seized ground-to-air weapons on their own, leaving the United States with no say whatsoever on their use.

“People think the United States is not serious,” says Louay Sakka, a spokesman for the Syrian Support Group, which lobbies for the more moderate wing of the Free Syrian Army. “Nonlethal aid will not remove Assad from political power. A political solution will not work without a military part.”

Now the Saudis are taking the lead in setting up a central Free Syrian Army command system intended to coordinate the flow of arms and funds to rebel fighters. The system will supposedly exclude groups with al-Qaeda ties, such as Jabhat al-Nusra.

Perhaps the Saudis (and Qataris) will favor professional rebel officers, regardless of whether they have beards. Perhaps not. Past history gives reason for concern. Meantime, the United States, which reportedly had a small CIA presence at the meeting in Turkey, remains in the background.

“If you don’t want others to have influence, you have to fill the void,” says Amr Al Azm, a Syrian activist and history professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio. “You can own the thing or let someone else own it.”

When it comes to shaping the military outcome in Syria, which will affect our interests throughout the Mideast, do we really want the Saudis to own it? Can we really afford to lead from behind?

As rebels make inroads, their ‘Friends of Syria’ are nervous
Tony Karon – the National
Dec 12, 2012

As western and Arab governments prepare to meet in Marrakech today under the “Friends of Syria” rubric, the US is scrambling to adapt its Syria policy to an increasingly complex reality that is changing rapidly, largely beyond western influence….

Massacre of Alawites at ‘Aqrab

Subhi Hadidi ?@SubhiHadidi writes: @joshua_landis Also, just for a change, why not watch some videos on the ‘Aqrab massacre today; the village is Alawite majority, isn’t it?

Bomb attacks in the village of Aqrab killed or wounded at least 125 civilians, said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which could not immediately give a breakdown of the casualties.

“We cannot know whether the rebels were behind this attack, but if they were, this would be the largest-scale revenge attack against Alawites,” said observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, said: “What happened there is obviously for many people in Syria an alarming sign, especially because many of those who have been killed are Alawites.”

Aqrab is located near Houla, a majority Sunni Muslim village where 108 people, including 49 children and 34 women, were massacred on May 25 in what was widely blamed on pro-regime armed groups despite denials from Damascus

Prashad, Vijay: The second part of my three part series on Syria. This is on neighbors. Jadaliyya.

Diplomats take their late planes to Morocco for the Friends of Syria meeting. The Old Powers will dominate. The new regional actors have been sidelined. The third part of the series is on Western Plans. The first was on Refugees.

The Land of Topless Minarets and Headless Little Girls — a stunning requiem for Syria by @AmalHanano. Foreign Policy

CASUALTY FIGURES: CASUALTY FIGURES – WEEK ENDING 2ND DECEMBER 2012CIVILIAN CASUALTIESWe have counted unidentifie… http://bit.ly/TPUB98

“Three Scenarios for Syria’s Future,” by Joshua Landis w. Lara Setrakian of Syria Deeply

• Why Assad may last longer than this summer
• The Sunni Arab Majority and Syrian Nationalism
• The future of the Alawites
• How the “Turkish”, “Iraqi”, and “Lebanon” models play out for Syria

[News Round Up Follows]