Kurdish Children wave Kurdish flags in Syrian Kurdistan to be.

Muhammad Amin Penjweni,close friend of Ocalan, PPK leader

PKK Advisor: PKK Wants to Liberate Parts of Turkey and Launch the Movement from There – 20/09/2012
Rudaw

Interview with Muhammad Amin Penjweni,  a founding member of the Kurdish National Congress in Belgium and a member of the Presidency Council of the Kurdistan Parliament in Exile, an organization founded by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).[…]

Penjaweni: The KDP and PUK leadership have to be careful and avoid becoming a part of a Shia or Sunni project, the latter of which is represented by Turkey.

Rudaw: Because of the situation in Syria, there are some worries about a possible war between the KDP and PKK. Do you think that is possible?

Muhammad Amin Penjweni: Due to the fact that the PKK leadership has been based in Syria for the past 20 years, they have a large number of followers there. Hundreds, if not thousands of PKK cadres are Syrian Kurds. The PKK has about 3,000 martyrs from Syrian Kurdistan.

The Democratic Union Party (PYD) is a very active party in Syrian Kurdistan. Since the start of the uprising, the PYD’s cadres have gone back into the general population and started organizing them. They have formed councils in all areas, and the councils have formed a bigger council called the People’s Council. Now the People’s Council has formed another council with the Kurdistan National Council (KNC), each with five members.

The PYD has power there because Abdullah Ocalan was based in Syria for 20 years. I personally have visited the areas of Efrin, Qamishli, Darbasiya and Derek. This is the reality in Syrian Kurdistan, whether Turkey wants it or not. The freedom achieved there — whether by bravery, or the Syrian regime giving the areas up — is a development for the Kurdish question.

As for civil war, most Syrian Kurds, including the PYD, remember the civil war in Iraqi Kurdistan. They all refuse civil war. I can certainly say that the PYD will never want to fight and will compromise to avoid a civil war. The PYD has decided to comply with whatever the joint council decides.

Even with the issue of the flag, the council is planning to create a flag for all the Kurds of Syria. I do not see a problem in that regard. There are 20 Arab states, and each has its own flag. To me it is normal if the Syrian Kurds create their own flag and let the Supreme Council run their affairs.

If the situation is run this way, and we on this side — I mean the Kurdistan Regional leadership — avoid meddling in their affairs, then there will be no civil war.

Rudaw: Is there such meddling from the Kurdistan Region now?

Muhammad Amin Penjweni: Yes, both the KDP and PUK are meddling. However, this meddling is to help prevent a civil war. I hope the situation continues as it is so there will be no possibility of a civil war, because civil war means delaying the Kurdish liberation movement for several decades.

Turkey has now mobilized its forces and threatened to interfere in Syria. But I believe, due to many factors, that Turkey will not be able to militarily interfere in Syria now. The Kurds in Syria have formed a front; they can expand this front by forming alliances with the Christians, Druzes and Allavies that are residing in Kurdistan.

“I believe, due to many factors, that Turkey will not be able to militarily interfere in Syria now.”

Until now the Syrian opposition, which is a Muslim Brotherhood-type opposition, has not recognized Kurdish rights and they do not want to do anything for the Kurds in the future.

Rudaw: Why do you think the PKK has escalated its fight with Turkey in the recent weeks?

Muhammad Amin Penjweni: The PKK fight with Turkey has taken a new form. It has changed from a guerrilla fight to full frontal attacks. Turkey has preoccupied itself with some issues that have led to internal disagreements and people in Turkey consider their policies wrong.

As for the issues related to the PKK, they believe that it is time for the Kurds to liberate a part of Turkish Kurdistan and start their movement there. This is an idea that has been circulating among PKK members.

A Journey To ‘Syrian Kurdistan’: Is This the Start of The Kurdish Empire?
niqash | Aral Kakal | Syria | 20.09.2012

The Syrian army have handed some parts of Syria over to the Kurdish, who now run those areas. But whose side are the Kurds really on? Does this mean they will establish their own nation? Aral Kakal spent several days in the “new Kurdistan”. By Aral Kakal / Syria

……Currently the closest the Kurdish get to their own country is the semi-autonomous state of Iraqi Kurdistan, which has its own Kurdish legislation, military and government.And doubtless many Kurds in Syria would like to see something similar happening there – whether the Syrian rebels or al-Assad or Turkey wants this or not.

And whether the PKK has that political will to push for any kind of independence is also a further, complicated question. In the past, the al-Assad regime and the PKK have been closely allied. That was until a Syria-Turkey agreement saw them sidelined. Until the beginning of the revolution, the PKK were still blacklisted by the Syrian government. All this has changed relatively recently and many Syrians now see the PKK as allied with al-Assad again

One former Arab resident of the Syrian north east says “they were well known as the hand of the government”.A correspondent for the New Yorker weekly magazine recently met Kurds in Syria who told him the PKK had forbidden them from joining the Syrian rebels.

All of which seems to leave Syria’s north east under Kurdish control but their real allegiances unclear. Meanwhile, to find out what’s really going on day to day, in north eastern Syria, Kurdish journalist and activist Aral Kakal and several of his colleagues went there for several days. This is what he saw.

A Journey Into ‘New Kurdistan’

To get across the border, we pretended we were going to Fish Khabour, 85 kilometres north of Dohuk, where we would visit some of the villages on the Iraq-Syria border. That was how we managed to get past the final government checkpoint in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan.

After walking about ten minutes down a dirt road, we found an armed man waiting for us with a truck. He was 25 years old, overweight and wore a green and black bandana tied around his forehead. He had come from Iraq to Syria to try and help the Syrian Kurds there.

The young man drove us to the first Syrian village on this side of the border. My colleague, Farman Mohammed, works for one of the Kurdish satellite television stations and he happily told me that although we had just crossed an international border we had not needed our passports because we were moving from one part of “Greater Kurdistan” to another. For him, this dream – of a country called Kurdistan – is a long held one.

There are about 60 houses here in this border village of Karbalat and there are also headquarters for Kurdish security in this area. More than 15 young men carrying guns are standing around. The youngest was 18, the oldest 25. Their collared shirts were not tucked in and some were wearing T-shirts, carrying gun magazines in their pockets. And from the way they were carrying their guns, we could tell they had had no, or very little, experience with them, or with warfare.

After speaking to the Kurdish security staff there, we were introduced to Assad Jaoush, 45, who was familiar with the territory and who would guide us through the areas that had been liberated from the current Syrian regime, led by President Bashar al-Assad.

Jaoush wears military clothes and carries a Kalashnikov. As we toured the area he was happy to provide lots of information about what we were seeing. He pointed out that this area, the Jazira area in Syria’s far northeast, is well known because it holds more than half of all of Syria’s oil. Jaoush and his friend reckoned that after counting the oil wells in this region for four days, they thought there were thousands of them here.

We also pass through another village, Wank, which was one of the first towns around here to be Arabized. This was a policy that former Syrian leader, Hafez al-Assad, had in common with neighbouring dictator Saddam Hussein. Both leaders tried to weaken the substantial Kurdish communities here by pushing Arabs from other parts of their countries in and moving Kurds out.

Jaoush told us that the heads of the Arabized villages had come to the Kurds in the village of Datba, where he’s from, two days ago and asked to stay in the area. The Arabs said that if they were able to stay they would even return the property that had been confiscated from the Kurds by the al-Assad government.

“The comrades of Datba decided to allow them to stay,” Jaoush explains. “Because if we expelled them now then, given the current situation in the rest of Syria, they’d probably be killed.”

After this we travelled another 32 kilometres until we came to the first checkpoint manned by the actual Syrian army. This was at the small Syrian city of Derik, which was also known as Malikiya.

Earlier on Jaoush had told us that the Syrian army still keeps some bases in this area but that their presence is really only a formality: the Kurds are in control here.

Jaoush spoke to one of the soldiers there and we were allowed to pass. The soldiers were young and they looked weary and frightened. “They cannot really make a move or interfere without our approval,” Jaoush explained.

Since taking control of the Afrin, Kobani, Sari Kani and Derik areas in Syria’s northeast, the Kurdish have set up their own independent administration. Jaoush confirmed that this administration was associated with Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish rebel leader who was one of the founding members of Kurdish separatist party, PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, and who is currently serving a life sentence in Turkey for his association with the PKK. Here in Syria the PKK-associated movement has two wings, with the political side known as the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria and the military wing named the Popular Protection Units (or YPG).

We were able to tour around Derik easily enough and were able to meet several local leaders. The mayor of the Derik district, Subhi Ali Elias, told us that he had been elected to the position by PYD’s People’s Council. “This organisation [the People’s Council] is the highest authority here,” Elias told us. “It also has institutions for youth issues, women’s affairs, the arts and for teaching the Kurdish language. It also supervises municipal activities.” Up until recently, no Kurdish language schools existed here, they were forbidden by the Syrian government.

Another local, Havel Ahmad, told us he was a member of the local market council. The market place in Derik stays open late – and there are still a lot of pictures of the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad hanging on the walls and power poles.

[Editor’s note: Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network explained recently that this was because the central Syrian government is still paying the salaries of civil servants and the Kurdish administrators were not ready to, and indeed could not afford to, remove all signs of al-Assad in the city.]

“Our market council was elected by the shop keepers here to administer the market,” Ahmad explained. “its main task presently is to prevent artificial inflation and stop merchants from manipulating prices.” His market council was supervised by the more senior PYD council and there was also another council that acted as a legal court, Ahmad added.

We were also able to meet the Kurdish local responsible for Derik’s internal security, that is, the de-facto police force here. The ground floor of Derik’s security headquarters has two cells and there was a prisoner in each one.

“We have officers in all areas of Derik and we have control over the security here,” the de-facto police chief confirmed. “In some cases we’ve had to arrest troublemakers. But we resolve these problems using traditional [tribal] means, where we let the accuser and the alleged perpetrator meet one another and negotiate what would be suitable reparation. And we’re the arbitrators. We’ve had some 20 or 30 cases that needed to be resolved, as well as five instances of theft and we’ve been able to resolve them all,” he told us proudly.

There is also another security force present here though and it seems more formidable. This is the YPG, which is supposed to come under the control of the Kurdish National Council in Syria [a political body that  comprises all of the different Kurdish political parties in Syria]. The YPG is more like an army; its members wear black uniforms and khaki jackets and they completely cover their faces with scarves, leaving only their eyes visible.

The YPG is commanded by a 30-year-old woman here. “All of the military in Derik is ours,” she told NIQASH, while keeping her face similarly covered. “In Derik we have 300 soldiers and if there’s any kind of emergency we can easily increase that number. We train our forces properly and every member is on duty for between five and 10 hours a day.”

Interestingly there was one place that we didn’t visit. This was the Baath political party’s premises in Derik. We stopped the car out front but we didn’t get out. Jaoush told us there was absolutely no point in doing so as the building – still decorated with al-Assad’s picture and flying the Baath party colours – had been abandoned recently. This seemed to be true: the door to the building simply stood ajar. “They left the building a week ago and took everything with them,” Jaoush said.

However there was still some noticeable Syrian presence in the headquarters of Syrian security: we saw men on the roof and also guards at the doors.

There are no hotels or guesthouses and during our stay in Derik, we were accommodated in a house that was just 150 metres away from the security headquarters. We managed to visit several locals’ homes too and often we would see pictures of Abdullah Ocalan hanging on the walls.

Every Friday there are anti-regime protests on the streets of Derik, organized by young Kurdish people who use loudspeakers to gather a crowd. Women stand on the left side and men on the right and then after the protests are finished, families simply return home again.

And in general, it seemed to us that most people were just going about their daily business, going to work, coming home, having dinner – nothing seemed unusual about their lives here.

Market council member Ahmad likes it this way. He told us that he believes that the Kurdish shouldn’t give up these territories again, that they shouldn’t let the al-Assad government back in here and that Syria’s Arabs should also be persuaded that al-Assad no longer controls the country’s northeast.

It makes sense to him and no doubt, to many others here too. “The Kurds don’t want to start a war with the regime and the regime doesn’t want to open up a new front,” Ahmad concludes.

Ghaith Abdul Ahad is superb. This is a must see.

Watch The Battle for Syria on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Syria Orders Schools to Open, but Classes Give Way to War
By an EMPLOYEE of THE NEW YORK TIMES in SYRIA and KAREEM FAHIM.

DAMASCUS, Syria — At one Syrian school, in the Damascus suburbs, students were so scarce this week that teachers spent most of the last few days sitting around and drinking tea.

On the outskirts of the northern city of Aleppo, the teachers just stayed home. The schools had been transformed into shelters for residents displaced by fighting, and in any case, one teacher said, there were more “more pressing concerns” than school.

Other schools had been taken over by rebel fighters, and throughout Syria, more than 2,000 school buildings had been destroyed or damaged in the war.

In an attempt to project calm in the midst of relentless violence, Syria’s Education Ministry ordered schools to open this week. Instead of calm, however, the schools reflected what had happened in the rest of the country during the summer: the fighting had grown worse, the routines of daily life more dangerous and education had become one more casualty of the unrest.

On Sunday, the education minister said that more than five million Syrian students had returned so far. But certainly tens of thousands, if not more, stayed away. Teachers and parents said that educators and students were too scared to return, or unable to, since the schools themselves were occupied, destroyed or inaccessible.

“The Syrian government promised that everything would be O.K., that they will finish the ‘criminal gangs’ before the beginning of the educational year,” said a teacher at a school in a Damascus refugee camp, using a term the government uses to describe its opponents.

“What happened is the opposite,” she said. The fighting grew worse and rolled through the neighborhood and surrounding areas, sending more and more families to shelter in the schools.

Last week, Unicef, citing government estimates, said that of the country’s 22,000 schools, at least 10 percent were damaged, destroyed or occupied by displaced families. In Homs, parents said that classes had started in only a few schools; in one private school, the families living there simply moved to an upper floor. In the Damascus suburb of Barza, one or two schools took students in shifts, to make up for all the schools that were closed.

Different challenges faced Syrians who had fled the country, including to Lebanon, where officials are struggling with a vexing issue: how to teach Syrian students, accustomed to classes in Arabic, in Lebanese schools where science and math classes are taught in English or French.

“When you ask young people about school, they say they’re afraid of the language,” said Soha Boustani, a spokeswoman for Unicef. Last year, she said, the dropout rate for seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade Syrian students in Lebanese schools was 70 percent, with the language barriers being a major cause.

Syrian students also face discrimination, from Lebanese teachers and students, and resentment from local residents in impoverished parts of the country where the school system is already overburdened.

Syrian rebels reportedly defeated government troops in a battle at a post on the Turkish border. Opposition activists reported the Syrian military attacked several southwestern, northwestern, and southern suburbs of Damascus, forcing opposition forces to pull out of three southern districts. The Syrian army additionally bombarded many central areas around the Old City of Aleppo.

Journalist Examines Chaotic Fighting In Syria

The battle in Syria is being fought by rebel fighters who lack many of the basics typically associated with warfare: helmets, a large supply of ammo, and military planning.

“I was with one fighter who had 11 bullets, and he was, like, roaming as a freelance fighter along the front line trying to pick up a fight somewhere,” journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad tells Fresh Air contributor Dave Davies.

Abdul-Ahad describes the situation in Syria as fluid and complicated. A correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian, Abdul-Ahad reported for the PBS Frontline documentary The Battle for Syria, which airs Tuesday.

“There is chaos, there is no military planning, there is no organization,” he says. “Most of the skirmishes happen like a game of cat and mouse: The tank is the cat. When the tank moves down street, the rebels disperse, run away, try to ambush the tank, they go from a corner to a corner. Meantime, there is shelling [and] mortars raining on them.”

Abdul-Ahad has covered conflicts in Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq for the past nine years — and he says he hasn’t seen such disorder and violence since reporting on Fallujah during the Iraq War in 2004.

“In other conflicts, you meet people and then you hear they died after a few weeks, months, years,” he says. “In Syria, you meet someone in the morning and they die at the end of the day. As one of the officers was saying: ‘The only thing we have plenty of to spend is men.’ ”

The Battle for Syria is an up-close look at insurgents fighting government forces in Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city.

Abdul-Ahad says most of the fighters he has met — some of whom are jihadis, secularists or Salafists — are “just driven by the spirit of the Arab Spring, the spirit of the revolution … fighting to topple [Bashar] Assad because they wanted a form of dignity. They were tired of being ruled like sheep, enslaved by one family, one ruling party.”

Analysis: Donors not walking the talk on humanitarian aid to Syria
by Heba Aly [[email protected]] and /cb

….Why has the funding for the UN and others lagged?  Few humanitarian crises receive the attention and engagement of the world that Syria has….

“Nobody wants to strengthen the Assad regime by sending aid,” says Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, and curator of a widely-read blog on Syrian affairs. “The Western strategy is to starve the regime and feed the opposition. That, of course, is impossible to do without starving all of Syria. Sanctions are a very blunt tool, and they are meant to weaken the regime to get Syrians to revolt against it.

“The trouble is if you help people inside Syria, you have to be in coordination with the Syrian government and that legitimizes the Syrian government. It is a matter of priorities. Do you want regime-change or to feed people?”…

“The problem is access,” one Western donor said. “[The UN’s] definition of access is different than the definition of the donors. We need more reporting: Not just, `We distributed aid here or there’, but: Are we sure the aid is really reaching the most vulnerable? Are we financing the government or the Free Syrian Army? … Where is the accountability? Where is the impartiality of aid?… Don’t give me lists of beneficiaries. Just give me details.”

Others have raised questions about the “local partners” that are cited but not identified by many aid agencies.

But for one Western aid worker, this is a front: “In my view, there is a total lack of political will on funding. They are just waiting for Assad to fall… Donors are using access as an excuse.”….

But for Peter Harling, analyst with the International Crisis Group, none of these explanations hold true.

“There is basically no explanation other than hypocrisy. The needs are huge in Syria and there is no doubt that a humanitarian crisis will provoke further radicalization and collapse of this fragile society. An expansive indigenous civil society has developed and matured, which there is every reason to support; and the outpouring of ostentatious sympathy for the Syrian people’s plight should prompt equally pressing action on the ground. But the fact is that our governments satisfy themselves with empty statements and insincere pledges.”

A panel of four or five journalists and experts will join Abeer in discussing the terrible humanitarian consequences of the conflict and complex relief operation underway to each them with assistance. The Google Hangout will take place Thursday at 12pm NY time and last approximately 45 minutes. We’ll be broadcasting the event live on our Google Plus page (http://plus.google.com/+worldfoodprogramme) as well as our Youtube Channel (http://youtube.com/worldfoodprogram).

Conflict in Syria: Regional Players’ Motives and Limits
September 19, 2012 | Stratfor

An Egyptian initiative to manage Syria’s post-al Assad transition launched Sept. 17 with a high-level meeting in Cairo. Foreign ministers from Egypt, Turkey and Iran held talks on a possible exit for Syrian President Bashar al Assad and, more important, what will come after him. Saudi Arabia, also part of the contact group, did not send an envoy and did not provide any explanation for its absence.

The four powers probably will not be able to reach a substantive deal on the Syrian transition. But the contact group provides a convenient prism through which to view the various motives and constraints of the four regional powers: Shiite Iran and Sunni actors Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Analysis

Iran is facing a geopolitical setback in Syria with the loss of its close ally, the al Assad regime. It could be a while before the Alawite regime collapses; indeed, recent statements out of Tehran confirm suspicions that Iran has been sending Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to bolster Syrian forces. But critical pillars of the regime are weakening, and Damascus is essentially fighting a war of attrition against a fractured and disorganized but determined rebel force.

Tehran wants to salvage as much of the Alawite power as it can. It has tools at its disposal, including the threat of a post-transition Alawite-led insurgency similar to the post-Saddam Hussein insurgency in neighboring Iraq. None of Syria’s neighbors, the regional players or the foreign powers with an interest in Syria — including the United States — wants to see an insurgency develop. They would like to see some continuity of the state apparatus and security forces, which would require a power-sharing agreement and thus an opportunity for Iran.

At the same time, Syria is only one piece — albeit critical — in a larger chess game between Iran and the United States. Washington, along with local powers Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, wants to see Iranian influence in the Levant reduced, but it also wants to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and any threat to the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Egypt’s contact group provides access to something that Iran has so far been denied: a seat at the table. Egypt’s re-entry into regional geopolitics and its overtures to Iran are an opportunity for the Iranians, since Cairo is showing that the historic leader of the Arab world is willing to work with them and mediate with the rest of the Sunni states. The Egyptian contact group puts Syria’s closest ally, Iran, at the table with the Syrian rebels’ key backers, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Iran is not yet ready to commit to any substantive discussions. The first request Tehran made, even before the talks started, was for Iraq and Venezuela to be added to the group. The request, a nonstarter, likely contributed to Riyadh’s decision not to send an envoy to the contact group meeting, although Riyadh sent its deputy foreign minister to Cairo last week for the preparatory meeting. Tehran wants to demonstrate that it is not desperate and does not need the group, but it sent Iranian Foreign Minister Ali

Akbar Salehi to the meeting. Tehran needs some access to transition talks and so far, Egypt’s group is the only discussion to which Iran is invited.

Turkey’s Role

Turkey also sent an envoy to Cairo, though Ankara’s position will be reduced, rather than strengthened, by the Egyptian intervention.

Turkey has taken the most risk in supporting the rebels. Turkey’s position is similar to Iraq’s or Lebanon’s. Ankara faces real consequences that threaten its own domestic security and stability — in Turkey’s case, the threat comes from the Kurdish separatist movements in Turkey, Iraq and northern Syria.

While Saudi Arabia and Qatar have supplied weapons and financial support and the United States has deployed a few CIA operatives and offered intelligence and guidance, Turkey has housed tens of thousands of Syrian refugees and provided sanctuary, arms, logistical support and likely training for Syrian rebels. Ankara has risked upsetting its delicate relations with Iran, a rival power but also a key supplier of energy.

Turkey has been the main contact point, along with Saudi Arabia, for the United States and has worked to bolster the cohesiveness and capabilities of the Syrian opposition and the Syrian National Council. Ankara also has built strong ties with the Free Syrian Army leadership.

If Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had not chosen to attend the Sept. 17 meeting in Cairo, the contact group would have effectively collapsed, becoming nothing more than a bilateral talk between Egypt and Iran. That Turkey showed up is an important indicator of the pressure it is under. It needs to maintain, at the very least, a working relationship with Iran, especially as domestic political pressure over Turkey’s role in Syria and the surge in Kurdistan Workers’ Party attacks grows and Ankara blames

Tehran for supporting the Kurdish militants. Turkey also does not want to alienate Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi or the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, especially with Syria and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood — the country’s largest and most organized Sunni group — still in play.

Egypt Reasserts its Power

The reasons for Egypt’s sudden interest in supporting the transition in Syria are many. First, the contact group is a small but important step in Egypt’s efforts to resume its regional role. Cairo hopes to position itself as a mediator between the mostly Sunni Arab world and Shiite Iran. This will help Egypt counterbalance the constraints placed on it by the overwhelming influence of Saudi Arabia.

Inserting itself in the Syrian transition talks also creates an opportunity for Egypt to build some influence in post-al Assad Syria. Cairo has already hosted meetings of opposition leaders, though various rebel factions walked out and the talks have nearly collapsed. Not since the creation of the United Arab Republic in 1958 has Egypt had an opportunity to directly shape the government in Damascus. But now, Morsi likely wants to work with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, which has retained much of its legitimacy in the eyes of Syria’s majority Sunni population.

Syria has long been a battleground between Iran and Saudi Arabia and will remain so for some time. But in the longer term, Tehran and Riyadh’s roles will be reduced although they will maintain stakes in Damascus.

The competition in Syria will shift to one between Egypt and Turkey as they both vie to support their particular faction of the Sunni leadership. However, any Egyptian influence will be limited in the short term as Cairo focuses much of its energy on domestic issues.

The Saudi-Iranian Divide

Saudi Arabia’s objectives in Syria are focused on Iran. Riyadh sees the Syrian uprising as a historic opportunity to reverse Iranian gains in the region. Fearful of an Iranian crescent stretching from the Zagros Mountains to the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean along its northern border, Saudi has long encouraged — either directly or indirectly — Sunni insurgents in northern Iraq. It has also backed the rebels in Syria, reportedly providing weapons and funding and likely encouraging jihadists to fight alongside rebel forces.

Foreign Salafist fighters are still only a small, though growing, percentage of rebel forces. Even if they convert large segments of the Syrian Sunni population, it would take years before they would be able to challenge the entrenched Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

Riyadh understands that a Salafist-led government is not likely to emerge in Damascus in the medium term and has cooperated with Ankara, largely bolstering Turkey’s bid to manage the transition.

Saudi Arabia can manage relations with Egypt, which is financially constrained, and with Turkey, which is not yet ready to assert itself aggressively in the region. What Riyadh wants are ways to curb Iranian influence in the longer term, and for Riyadh that means limiting Iranian influence in Syria and Iraq.

Any Saudi engagement with Iran over Syria will be limited, since Riyadh and Tehran’s geopolitical positions are at odds. Riyadh did participate in the working group a week prior to the foreign ministerial meeting and, according to Davutoglu, will be attending future talks. Saudi Arabia and Iran have already both signed a willingness to negotiate, with Riyadh inviting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the emergency Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit in Mecca in mid-August and Iran hosting Saudi Deputy

Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah, the king’s son and likely successor to ailing Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.

But like Iran, Saudi Arabia is far from committed and will be waiting to see some serious signs of commitment from Iran. If any regional effort to resolve the Syrian conflict and manage a transition is to take place, the key will be what happens between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Full attendance from all four players at the next meeting, scheduled to be held in New York City during the upcoming U.N. General Assembly meeting, or any bilateral talks between Riyadh and Tehran will be important indicators of progress in the negotiations. A lack of attendance will mean not only the death of Egypt’s initiative but also the failure of Saudi Arabia and Iran to reach any accommodation.

Turks Weary of Leaders’ Support for Syria Uprising

Human Rights Watch

…A pattern has emerged in recent weeks in areas where government forces, pushed into retreat by opposition forces, are now indiscriminately bombing and shelling lost territory – with disastrous consequences for the civilian population….what the residents of Idlib, Jabal al-Zawiya and north Hama endure every day is just as harrowing. Such indiscriminate attacks constitute war crimes.”….

Syrian rebel leader wants Libyan-style Arab initiative
Wed Sep 19, 2012

* Sieda calls for an Arab move to stop bloodshed in Syria
* Opposes Iran involvement in efforts to resolve crisis

(Reuters) – Syria’s main opposition bloc wants Arab states to work together to effect an international intervention in Syria similar to the joint initiative in Libya, Syrian National Council (SNC) head Abdulbaset Sieda said in an interview published on Wednesday.

Business Insider: Syrian Regime ‘Will Deploy Chemical Weapons As Last Resort’
2012-09-19

The Syrian regime plans to deploy chemical weapons against its own people “as a last resort”, the former head of Syria’s chemical arsenal has said in an interview with a British newspaper. Major-General Adnan Sillu said he defected from the Syrian …

VOA is publishing “Syrian Stories,” mostly of activists.  Here’s the latest: http://ow.ly/dPaOm  The collection of about 40 stories written by Syrians is on Tumblr: syriawitness.middleeastvoices.com

Syrian Christians are taking refuge in Tartus. This is what I am told by a Syrian Christian in Beirut. Life is just too expensive in Lebanon for most Syrian refugees. Their friends who fled Aleppo to Beirut are finding excuses to go back — “My neighborhood is secure again,” “I must enroll my kids in school,” “things are getting better.” These are some of the reasons that Syrians are giving as they leave Beirut, but few are buying them. Money. It is all about the money. Life is too expensive in Beirut for most Syrians. Some are choosing to move to Tartus on the Syrian coast, rather than go back to Aleppo. There are a number of reaons it has become a destination of choice for Syrian Christians. It is a hop, skip and jump from north of Lebanon. It is surrounded by Christians in Wadi Nasara and by the Alawite Mountains. Apartments and food are inexpensive. Alawites have already begun to migrate there from Syria’s inland cities in search of security. Yes, the city has a Sunni majority, but the town of 120,00 has not seen communal violence and remains stable. Many Tartusis claim that in their town, one can almost pretend that the country is not at war.

???? ????: ???????? ????? ????? ????? ??? ?????? ?????? 3 ????

– 2012/09/17??? ??: ??????
“?? ?? ??? ???? ??????? ????? ?? ?? ??????? ??? ?? ???? ??? ?? ????? ????, ????? ????? ???? ?????? ????? ????????”

Foreign Policy

Clashes continued throughout Syria on Monday with an estimated 131 people killed by Syrian forces according to the Local Coordination Committees. Shelling by government forces was reported in Homs as well as the predominantly opposition held Damascus district of al-Hajar al-Aswad. The army reported it had taken control of Midan, a statement that was corroborated by a correspondent on the ground.

Fragmented Syrian Opposition Competes with SNC in Jordan
By: Tamer al-Samadi posted on Thursday, Sep 13, 2012

High-level Syrian opposition sources told Al-Hayat that meetings between Syrian opposition forces, which have been taking place in the Jordanian capital of Amman for several days now, seek to unite and establish an overreaching framework to serve as a substitute for the Syrian National Council (SNC). This united front will be headed by the defected Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab, who is currently in Amman.

Defected Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab (rear C) poses with members of the Free Syrian Army in Deraa August 7, 2012. (photo by REUTERS)

Yasser Abboud, commander of field operations for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who is currently in Amman, said that “the opposition meetings in the Jordanian capital that were launched last week are still ongoing.” In an exclusive interview with Al-Hayat, he said, “The ongoing meetings include politicians and military officers who defected from the criminal regime in Syria, in addition to some SNC members, who have personally attended the meetings.” Abboud stressed that the military leaders represent various cities and villages of the Damascus and Daraa governorates, the latter of which borders Jordan.

Abboud explained that the meetings seek to unify the ranks of the political and military opposition, and look into the possibility of establishing a political alternative to the SNC. Abboud, who is the leader of the group that succeeded in smuggling Hijab out of the country and into Jordan, said that “Hijab will be at the head of the new Syrian opposition entity, while defected Brig. Gen. Mohammed al-Hajj will head the FSA military and field leaderships, as well as the military and revolutionary councils. This new military entity, named the National Syrian Army, will be affiliated with the political leadership.

… Abboud spoke of what he called “guarantees” that were demanded by some states to “support the new birth.” However, he did not elaborate in detail. Abboud added that these states had stressed the need “to protect the rights of minorities,” which he considered to be “a demand that does not require any guarantee.”

“We have agreed to the general guidelines of the next phase. However, we are still looking into the details … What matters now is to overthrow the regime as soon as possible. Regarding the upcoming phase, the Syrian public will have the final say in this matter,” he added.

In the same vein, Mohamed Inad, an SNC member and a member of the Supreme Council for the Revolutionary Command, told Al-Hayat that “the meetings in Amman seek to reorganize the ranks of the SNC and to oust some people and leaders who have proved disruptive to the paths of change.

“All of the ongoing meetings are in the best interest of the political and military opposition. We are seeking a realistic vision that would guarantee the ousting of the regime and accelerate steps to declare a transitional government that would include people of high competence and expertise,” he added. Furthermore, Inad said that “the meetings seek to unite the military battalions in Syria, as well as the sources of external funding.”

However, Abdul Salam al-Bitar, the secretary-general of the SNC’s regional office in Jordan, criticized the meetings, saying that they “are run from abroad.” Bitar said that talk of unifying the opposition is a “big lie” which aims to declare an interim government “led by former regime leaders who killed so many Syrian people before they defected from the regime….

Saudi Arabia absent from Egypt-Iran-Turkey talks on Syria
Reuters

CAIRO (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia opted to stay away from a meeting of four regional powers on the Syrian crisis on Monday, adding to a sense that the forum is unlikely to advance the quest for peace.

Time Magazine–  Rania Abouzeid / Idlib province – “Syria’s Secular and Islamist Rebels: Who Are the Saudis and the Qataris Arming?”

The FSA is nominally headed by the Turkey-based Riad al-As’aad. Both As’aad and his chief FSA rival General Mustafa Sheikh are not party to the Istanbul control room which supplies and arms rebels who operate under the FSA banner. The two men each have their own sources of funding, and are independently distributing money and weapons to selected FSA units.

According to sources who have dealt with him, Saudi Arabia’s man in the Istanbul control center is a Lebanese politician named Okab Sakr. He belongs to the Future Movement, the organization of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, which has a history of enmity with Damascus (Syria was accused of complicity in the 2005 assassination of Hariri’s father Rafik). The party has not made Sakr available to TIME, denies his involvement in any weapons deals and insists that Sakr is in Belgium “on leave” from his political duties.

However, Sakr appears to have been in the southern Turkish city of Antakya in late August. A TIME inquiry with an Antakya hotel confirms Sakr was in the area at the time. According to rebel sources who dealt with him, theLebanese politician was there overseeing the distribution of batches of supplies — small consignments of 50,000 Kalashnikov bullets and several dozen rocket-propelled grenades – to at least four different FSA groups in Idlib province as well as larger consignments to other areas including Homs. The FSA sources also say he met with some commanders but not others – a selectivity that led to much chagrin.

That kind of favoritism has caused problems on the ground in many ways. According to FSA sources, prominent activists and members of the Istanbul control room, Sakr was mainly responsible for designating the representatives in Syria’s 14 provinces to whom the Istanbul center would funnel small batches of light weapons — Kalashnikov rifles, BKC machine guns, rocket propelled grenade launchers and ammunition – to reach FSA groups operating in each area. But the 20 or so Syrians selected (some areas like Damascus have more than one representative) to distribute armaments were not all effective. These representatives were “supposed to deliver the support inside but they did not have a presence on the ground, they weren’t known,” says an influential U.S.-based Syrian activist with wide contacts inside Syria who played a role in setting up the Istanbul operations room. “I saw this weak point, so I connected Okab to people I knew were working on the ground, and I wasn’t the only one to do this, others did too because we wanted the room to succeed.”

But the selectivity has bred further favoritism in the distribution of arms. “Those who received goods would distribute them as they wanted. They started sending to people and saying, ‘this is a gift from me to you,’” a member of the control room representing eastern Syria told TIME. Other representatives were blunter, seeking pledges of loyalty from FSA groups inside the country before delivering the goods. To try to alleviate the problem, the provincial representatives were cycled in and out of the room’s operations but the problems remained. “The weapons are all being distributed in secret,” says one fighter inside Syria angrily, “and what is secret will stay unclear.”

The situation is compounded by Qatar’s man — a major who defected from Assad’s army who has not yet responded to TIME’s request for comment. The Qataris want to focus on aiding the regional military councils, FSA groupings within Syria set up earlier this year partly in order to get around the favoritism of the representatives. (There are at least 10 military councilsscattered throughout the country.) Goods would be delivered to a council, and then distributed to the brigades under its umbrella. In practice, it wasn’t quite as easy, or smooth. “We were given lists by brigade leaders of their men, but we stopped believing the numbers,” says a member of the Istanbul room from Syria’s Idlib province. However, the Saudis – via Okab Sakr – appear to only want to support certain groups within the councils, but not others.

“We felt that the sides giving us support weren’t on the same page,” says the control room member from eastern Syria. “They started having side meetings with some groups.” Still, he says, “what is most important is that the guys receive weapons, whether that is via an operations room or directly, we don’t care. Nobody knows the truth from the talk,” he says. “We have been lied to [by the international community] and we have lied to the guys inside, saying weapons would arrive in a week, in 10 days, and months have passed and someareas haven’t received supplies. So, unless I see it, and see it distributed, even I don’t believe it.”

In the town of Bdeeta in Idlib province—which happens to be the hometown of Riad al-As’aad–rebel fighters complain bitterly about the lack of assistance. “We are licking our plates, we beg for salt,” says Abu Mar’iye, who heads the Martyrs of Ibditha group in the tiny town, home to some 2,000 people. “It’s not enough, even the weapons that arrive, it’s like a drop, just enough so the fighting continues, so we can kill each other but not win.”…..

….some FSA groups, like Abu Issa’s Suqoor al-Sham, are also part of wider Islamist networks. It’s largely to maximize the amount of support they can get.

…. Abu Issa, Suleiman and Maarouf, along with other high-profile rebel leaders from other provinces, spent much of August shuttling between Syria and Turkey to attend high-level meetings with diplomats and senior Syrian opposition. But U.S. diplomacy has yet to grasp the full complexity of the Syrian crisis. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to snub the SNC during an August trip to Istanbul was widely viewed as belated recognition by many activists inside Syria that the exiles comprising the body have littlesway or credibility. The fact is, the guys with the guns do, although the State Department denies any direct contact with members of the FSA. (The SNCdoes not have a role in the arming of the rebels inside Syria, though some individual SNC members are in the Istanbul control room, representing theirregions.)

The Obama administration does not deal directly with the armed opposition but it has authorized a non-profit organization, the Syrian Support Group, to fundraise for the FSA. The SSG is comprised of Syrian exiles in the U.S and Canada as well as a former NATO political officer.

Zeidan of the Idlib Military Council doesn’t seem to differentiate between official U.S. policy and that of the SSG. He says he’s been in contact with members of the SSG for months. “I know that they are afraid of something called Al-Qaeda, it’s all a big lie,” said Zeidan. “They talk about Ahrar al-Sham and Suqoor al-Sham. They are conservative Islamists, but they are not extremists. Many of these groups just want support.” He adds, “We are fighting to have a democratic country, not so that we can install people with American or European or Saudi agendas… We want to topple the regime, so whoever offers us help, we will call our units whatever they want as long as they support us. We just want to finish.”

Syrian opposition split and hesitant- FM
Sep 17, 2012 – Voice of Russia

Syria’s opposition has split over choosing a mediator to lead dialogue with the government officials, Russia’s deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters Monday.

He said that the opposition failed to choose a joint candidate, while the government is ready for talks.

The Swedish Institute for International Affairs just published a 44-page study written by Aron Lund on Syrian jihadi movements: “UI Brief 13: Syrian Jihadism”. It’s in English, but a Swedish version is on the way.

Report: Syria tested chemical weapons delivery systems in August
The German weekly Der Spiegel quotes witnesses as saying that Iranian officers were flown in for testing of chemical weapons in Syria’s desert.
By Haaretz | Sep.17, 2012 |

A satellite image of al-Safir, Syria’s main chemical weapons facility, near Aleppo.

Syria tested delivery systems for chemical weapons at the end of August, according to the German weekly Der Spiegel.

The report, which quotes various witnesses, said that the tests took place near a chemical weapons research center at al-Safir, east of Aleppo, and were carried out with the aid of Iranian officers who were flown in for the testing.

According to the report, five or six empty shells capable of delivering poison gas were fired by tanks and aircraft at the site of Diraiham in the desert, near the village of Khanasir. The report said that scientists from Iran and North Korea are said to work in the al-Safir research center, which is Syria’s largest testing site for chemical weapons.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that the Syrian government has storied its chemical weapons and materials in some twenty sites around the country.

The report cited unnamed American and Middle Eastern officials, who also said there could be additional sites of which they were unaware.

The officials said their governments believe Syria has several tons of chemical weapons and materials, including weapons-ready sarin gas, and that the most dangerous elements of the arsenal are stored in bunkers.

UK: Syria intervention would need full US backing
AP / September 18, 2012

LONDON (AP) — British Foreign Secretary William Hague says any intervention in Syria would only be possible with the full backing of the United States

Hague told Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Tuesday that he wasn’t advocating a military intervention, but that the option could not be ruled out amid an escalating crisis.

‘‘It would require intervention on a vastly greater scale than was the case in Libya, with no prospect at the moment of agreement at the U.N. Security Council, and would require the full involvement of the United States,’’ Hague told the committee.

Hague acknowledged he saw ‘‘major disadvantages’’ to an intervention….

Turkey to Provide Egypt $2 Billion in Aid
BY MATT BRADLEY

CAIRO—Turkey will provide a $2 billion aid package to help Egypt finance infrastructure projects and increase its dwindling foreign currency reserves, Egypt’s Minister of Finance said Saturday.

Egyptian financial policy makers have embarked on an aggressive effort over the past several months to solicit foreign assistance and investment in the hopes of mending a gaping budget and foreign currency reserve deficit.

Egypt’s budget deficit in …

Hatay officials look for fleeing Syrian refugees
ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News, by  Erdem Güne?

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry is looking to coax back upward of thousands of Syrian refugees to temporary camps in the country’s south as they remain unaccounted for elsewhere in Turkey, an official told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.

“Syrians who crossed the border illegally or escaped from the camps have been invited to come back to the camps by the Foreign Ministry,” Suphi Atan, who has been appointed to coordinate the Syrian camps in southern Turkish cities, said in a phone interview yesterday.

Atan said there were between 5,000 and 10,000 Syrians living in Hatay outside the camps, and there were thousands of others in other cities..

???? ???? ????? ?????? ???? ?????? ?????? ???????? ?? “?????? ????? ????? 25 ????? ?????? ??? ???? ????? ????? ???? ?? ?????”.

??? ??????? ???? ?????? “????????” ??????? ??? ???? ????? ?????? ???? ????? ?? “??? ?????? ?????? ??? ???? ??????? ??????? ???????

Aerial bombing ramped up in northern Syria – FT

Syrian rebels experiment with self rule
By: Borzou Daragahi | Financial Times

The leaders of the council governing Souran, a town in rebel-controlled Syria, decide to hold an impromptu meeting right on the footpath along its main street, a gesture of open government that would impress Canada or Sweden.

Jihad in Syria
Executive Summary – Institute for War Studies

This report examines the presence of jihadist groups within Syria, explains where various Syrian rebel groups and foreign elements operating in Syria fall along the spectrum of religious ideology, and considers their aggregate effect upon the Islamification of the Syrian opposition…..

• The U.S. Government has cited concern over arming jihadists as a reason for limiting support to the Syrian opposition.  However, U.S. allies are already providing material support to the Syrian opposition, and competing sources of funding threaten Syria’s future stability by enhancing the influence of more radical elements. The confluence of jihadist interest with that of the Gulf states raises the possibility that these states may leverage jihadists for their own strategic purposes, while simultaneously limiting Western influence.

• In order to counter this effect, the U.S. should seek to channel this support in a way that bolsters responsible groups and players while ensuring that Salafi-jihadist organizations such as Jabhat Nusra are unable to hijack the opposition movement. If the U.S. hopes to counter this threat and stem the growing popularity of more radical groups, it must clearly identify secular and moderate Islamist opposition groups and encourage the international community to focus resources in support of those groups alone.  Such focused support would increase the influence of moderate opposition groups and undercut the appeal of Salafism in Syria.

The United States must act on Syria By Radwan Ziadeh Monday, September 17 in FP

…. The United States should now provide robust diplomatic support for action to protect civilians, such as the establishment of no-fly zones. The Assad regime has proven time and again that it is entirely willing to indiscriminately bombard its own population centers with artillery and airstrikes. If the United States is unable or unwilling to put its own planes to use protecting innocents, the least it could do is provide diplomatic support to those who are. Regional allies have expressed a willingness to provide air cover for refugee camps situated near international borders — there is no reason for the United States not to support these efforts. Additionally, the United States should, in concert with regional partners, work to increase the supply of defensive weapons to the armed opposition. The Free Syrian Army (FSA), which controls large portions of the country, desperately needs anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons…..

I was born and raised in Daraya with my brothers and sisters. Many of my relatives still live in Daraya, and, following last month’s massacre and the death of my cousin, I fear for their lives. I last spoke to my mother on August 25 and have struggled to contact my family since. The feeling of helplessness that results from searching for the names of dead relatives on casualty lists posted on the internet is indescribable…

The America of the Arab Street
By ED HUSAIN, September 18, 2012, NYTimes

… The liberal protesters who demanded freedom and democracy last year were able to unite and overthrow dictators in Tunisia and Egypt. But their failure to explain what their liberalism stands for has opened the way for a new, Islamist-oriented power elite that capitalizes on old lies and half-truths to twist religion and history to manipulate the masses. …

Arab societies remain deeply religious. In liberal Morocco, 89 percent of the people say that religion is “very important” in their lives, according to a recent Pew poll. Mosques are packed every Friday; religious events promote widespread charity, and believers are encouraged to support candidates who are perceived to be more godly. But there is a deeper problem that goes well beyond the popular appeal of Islamist parties: A cancerous narrative has taken hold of many Arab minds.

In Egypt, 75 percent of Muslims do not believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks, according to a 2011 Pew poll. Many believe that it was either Israel, the U.S. government, or both. The West is viewed through a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories, half-truths and a selective reading of history.

When I met Muhammad Mahdi Akef, the influential former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, in April 2011, he insisted that Al Qaeda was a figment of the Western imagination. The idea that it doesn’t exist, that the United States attacked itself, is buttressed by preachers in mosques, on satellite television channels and in glossy Arabic books.

WINEP and Wikistrat analysts predict that Assad and his army will “fall”, “crumble”, or “break”. I have argued the opposite in “Creating a Syrian Swamp: Assad’s ‘Plan B’“.  A likely outcome of the Syrian struggle is that Assad and his army will not break; rather, they will likely retreat to the coastal region, where Alawite and loyal troops have a social base. They would be very hard to destroy on their home base, especially if foreign allies continue to support them with weapons and money. Should this happen, Syria’s civil war could end more like Lebanon’s — with a stalemate — rather than like Libya’s — with the death of the dictator and destruction of his military.

If Sunni Arab rebels manage to unify or if foreign powers intervene directly, the survival of Assad’s military is unlikely.

Here is a bit of what I wrote on Aug. 10:

In order to survive, Assad and his Alawite generals will struggle to turn Syria into Lebanon – a fractured nation, where no one community can rule. He may lose Syria, but could still remain a player, and his Alawite minority will not be destroyed. Today, Junblat, Geagea, Gemayyal, Franjia and other warlords are respected members of parliament and society. All might have been taken to the international court and charged with crimes against humanity two decades ago. After all, somewhere between 100,000 to 150,000 Lebanese were killed out of a population of three million during the civil war. When the Lebanese came to terms with the fact that no one camp could impose its rule over the others, they had no choice but to bury the hatchet and move forward.

If Assad surrenders, hundreds of regime leaders will be executed or tried for crimes against their fellow countrymen. The broader Alawite community fears the possibility of aimless retribution. To avoid this, Assad is likely to pursue the Lebanon option: turn Syria into a swamp and create chaos out of Syria’s sects and factions. It is a strategy of playing upon divisions to sow chaos. Already the Syrian Army has largely been transformed into an Alawite militia. If Assad must withdraw from Damascus, he will have nowhere to fall back on but Latakia and the coastal mountains. I have argued that the Alawite region cannot be turned into an independent state, but it does provide Assad and the remnants of the Syrian Army a social base. Just as Lebanon’s Maronites did not create an independent state in the Lebanon Mountains, they did use it to deny Muslim forces undivided supremacy over Lebanon. The Syrian opposition will have difficulty defeating Assad’s army. This is certainly true if opposition forces remain as fragmented as they are today. Assad is gambling on his enemies being unable to unite. He is working assiduously to turn Syria into a swamp in order to save what he can of his power and the lives of those around him.

If Assad is successful in this ambition, there will be no clear endgame to the fighting in Syria. Syria’s Baathist regime cannot survive. It is already collapsing. Most state institutions are no longer functioning. Order has broken down in many parts of the country. New authorities are springing up as the old disappear. But Assad’s army in its transformed state is likely to remain a powerful force.

Addendum:Email from a reader

I was just reading your latest post, and I think that WINEP’s assessment shows how out of touch they are with the Syrian mosaic. My husband, [a Sunni Damascene] has Alawi family friends, and one of them has just joined an Alawi militia. According to my husband’s cousin, who works for Rami Makhlouf, this militia is being funded by Makhlouf, and each volunteer gets paid money and get training and weapons. Of course, this person is in Lattakia, which supports your claim that they will probably unify in the coastal region.

I am just beginning to realize how sectarian characterizations are just the surface of everything. Yes, my husband’s friend is Alawi, but they had grown up together. They had known each other since they were babies. We were talking about this the other day. What if my husband had stayed behind and joined the Free Syrian Army? What if they ended up having to fight each other? How horrible would that be, for brothers to kill each other? My husband is not the only one who is suffering from these thoughts. There are so many of my friends who have had dear Alawi friends, and they had to watch those friends become soldiers who kill their fellow Syrians. It’s not easy, especially when those friends die. You just don’t know how to feel.

Answer to Observer’s Question in the Comment Section

Dear Observer, You write:

News Summary

Wikistrat

“Hundreds of analysts at Wikistrat, a crowdsourced geopolitical consulting firm, recently forecasted… that … The most plausible scenarios portray a slow-but-continuous decline of the regime until Assad falls. At that point, the opposition’s divisions and conflicting goals imply Libyan-style post-war difficulties.”

Syria at War: Views from the Turkish and Lebanese Borders
Andrew J. Tabler and Jeffrey White, September 13, 2012 WINEP

ANDREW J. TABLER
As the regime contracts and eventually crumbles, opposition fighters on the ground are poised to determine the course of Syrian politics.

… Particularly in northern Lebanon, tensions between Sunnis and Shiites are palpable. Conversations with fighters in these areas exhibit a more sectarian hue than ever before, with individuals freely admitting that they are fighting not just Assad, but also Shiites from Iran, Hizballah, and even Iraq.

JEFFREY WHITE
…. Looking ahead, Assad’s regime will fall when his forces break — and the Syrian army is on its way to breaking. The government is still determined to hold the entire country, and this over-commitment is bound to place unbearable stress on its capabilities. In the meantime, unfortunately, the regime is consciously inflicting causalities on civilians in an effort to break the connection between the populace and the armed opposition. If it succeeds in that effort, even if only on a local level, it will have made an important gain.

In Syria’s largest city, rebellion takes on an overtly religious tone
By David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers

ALEPPO, Syria — Two months into the battle for Syria’s second largest city, the airstrikes have become a part of daily life. Sometimes they are deadly accurate, taking out the rebels for whom they are intended. Just as often, they seem to miss.

A rebel headquarters in a former police station in the northeastern neighborhood of Hanano stands as testament to this. Though its windows are all broken, it has been missed at least four times, the intended strikes landing in a nearby park, an empty lot and destroying a five-story apartment building a full block away.

The battle for Aleppo that began with a rebel offensive in mid-July has settled into a stalemate. The rebels here control largely the same neighborhoods they took in the initial offensive. But there is something different here – a distinctly religious tone that this reporter hadn’t heard elsewhere in more than seven months covering Syria’s rebellion…..

“This is not a revolution, it’s a jihad,” shouted one man, angry, as he stood near the rubble of the apartment building mentioned above. Behind him, men worked with a bulldozer, trying to reach people they believed were still alive under the rubble….

Liwa Tawhid, one of the largest groups fighting here, had even made contingencies for policing rebel controlled neighborhoods and laid out plans to set up schools. Their plan for schooling includes religious instruction, and their council for making decisions about the fate of prisoners includes an expert in Islamic law.

At a mosque being used as a base for fighters in another neighborhood, a sign warning civilians against entering was another sign of the religious drift. The sign referred to the men inside as “mujahidin,” which translates as holy warriors, as opposed to “thowar,” which means revolutionaries.

Last Tuesday, at another rebel base, members of Ahrar al Sham, a group whose members describe themselves as Salafis, followers of a conservative strain of Islam some of whose followers also are thought behind last week’s attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere, handed out leaflets delineating the difference between mujahids and other rebels. It used the pejorative term “shabiha” – a Syrian word that usually refers to pro-government militiamen accused of carrying out some of the war’s worst atrocities – to refer to non-mujahids.

The leaflet had multiple aims, including criticizing rebels who might loot or use their weapons carelessly. But it also explained that a mujahid prays, and “Knows very well that God will give us victory if we apply his law by studying it and spread it between people nicely.”

The mujahid “Uses his weapon to support the oppressed people and their rights in a way that God accepts and nothing else,” the document continued…..

In Aleppo, Jabhat al Nusra, another Salafi group that has been known primarily for claiming bombings against government targets, is an actual fighting force here, with an identifiable base of operations from which it carries out guerrilla strikes. Members of the group declined interviews.

“We are fighting only for God,” one of them said, refusing to be identified. “Not to be in the press.”

But they know what their image is outside Syria. “They say in the West we are Al Qaida,” one Jabhat fighter scoffed, meaning it as a denial.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/09/16/168655/in-syrias-largest-city-rebellion.html#storylink=cpy

Nadim Houry ?@nadimhoury: Head of Aleppo Revolutionary Council told @hrw that they do not torture detainees but beating on soles of feet “permissible” #Syria

Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, said that his forces were playing only an “intellectual and advisory” role, but that they will offer military assistance in the event of external intervention. “We are proud to defend Syria, which constitutes a resistance to the Zionist entity,” Jafari told reporters in Tehran.

Syria: Christians take up arms for first time
Sept. 12 (Telegraph) — Christian communities in Aleppo have taken up arms and formed their own militias for the first time, the Daily Telegraph can disclose.
By Ruth Sherlock, Carol Malouf in Beirut, 12 Sep 2012

…. “Everybody is fighting everybody,” said George, an Armenian Christian from the city. “The Armenians are fighting because they believe the FSA are sent by their Turkish oppressors to attack them, the Christians want to defend their neighbourhoods, Shabiha regime militia are there to kill and rape, the army is fighting the FSA, and the [Kurdish militant group] PKK have their own militia too.”

For the past six weeks up to 150 Christian and Armenian fighters have been fighting to prevent Free Syrian Army rebels from entering Christian heartland areas of Aleppo.

Last month the Syrian army claimed a ‘victory’ in removing FSA fighters from the historic Christian quarter of Jdeidah. But Christian

militia fighters told the Daily Telegraph it was they who had first attacked the FSA there.

“The FSA were hiding in Farhat Square in Jdeideh. The Church committees stormed in and cleansed the area. Then the Syrian army

joined us. They claimed the victory on State television,” said George, who like many Christian refugees is too scared to give his full name. “The rebels were threatening the churches.”

….Seeing little hope of change many Christians have already joined the hundreds of thousands who have fled the country. The UN High Commission for Refugees said 253,000 Syrians were now registered with them. Many Christians say they hold little hope of returning.

An Aleppo Assyrian writes me:

The Daily Telegraph on September 10th ran an article titled “Syria: Christians take up arms for first time”. But the article talks mainly about Aleppo Christians. It is not the first time for Syrian Christians. It is the first time for Aleppo Christians. I have always said that if the Assyrians in Iraq had 1,000 fighters in Baghdad and 1,000 fighters in Mosul, none of the bad things would have happened to them and other Christians. The Assyrian tribes there were disarmed in 1933. In Baghdad and Mosul, the Christians are spread among Muslims in almost every neighborhood. This would have been difficult to accomplish. Aleppo is different. The Christians in Aleppo inhabit 10 contiguous neighborhoods, all in the north half of Aleppo, 5 dominated completely and 5 have Christian majorities in them. The daily Telegraph mentions 150 Christian fighters in Aleppo. We need 1,500…..

Ex-CIA Dir. Hayden: Syria struggle is mainly sectarian, and the longer it continues, the stronger al Qaeda’s role. http://cs.pn/PfKDPI

Video: The sorrows of Syria – Michael Provence does a good job of giving an overview of the revolution so far.

DARIYA, Syria — As he hid from soldiers in a field next to his neighborhood, a young man watched as a cat wandered down a street. Suddenly, it was shot dead. That’s when Zuhair noticed the sniper on a nearby roof.But a father and son walking along the street didn’t see the gunman, Zuhair said. The sniper lowered his head and peered through his scope.He shot the boy first. As the man tried to grab his son, who looked to be about 10, he was shot as well.The two are among a reported 700 victims of snipers, shelling and summary executions, most of them men, since forces loyal to President Bashar Assad stormed the Damascus suburb of Dariya in late August, one in a growing list of Syrian towns and villages that briefly enter the world’s spotlight, only to be replaced by another one when a new mass killing is committed.Unlike a massacre by government forces three decades earlier in the city of Hama, which left more than 20,000 dead in just three weeks and still haunts the country, the reported atrocities have been spread over months of bloodshed in Syria. That has led some to call the government campaign a kind of slow-motion Hama…..

Death from the skies
The Economist, 15 September 2012

Aerial attacks also have the advantage of depending on a part of the armed forces which is almost entirely controlled by Alawites, the sect to which the Assad family adheres. Mr Assad’s father, Hafez, ran the air force before he launched the coup that brought him to power in 1970. It is reasonably well equipped, with perhaps 325 aeroplanes that can be used for ground attack and 33 helicopter gunships, and its personnel are thought less prone to defection than army officers have proved…..

Syrian Central Bank’s Foreign Reserves Enough for Years, PM Says
2012-09-13, By Donna Abu-Nasr

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) — Syria’s central bank has foreign reserves that are enough for “years,” Prime Minister Wael Al- Halaqi told state television in remarks aired today. Al-Halaqi said rumors that Syria’s currency is weakening are “baseless.” He said the central bank has 600 billion Syrian pounds ($8.9 billion) in its coffers.

9/12/12 7:09 PM
Total of 34,000 emails leaked today from the Central Bank and the Ministry of Presidential Affairs.

Foreign Fighters Bring a Global Agenda to Syria
Jamestown: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 10 Issue: 17
September 13, 2012, By: Chris Zambelis

Great uncertainty continues to shroud the ideological composition of the insurgency that is raging across Syria. The motivations of the rank-and-file of the Free Syrian Army (FSA – the armed wing of the Syrian National Council [SNC] opposition movement) and the constellation of factions that claim to be fighting under its auspices, are provoking serious concern.  Displays of sectarianism, expressions of Salafist dogma and a spate of improvised explosive device (IED) and suicide attacks redolent of al-Qaeda that are occurring with growing frequency in Syrian cities, validate fears of the presence of radical Islamists within the armed opposition. Islamist militants fighting under the FSA banner or with Syrian organizations harboring expressly radical Islamist agendas such as Jabhat al-Nusrah and Kataib al-Ahrar al-Sham are making their presence felt in the insurgency (al-Akhbar [Beirut], August 6).  [1]

Allegations that foreign-born radical Islamist militants hailing from around the globe are streaming into Syria, are appearing with increasing regularity in media accounts of the conflict in Syria (al-Jazeera [Doha], August 23; al-Akhbar, July 26). Since the start of the uprising, influential radical Islamist ideologues as diverse as al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, exiled Syrian Salafist cleric Sheikh Adnan al-Arour and Lebanon’s Dai al-Islam al-Shahhal have appealed to Muslims to travel to Syria to fight the Ba’athist regime (al-Arabiya [Dubai], February 12; Daily Star [Beirut], April 16). Al-Qaeda’s Iraq-based affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), and the Algeria-based al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have also interjected themselves into the campaign by publicly declaring their solidarity with the insurgency. AQIM commander Abu Musab Abd al-Wadoud (a.k.a. Abdelmalek Droukdel) issued a video statement in August lamenting the Algerian government’s position on the crisis in Syria and the predicament of Syrian refugees in Algeria (Al-Andalus Media Foundation, August 27) Abu Hussam al-Shami (a.k.a. Abd al-Aziz al-Kourkli), the commander of the Khilafah Brigades of Lebanon’s Fatah al-Islam militant group, was killed near Damascus earlier this month (OnlyLebanon.net [Beirut], September 8). …..

Mideast Unrest Intensifies Debate on U.S. Intervention in Syria
By ROBERT F. WORTH and HELENE COOPER, NYTimes, September 16, 2012

DOHA, Qatar — In recent weeks, the growing death toll in Syria pushed that country’s civil war to the top of the Obama administration’s agenda, with some Arab leaders pressing harder for a greater American role in toppling Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad…..

Will US aid keep Syria from becoming more religious and radical?

McClatchy

Other fighters assert that the strength of the religious fighting groups here has more to do with the fact they appear to be better financed than other groups. “Many people join Ahrar al Sham and Jabhat al Nusra because they have money and weapons,” said one fighter who declined to be named with Suqqor al Sham, another rebel group fighting here.

He said he believed the religious conservatives will lose their fervor once the fighting was done

Syria Debates Again Mazout Distribution Policy – Syria Report

Syria’s policy on the sale of gas oil, or mazout, is again this year a source of all sorts of rumours and debates as the winter season nears.

Syrian Pound Loses Some Ground against Dollar – Syria Report

Syria’s national currency has lost some ground in recent days with the US dollar currently trading at around 72 pounds in black market dealings.

Syria Comment is working again. There was a problem with the server. Thanks to those who helped guide me through the fix, particularly to Camille.

Mounting calls in Israel for Western military intervention to topple the Assad regime are being sounded. Amos Yadlin, head of the country’s leading strategic affairs think tank, the National Institute for Security Studies, wrote an article in the Independent on Thursday urging a Western bombing campaign Libya style to stop the bloodshed. He also mentioned that toppling Assad would deal a blow to Iran. And now the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman is also going on record urging Western military intervention.

Foreign Policy

Turkey has shifted its policy on refugees, demanding they either enter camps or move deeper into the country away from the tense border region. According to the United Nations and Turkey, about 80,000 Syrian refugees are housed in camps along the Turkish border, and 40,000 others are living within Turkey’s cities. Turkish officials say the policy is meant to disperse the Syrians to separate them from possible antagonists. However, it will create added stress for Syrians injured in the conflict or those working from Turkey to aid the opposition. Turkey has criticized the United Nations, United States, and Europe for abandoning the country on the front line of Syria’s civil war. The United Nations’ Human Rights Council has convened in Geneva on Monday, where U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said both the Syrian government and opposition are responsible for human rights abuses. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for all war criminals in Syria to be “brought to justice.”

Effort to Bring Iraq’s Vice President to Justice for War Crimes Provokes Deadly Wave of Attacks

Iraq’s Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, tried in absentia while in Turkey, has been found guilty of orchestrating death squads. Hashemi has been charged with involvement in over 150 attacks on Iraqi officials and security forces between 2005 and 2011, and is accused of directly ordering several assassinations. US occupation forces had been protecting him, but the day after US troops left Iraq, a warrant was delivered for his arrest. Afterwards, he fled to Iraq’s northern autonomous Kurdish region. In Iraq, he was the most senior Sunni Muslim official and accused the government run by Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of “pushing for” increased sectarian strife. Sunni leaders have accused Maliki and the Shiite dominated government of attempting to sideline them from a power-sharing arrangement. The verdict coincided with a wave of over 20 attacks, mainly targeting Shiite neighborhoods across Iraq, during which an estimated 100 people were killed and more than 350 wounded, in one of the deadliest days since the U.S. departure.

Juan Cole has a good post on the difference between Syrian and Iraqi violence, but the question of how and when to prosecute Syrians for war crimes, will become an important issue in post-revolution Syria. Already the State Department is funding an important effort by Syrians to catalog the war crimes carried out by regime figures and members of the Syrian military.

Philip Giraldi’s article, copied below, is particularly important as it suggests that both Turkey and the US are growing increasingly concerned with al-Qaida penetration of the Syrian opposition militias. This is causing them to get cold feet about supporting the revolution with better weapons – something that the rebels need and are calling for.

The killing of four US diplomats in Libya is unlikely to make the US public enthusiastic about the Arab Spring in general and could have a negative effect on future aid.

Dissent Among the Alawites: Syria’s Ruling Sect Does Not Speak with One Voice
Considered heretics by many mainstream Sunnis, the Alawites have long been perceived as a solid bloc of support for their co-religionists in the Assad dynasty. Not so now
By Steven Sotloff / Antakya, Turkey | September 10, 2012 – Time

….Sect members are increasingly breaking rank, as defections swell along with mounting uneasiness about the government’s crackdown against what started as a peaceful protest movement.

Captain Umar in Syria is a rebel fighter and an Alawite, and he considers Assad a “butcher.” The officer no longer believes the regime’s propaganda and says he abandoned his unit after the government began shelling civilian neighborhoods in his hometown. But Umar says it is Assad who is injecting the conflict with a sectarian hue. “Bashar is telling us the Sunnis will slaughter us,” he says via Skype from Syria. “He is scaring Alawis and pushing them to the edge. This is why the army is killing the people in the street. They are scared the Sunnis will massacre us.”

Umar says that it was the military’s daily shelling of civilian areas that pushed him to defect. “I just couldn’t see Syrians dying anymore.” He refuses to reveal how many Alawite officers have defected, but he does say the “number is significant.”

Others with ties to the security forces have also turned their back on the Alawite leadership. Luban Mrai’s father is a senior leader in the paramilitary organization known as the shabiha that targets civilians. She recently left the country after experiencing “serious moral and ethical dilemmas” stemming from the targeting of civilians. Today she resides in Istanbul, trying to mobilize support for the rebels. “The regime is using our religion for political ends,” she explains in a phone conversation. “Alawis are killing Syrians for no reason. This is wrong.

Leading Alawite intellectuals have abandoned the regime as well. Rasha Omran is one of Syria’s better-known poets and has been invited to read her poetry at literature festivals throughout Europe. Since the beginning of the uprising, she has lent her voice and pen to the cause. Omran announced her support of the revolution within days of its eruption on her Facebook page. She marched in protests and spoke out against Assad. “This is a dictatorial regime,” she said in a phone call from Egypt. “How can I support a government that kills its citizens?”

Omran sees herself as a Syrian rather than as an Alawite. She emphasizes that the country is composed of a number of minorities whose identity is shaped by the larger Syrian state. She believes Assad and his inner circle are destroying this delicate mosaic by stirring up ethnic hatreds. “We are all Syrians. But Assad is working to demolish our country.”

Omran wanted to support the revolution by remaining in Syria. But her vocal protests embarrassed a regime trying to project sectarian unity. Because she belongs to a respected Alawite family, the government risked an Alawite backlash if it arrested her. Instead, she says, intelligence agents pressured her to leave the country in a series of visits to her house. She finally left Syria at the beginning of the year.

This FAO WFP report on Syrian crops rotting in the fields and families who will starve in the villages deserves wider publicity. The Drought in US and Russia will restrict the amount of grain for sale on international markets. Sanctions are already making bank transactions in pursuit of grain purchaes by Syrian government fraught. (Thanks to Frank Domoney)

Zaman Interviews with Head of SNC and others are good. by Minhac Çelik in Zaman Gazetesi / Zaman Daily

Ankara in a prisoner’s dilemma over Syria by Mehmet Kalyoncu*

The Agony of Syria
By Max Rodenbeck, September 27, 201, NYRB

Book Reviewed:

The Syrian Rebellion
by Fouad Ajami
Hoover Institution Press, 240 pp., $19.95

Syria: The Fall of the House of Assad
by David W. Lesch
Yale University Press, 262 pp., $28.00

A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution
by Samar Yazbek, translated from the Arabic by Max Weiss
Haus, 269 pp., $18.95 (paper)

Laurent Van der Stockt/Reportage by Getty ImagesResidents of Tall Rifat, a small town north of Aleppo, after a Syrian army helicopter launched rockets at a local school, July 12, 2012

Postcolonial governments have often seemed condemned to repeat the sins of the imperialists they replaced, a sad irony that has been especially pronounced in the Middle East. The British in 1920, for instance, pioneered the use of poison gas against civilians in order to subdue a tribal revolt in Iraq. The last known deployment of chemical weapons for mass murder was again in Iraq, in 1988, when Saddam Hussein gassed his fellow citizens during the notorious Anfal campaign against the Kurds.

Syria, too, has experienced sinister symmetries. Soon after France grabbed the territory as a share of its spoils from World War I, an insurrection among the proud Druze of the Houran region in the south quickly spread elsewhere. The colonial government countered this challenge with a mix of sweet propaganda and extreme violence. Depicting their foes as sectarian fanatics, the French posed as patrons of progress and as the noble guarantors of peace between Syria’s diverse sects. Yet they also worked hard to sharpen the schism they warned of. Arming and empowering favored groups, they brutalized others with summary executions, the burning of crops, and the razing of villages.

The counterinsurgency culminated with a brazen demonstration of destructive power that effectively terrorized Syria’s propertied class into submission. In October 1925 French artillery and aircraft bombarded Damascus for two days, leaving 1,500 dead and much of the Syrian capital in ruins; the large, incongruously grid-patterned section of the Old City known simply as al-Hariqa—The Fire—today serves as a memorial to that conflagration. In May 1945, French forces again shelled Damascus indiscriminately, killing more than six hundred people in what proved a vain attempt to reassert control following the end of World War II.

The regime built under the Assad clan, whose godfather, Hafez Assad, Syria’s then minister of defense, seized power in 1970 and held it for three decades until his son Bashar’s succession, has followed these unfortunate examples. Like France’s colonial governors the Assads have posed as defenders of a modern secular state. They have called their opponents sectarian extremists, even as their favoritism toward some parts of Syria’s complex ethnic and religious mosaic—particularly their own minority Alawite sect—and punishment of others, such as the 10 percent Kurdish minority, have enflamed communal resentment. The striking viciousness and scale of state repression, enforced by seventeen competing intelligence agencies whose upper ranks are dominated by Alawites, have been excused as a necessary bulwark against threats to national unity.

Just like the French, too, the Assads have made a practice of training heavy artillery on densely populated areas. In 1982, responding to a budding Sunni Muslim insurgency that included terror attacks against Alawite soldiers, an army brigade commanded by Hafez Assad’s brother sealed off Syria’s then fourth-largest city, Hama. The two-week barrage of mortar and rocket fire that followed killed tens of thousands, erasing Hama’s large and well-preserved historic center….

“The Silent Strike: How Israel Bombed a Syrian Nuclear Installation and Kept It Secret” , David Makovsky speaks with some two dozen Israeli and American officials who knew about the 2007 Israeli operation and explores what the strike could mean for an Israeli attack on Iran. – In the New Yorker

Update: The comment section of Syria Comment is now working again. best, JL

Much of Aleppo has been without water for two days now as a water main was blown up in fighting. People are frightened and panicking as they realize how easily essential amenities may stop. A car bomb exploded in Aleppo’s government-controled Malaab Baladi district on Sunday killing 27 and wounding over 60.

The Syrian magazine, The Economist, passed on the rumor that the government is preparing to automatically reduce salaries in the future to pay for security operations.

Menawhile in Iraq, the Sunni Vice President has been sentenced to death as a wave of deadly bomb blasts hits the country.

A Reporter In Syria Captured Shocking Pictures Of A Tank Blast
Tracey Shelton, GlobalPost| Sep. 7, 2012,

ALEPPO, Syria — Earlier this week, I was filming a feature on life on the Frontlines of Aleppo, Syria. I was camping out with the men of Noor Den al-Zenke battalion, who man a two-block stretch of back streets that now forms the final line between government troops and opposition forces.

Russians Say Unilateral Sanctions are Unacceptable
VOA

…Water supplies to residents in Aleppo were cut after a major water pipe was damaged during intense fighting between government forces and rebels.

Opposition activists say the pipeline was hit as Syrian forces shelled rebel targets, while Syrian officials accuse the rebels of sabotage.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says discussions with Russian leaders about Syria have not been productive.

The top U.S. diplomat was in Russia for a summit of Pacific Rim countries. She said her talks Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made little progress on how to deal with the Syrian rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad’s autocratic rule.

Clinton said if the differences persist, she is willing to work with “like-minded” states to support the Syrian opposition in its struggles.

Lavrov said unilateral U.S. sanctions against Syria appear more and more extra-territorial and have a direct impact on Russian business interests.  He said Moscow has made it clear that this approach is not acceptable.

The Economist’s Max Rodenbeck in the NYRB:

The stark estrangement between rulers and ruled struck me during a visit last winter to Douma, a largely Sunni Muslim suburb of Damascus. It is one of a ring of overgrown villages, divided from one another and from the old city center by empty spaces that have now revealed their utility as potential security cordons. Taken together these villages house most of the capital’s four million people. At the time Douma was just emerging from the trauma of a three-week government siege designed to flush out what state television insists on calling “terrorists.” The campaign worked, for a while: the then barely armed local self-defense groups loosely known as the Free Syrian Army briefly pulled out of Douma to spare it further punishment. (As has happened nearly everywhere the government then claimed victory; the rebels simply waited, then filtered back.)

As a proud group of local youths showed me holes blasted by tank fire as a show of force, a mosque donations box pilfered by soldiers, and a cemetery with many fresh graves and more gaping open, ready for urgent use, the thought kept nagging that I had seen this all before. It was when they pointed out that every one of Douma’s rooftop water tanks had been punctured by government gunfire that I realized what seemed familiar. The Israeli army had done the same thing during the first Palestinian intifada.

In fact, the entire catalog of collective punishments meted out in Douma suggested the handbook of an army of occupation: cutting power and phone links for days on end, enforcing curfews with snipers, forcing children at gunpoint to paint over graffiti, breaking down doors instead of knocking, administering public beatings, arresting male youths en masse, using masked informants to finger suspects.

Already in February, however, Syria’s revolution had taken far more disturbing turns than either the first, rock-throwing Palestinian intifada or even the second, far more violent one between 2000 and 2005. The gapinggraves in Douma’s cemetery, for example, had been dug in advance not merely because they were likely to be filled soon. Fallen martyrs needed to be buried in haste because Assad’s men held corpses as macabre hostages: only families who agreed to attest in writing that their kin had died at the hands of “terrorists” would be allowed to retrieve their bodies.

Already in February, government shelling had destroyed large parts of Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, rendering a quarter of its 1.2 million inhabitants homeless. The helling was smashing smaller towns to bits, too, such as Zabadani near the Lebanese border in the west, Idlib in the far north, and Deir Ezzor, far to the east in the valley of the Euphrates. The widespread assumption was that Bashar Assad meant to make examples of such places, just as his father had done with Hama. This, in fact, had been his government’s response to every new challenge since the start of the uprising: to commit an act of violence so extreme that its enemies would be cowed, and fence-sitters would think twice.

Heart-rending choices in Syrian war-zone hospital
By Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, Sat September 8, 2012

Aleppo, Syria (CNN) — They are so used to seeing blood outside Dar alShifa hospital, the magnet of all suffering in Aleppo, that passersby simply walk over it, oblivious. When they mop out the building’s tiny reception area, the blood runs in small, dirty streams into the gutters. This is a hospital trying to get by day-to-day while lacking the most basic in supplies. It has itself been hit by shelling: two separate attacks have left its right side punctured with gaping holes in what was once the maternity ward.

One afternoon, a rush of the most frail and vulnerable come towards the exhausted doctors; children, some suffering from sheer terror. One is malnourished. They have cuts, bruises — but more often much worse. The government has, the doctors say, closed the main children’s hospital owing to a paperwork issue, so this is where they must come.

Mohamed is aged eight and was hit by shrapnel from regime shelling in his right leg. It shattered his femur. In Europe, surgery would mean he’s playing football again within months, but here a list of precarious challenges form. He remains quiet, brave, patient almost, as the doctors work out what to do.

The tough natural solution they hit on is a stark reminder of how desperate the task is of getting medical care to the wounded here in rebel-held territory. The government hospital has better equipment, and can probably save Mohamed’s leg. So, lifting him on the blankets they use as makeshift stretchers, they take him, bewildered and confused, into a nearby taxi to cross the front lines. His ordeal is far from over. It is perverse to know that only those who hurt him can also heal him…..

Jihadists join Aleppo fight, eye Islamic state, surgeon says
Sat, 8 Sep 2012,  Reuters
* French surgeon returns after 2 weeks in Aleppo hospital
* Says French fighters inspired by Toulouse gunman Merah
* Says Turkey flooding parts of border to stop refugees
By John Irish

PARIS, Sept 8 (Reuters) – Foreign Islamists intent on turning Syria into an autocratic theocracy have swollen the ranks of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad and think they are waging a “holy war”, a French surgeon who treated fighters in Aleppo has said.

Jacques Beres, co-founder of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, returned from Syria on Friday evening after spending two weeks working clandestinely in a hospital in the besieged northern Syrian city.

In an interview with Reuters in his central Paris apartment on Saturday, the 71-year-old said that contrary to his previous visits to Homs and Idlib earlier this year about 60 percent of those he had treated this time had been rebel fighters and that at least half of them had been non-Syrian.

“It’s really something strange to see. They are directly saying that they aren’t interested in Bashar al-Assad’s fall, but are thinking about how to take power afterwards and set up an Islamic state with sharia law to become part of the world Emirate,” the doctor said.

The foreign jihadists included young Frenchmen who said they were inspired by Mohammed Merah, a self-styled Islamist militant from Toulouse, who killed seven people in March in the name of al-Qaeda.

Assad himself has consistently maintained that the 17-month-old insurgency against him is largely the work of people he refers to as “foreign-backed terrorists” and says his forces are acting to restore stability.

During his previous visits to Syria – in March and May – Beres said he had dismissed suggestions the rebels were dominated by Islamist fighters but he said he had now been forced to reassess the situation.

The doctor’s account corroborates other anecdotal evidence that the struggle against Assad appears to be drawing ever greater numbers of fellow Arabs and other Muslims, many driven by a sense of religious duty to perform jihad (holy war) and a readiness to suffer for Islam.

But while some are professional “jihadists”, veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya or Libya who bring combat and bomb-making skills with them that alarm the Western and Arab governments which have cheered the rebels on, many have little to offer Syrians but their goodwill and prayers.

Beres described treating dozens of such jihadists from other Arab countries, but also at least two young Frenchmen….

Showing his muddied surgical case, shoes and clothes, Beres said that Turkish forces had flooded the Reyhanli border area with water making it difficult for refugees to cross unnoticed.

“We were caught by the Turkish army. It took us 20 hours to cross the border and I was fined $500 for crossing the border illegally. They flooded the border completely so that they can hear who is crossing. Those they do catch they are sending back,” he said.

Turkey facing questions on Syria policy
Wash Post, By Karin Brulliard

ANTAKYA, Turkey — Turkey, a rising heavyweight in the Muslim world, has led the international campaign to oust the regime in next-door Syria. But as the fighting drags on, Turkey is complaining that the United States and others have left it abandoned on the front line of a conflict that is bleeding across its border…

“Ankara now realizes that it doesn’t have the power to ­rearrange — forget it in the region, but also not in Syria,” said Gokhan Bacik, director of the Middle East Strategic Research Center at Turkey’s Zirve University. “So Ankara desperately needs American support. But American support is not coming.”

When a U.S. delegation visited late last month, the Turks made the case they had made two weeks earlier to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a senior administration official said: They were overwhelmed with Syrians, and they wanted the United States and others to establish safe areas, protected by a no-fly zone, for them inside Syria. Their limit, the Turks warned, was 100,000 refugees.

Clinton, confronted with emotional Turkish pleas, said that a no-fly zone would require major outside military intervention and that the United States did not believe it would help, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. But rather than dismiss Turkey’s concerns outright, Clinton called for further bilateral discussions and an “operation and command” structure for the two governments to coordinate their responses to the crisis….

Turkey backtracked on a recent statement that it would close its doors at 100,000 refugees. But Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who is facing growing criticism at home, suggested regret last week over the open-door policy.

“There is an increasing sense in Turkey that, through making such a sacrifice and tackling an enormous issue all by itself, we are leading the international community to complacency and inaction,” he said at the United Nations.

The refugee crisis is swelling as Turkish headlines are dominated by deadly battles in the alpine southeast between security forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a separatist insurgency for 28 years. Turkish officials accuse Syria of arming the guerrillas and empowering a PKK offshoot in sections of northeastern Syria along the Turkish border. Last month, Turkish officials blamed the PKK for a bombing that killed nine civilians in the city of Gaziantep.

Turkey is particularly concerned that Syrian missiles could fall into the hands of the PKK, enabling it to attack the helicopters Turkey relies on to fight the insurgents, Bacik said.

Yet even as Turkey condemns Assad, frets about a growing power vacuum in Syria and pleads for international intervention, officials and analysts say the country has no appetite for deploying its military unilaterally to confront Assad or secure a refugee zone.

There is widespread public opposition in Turkey to military action, and analysts say Turkey is wary of jeopardizing its popularity in a region where the legacy of Ottoman rule remains fresh. The Turkish military is ill-prepared for what could be a prolonged, Iraq-style sectarian war, said Henri Barkey, a Turkey expert at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania….

Unspoken Israeli-Saudi alliance targets Iran
Asia Times

The unspoken alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia remains in full force as popular Arab revolts against tyranny transform the region. Heavily invested in the old status quo, Israel and Saudi Arabia (and its GCC partners) are marshaling efforts to lead a counterrevolution to co-opt fledgling democracies in countries such as Egypt that are seeing previously suppressed demands for freedom, accountability, dignity and independence shape a new politics.

Yet the interests of Israel and Saudi Arabia diverge greatly over events in Syria. On the surface, they should equally relish the possibility of Iran’s most important ally crumbling. But only Saudi Arabia, a principal supporter of the political and violent militant factions making up the Syrian opposition, appears determined to destroy the Baathist regime.

Israel stands to lose a great deal in the event that Syria’s Baathist regime falls. The regime has largely ignored Israel’s occupation of its Golan Heights and the thousands of Israeli settlers who inhabit Syrian territory. This has allowed Israel to devote its military resources to other theaters. A post-Baathist order in Syria that sees the rise of an Islamist-oriented regime or the country plunged into years of internecine strife might witness an attempt to recapture the territory based on the model of armed resistance employed by Hezbollah against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.

In spite of their differences over Syria, however, the course of regional events involving Iran and other matters provide fertile ground for continued strategic cooperation between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

In Syria, peaceful protesters struggle amid Damascus shellings
Wash Post

the true believers hold out hope of toppling the regime through marches, sit-ins, strikes and campaigns such as boycotting cellphone companies suspected of financing the crackdown. They also aspire to win new support: At the brief Midhat Basha demonstration, participants paired anti-Assad slogans with chants of “Merchants of Damascus, may God protect you,” in an attempt to sway business owners who generally support the regime…

Nadia, an activist, said she abandoned demonstrations when the regime began shelling Damascus, triggering a cycle of violence that she says has extinguished her enthusiasm for a rebel victory.

“I will cry when the regime falls,” she said. “By then, it would not be worth all of the deaths for the sake of toppling it.”

She said she has shifted her focus to more low-profile nonviolent activities, such as helping displaced civilians who have taken shelter in schools.

“The regime believes only in the security solution,” said Abdulrazak, 22, a Damascus-based activist who has also lost faith in the nonviolent route. “If the revolution had continued peacefully, the regime would have annihilated it by now.”…

“We are peaceful, but we support the FSA,” Obaida said. “The FSA is only defending people from the regime’s attacks.”.

Game changer: How the discovery of huge gasfields could change the dynamics of Levantine economies

EU ministers explore fresh help to Syria opposition
Khaleej Times – 08 September, 2012

EU foreign ministers gather in Cyprus some 100 kilometres from the Syrian coast Friday to explore how to best assist its opposition while defusing a humanitarian crisis looming in Europe’s backyard.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has put Syria top of the agenda for two days of informal talks starting around 0930 GMT, the first meeting of EU foreign ministers since the summer break.

The talks, which will also address deepening worry over Iran’s nuclear programme, come amid increasing concern over mounting violence between the opposition and President Bashar Al Assad’s regime that last month alone sent a record 100,000 people fleeing across the borders.

Turkey, which along with Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon is hosting tens of thousands of refugees, has suggested creating protected safe havens inside Syria for civilians seeking to escape the violence.

But the idea fell on deaf ears at the UN Security Council last week amid concern even among Western governments over the implications of such a controversial military operation.

France is expected instead to urge its partners at Friday’s talks in the classy Cypriot resort of Paphos to find ways to help funnel medicines, cash and other resources to civilians trapped in rebel-held areas.

France and Britain too are agreed on the need to speed up the transition from Assad’s regime in Syria to a new government, French President Francois Hollande said Thursday after talks with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

‘We must accelerate the political transition (and) help the opposition to form a government,’ said Hollande…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blew up at the US ambassador last month because he was “at wits’ end” over what he sees as the Obama administration’s lack of clarity on Iran’s nuclear programme, a…

The Arab Spring is dead — and Syria is writing its obituary
A Syrian rebel covers a fellow fighter carrying the body of his brother, killed during a battle in the Saif al-Dawla district of Syria’s northern city of Aleppo, amid heavy street fighting between opposition and government forces on August 29, 2012.
By Richard Engel , NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent

ISTANBUL — I called an old friend the other day, dialing the number somewhat sheepishly. He’s a senior adviser to the Iraq government and I knew what to expect when he answered.

First, he reprimanded me for not calling enough and hardly visiting. I’ve been away too long. You can’t do that, not to your friends. What’s so difficult about calling? he asked.

I apologized, asked about his children, his health, if he’s having success in quitting smoking, and offered the only excuse I could think of: “I’ve been busy with the Arab Spring.”

“The Arab Spring?” he said. “What’s that? There’s no Arab Spring anymore. That’s over. It is now a big struggle for power.”

He may have been acting like an insistent grandmother, but he was right. The Arab Spring is over. The days of the protesters with laptops and BlackBerrys in Tahrir Square are long gone.

Instead, a much bigger struggle is underway, one that goes back centuries that is both a regional battle for dominance and an epic tug of war between Sunnis and Shiites for control of the Middle East and the Prophet Muhammad’s legacy.

The front line is now in Syria, where the United Nations says more than 20,000 people have been killed since pro-democracy protests started in March 2011.

But it goes back, at least in very modern history, at least to Iraq — and America shares a large part of the responsibility for reopening this Pandora’s Box.

Roots in Iraq

A major factor in the rise of the present struggle came when American troops invaded Iraq in 2003, thus pitting Sunnis against their rival Shiites, who many Sunnis think are effectively infidels who turned against Islamic leaders about 1,400 years ago and have been on the wrong side of Allah’s path since then.

For decades, Saddam and his Sunni minority had imposed their will on Iraq, carrying on a 14-century tradition of Sunnis controlling Mesopotamia despite a Shiite majority. Not surprisingly, in most Sunni regions there has little appetite for free U.S.-sponsored elections. They knew they would end up being ruled by their enemies.

And that’s what happened. Essentially, the lasting legacy of America’s involvement in Iraq is an Iranian-allied Shiite government that also happens to be one of the most corrupt on the planet

The Formation of Alawite Militias in the Kassab region
By Mohammad D.
For Syria Comment, Sept 5, 2012

There are important new developments in Lattakia and its surrounding recently.  The violence that started a few months back in the East and North of the city itself has not subsided.  Yesterday a rumor spread that the FSA had shelled al-Qurdaha, something its leaders have been wishing to do from day one.  I think it is just a rumor, but, the big news is that the Alawis have started to form armed groups in some of the villages which are in direct contact with the Sunni villages.

The Alawis in areas that are not near the front lines have also begun amassing small arms.  They have also begun to form similar groups.  One of these groups appeared in the area of Jabal al-Turkman (North of Lattakia).  These new fighters are known locally as al-Lijan al-Sha’biyah (?????? ???????).  So far they have light arms only.  The Assad regular troops are doing the heavy bombing and own the heavy arms.  Here is a link to their facebook page, which lists them as al-Muqawamah al-Suriyah (The Syrian Resistance).

In this Facebook page, one can see that the newly formed group has been engaging in military action against the Sunnis from that area.  The Sunnis (Turkmen) had formed their own brigade, which is fighting under the banner of the Free Syria Army (FSA).  The FSA has attacked the nearby Alawi villages on many occasions.  One Alawi village; al-Sarayah, has been emptied of its inhabitants, except the men who are armed and fighting along side others in al-Lijan al-Sha’biyah.  The Sunnis have also left their villages and gone to either Turkey or Lattakia city.  Lattakia is now overflowing with refugees and villagers escaping violence.  There are lots of people from Allepo there also.  The sports complex is packed with the poor refugees, The rich ones are renting apartments or rooms.  Also, to the East of Lattakia in al-Haffe region, fighting is still raging on.  The sound of artillery and explosions can be heard in Lattakia.  The situation on the coast  is explosive and growing more dangerous every week.

Another interesting phenomenon is that Turkish Alawis are writing in Turkish on the same Facebook page — http://www.facebook.com/syr.moqawama — that is being used by Syrian Alawis. This seems to indicate that Alawis in Syria and Turkey are starting to work together.

Picture of Kassab, near the Turkish border

End of Commentary by Mohammad D.

A different take on what happened in Qassab from the Guardian
Our colleague Mona Mahmood has been speaking on the phone to Lieut Col Abu Ahmed of the rebel Ahrar al-Sahel brigade which is fighting in the Latakia area. This is what he told her.

We have two military [observation] towers for the Syrian army in Latakia countryside which are used as bases to attack and shell people living in villages nearby.

There were six tanks at al-Qassab tower and another six at al-Barouda tower. These 16 tanks claimed the lives of many civilians and wounded many of them, in addition to the great damage they caused to the houses. They were based on high hills and overlook wide areas.

We as the revolutionary military command in Latakia decided to launch an operation against these towers to curb their damage. We did the required intelligence and reconnaissance secretly before the operation and chose the brigades to carry out the operation last Monday at four in the morning and with more than 650 fighters.

We were able to get control of al-Qassab tower completely and destroy five of the tanks inside, except for a tank and rocket launcher which are under a siege by our fighters. We were engaged in clashes with the Syrian army in control of al-Barouda tower and were able to push them backward.

As a result of the attack, we lost 28 martyrs and 40 wounded while the Syrian army lost 70 soldiers and 120 wounded. We were able to capture 11 members of the Syrian army and took them as hostages.

We work in the countryside of Latakia which is liberated of the Syrian army now – al-Akrad mountain and 90% of Turkman mountain is liberated. The liberation war is still going on from the countryside to reach the heart of [Latakia city].

It is difficult now to get work inside the city, it is cut off by many checkpoints and full of Syrian army and shabiha.

All the villages we are in control of now are Sunni. So far, the position of the Alawites in Latakia is ambiguous. We want a clear stance from them. We have sent them many messages telling them that we are not against them or targeting them but when their villages are used as a base for tanks to launch attacks against other part of Latakia, they become like witnesses to the killing of the Syrian people.

Personally I support that we join the Syrian National Army but we will hold a meeting for all the commanders of the revolutionary military command in Latakia to discuss [it] and will take a decision whether to join or not

Ghufran wrote in the comment section:

“This is a corrupt, undemocratic police state, but what is going on is not a war in Syria but a battle by outside players for Syria,” he said in an August interview in an office at the Writers Union building in Amman.

Mr. Muwaffaq Mahadin, a prominent opposition figure who writes for the independent Jordanian daily Al-Arab Al-Yawm, has extensive pro-democracy credentials. He was arrested several times for his political views and was even forced to flee the country for a decade, living in exile between Beirut and Damascus.

These days some revile him as a conspiracy theorist while others call him courageous. Regardless, his columns fuel heated debate among Jordanian intellectuals.

Over the years he spent in Damascus, Mr. Mahadin built strong ties with the Syrian opposition. He says the revolt in Syria was initially a spontaneous uprising of the street but was later hijacked by international powers in order to gain dominance in the region.

A group of 230 influential figures have signed an open letter in the press demanding that Jordan stand with Syria in the face of a global conspiracy.

Record Number Of Syrians Fled Country In August
Listen to the Story on NPR Radio, All Things Considered [4 min 33 sec]

Activist groups are reporting that more than 5,000 people died in Syria in the month of August. Along with the death toll, the number of Syrians fleeing their country is also on the rise. Melissa Block talks to Joshua Landis about the bigger picture in Syria and what happens next…

LANDIS: The Syrian army remains very strong. Even though it’s losing ground, it has strong backing in Iran and Russia, and its got a command and control, which is what the opposition – although it has numbers, the opposition, and it has a lot of international support, it does not have good command and control. And it doesn’t have the kind of weaponry that the Syrian army has.

BLOCK: How resilient would you say the Syrian army is? How much can it take?

LANDIS: It can take a lot. This is the problem, is that the Syrian army is transforming itself. As the Sunni Arabs defect from the army, and increasingly, the Sunni elements in the army are not trusted, the army has been remaking itself as an Alawite militia, increasingly. And we’re seeing this war devolve into a civil war between Alawites, the Shiite heterodox group – 12 percent of Syrians – and the Syrian Sunni Arabs who are 70 percent of the population roughly. And that’s why things are becoming increasingly more brutal, but it’s also why the Syrian army will not likely give up.

If they were to give up, the leadership in the army will be killed. And many Alawites believe that they would be marginalized in society as the Sunni Arabs take over. So they’re fighting a very brutal war, and it’s hard to see how this comes to an end anytime soon…..

Syrian Children Offer Glimpse of a Future of Reprisals
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, September 3, 2012, New York Times

ZAATARI, Jordan — Like all the small children in the desert refugee camp here, Ibtisam, 11, is eager to go home to the toys, bicycles, books, cartoons and classmates she left behind in Syria.

But not if that means living with Alawites, members of the same minority offshoot of Shiite Islam as Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad. “I hate the Alawites and the Shiites,” Ibtisam said as a crowd of children and adults nodded in agreement. “We are going to kill them with our knives, just like they killed us.” ….

“We hear it all the time from the kids, but also from the parents — that this is not political at all, and not a call for democracy, but is about people fed up and angry at rule by a minority, the Alawites,” said Saba al-Mobaslat, director for Jordan of the nonprofit group Save the Children, which provides toys to refugee children and tries to teach them understanding. “There is a concern that this is a whole generation that is being brought up to hate, that can’t see the other’s side.”

The roots of the animosity toward the Alawites from members of Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, who make up about 75 percent of the population, run deep into history. During the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, the two groups lived in separate communities, and the Sunni majority so thoroughly marginalized Alawites that they were not even allowed to testify in court until after World War I.

Then, in a pattern repeated across the region, said Joshua Landis, a Syria scholar at the University of Oklahoma, French colonialists collaborated with the Alawite minority to control the conquered Syrian population — as colonialists did with Christians in Lebanon, Jews in Palestine and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. The French brought Alawites into the colony’s military to help control the Sunnis. And after Syria’s independence from France, the military eventually took control of the country, putting Alawites in top government positions, much to the resentment of the Sunni majority.

“Now the Alawites believe — possibly correctly — that the Sunnis are going to try to kill them, and that is why the Alawite Army now is killing Sunnis in this beastly way,” Professor Landis said. “The Alawites feel justified in brutality because they fear what may be in store for them if they lay down their guns.”

“I don’t see any way out of that,” he said, “except to say that we are in for a long, difficult ride, and you pray that the Syrians are going to get over this somehow.”….

Inside Syria’s Fracturing Rebellion
Sarah Birke and Katie Paul, August 30, 2012 | New Republic

JEBEL ZAWIYA, SYRIA—The unglamorous municipal building, on which black daubs evince graffiti wars between the regime (“Bashar Assad or the country burns!”) and the opposition (“Leave, oh Bashar!”) did not look fit for a king. But it was immediately obvious when the man in the pressed green khakis strode in that we were in the presence of a leader. Men who had been sitting around in the room chatting fell silent. The leather chair behind the desk was seamlessly vacated. A bulky companion, who appeared to be a bodyguard, took the chair nearest the door; the American-made weapon laid across his knees stood out against the Kalashnikovs we had seen slung over shoulders for the last few days.

We had sat waiting for two hours in Serjeh, a village perched on a ridge in the mountainous Jebel Zawiya region of Syria’s northwestern Idleb province, and were about to give up hope when Ahmed Abu Issa, the head of Saqour al-Sham (the “Sham Falcons”; Sham refers both to Damascus and Greater Syria) appeared. The 40-year-old cut a striking figure, with his bushel of thick hair and grey eyes that betrayed no emotion; a holster was strapped across broad shoulders and he trailed a waft of cologne. The enormous turquoise rock adorning his right ring finger was conspicuously displayed as he clamped his hands on the table.

As head of a group of some 4,000 or so fighters that operates out of Serjeh, Abu Issa is one of the most influential men in the province—and he knows it. Within two minutes of our arrival, intelligence networks had clicked into action, as a gun-toting teenager rode up to inquire as to the nature of our visit. Elsewhere around his territory, he runs three field hospitals, a court based on sharia law, and a prison. (He refused to show us the prison, though YouTube footage later revealed a less savory side of his outfit: some captives have been sent off in booby-trapped cars to be blown apart at army checkpoints.) His immediate motivations are the same, he tells us, as that of other rebel groups: the ouster of Assad. But in the longer-term he wants an Islamist state: “Not as the West understands it: one not too far to the left, and not too far to the right.”

The source of his authority derives neither from military prowess nor local prominence, but rather from a peculiar collection of personal attributes. Abu Issa has charisma by the bucketload: a spellbinding way of orating in flawless formal Arabic and, when addressing issues he deems unpleasant, one side of his upper lip momentarily curls up into a snarl. Rebel fighters have flocked to his side, he says, because of the “rectitude” of his vision and because “Syrians need someone to lead them.” Like many men in his brigade, he is also driven by personal scores to settle with the Assad family. His father was killed in the notorious Tadmor jail in the 1980s; he too spent time in prison in 2003 because the regime didn’t much like his sharia studies nor his “voluntary work” mediating disputes between local families. Sixteen relatives have perished in the current conflict, including two brothers and his sixteen-year-old son (after which he donned a more overtly religious tone.)

Money and weapons help draw followers as much as personal authority, of course. Asked how a small-town religious scholar is able to amass the military might to challenge the army, he is coy. “Need,” he says, with a sly smile, “is the mother of invention.” In fact, swashbuckling performances in videos have made Saquor al-Sham a name on forums outside the country and with it income from private Gulfi backers. Serjeh was something of this year’s Ramadan rebel financier hotspot.

This support leaves him better placed than most rebel groups. It also allows him to dismiss with the flap of a hand the floundering myriad opposition institutions—the Free Syrian Army, Syrian National Council, Muslim Brotherhood—who might want to have a say over his plans. Despite this independence, Abu Issa says he will not fight to impose his vision on Syria: “The political field is a market: you offer your goods and I offer mine,” he told us. “People will come to me because mine are clean.” But the spirit of cooperation many only extend so far: should there be any attempt to “force me to close my store,” he says, then “the sword will be the judgment.”….

the men in Jabal Zawiya offer an insight into the evolving power structures in Syria as Bashar al-Assad’s regime contracts. The groups are currently bound together by a common aim to rid the country of Assad and strive not to act like his regime, but the seeds of struggles are being planted—aided by the brewing geopolitical reckoning. Rather than build the united country once imagined by protesters, rebel warlords are each taking their own bit of land and implementing their own vision—though militarily coordination continues. ….

Turkey’s Anti-Assad Policy Ricochets Back:
Public Opinion Shifts Against Ankara As Conflict in Syria Crosses Border
BY JOE PARKINSON

ISTANBUL—The Turkish government, which is spearheading efforts to force Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power, is facing public skepticism over its Syria policy as the civil war next door increasingly spills across the border.

Developments in recent weeks have magnified Turks’ unease over Syria’s 18-month uprising.

More than 82,000 Syrians have now sought refuge in Turkey, at a cost of around $300 million to the Turkish government, Ankara said Tuesday, as Turkish border towns that relied on trade with Syria have seen economic activity wither and unemployment rise. Turkish television is showing footage of the country’s nationals, which have been …

Iran Supplying Syrian Military via Iraqi Airspace
By MICHAEL R. GORDON, September 4, 2012

WASHINGTON — Iran has resumed shipping military equipment to Syria over Iraqi airspace in a new effort to bolster the embattled government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, according to senior American officials.

The Obama administration pressed Iraq to shut down the air corridor that Iran had been using earlier this year, raising the issue with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq. But as Syrian rebels gained ground and Mr. Assad’s government was rocked by a bombing that killed several high officials, Iran doubled down in supporting the Syrian leader. The flights started up again in July and, to the frustration of American officials, have continued ever since. ….

Assad assures Red Cross on aid operations
The Peninsula – 05 September, 2012

Syrian President Bashar Al Assad promised yesterday to allow the Red Cross to expand its humanitarian operations in his country which is gripped by a 17-month insurgency that forced more than 100,000 people to flee last month alone….

 Some 100,000 refugees fled Syria during August making it by far the highest monthly total since hostilities began, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.

The tide in people fleeing the civil war, a figure that includes both refugees who are registered and those awaiting registration with the Geneva-based U.N. refugee agency, underscores the intensifying violence between the regime of Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, and the armed anti-government groups.

The August total represents more than 40 percent of the 234,368 Syrian refugees who, as of the last count on September 2, had fled for surrounding countries since the uprising began 17 months ago.

The Making of a Syrian Rebel: The Saga of Abboud Barri
His callousness is more pronounced than most, but the story of Abboud Barri reflects the universal struggle to preserve humanity in the face of the exigencies of war
By Rania Abouzeid / Jabal al-Zawya | September 4, 2012 | 1

Free Syrian Army soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint in the northern town of Ariha, on the outskirts of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, June 10, 2012

Abboud Barri jiggles the dog tags as if they belonged to animals being raised in a puppy mill. “I have a lot of these,” Barri says. “Any buyers?” He is joking. The tags belong to human beings, soldiers of the hated Assad regime now held captive or killed by Barri, a local commander of one of the franchise groups of the rebel Free Syrian Army. Unlike some other militia leaders, Barri says he isn’t interested in ransoming his captives from their families. He says he keeps the ID tags so that those families know “to look for them in hell.”

He keeps the eight military-issued dog tags in the right pocket of his sand-colored desert camouflage cargo pants; they are war booty from his unit’s recent assault on a loyalist checkpoint in Kfranbel in Idlib province….

The fighter was extremely troubled as he recalled the incident. “See this blood,” he said pointing to a patch on the knees of his jeans, “it’s Alawite blood.” He held his head in his hands, asking God for forgiveness. “What are we becoming?” he said. There was no way to verify his account….

U.S. Hones Plans for Big Bailout of Egypt – WSJ

CAIRO—American diplomats are closing in on an agreement to dole out $1 billion in debt relief to Egypt, part of a gilded-charm offensive that Washington hopes will help shore up the country’s economy and prevent its new Islamist leadership from drifting beyond America’s foreign-policy orbit.

A team of senior State Department economic officials have spent the past week in Egypt’s capital completing the terms of an aid package that President Barack Obama first announced last year after Egypt’s pro-democracy uprising rattled the country’s once-promising economic future.

The money has since sat in policy limbo as Egyptian and American diplomats disagreed

Muslim Brotherhood establishes militia inside Syria

The Muslim Brotherhood has established its own militia inside Syria as the country’s rebels fracture between radical Islamists and their rivals, commanders and gun-runners have told The Daily Telegraph.

Who Will Govern Syrian Kurdistan?
By Giorgio Cafiero, August 31, 2012

Last month, as the Free Syrian Army took over areas of the Syrian-Turkish border, a power vacuum emerged in northeastern Syria. It was not the Free Syrian Army that filled the vacuum, but instead the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), the most heavily armed Kurdish faction in Syria. In early August, the Wall Street Journal reported that “Kurdish political parties and paramilitary groups have almost completely usurped the Syrian state apparatus,” taking over municipal buildings and vital infrastructure, providing security, and controlling the distribution of resources.

Egypt President Slams Syria in Iran
WSJ

TEHRAN, Iran—Egypt’s new president described the Syrian regime as “oppressive” and called for it to transfer power to a democratic system during a visit to Syria’s key regional ally Iran on Thursday.

President Mohammed Morsi’s visit to Iran is the first by an Egyptian leader to the Islamic Republic in decades. It represents a major thaw in relations between the two regional powerhouses following Mr. Morsi’s election win in June in the aftermath of the country’s 2011 uprising. But the two countries remain deeply divided over the situation in Syria.

Tehran cut ties with Egypt following Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. …

CBS News: Bosnians who fled Syria describe a hellish war
2012-08-30

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina &#8212 A Bosnian woman who fled Syria says the war in the Arab country is worse than the fighting in her homeland 20 years ago. A group of 35 Bosnians landed at the Sarajevo airport Thursday, flying in from Istanbul …

Reuters reports: France plans to channel aid to rebel-held parts of Syria so that these “liberated zones” can administer themselves and staunch an outflow of refugees, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.

He said France and Turkey had identified areas in the north and south that had escaped President Bashar al-Assad’s control, creating a chance for local communities to govern themselves without feeling they had to flee to neighboring countries.

“Maybe in these liberated zones Syrians who want to flee the regime will find refuge which in turn makes it less necessary to cross the border whether in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan or Iraq,” Fabius said after a U.N. Security Council meeting in New York on Thursday.

However, civilians in rebel-held parts of Syria have suffered frequent deadly air strikes from Assad’s forces.

It was not clear how Fabius’s promise to allocate much of its future 5 million euros ($6.25 million) aid for Syria to these areas would protect civilians and deter them from fleeing.

The Associated Press reports: Turkey appealed to a reluctant U.N. Security Council Thursday for a safe haven for thousands of Syrians facing a “humanitarian disaster” as Britain and France said they would rule out no options — including a no-fly zone — to aid residents fleeing an escalating civil war.

But Turkish leaders held out little hope for the endorsement of a deeply divided council that has been paralyzed on taking action to stop the 18-month uprising that has killed more than 20,000 people.

“How long are we going to sit and watch while an entire generation is being wiped out by random bombardment and deliberate mass targeting?” asked Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. “Let’s not forget that if we do not act against such a crime against humanity happening in front of our eyes, we become accomplices to the crime.”

Davutoglu, whose country is hosting more than 80,000 Syrian refugees, said he came to the council with hope that its members would take “long overdue steps” to help suffering people and establish camps inside Syria for those forced to flee their homes.

“Apparently, I was wrong about my expectations,” he told the council. “This meeting will not even end with a presidential or press statement, let alone a robust resolution.”

The path to the council’s agreement on a safe zone for Syrians is fraught with obstacles, headed by the reluctance of Russia and China, Syria’s most important allies. They have vetoed three Western-backed resolutions in the Security Council seeking to pressure President Bashar Assad’s government with the threat of sanctions.

The situation in Syria is deteriorating rapidly as the fighting has intensified in urban areas, which are key to the regime’s survival and to the opposition’s progress. The death rate has spiraled upward as has the flow of refugees out of Syria. Neighboring states are beginning to become overwhelmed by the torrent of human misery that is coming their way. There is no end in sight and the outside world is providing little humanitarian aid. The Assad regime is determined and lethal. It seems ready to pursue a scorched earth policy. Its foreign supporters – Iran and Russia – seem prepared to stick by its side.

Syrian Refugees Flood Into Jordan and Turkey in a Sharp Rise. 5,000 a day into Turkey. 10,000 last week into Jordan.

Moral among the Syrian opposition remains high despite the pounding it’s fighters have taken in the face of offensives in both Aleppo and Damascus. It has met with renewed support in the international community. France’s President is talking about recognizing a government in exile. Turkey is insisting on a no-fly zone over Syria. And the US has moved an aircraft carrier to the coast, opened a center in Istanbul to help coordinate opposition activities, and allowed a Syrian opposition lobby group to operate in Washington DC. But none of this can make up for the continuing fragmentation and bickering of the opposition. The Economist quoted one Syrian activist to say that perhaps more than 2,000 armed groups were operating on Syrian soil. From the viewpoint of foreign governments that hope to support the opposition, this is an impossible situation. It is also an impossible situation for the Assad military. Although the fragmentation of the opposition troops may make it impossible to destroy the Syrian Army, it also makes it impossible for the Syrian Army to destroy the opposition, which is constantly multiplying.

Foreign powers continue to resist getting directly involved in taking on Assad’s forces, but they are being faced with a much larger humanitarian crises than earlier. Both Turkey and Jordan have been making noises about shutting their borders to every greater waves of refugees. This is a warning to the international community that it must begin planning for greater help and that its inaction may have profound effects on the stability of the region.

Foreign Policy

Turkey is calling for the establishment of humanitarian “safe zones” as refugee flows from Syria escalate, and the United Nations has warned about increased refugee movement into Jordan and Turkey. About 80,000 people from Syria have settled in Turkey since the start of the uprising in 2011, and the United Nations said it could reach 200,000. As fighting has recently increased, Turkey has started to see larger flows, with an estimated 5,000 refugees a day, a drastic jump from the average 500 per day earlier in the month. Turkey warned it only has space for around 100,000 people, however has built new camps which could bring the number up to 120,000. Western diplomats have expressed interest in establishing a safe zone in Syria, however said it would need to backed by a “no-fly zone,” concerning those who hesitate to participate in a military intervention. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a rare appearance on a television interview on the pro-government Dunya TV. He denounced the premise of establishing humanitarian safe zones in Syria, calling it an “unrealistic idea by hostile countries and the enemies of Syria.” He maintained his soldiers are “doing a heroic job” but said they need more time to end the conflict. Fierce fighting has been reported in Damascus, Aleppo, and in Idlib province.

Assad Draws Shock Troops from Elite Sect in Syria
By Bill Spindle, 28 August 2012, The Wall Street Journal Online

LATAKIA, Syria—Flag-draped coffins depart from the drab military hospital here each morning these days, carrying the dead soldiers of the Syrian regime along winding rural roads to ancestral villages in the surrounding hill country.

All along the way, women come out to the roadside to throw rice and rose petals at the passing caravan. Cheering men shoot machine guns in the air. Children shout, “God! Bashar! Syria!” in homage of President Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian nation. They believe their native sons have sacrificed their lives to become “martyrs.”

These are Syria’s Alawites, one of the more peculiar and least-known sects in the Middle East. Here in a country ravaged by civil war, they make up only about 12% of the country’s population of 22.5 million. And yet, as that war intensifies, they are taking on a potentially critical—and controversial—role defending the Assad regime.

Many Alawites characterize themselves as the first and last line of defense for their nation. And they may be right, now that other sectarian groups, including many Sunnis and Kurds, have turned into opposition or pulled from the government orbit.

“The Syrian army is being transformed into an Alawite militia,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma. “As the Sunnis defect, more and more Alawites are being brought in, which is bringing in more of these villagers.”…

“They’re afraid,” said an Alawite activist and government opponent as he looked on. “They don’t know what will happen.”

Bassma Kodmani, spokesperson for the Sryian National Council has resigned. In the resignation letter I received, she wrote: … “The project did not achieve its objectives and did not earn the required credibility and did not maintain the confidence of the people…”

Bloomberg writes: Bassma Kodmani, a prominent voice of the Syrian National Council, resigned from the main political opposition body to President Bashar al-Assad, citing disappointment in the group’s failure to work together more than 17 months after the uprising began.

“I decided to leave the council because of a difference of views over how to move forward and because thought I could be more productive working on the outside,” Kodmani, a Paris-based academic turned revolutionary, said today in a telephone interview.

Without going into details, the former chief spokeswoman for the SNC said that in “general terms, I’ve been disappointed with how the council has worked on several levels.” She said she will work with other groups, mainly in humanitarian relief.

Kodmani said her resignation was unrelated to France’s signal yesterday that it was prepared to confer legitimacy on the SNC, a political umbrella for anti-government factions that includes the Muslim Brotherhood.

Syria’s Mutating Conflict – International Crisis Group
[I have been meaning to push Peter Harling’s latest report because his analysis is the best, most in-depth, most balanced, and best written on Syria. He is worth his weight in Gold.]

As fighting rages in Aleppo, the combination of a regime morphing into a formidable militia and an Alawite…

Syria looks for big wheat purchase
By Michael Hogan,  HAMBURG | Wed Aug 29, 2012

(Reuters) – Syria has issued a large tender for wheat, a commodity not subject to sanctions, as feeding its people becomes harder in the chaos of civil war.

The United Nations has said Syria faces food shortages as tens of thousands of families leave their homes due to heavy fighting and with the harvest neglected during the conflict.

Syria’s state grains agency issued a new international tender to purchase and import 100,000 metric tons of soft milling wheat, European traders said on Wednesday.

Trade sources said a reluctance among foreign banks, shipowners and grain traders to sell and transport grain to Syria – even though food is not itself subject to sanctions – had forced Damascus into an array of unusually small wheat purchase deals in past months, many arranged by dealers around the Middle East and Asia.

Traders also said Syria was entering the market at a time of high prices, so a purchase will be more expensive than usual….

Syrian army being aided by Iranian forces
Iran confirms Quds force’s presence in Syria with Revolutionary Guards commander saying troops ‘helped prevent more massacres’
Saeed Kamali Dehghan – guardian

Ismail Gha’ani, the deputy head of Iran’s Quds force, the arm of the Revolutionary Guards tasked with overseas operations, said in an interview with the semi-official Isna news agency: “If the Islamic republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale.”

Sattam Sheikhmous still farms wheat on what’s left of his grandfather’s land, shrunk from more than 32,000 acres to less than 5,000 by the Syrian government in 1966. “They said it was a socialist policy, but we believe it was political,” said Sheikhmous, now in his 60s, referring to the government confiscation […]

The land confiscation took place across the country. But in the predominantly Kurdish province of Hasaka, in Syria’s northeast corner, the resettlement of Arabs from another part of the country in the 1970s created ethnic tensions that could manifest themselves violently when the Syrian government fully relinquishes control of the area, now seen by many as only a matter of time.

“We have to ask them to give us our land back. If they don’t, we have to do whatever we need to do,” said Sheikhmous. “It’s not just our land, it’s Kurdish land. If they don’t leave peacefully, we will use weapons.”

With Syria convulsed by a civil war that shows no signs of ending soon, the country’s Kurdish region, fast against Turkey and Iraq, is surprisingly peaceful, thanks to a maneuver by the government of President Bashar Assad, who first granted the Kurds greater rights last year, then surrendered security to a Kurdish militia this summer. While anti-Assad demonstrations still take place here, there is none of the kind of fighting that has convulsed other parts of Syria….

The Day After. Supporting a Democratic Transition in Syria
Vision, Principles, Objectives, Challenges, and Recommendations
SWP Comments 2012/C 28, August 2012, 7 Pages

Among the challenges confronted by the Syrian opposition since the start of the Syrian revolution in March 2011 has been the lack of a unified vision for Syria’s future and concrete and detailed planning to respond to the significant challenges that will accompany a post-Assad transition. The absence of a clear vision and detailed plans has reinforced fears among some segments of Syrian society about what the future might hold should the Assad regime collapse. It has also constrained efforts by the inter­national community to support the opposition in its efforts to overthrow the Assad regime. To address this gap, The Day After project provided a framework within which some 45 prominent opposition representatives of varied backgrounds participated in a facilitated process of transition planning. The project has now published a document that provides a comprehensive vision for a post-Assad order, agrees on principles and goals, identifies challenges and risks, and puts forward concrete recommendations in six policy fields crucial for a successful transition. The document also offers recommen­dations for measures to be taken immediately to put in place the foundations for a suc­cessful transition.

Iran Said to Send Troops to Bolster Syria
WSJ

BEIRUT—Iran is sending commanders from its elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and hundreds of foot soldiers to Syria, according to current and former members of the corps.

The personnel moves come on top of what these people say are Tehran’s stepped-up efforts to aid the military of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with cash and arms. That would indicate that regional capitals are being drawn deeper into Syria’s conflict—and undergird a growing perception among Mr. Assad’s opponents that the regime’s military is increasingly strained.

A commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, appeared to offer Iran’s first open acknowledgment …

France to recognize an Syrian opposition government – 2012-08-28

BEIJING, Aug. 28 (Xinhuanet) — French President Francois Hollande has called on the Syrian opposition to form a provisional government and says France will recognize it once it is formed.

The announcement by Hollande – believed to be the first of its kind – appears to be an attempt to jolt Syria’s deeply fragmented opposition into unity. It has increased diplomatic pressure on the already isolated government of President Bashar-al-Assad.

Sharp increase in refugee flows from Syria
By Liz Sly, AUGUST 26, Washington Post

ANTAKYA, Turkey — A surge in the number of Syrians seeking sanctuary from their country’s soaring violence prompted the Turkish government to halt the flow of refugees at two key border crossings Sunday amid an escalating humanitarian crisis that is swamping Syria’s neighbors and intensifying pressure for international intervention.

The closure left more than 7,000 refugees stranded in olive groves just inside Syria at the two places where most of the Syrians cross, while Turkish officials look for a way to accommodate them at camps that can’t keep pace with the influx.

But with more than 80,000 refugees in Turkey, nearly double the number a month ago, officials warned that the country is rapidly approaching the point at which it will no longer be able to cope. That could trigger a request for support at the United Nations for the creation of some form of internationally protected haven that would enable refugees to remain in Syria.

Turkey has not decided how to address the accelerating refugee flow but is considering asking the United Nations to find a way “to keep those Syrian nationals safe on the Syrian side of the border,” said a government official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. “It is becoming a big burden. This could become a big issue, and we have to think about any kind of eventuality.”

The Obama administration remains reluctant to become embroiled in what could prove to be a costly and unstoppable war that would risk engulfing the region, U.S. officials say.

President Obama last week identified the use of chemical weapons by the regime against its opponents as a “red line” that would trigger American intervention. U.S. officials say they are monitoring the evolving situation and are discussing various options, including the imposition of a no-fly zone in northern Syria that would alleviate the burden on Turkey of accommodating the refugees.

But although Turkish officials have been pressuring the United States to move toward some form of intervention because “they don’t want more refugees,” the United States is not convinced that the creation of any form of buffer zone would work to protect refugees or accelerate the demise of the regime, according to a senior U.S. administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Discussions by U.S. contingency planners have focused on a variety of options. They range from what is being called “no-fly lite,” which would provide a haven for refugees but not require outright attacks on military facilities, to a full-scale no-fly zone similar to the one imposed over Libya last year, according to U.S. officials.

The number of refugees being accommodated by Syria’s neighbors has already outstripped the United Nations’ projection of 185,000 by the end of the year, with more than 200,000 registered in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon as of Friday. The number in Turkey has climbed by 10,000 since Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, warned a week ago that Turkey would press for international action if the figure passed 100,000. The latest arrivals suggest that threshold could be reached within weeks, if not days.

Aleppo archbishop flees to Lebanon, Vatican radio says
August 27, 2012 share
Print Save as PDF Email

The Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo has fled to Lebanon and his offices in the war-ravaged city have been looted, Vatican media said on Monday, amid fears over the fate of Christian minorities.

Vatican radio and the missionary news agency Fides said Jean-Clement Jeanbart initially sought refuge with some Franciscan friars in the city on Thursday last week as fighting intensified in Christian quarters of Aleppo.

Within a few hours the archdiocese had been ransacked by “unidentified groups who want to start a religious war and drag the Syrian people into a sectarian conflict,” a source in the local Christian community told Fides.

The doors of the archdiocese had been forced open and several objects like computers stolen, the reports said. Jeanbart has since fled to Lebanon.

The Melkites are an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Vatican.

The reports also said the Maronite archdiocese in Aleppo and the Byzantine Christian museum of Maarrat Nahman in the city had also been damaged.

President Bashar al-Assad’s forces last week regained control of some Christian areas in the city center that had been seized by rebels.

Jeanbart told Vatican radio that he was concerned about the presence of foreign fighters in the country and “organizations to find jihadists.”

“That is why there are fundamentalists coming from Libya, Jordan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Turkey and many other countries,” he said.

Many members of Syria’s Christian clergy have been supportive of Assad, a member of the minority Alawite community, because of concerns that Islamists could take power in the multi-faith country.

Around 7.5 percent of Syria’s 20 million inhabitants are Christian.

A Christian Syrian from Aleppo, who now lives in Chicago, writes

… During the Lebanese civil war and after, I thought about ways to arm the Christians in Aleppo. The Christian areas in Aleppo are mostly connected. Only about 20% live outside said areas.

Christians in the Suleimaniah district used to be wary of their Moslem neighbors in the Baghdad Station district. I remember my mother telling us kids in 1963-64 not to stay too long on the balcony, afraid of Moslem snipers. We did not believe her and nothing happened. Christians later moved into the Baghdad Station district and became the majority there.

The Christians of Aleppo do not fear the Moslems of Aleppo. Armed Moslems from the Aleppo countryside are different and thus are not welcomed by Christians, and by Moslems.

Staying unarmed is dangerous.

‘The Syrian army would like to appear squeaky clean. It isn’t.’ (Robert Fisk, The Independent)

“Of course, all armies want to stay clean. All that gold braid, all those battle honours, all that parade-ground semper fi. Thank God for Our Boys. Trouble is that when they go to war, armies ally themselves to the most unsavoury militias, gunmen, reservists, killers and mass murderers, often local vigilante groups who invariably contaminate the men in smart uniforms and high falutin’ traditions, until the generals and colonels have to re-invent themselves and their history.”

Bitter Lemons, the Israeli-Palestinian webzine, shuts down after 11 years. Editors say reflects lack of hope for peace, fatigue of conflict.

Taking Syria Seriously
Wasif Syed, F. Stephen Larrabee, Aug. 25, 2012

America’s current policy focuses on providing the opposition with non-lethal humanitarian assistance. As a result, an increasingly bloody and protracted civil war is likely…. America’s failure to support the opposition more actively already is provoking resentment among Syria’s population, which will undermine US efforts to influence the post-Assad transition. As one opposition spokesman warned, “America will pay a price for this. America will lose the friendship of the Syrians, and no one will trust them anymore.”….

Parchment of Kashmir: History, Society, and Polity, by Nyla Khan

Nikolaos van Dam interview on Syria with Al-Ghad.

The Golan predicament: Syrians at crossroads over support for Assad
Julian Phillips, August 29, 2012

“Despite their activity, the anti-regime organizers in the Golan Heights have not attracted mainstream local support for their movement.”

Three evenings a week, Syrian dissidents gather in a borrowed office in the bustling town of Majdal Shams. The diverse attendees – Facebook organizers, graffiti artists, former political prisoners, artists and writers – come together to coordinate a local contribution to the ongoing uprising against Bashar al-Assad. Some nights, they spend hours debating the news, brainstorming protest slogans, and strategizing for weekly demonstrations in a nearby plaza….

Assad forces accused of massacre in Damascus suburb – aljazeera

“The Assad forces killed them in cold blood,” said Abu Ahmad, 40, a resident of Daraya, where the Syrian government has waged a campaign it described as a “cleansing.” “I saw dozens of dead people, killed by the knives at the end of Kalashnikovs, or by gunfire. The regime finished off whole families, a father, mother and their children. They just killed them without any pretext.”…..more than 200 bodies had been found in the town, activists said another 15 bodies were discovered in the basement of a home in the area. That put the death toll for the week at more than 630 in the city, said the Local Coordination Committees, including 300 people reported executed….

When the government assault started activists said that rebels had established a large armory inside the city. They said it had been rumored to be holding missiles — a detail that could not be confirmed — perhaps to target helicopters at the Meze airport.

The government operation began early last week. Troops first surrounded Daraya and set up checkpoints, blocking food and other supplies from entering, residents said. The electricity was cut, then the Internet and phone service.

Shelling — intense and relentless — started midweek and that was followed by hundreds of Syrian soldiers entering the town, backed by tanks and pickup trucks with mounted machine guns. Residents reported that the soldiers and government militiamen known as shabiha initially faced strong resistance from the Free Syrian Army. But by late Friday or early Saturday, they said the Syrian military seemed to be in control of most of Daraya.

House-to-house searches accelerated. People were not allowed to leave….

“I will not forget my son, and I swear that I will raise his 3-year-old son to take revenge for his father from those Alawite shabiha and soldiers who kill our husband and sons,” she said. “We will not forget the Assad massacres and crimes.”…

“We don’t consider the Assad army to be the army of a nation, we seem them as gangs of robbers who kill, steal and rape,” said Abu Mohammed, 50, a resident helping with the burials. “No national army commits acts like these except the dogs of Assad.”

The Russia Take from RT

Massacre accusations have been leveled at Syrian government forces by opposition watchdog groups after a fierce offensive to retake a Damascus suburb. But with no independent observers on the ground it remains unclear what exactly happened in Daraya.

A gruesome video has emerged showing a man navigating a sea of bodies in what he says is a mosque complex in Daraya, a working class Sunni Muslim town of 200,000 located southwest of Damascus. Amid repeated calls of Allahu Akbar, the individual filming the scene proclaims there are “more than 150 martyrs in this mosque in Daraya so far.”

Blood is conspicuously absent in the dimly-lit room, as the bodies were evidently moved to the Abu Auleiman al-Darani mosque post mortem.

Anti-government activists claim many of the corpses bore the marks of sniper fire, while others had been shot “execution-style” in house-to-house raids.

The video’s authenticity could not be independently verified, and the details of just what happened during the five-day offensive in Daraya remain sketchy at best….

Syria’s rebels: More than they can chew
Following an audacious offensive, the rebels are struggling to survive the regime’s counterattack
Aug 25th 2012 | ANTAKYA AND IDLEB |Economist

the rebels are failing to win hearts and minds among the urban middle class in Aleppo. The same was true of the failed attempt to take the capital, Damascus, in July. …..

Meanwhile, the political opposition is as divided as ever. Much to its dismay, America’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton snubbed the Syrian National Council, a group of exiles, during her recent visit to Turkey. The group is “on the verge of irrelevance”, says a Western diplomat…..

Take the Tawhid (Unity) Brigade that is leading the assault on Aleppo. It is the biggest and best organised opposition force in Syria. Although formed on July 18th it still lacks a unified command. Its men manage to draw up a rota for front-line duty and joint operations.

Most fighting forces are less organised. Bassel Shahoud, a calm, thoughtful commander of just 80 men in Sarmeen, a small town in the north-western province of Idleb, says it is easier to command that way—and adds that many want to lead. With four groups in Sarmeen alone, he reckons there could be as many as 2,000 groups across the country. Some, such as fighters in Hama, Syria’s fourth city, are not plugged into national networks….

The Idleb Military Council is one of nine or so provincial military councils that were set up late last year by defectors to oversee the fighting groups that are staffed mainly by volunteers. But this is far from a unified force. “There was a lot of hope these councils would create a nationwide military, but we haven’t seen that,” says Asher Berman at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

Competition for resources and personal feuds have already led some groups to fall out. The two main rebel forces in the Homs area, the Khaled Ibn Walid Brigade and Farouq, both work out of the rebellious town of Rastan, but their leaders are at loggerheads. ….

Syria: the myth of partition
Salam Al-Kawakibi , 25 August 2012, Open Democracy

…it seems that some western experts who are searching for excitement, are now leaning towards discussing the possibility of an “Alawite” state being set up on the Syrian coast, based on “advanced agriculture, modern infrastructure, and ports,” claiming that the Syrian regime has developed these sectors in anticipation of such a scenario. …

Britain and US plan a Syrian revolution from an innocuous office block in Istanbul
An underground network of Syrian opposition activists is receiving training and supplies of vital equipment from a combined American and British effort to forge an effective alternative to the Damascus regime.
By Damien McElroy, Istanbul
26 Aug 2012

Dozens of dissidents have been ferried out of Syria to be vetted for foreign backing. Recipients of the aid are given satellite communications and computers so that they can act as a local “hub” linking local activists and the outside world.

The training takes place in an Istanbul district where handsome apartment blocks line the steep slopes and rooftop terraces boast views over the Golden Horn waterway.

Behind closed doors the distractions of outdoor coffee shops and clothing boutiques gives way to power point displays charting the mayhem sweeping Syria.

“We are not ‘king-making’ in Syria. The UK and the US are moving cautiously to help what has been developing within Syria to improve the capabilities of the opposition,” said Alistair Harris, a British political consultant overseeing the programme. “What’s going to come next? Who is going to control territory across Syria. We want to give civilians the skills to assert leadership.”

Once up and running dissidents can expect help to deal with local shortages and troubleshooting advice from sympathisers….

But the activists also face two days of vetting designed to ensure that the programme does not fall into the trap of promoting sectarian agendas or the rise of al-Qaeda-style fundamentalists…..

Jon Wilks, the Foreign Office diplomat who serves as envoy to the Syrian opposition, told the Arabic newspaper al Sharq al Aswat last week that Britain was already working to lay the foundations of democracy in a post-Assad Syria…..

The scheme has, however, infuriated the exiled opposition body, the Syrian National Council. Its failure to provide a united and coherent front against the regime has led some western officials to brief privately that foreign governments were shifting support beyond the exiled body.

But in a barely furnished office in a tower block near Istanbul airport an SNC official decried the false promises of its allies. “We’ve heard a lot of promises from the very beginning of the SNC but none of those have been fulfilled,” the SNC official said. “This has reflected absolutely negatively on our work. The opposition of Syria wants the world to provide humanitarian aid for the people in need and the Free Syria Army wants intervention to stop planes bombing their positions.

“Instead they go around behind our back undermining our role.”…

A Critique of Joshua Landis
By The Global Perambulator
July 31, 2012

This is a response to a recent talk on C-SPAN by professor Joshua Landis of Oklahoma University…..

Rights of Women

One important issue that was missing from his talk (and is missing in almost all discussions on Syria) is the threat to the rights of women if the Assad regime falls. This is no small issue….

Christians, Kurds and Minorities

In the question and answer period after Mr. Landis’ you will note that there is a Syrian Christian man asking a question about the rights and status of Christians in Syria after a Sunni extremist takeover of the country. He is very concerned about this issue and he has good reason to be. Since the beginning of the so-called ‘revolution’ there have been many incidents of rebels killing Christians and bombing churches all over Syria. The chant of the fighters has been: “The Alawite and Christians to Beirut!” The intentions can’t be made any clearer. Nobody will be safe in Syria after Assad except orthodox Sunni Muslims. Mr. Landis made this very clear to the Christian man when he said that the solution for Turkey was ethnic cleansing. The reason there is no problem in Turkey with Christians is because there are no more Christians. They used to be 20% of the population. …All that is left of Christianity in Turkey are ancient Christian sites that are advertised to attract tourists to the country. Istanbul, which is still the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church, barely tolerates what is left of the Christian community there. The Church has virtually no sovereignty and is at the mercy of the government and its flock has dwindled to almost nothing, when compared to its vibrant past.

If ethnic cleansing and forced conversion has been Turkey’s solution for diversity, take a look at the other country that is supplying weapons and Islamist fighters to topple Assad: Saudi Arabia. There is no country in the world that as intolerant and anti-democratic as Saudi Arabia….

“Non-Lethal” Support

Hillary Clinton regularly acknowledges that the United States is providing ‘non-lethal’ support to the rebels. There is no such thing as ‘non-lethal’ support. The U.S. claims to be supplying material logistical support and training. That is lethal support. They are training people to kill other people and giving them the logistical means to do so. But to claim that the Americans limit themselves to these forms of support is disingenuous. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are two very close allies of the U.S. Saudi is America’s biggest customer in weapons and military hardware. The Turkish military is trained and armed by America. The weapons come from America, go to Turkey and Saudi and end up in the hands of militant Islamic fighters in Syria. This is not an attempt to make a connection between America and weapons on the ground in Syria. This is the actual flow-chart of weapons from origin to destination: From America to Syria.

Geo-Political Agendas

It is in this area where Mr. Landis must seriously be taken to task. When he spoke about his shock when dealing with the Chinese about geo-political concerns in the region, one must wonder what planet he is living on. He claimed that America was helping the ‘good guys’ and China was helping the ‘bad guys’.* One needs to merely look at the public record on the history of the region and the world to find where Washington’s sympathies lie. The best place to access this history is William Blum’s website: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.

If we focus on the Middle East we can find an atrocious record of war, sabotage, coup d’etats, mass-murder, assassinations and the creation of failed states as a result of American foreign policy of global hegemony.

America claims to promote democracy….

When Mr. Landis goes abroad representing the U.S. government and supporting its policies, let us remember what agenda he is pushing forward. In General Wesley Clark’s 2003 book Winning Modern Wars he wrote that in November 2001 he had visited the Pentagon and was completely stunned when he came across a list of countries that were to have their governments overthrown by the United States. That list included: Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia.

So when you turn on the evening news and see the chaos, killing and destruction, you will now understand what a work in progress looks like.

Robert Fisk: The bloody truth about Syria’s uncivil war
Those trying to topple Assad have surprised the army with their firepower and brutal tactics

By Jean Fleury, General, former Chief of Staff of the French Air Force
LE MONDE | 23.08.2012

….But for aviation to destroy tanks or artillery threatening civilians, it must have the prior control of the sky, that is to say, knocked out air and ground batteries as well as enemy fighter planes.

In the case of Libya, it was not too difficult because the dictator’s Air Force had little operational and terrestrial means of defense and his airplanes were quickly destroyed.

For Syria, the song is not the same. Its Air force totals approximately 500 combat aircrafts, more than twice ours although some of them only are modern, yet the number and quality of a training directed to a possible war against Israel are a serious contender. We are not big enough to cope.

In June, when the Turks wanted to test the Syrian air defense (for any expert, this is evident in the review of published trajectories), the reaction was not long in coming, and the airplane was shot down. To overcome Bashar al-Assad today’s aviation, the whole American war machine must be used as well as the airports of Greece and Cyprus, or the Middle East. For Libya, it is our airforce who led the first raid of liberation of Benghazi. If U.S. assistance was essential for the continuation of the war, we have done no less than a quarter of the protection missions of the population threatened by Gaddafi, placing us at the forefront of the coalition.

Against Syria, we would be just a little extra strength under the orders from Washington, it would not be very glorious.

As for the no-fly zone demanded by others, it raises exactly the same problem as for destroying Syria’s plane it would require a mastery of the sky even more perfect!

It seemed surprising that this view has not been discussed further in France. But there is a good reason for this: it would recognize the weakness of our military aviation.

Syrians are torn between a despotic regime and a stagnant opposition
The Muslim Brotherhood’s perceived monopoly over the Syrian National Council has created an opposition stalemate
By Hassan Hassan, Guardian, Thursday 23 August 2012

…A year ago this week, the Syrian National Council was formed in Istanbul by a coalition of political forces and figures that presented themselves as society’s representatives. In the absence of a mechanism to determine the power base of each political force, the Muslim Brotherhood came to dominate the council, benefiting from its relations with Islamist-leaning Turkey.

The Brotherhood’s perceived monopoly over the council has led to a chronic political stalemate within the opposition and will most likely undermine an orderly transition if the situation persists. But the appointment of Algerian veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi as the new UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, along with the recent defections of high-level technocrats, presents a new opportunity to reverse the group’s domination.

…When the Brotherhood was part of the political system, the business community in both Aleppo and Damascus allied itself with the People’s party, a nationalist non-Islamist party, and then to the Ba’ath party. Politically, the business community today is also more likely to ally itself with non-Islamist groups.

Also, in both of these significant cities, the business community is socially tied with a local pragmatic clergy that adheres to a classical Sunni religious school similar to that of al-Azhar in Egypt….

the country appears set for a war that will continue until the regime falls. Significant segments of society in Syria are torn between a despotic regime that is committing atrocities on a daily basis and a stagnant political opposition that has so far failed to present a viable alternative and is dominated by a group they view suspiciously. That is a torn majority, not a silent majority.

Damascus
Torrent of Syrian Refugees Strains Aid Effort and Region

International relief agencies reported an alarming increase in Syrian refugees on Friday, shattering calculations made by the United Nations and spreading fears that the violence in Syria is creating a broader humanitarian crisis that could further destabilize the Middle East.
….
But those forces also have dropped leaflets encouraging people to flee, especially from Aleppo,
suggesting that Mr. Assad may be trying to use refugees to punish Syria’s neighbors, especially Turkey, a former Assad ally that turned on him as the repression in Syria worsened.

“It is a way for Assad to put pressure on Turkey,” said Ayman, a Syrian activist working with refugees at the Turkish border, who used only one name for security reasons. “He is seeking to destabilize Turkey.”

Libya Islamists let loose in their frenzy of destruction
Libya Islamists destroy Sufi shrines, library: military
25/08/2012

ZLITAN, (Reuters) – Conservative Islamists blew up the tomb of a 15th century Sufi scholar and burned down a library in the Libyan city of Zlitan, a military official said on Saturday, the latest attacks on sites in the region branded idolatrous by some sects.

The attackers used bombs and a bulldozer to destroy a complex of shrines that included the tomb of Abdel Salam al-Asmar on Friday and ruined thousands of books at the Asmari Mosque library, said witnesses and Zlitan military council official Omar Ali.

Hardliners, many of them emboldened by the Arab Spring revolts, have targeted a number of sites belonging to Islam’s mystical Sufi tradition in Libya, Egypt and Mali over the past year.

Syrian Christians in 2-week blockade by rebel fighters, residents desperate
25 August, 2012, 17:01

An estimated 12,000 people have spent two weeks blockaded in the Christian town of Rableh, Syria, near Homs in the south. Experiencing a shortage of food and medical supplies, residents could not leave as rebel snipers were shooting at them.

­The town, close to the border with Lebanon, was liberated by Syrian government forces on Friday, according to Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen satellite channel. These reports are yet to be verified. Sixty militants were reportedly eliminated.

Syrians are torn between a despotic regime and a stagnant opposition

Hassan Hassan: The Muslim Brotherhood’s perceived monopoly over the Syrian National Council has created an opposition stalemate

How the Syrian Revolution Became Militarized – The Nation
Sharif Abdel Kouddous, August 23, 2012

Zabadani, Syria — Emad Khareeta says he had no choice but to defect. The 23-year-old member of the Free Syrian Army stands outside his family home in a deserted section of town. Shards of concrete and…

“I was ready to die after what I had seen and been through,” he says. “I don’t want to oppress anyone.” He eventually bribed an officer 20,000 Syrian pounds (approximately $300) for a three-day vacation leave. On January 26, Emad left and never returned, making his way back home to Zabadani.

Emad is just one of thousands of army defectors who are switching sides in a conflict that began as a nonviolent popular uprising but has since spiraled into an increasingly bitter and polarizing civil war, one that has become a theater for geopolitical interests.

The armed opposition to the Assad regime first began to take form in the late summer of 2011, following months of mass demonstrations that were overwhelmingly nonviolent. Facing repeated crackdowns and mass detentions by security forces, protesters began to arm themselves, many by purchasing smuggled weapons from border countries like Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. The revolt was further militarized by increasing numbers of army soldiers defecting to their local communities and bringing their weapons with them.

“They dragged us into arming ourselves,” says Malek al-Tinnawi, a 25-year-old FSA volunteer. He limps badly as he goes to retrieve a newly acquired assault rifle. Two months ago, he was shot through the ankle in clashes with the army. The local doctor inserted a metal rod in his leg to replace the shattered bone. “It’s a good one, isn’t it?” he smiles, brandishing the German-made H&K Model G3 rifle. “Not too used, almost like new.”…

Don’t Fear All Islamists, Fear Salafis
By ROBIN WRIGHT, August 19, 2012, New York Times
As Syrian War Drags On, Jihadists Take Bigger Role (July 30, 2012)

….A new Salafi Crescent, radiating from the Persian Gulf sheikdoms into the Levant and North Africa, is one of the most underappreciated and disturbing byproducts of the Arab revolts. In varying degrees, these populist puritans are moving into the political space once occupied by jihadi militants, who are now less in vogue. Both are fundamentalists who favor a new order modeled on early Islam. Salafis are not necessarily fighters, however. Many disavow violence.

In Tunisia, Salafis started the Reform Front party in May and led protests, including in Sidi Bouzid. This summer, they’ve repeatedly attacked symbols of the new freedom of speech, ransacking an art gallery and blocking Sufi musicians and political comedians from performing. In Egypt, Salafis emerged last year from obscurity, hastily formed parties, and in January won 25 percent of the seats in parliament — second only to the 84-year-old Muslim Brotherhood. Salafis are a growing influence in Syria’s rebellion. And they have parties or factions in Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Yemen and among Palestinians.

Salafis are only one slice of a rapidly evolving Islamist spectrum. The variety of Islamists in the early 21st century recalls socialism’s many shades in the 20th. Now, as then, some Islamists are more hazardous to Western interests and values than others. The Salafis are most averse to minority and women’s rights.

A common denominator among disparate Salafi groups is inspiration and support from Wahhabis, a puritanical strain of Sunni Islam from Saudi Arabia. Not all Saudis are Wahhabis. Not all Salafis are Wahhabis, either. But Wahhabis are basically all Salafis. And many Arabs, particularly outside the sparsely populated Gulf, suspect that Wahhabis are trying to seize the future by aiding and abetting the region’s newly politicized Salafis — as they did 30 years ago by funding the South Asian madrassas that produced Afghanistan’s Taliban.

The case against intervening in Syria
HENRI J. BARKEY, August 25, 2012
One thing unlikely to come of American involvement: Goodwill.

…Taking sides and delivering power to one group does not always induce the winners to be magnanimous. Iraq is the perfect example of this. It’s sad to say, but civil wars have to be fought and won by locals — and it is generally only after experiencing the horrors of war that the participants learn to compromise….

Syria VP Dispels Defection Rumors – VOA

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, left, head of Iran’s powerful parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy meets with Syrian Vice President Farouk Al-Sharaa, ending rumors that Al-Sharaa had defected to Jordan in Damascus, Syria, August 26, 2012.

Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa has appeared in public for the first time in weeks, ending speculation that he had defected from President Bashar al-Assad’s embattled government.

Q&A: Free Syrian Army deputy leader, Anita McNaught – aljazeera

Colonel Malik al-Kurdi says opposition fighters only need another two months to take the Assad regime down.

Report: Egypt turns down U.S. request to inspect Iranian arms ship on way to Syria – Aug. 26, 2012

Suez Canal Authority chairman tells Al-Ahram newspaper Egyptian navy refuses to inspect ship’s cargo; President Morsi to attend Tehran summit later this month.

Olmert struck Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 immediately after Bush refused to do so
2012-08-26

Olmert struck Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 immediately after Bush refused to do so ‘If you’re not going to act against the reactor, then we are,’ PM told president, says advisor Elliot Abrams. Then, as now on Iran, the US favored diplomacy …