Mawal95 wrote up this very useful news summary of the results of the May 7, 2012 parliamentary elections in Syria, copied below.

In short, the Baath party has won an even larger victory in the 7 May 2012 parliamentary elections than it did in previous elections. The Ba’ath party has won a majority of around 60% of the 250 parliamentary seats. Previously, the Baath had a majority of just over 50% of the seats in parliament. If one adds in the independent MPs aligned with the Baath Party, the MPs who support the president make up over 90% of the seats in new parliament. The National Unity List, which is dominated by the Syrian Baath Party, won more than 150 seats in the 250 member parliament. Independent individuals won more than 90 seats. Among the newly established opposition parties (established since August 2011), only one single seat was won, namely a seat in Aleppo won by the Syrian Democratic Party, Ahmad Koussa. In addition three representatives of longstanding opposition parties have been elected to Parliament: Qadri Jamil and Ali Haydar from the Front for Change and Liberation, and Amro Osi from the Initiative of Syrian Kurds.

16 May 2012 @ ASNAmed.info:

The Baath party has won an even larger victory in the 7 May 2012 parliamentary elections than it did in previous elections. Syria’s electoral commission on 15 May 2012 released the names of the 250 winning candidates in the elections, but did not specify the political affiliation of the 250 winners. Instead, it was the Lebanese paper As Safir that provided more detailed analysis on 16 May. “The Ba’ath party has won a majority of around 60%,” the Beirut paper said. According to previous electoral law — repealed before these elections — the Baath had a majority of just over 50% of the seats in parliament. In the new parliament the great majority of the members who are not Baath Party members are independents who support national unity under the leadership of the Assad government. In addition three representatives of longstanding opposition parties have been elected to Parliament: Qadri Jamil and Ali Haydar from the Front for Change and Liberation, and Amro Osi from the Initiative of Syrian Kurds.

16 May 2012 @ Al-Akhbar.com:

Judge Khalaf al-Azzawi held a press conference on 15 May to announce the final outcome of the elections. But while he listed the names of the winning candidates, he gave no breakdown of how many votes the various political parties won. The omission puzzled even members of the official media. “This information always used to be announced and provided to the media in a clear and detailed manner,” said Adnan Abdul-Razzaq, an editor at the daily newspaper al-Baath. But Abdul-Razzaq added that it was “only natural and to be expected” for the Baath party and its allies to gain a landslide win, given the party’s broad popular base and membership of millions. The outcome of the contest was indeed a landslide victory for the ruling party together with the parties and independent MPs aligned with the Baath, who together will have over 90% of the seats in new parliament.

16 May 2012 @ Moqawama.org:

The National Unity List, which is dominated by the Syrian Baath Party, won more than 150 seats in the 250 member parliament. Independent individuals won more than 90 seats. The bulk of the winning independents are on record supporting national unity under the leadership of the Assad government. The political composition of the new parliament is very similar to that of the previous parliament. Opposition parties won five seats in the elections. Among the newly established opposition parties (established since August 2011), only one single seat was won, namely a seat in Aleppo won by the Syrian Democratic Party. The head of the Syrian Democratic Party, Ahmad Koussa, conceded that the wins by the National Unity List are proof that the people of Syria support the current government to lead them through the current crisis.

Related, 17 May 2012 @ Moqawama.org:

President Assad said that the Syrian opposition had shown itself to be insignificant by calling for a boycott of the recent parliamentary elections: “How can you boycott the people of whom you consider yourself the representative? I don’t think that they [the opposition] have any kind of weight or significance within Syria…. The polling stations show the opinion of the people. The results show that the Syrian people support the course toward the reforms which were announced about a year ago. It is a serious message for everyone both inside the country and beyond its borders,” said the president.

deaths on Syria map Total deaths, by governorates, March 2011 through April 14, 2012

The SNC is in deep trouble. Burhan Ghalioun has offered to resign as soon as another leader can be chosen, even though he was recently reelected to a new three-month term. The SNC is ripping itself apart. From the beginning, the SNC leadership has been troubled by deep divisions within the Council and accusations that its leaders were not following procedure and were not transparent about money matters. But perhaps most telling is that the SNC established a three month term for its leader at the outset.

Now that the real center of the opposition has shifted from western capitals organizing the international community to impose economic sanctions on Syria to the militias battling the Syrian Army within Syria, the SNC’s role has become more tangential to the elements of the opposition that are doing the heavy lifting.

The SNC played a crucial role in getting sanctions imposed on Damascus. It is unlikely to play such a central role in getting Gulf money and weapons to the fighters in Syria. The uprising entered a new phase after the Russian veto at the UN Security Council.

The Syrian National Council has reelected Burhan Ghalioun of the opposition group in exile.
By Oliver Holmes, Reuters

Ghalioun has the backing of the Gulf States and France, but has been criticized for his inability to unify the opposition. … “It is true that we had a weak performance and we admit that, and that is why we are restructuring now and we hope by this we will have a better performance,” Ghalioun told Reuters shortly before delegates re-elected him….

“It is true that we had a weak performance and we admit that, and that is why we are restructuring now and we hope by this we will have a better performance,” Ghalioun told Reuters shortly before delegates re-elected him…

Even within the SNC, Ghalioun appears to struggle to impose himself as a leader. Inexpressive and somber in contrast to his more gregarious colleagues, he tended to potter about alone, lost in thought, during coffee breaks in Rome while clusters of fellow SNC members chatted animatedly among themselves….

Since emerging at the head of the SNC at its formation last August under the sponsorship of Assad’s Western, Arab and Turkish adversaries, Ghalioun’s image as a secular, liberal leader who could rally support in Western capitals has been dented by accusations from liberal rivals within the opposition who say he is too close to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood….

In particular, those close to Ghalioun feel that the United States and Western powers are less valuable allies than Arab states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. These would welcome a victory for Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority over Assad’s dominant Alawite minority, which has long been supported by Shi’ite Iran.

“It’s not about the U.S. anymore,” an SNC member close to Ghalioun said in Rome, arguing that President Barack Obama’s campaign for re-election was distracting Washington’s attention. “They are more concerned with elections and can’t help.

“It’s all Saudi and Qatar now.”

Syrian opposition group leader says he’ll resign to stem rifts
May 17, 2012 – LA Times – Alexandra Sandels.

Burhan Ghalioun, the head of Syria’s main government-opposition alliance, announced that he would resign after members accused him of “political and organizational failure”

BEIRUT — The head of Syria’s main government-opposition alliance announced Thursday that he would resign after members accused him of “political and organizational failure” and threatened to withdraw from the group.

Burhan Ghalioun, who was reelected as head of the Syrian National Council on Tuesday despite rifts within the group, said he did not want to be divisive and would step down as soon as a successor was named either through elections or consensus.

“I am announcing my resignation as head of the council,” Ghalioun told the pan-Arab TV station Al-Arabiya.”I call on the Syrian opposition to break the cycle of conflicts and preserve unity.”

The announcement came after the activist group Local Coordination Committees threatened to withdraw from the alliance in a statement accusing Ghalioun of failure and saying the council was drifting away from “the spirit and demands of the Syrian Revolution.”

The council, a group mainly made up of Syrians living in exile, was established as an umbrella group of several organizations with the aim of presenting a united front for Syria’s opposition and an alternative to Syrian President Bashar Assad. But infighting and divisions appear to have left some members disillusioned, and some have left the alliance while citing undemocratic processes.

Rafif Jouejati, a spokeswoman for the Local Coordination Committees, said the group was frustrated with the council’s inability “to move forward” and to effectively represent the people on the ground.

She said that the council needs to undergo some major restructuring, including how key decisions are reached within the bloc. Ghalioun, a secular 67-year-old Sunni Muslim professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, has been accused by some opposition members of trying to monopolize power and having too close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

Some activists inside Syria expressed disappointment when his reelection was announced Tuesday. “There is a feeling of frustration regarding Ghalioun’s reelection,” said Talhat, an activist from Tal Kalakh in the province of Homs, over Skype. “There is also a sense that the Muslim Brotherhood is controlling the council, and I have nothing against them but they are acting on their political interests — not in the interest of the country.”

Ghalioun ran against George Sabra, a Christian member of the council viewed by some as a better candidate to calm worries among Syria’s religious minorities, some of which have stood by Assad out of concerns for what the future holds for them if the regime is overthrown

“If you ask me, George Sabra should be elected, ” said an activist reached in the town of Rastan in Homs.”There are accusations that Islamists are controlling the SNC, and George Sabra is a Christian, so it would solve the problem.”

Arab League Refuses to Accept that the SNC Knows What is Best for the Syrian Opposition: http://www.mideastwire.com/

On May 17, the Saudi-owned London-based Al-Hayat daily carried in its paper edition the following report by its correspondent in Cairo Mohammad al-Shazeli: “Arab League Secretary General Doctor Nabil al-Arabi said that the decision that was taken to postpone the Syrian opposition conference in Cairo was not due to any positions taken by the Arab League. Al-Arabi added: “We did not take any sides in favor of a specific Syrian opposition party at the expense of another. The position that is supported by the League is known to all and we have never tried to conceal it…” For his part, Jaber ash-Shoufi, i.e. a member in the Syrian National Council’s secretariat, told Al-Hayat that the Arab League did not cooperate with the council in regard to the meeting that was supposed to be held in Cairo.

“He added: “We had previously reached an agreement with Al-Arabi and his aides, but they have failed to comply by this agreement. Al-Arabi must understand that the Syrian National Council is the main opposition body and if they wish to organize any meeting for the opposition forces, they should firstly cooperate with us. Since this was not the case, we were forced to reject this conference. The Arab League refused to cooperate with us and this drove us to take that position.” He continued: “They did not treat us as the main opposition force and they refused to cooperate with us while insisting on inviting a number of SNC members and not the entire body. They failed to understand that we do not represent ourselves, rather the Syrian people. We are the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people and they cannot treat us the way they did.”

“[He assured:] “They invited a few members, but who said that they have the right to determine who will represent the council? We will determine who must take part in this meeting and we are not saying this because we want to exclude anyone from the conference. Quite the contrary. We are just saying that we know what is best for the opposition. Besides, the meeting was called for in order to form a committee to engage in dialogue with the regime and this is something we reject. Dialogue can start after Bashar al-Assad leaves power and not before that. Only when he leaves and delegates his powers to his deputy, and after his security regime is dismantled will we agree to engage in dialogue…”” – Al-Hayat, United Kingdom

Why Does the Syrian Opposition Remain Fractured? Shane Farell provides a list of major political opposition parties inside and outside of Syria.

SYRIA CONSUMER PRICES RISE 31% IN MARCH YR/YR — SYRIA CONSUMER PRICES RISE 6.7% IN MARCH FROM FEBRUARY
2012-05-16 –INAL ERSAN

Prepare for the Long Haul in Syria Michael Young argues that it is too late for a diplomatic movement.

Syrian Rebels Get Influx of Arms with Gulf Neighbor’s Money, U.S. Coordination
Wash Post – By Karen DeYoung and Liz Sly,

The West and its allies operate outside the Annan Plan…. Syrian rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad have begun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States, according to opposition activists and U.S. and foreign officials…. Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood also said it has opened its own supply channel to the rebels, using resources from wealthy private individuals and money from gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said Mulham al-Drobi, a member of the Brotherhood’s executive committee….

The new supplies reversed months of setbacks for the rebels that forced them to withdraw from their stronghold in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs and many other areas in Idlib and elsewhere.

“Large shipments have got through,” another opposition figure said. “Some areas are loaded with weapons.”

The effect of the new arms appeared evident in Monday’s clash between opposition and government forces over control of the rebel-held city of Rastan, near Homs. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebel forces who overran a government base had killed 23 Syrian soldiers….

Opposition figures said they have been in direct contact with State Department officials to designate worthy rebel recipients of arms and pinpoint locations for stockpiles, but U.S. officials said that there currently are no military or intelligence personnel on the ground in Syria.

The Pentagon has prepared options for Syria extending all the way to air assaults to destroy the nation’s air defenses. U.S. officials, however, have said that such involvement remains very unlikely. Instead, they said, the United States and others are moving forward toward increased coordination of intelligence and arming for the rebel forces…..

“Various people are hoping that the U.S. will step up its efforts to undermine or confront the Syrian regime,” the gulf official said. “We want them to get rid” of Assad.

New Scientist: Egypt: Arab Spring could be wasted in youthful nations
2012-05-17

Oppressive autocracies with a median population age of 25 to 35 are likeliest to become democracies A YEAR after ousting Hosni Mubarak, Egypt appears poised this week to elect his former minister of foreign affairs, Amr Moussa, as its next …

U.S. in waiting game on Syria
By Elise Labott CNN, 16 May 2012

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Fifteen months into the crisis in Syria, and the Obama administration is, as one U.S. official describes it, in “a holding pattern,” waiting for Russia to abandon its support for President Bashar al-Assad, waiting for sanctions to topple the economy and waiting for an organized Syrian opposition to present a coherent vision for a post-Assad Syria.

As the U.S. waits for what many believe is the inevitable failure of a United Nations-backed plan, American officials say they would rather U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan to pronounce his diplomatic efforts a failure himself.

Senior officials say the international monitors provided for in the current agreement with the Syrian government, however small in number, offer a small buffer against Assad’s forces. Additionally, the U.S. and its allies on the U.N. Security Council want Russia to come to its own conclusion that Assad is not living up to his end of the agreement in ceasing the violence, and the plan is a failure. The concern is should the U.S. push for the next step, it would further alienate Moscow, which is skeptical about efforts to push out Syria’s president. How the plan fails is as important as when it does, Western diplomats said this week.

“You have the politics part of this plan, and you have what is really happening on the ground,” one U.S. official said. “We are going to be in a bit of a holding pattern for a while, debating on whether this has succeeded or failed, and whether it was designed to fail.”

But the U.S. is looking for ways it can further aid the opposition. U.S. officials and congressional sources say the Obama administration has realized that nonlethal communication, currently the bulk of U.S. support for the opposition, is not enough. In recent weeks, the U.S. has broadened its outreach to include Syria’s rebel groups, including the Free Syrian Army.

Sources say the administration is already increasing coordination with Gulf nations working to arm the opposition and is actively debating providing additional military support.

“These guys need space, training and greater capabilities,” one congressional source said. “What is that, where would it be done, who would it be for? Those are the questions the administration is trying to answer, and they need to be moving a lot faster.”

So far, representatives of the rebel groups say the weapons are not coming in any significant numbers.

“The problem is we want weapons but have received nothing so far,” said Free Syrian Army Capt. Riad Ahmed, currently in Istanbbul.

Sen. John McCain R-Arizona, one of the administration’s harshest critics on Syria policy who recently returned from a trip to the Turkish border with Syria, has openly called for arming the opposition and supporting havens for opposition members.

“What they need, first of all, is weapons to defend themselves,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Then we need to talk with our allies about a sanctuary, a place where the government can organize, where we can train and equip these forces so that we can have a fair fight.”

The State Department has also stepped up its efforts to unite Syria’s fractured political opposition. Last week, the State Department invited leaders of the Kurdish National Council, from the relatively quiet eastern part of Syria, to Washington. In meetings with U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford other senior US officials, sources said the possibility was raised of opening another front against al-Assad’s forces to force him to divert resources from the western part of the country.

Sanctions have left Syria’s main revenue sources, tourism and oil exports, “almost completely dried up,” according to David Cohen, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. “They’re not earning, and on the expenditure side, they’re spending money to try and keep inflation down by subsidizing food and fuel, and they’re spending a lot of money, frankly, pursuing the violence against their own people,” he said last week at an event in Washington. “The combined effect of this is that the economic situation in Syria today is quite perilous.”

In the coming weeks, a working group made up of representatives from various countries will meet in Washington to consider how to increase financial pressure on Damascus, Cohen said.

Earlier this year, the administration concluded that the Syrian National Council, the primary opposition group dealing with the international community, will not be running the country after al-Assad falls. Since then, Ambassador Ford, who has combed the globe to meet with Syrians from all walks of life, has tried to identify Syrians inside the country whom the U.S. can do business with. Members of the country’s various revolutionary councils — the grassroots movements that are coordinating on the ground with the armed opposition — are viewed as more organized and potentially able to help Syria through a transition period.

There is still little coordination between Syrians on the ground and the Syrian National Council, which is still the international face of the opposition. In the coming days, Ford is hoping to convene a meeting of a diverse group of Syrians, including some from inside the country, with the goal of creating a more cohesive opposition that can inspire more confidence from the international community.

“It is preposterous that we are only at this point after 15 months,” another U.S. official lamented.

Once the opposition is sufficiently united, the ball will be in the U.S. court to actively support it. Until now, the Obama administration has been loath to support militarization of the conflict in Syria, fearing it would spark the kind of civil war that sprang out of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Yet last week’s bombing of a Syrian intelligence facility, presumed to be the work of al Qaeda in Iraq, proves those fears have already been realized. Some U.S. officials and diplomats worry how long members of the opposition will be willing to fight a losing battle with the regime without sufficient international support until they turn to al Qaeda, which is more than willing to help them wage jihad.

“By not doing anything,” warns Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “we are contributing to the fact that this is tipping from a civil resistance into a civil insurgency and into a civil war.”

The international community is looking toward the United States for the elusive plan B. But as the presidential election in the United States approaches, diplomats in the region voice frustration about what they perceive as a lack of political will from the Obama administration to orchestrate the next move in Syria.

“In order to say the Annan plan doesn’t have any hope, you have to have a plan to deploy immediately,” one senior Western diplomat said. “If you say it’s dead, people are going to say, ‘What is next?’ There is nothing.”

Nowhere is that sentiment felt more strongly than in Turkey. While the Obama administration has been actively considering support for havens inside Syria, Washington is looking to Ankara to lead the way. Turkish officials, however, say they are looking for the U.S. to provide the leadership first, which they say starts with Washington working more actively to secure Russian support for a U.N. Security Council resolution under Chapter 7, which would provide a legal basis for any military intervention.

Turkish officials say they want international legitimacy for any further action, which only such a U.N. mandate can provide.

“We are prepared to do everything possible in our power to help the Syrian people,” one senior Turkish official said. “But if you are waiting for us to come and say we will do it, we won’t go it alone.”

The U.S. also wants Turkey to make a political decision to allow training and equipping of Syrian opposition on its soil. Ankara has told the U.S. it is prepared to allow weapons to flow across its borders and more actively help the internal Syrian opposition, but only if Washington, too, exercises leadership.

“The Turks are prepared to deliver if the U.S. is with them,” one U.S. official said. “They don’t want to do something and be left holding the bag. They want to be assured of success, and that means American leadership.”

Syria is likely to be a topic of discussion at this weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago. Although the alliance has repeatedly said it has no plans to wade into the Syrian conflict, Turkey has suggested it could invoke Article IV of the NATO Charter, which allows NATO to begin consultations on threats to Turkey, which would pave the way for consultations on how Syria may pose a threat to Turkish security.

Nat Law Jr [Reg]: Judge Orders Syria and Iran to Pay $332M in State-Sponsored Terrorism Case, 2012-05-17

In what one attorney calls the first judgment of its kind, U.S. District Chief Judge Royce Lamberth recently ordered Iran and Syria to pay $332 million for their role in a 2006 suicide attack in Israel that killed eleven people.bThe family of Daniel …

Abu Basir Al-Tartousi Joins Mujahideen in Syria MEMRI

Prominent Salafi-jihadi cleric Abu Basir Al-Tartousi, who in recent years resided in London, has joined the ranks of the mujahideen in Syria. In a 1:33-minute video posted on his Facebook page, he is seen speaking with a group of men in a forest. The accompanying message, by the page’s administrator, states that the video documents a meeting between Al-Tartousi and “free” jihad fighters inside Syria, but does not specify which jihad group Al-Tartousi has joined. However, in the past the sheikh has expressed support for the Free Syrian Army and criticized Jabhat Al-Nusra. The term “free” could therefore imply that the sheikh has joined the former organization; alternatively, it might imply that his comrades are not affiliated with any group.

In another posting on his Facebook page, Al-Tartousi praises the sound theological doctrine of the mujahideen in Syria. He says:

Opinion – “For whom is this lion eager?”

On May 17, the Palestinian-owned Al-Quds al-Arabi daily carried the following opinion piece by Chief Editor Abdel-Beri Atwan:

“Yesterday, the Eager Lion drill was launched in the Jordanian desert with the participation of more than 11,000 soldiers representing 19 Arab and foreign states. It is considered to be the largest of its kind in at least ten years… A quick look at the nature of this maneuver, the scenario for which it prepares, its timing and location near the Syrian border with Jordan, makes one come out with a quasi-certain impression that it is preparation for military intervention against Syria or Iran, or even both, just as it happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and recently in Libya. What is confirmed is that these military drills do not fall in the context of the preparations to invade Israel and change its regime, in order to sanction it for its violation of the Palestinians’ human rights, its undermining of their dignity, occupation of their lands and pillaging of their wealth, or for its construction of racist walls to suffocate them and their occupied capital Jerusalem with settlements, in order to eliminate its Arab identity.

“It was natural for General Awni al-Adwan, the head of the operations and training commission in the Jordanian armed forces, to deny that these drills carried any message of warning to Syria or any other state. However, General Al-Adwan did not reveal to us why it was staged near the Syrian southern border and not the Jordanian-Palestinian or Jordanian-Saudi border for example?… The Americans want military intervention to change oppressive dictatorial regimes and destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities. For that purpose, they have started forming an Arab military alliance to carry out this task with them and cover its expenses. So, did the Arab states earn guarantees that the alternative will be stability, security, wellbeing, real democratic regimes, an end to the Israeli arrogant practices and the elimination of the restraints imposed on the sanctities?

“The answer is definitely no. The Arab countries are now offering services to America for free, and are paying the price for that later on. Did Saudi Arabia – via Prince Turki al-Faisal – not express regrets over the occupation of Iraq, the toppling of the regime in it, its fall under Iranian influence and the flaw affecting the strategic balance in the region in favor of the Iranian regime? I hope that in twenty years, we will not have remorse when we see a situation we never expected in Libya, and maybe even Syria, although this does not mean that we oppose democratic change in the latter or wish to see the disregarding of its regime’s crimes against the people.” – Al-Quds al-Arabi, United Kingdom

Tunisian Islamists join jihad against Syria’s Assad
By Lin Noueihed

BEN GUERDANE, Tunisia (Reuters) – The first that Tunisian schoolteacher Mokhtar Mars heard of his brother fighting alongside rebels in Syria was a phone call from a foreign number, telling him Houssein was dead.

“We got an anonymous call telling us he had been martyred. Just three words. We tried to call back but there was no answer,” said Mars, 40, sitting on a mattress along a wall of what was his younger brother’s room, bereft of other belongings.

“The last call we got from him in February was from Libya. He said he was there to study … Then all contact was broken. We tried to call the number he used but there was no answer.”

Houssein Mars, 34, is one of at least five Tunisians, all from the southeastern town of Ben Guerdane on the border with Libya, who are believed to have been killed in Syria. Two of their families agreed to be interviewed, as did the family of a sixth man, from the same town, whose fate is not known.

The families either received calls from their sons in Syria or calls from strangers telling them their sons were dead.

Though the families have seen no corpses or proof of the deaths, a video carrying the black flag of al Qaeda has appeared on Facebook eulogizing the five men to a backdrop of Koranic verses and stating they had been killed in Homs, which has seen some of the worst bombardment by Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Syria’s envoy to the United Nations says 26 Arab fighters have been captured and “confessed” to al Qaeda sympathies. Another envoy to the U.N. said 19 of those 26 were Tunisians.

Foreign Islamist fighters appear to be a fringe element only in the conflict between assorted Syrian rebel groups and Assad’s armed forces. But the fate of this one band of Tunisian friends offers some of the hardest evidence yet that Syria could become a magnet for the kind of young Muslim men from around the world who once sought jihad and martyrdom in Iraq or Afghanistan.
…

One man, who would speak only if he were not named, already sported the long beard and Afghan-style dress that is common among jihadist guerrillas and said he was hoping to get to Syria, even though his wife had just given birth to a daughter.

Aged about 30, the man, who knew at least one of those killed in Syria well said he was ready to follow: “I would like to go to Syria,” he said. “God willing, if it works out.”

Correction: In my last post I copied an article that claimed that Zuhair Sahloul, a large money changer, had left Syria. A relative of Sahloul’s writes:

With reference to the above headline: “Zuhair Sahloul – a large money-changer – has fled Syria”, I would like to draw your kind attention to the fact the Mr. Zuhair Sahloul mentioned here is still in Syria, Damascus. He did not flee the country.

The original piece of news was reported by a Facebook page named “Association of free journalists”; and later published in Ayman Abdulnour’s All4syria.com

To tell the whole truth; who left Syria was Zuhair’s brother; Ammar due to some reasons… links that might be linked to the ongoing unrest; but this remains uncertain for the moment.

Ya Libnan: The ‘secretive sect’ in charge of Syria
2012-05-17

Considered by some Muslims a heretic sect, this small Levantine minority have survived persecution and the Crusades to rise to the top and take over the Syrian establishment. Alawite practices, which are said to include celebrating Christmas and the …

Christian Minorities in the Eye of the Storm in Syriaby Rudy Sassine for Fikra and Brookings

The string of popular uprisings sweeping the Arab world has been described as social protest movements. The people, who took to the street to protest the dismal economic conditions…

The Syrian Revolution and Washington’s Miscalculations, May 17, 2012

and Brookings

by Zagros Osman who is a Kurdish Syrian activist, writing from within Syria.

 The way the U.S. administration has dealt with the Syrian crisis has been shocking to the Syrian people as well as major democratic powers. All were surprised by the negligent U.S. attitude toward the Syrian regime, which has committed crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity, and the fact that Washington has offered only meager moral support for the Syrian revolution in opposition. This is both contrary to interests of the Syrian people in their democratic transition, and to American strategic and oil interests in the Middle East. …

As Syria’s rebel militias become more lethal, foreign analysts are trying to determine how Islamic they are, how to unify them, and what role the West can play in guiding Syria toward an outcome favorable to its interests. The Syrian government is exploiting Western concerns that the Syrian militias could turn out to be harmful to Western and Israeli interests. Deborah Amos explains that Damascus is arresting most moderates in an evident attempt to create an “either-or” dilemma for Western governments and Syrians themselves: they must choose either between and Assad dictatorship or divided Islamists. This has been the Assad strategy for 40 years. Liz Sly explains that in fact the Muslim Brotherhood is gaining influence over the revolt. Sharmine Narwani, in contrast to Deborah Amos, highlights the brutal and Islamist characteristics of some of the rebel groups, suggesting that the stark choices Syrians face are not manufactured by the Assad regime, but real. She suggests that the Western press has tried to whitewashed the distasteful realities of Homs’ Farouq Battalion to fit its narrative of brutal regime versus good people.

News Roundup

Foreign Policy Round Up: 23 Syrian soldiers killed in Rastan as divides spark clashes in Lebanon

During overnight clashes in the Syrian city of Rastan, 120 miles north of Damascus in Homs province, at least 30 people were killed, including 23 Syrian soldiers, in what has possibly been one of the deadliest attacks on government troops in the 14-month revolt. The attacks came after a weekend of shelling by Syrian security forces on the opposition-held town during which dozens of people were injured. Additionally over the weekend, Syrian forces raided the Damascus suburb of Qaboun and a Sunni farming village in the province of Hama killing at least five people and torching homes. Meanwhile, in an online video, an obscure Islamist group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s car bombings in Damascus that killed over 55 people. Al-Nusra Front said it orchestrated previous attacks and the group is suspected to have ties to al Qaeda. However, the video has been met with suspicion as it was vague and did not come through the typical channels. The European Union has imposed new sanctions on Syria, in its 15th round of doing so. The Syrian regime claims to be conducting reforms, as it held parliamentary elections last week for which the results are expected to be released on Tuesday. The opposition condemned the elections as “a farce.” Violence appears to be spilling over into neighboring Lebanon in the city of Tripoli. The clashes were sparked by weekend protests demanding the release of a man detained on charges of terrorism. Approximately four people were killed including one soldier in violence believed to be fueled by sectarian tension.

Aron Lund, “Divided They Stand: An overview of Syria’s political opposition factions” FEPS think tank in Brussels just published this long piece by Sweden’s foremost Syrianist. Lund also wrote The Ghosts of Hama

Largely Unseen, Syria Carries Out Arrest Campaign
by Deborah Amos – NPR

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government has waged a two-pronged campaign against the opposition, critics say. His military continues to fight, while nonviolent activists are being detained in increasing numbers, according to monitoring groups.

President Bashar Assad’s regime has launched a new and sweeping arrest campaign of opposition activists and intellectuals in the past few weeks, according to Western analysts and diplomats.

The growing tally of arrests has gone largely unnoticed, overshadowed by the daily violence that threatens to jeopardize the U.N. peace plan. But in combination, both are undermining the already faint hopes of peace.

“It’s a political decapitation,” says Chris Doyle, director of the London-based Council for Arab-British Understanding. Doyle is monitoring the arrests and believes the regime aims to eliminate negotiating partners from what he calls “the rational opposition.”

An Accelerating Campaign

Most analysts say the campaign began with the arrest of Mazen Darwish, a prominent human rights worker and the director of the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression. Darwish was jailed in February after a raid on his offices in the capital. Arrests have accelerated in recent weeks in what a U.N. Security Council diplomat terms a new phase in Syria, as the regime winds down an intense military campaign.

According to Syrian activists, the most recent arrests include Mahmud Issa, an opposition lawyer and activist from the coastal city of Tartous. In Damascus, Ahmad Mouaz Al Khatib, a moderate religious leader, was jailed in early May along with Salameh Kaileh, a noted leftist and a political commentator.

Last week, the two sons of Fayez Sara, founder of the Association of Syrian Journalists, were arrested after a 6 a.m. raid on Sara’s house by security police, according to his lawyer. Sara had been part of a “national dialogue” sponsored by the regime last summer in an earlier attempt to open talks with the opposition.

“They are arresting left, right and center,” says a Damascus-based analyst who asked not to be named for his own safety.

The Obama administration is nearing a potential decision point on Syria: stick to the current diplomatic approach, which shows no signs of persuading Bashar al-Assad to step aside, or offer assistance to the country’s rebels despite the risks of …

Syria exile opposition, world powers lack leverage
By Oliver Holmes,  ROME | Mon May 14, 2012

(Reuters) – When it comes to influencing Syria’s bloody struggle between President Bashar al-Assad and rebels trying to unseat him, the exile opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) seems as helpless an onlooker as world powers groping for a strategy.

The SNC tepidly backed the peace plan U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan agreed with Assad a month ago with the support of the West, China, Russia, the Arab League and almost everyone else.

But Annan’s ceasefire is in tatters and the rest of his six-point deal is mostly confined to the paper it was written on.

U.N. monitors are trickling in, but it is unclear how even the full 300-strong team can halt a budding civil war in Syria, where deadly car bombings present a murky new challenge for the Syrian opposition and its Arab and Western well-wishers alike.

Zuhair Sahloul – a large money-changer – has fled Syria (in Arabic)

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Circassians from Syria Return to Russian Homeland – 13/5/2012

A first group of 25 Circassians from Syria have arrived in the southern Russian republic of Adygea for permanent resettlement in their ancestral homeland, the head of Adygea’s committee on nationality affairs said.

“The Syrian Circassians are coming on the usual terms, the same used with all repatriates,” Asker Shkhalokhov said at the first meeting of the commission to support compatriots in Syria.

“Most of them are renting apartments. The issue of providing land for them to build homes is being examined,” he said.

CBS Sets Purchase Price of USD at 62.92 and 66.75 for Intervention Purposes – May 13, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The Central Bank of Syria (CBS) set the price of USD exchange rate against the SYP at 62.92 by purchasing and at SYP 63.30 by selling.

According to the bulletin of foreign currency exchange rate issued by the CBS, the purchase price of Euro reached SYP 81.23 while the selling rate reached SYP 81.80.

Israel to Search for Oil on the Golan Heights – 5/13/2012

Israel has decided to search for oil on the Golan Heights after 20 years of delay due to objections from Syria.

The Hamas-Syrian Split, a Dilemma for Iran’s Palestinian Strategy
By Mohammad Ataie
for Syria Comment
May 13, 2012

Since the advent of the Iranian revolution, the Palestinian issue has been at the heart of the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy. For ideological and strategic reasons, supporting the Palestinian cause and resistance against Israel has been an integral part of the Islamic Republic’s identity and international approach. However, Iran’s Palestinian policy has, to a great extent, been forged under the influence of its alliance with Syria. That is why the tensions between Damascus and Hamas, brought about by the latter’s equivocal stance on Syrian crisis, have spilled over into the Palestinian movement’s relationship with Tehran.

Last February, on the thirty third anniversary of the Iranian revolution, Hamas’ Prime Minister in Gaza paid a visit to Tehran and met with the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenehi. Given the rumors and reports of tensions between Iran and Hamas over the Syrian crisis, Ismail Haniyeh’s official trip was important and timely for the Islamic Republic. The visit conveyed a clear message that, in the words of Haniyeh, Iran’s support for Palestinian issue has “remained unchanged and unconditional” and that their ties are “as strong as before”. But some remarks that Iranian officials made during Haniyeh’s visit revealed how concerned Tehran is with a changing Hamas in the wake of the “Arab Spring”.

In the meeting between Haniyeh and the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenehi warned him that “compromisers’ infiltration into a resistance organization would gradually weaken it”. He reminded Haniyeh that a once very popular Arafat lost his credibility when he distanced himself from resistance. Iran is obviously concerned with the recent signs of pragmatism in Hamas and reports of it reconsidering its strategy in the wake of the ascendance of its sister Islamic movements to power across the Arab world. But a graver concern for Tehran has been Hamas’ position regarding Syria. More than a year into the Syrian crisis, Hamas has refused to take sides in the conflict and has not concealed its intention to turn to new patrons in the region.

Tehran believes that Syria has fallen victim to a foreign plot. While Bashar al-Assad is carrying out reforms, Tehran says, there are foreign parties solely concerned with Assad’s alliance with the axis of resistance, that wreak havoc in Syria. This was what Iranian officials told Haniyeh in Tehran. Similar remarks were made by Ayatollah Khamenei earlier, in January, when he received the head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and warned about an American plan against Syria that aims to undermine the “line of resistance”, which is a reference to the alliance of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah vis-à-vis the US and Israel.

In the past several months, the Islamic Republic has sought to convince the Hamas leadership to adopt its own reading of the Syrian crisis and at the same time cement the cracks that are appearing in Damascus-Hamas ties. Haniyeh’s visit to Iran and his statement that the movement would not abandon its long time base in Syria left an impression in Tehran and Damascus that the movement would not “stoop to pressures” and turn its back on Bashar al-Assad. However a mere two weeks after his visit, Haniyeh made unprecedented remarks in Cairo in support of the uprising in Syria which was interpreted as “Hamas’s first public break with its longtime patron”. During the Friday prayer at al-Azhar Mosque Haniyeh said “I salute all people of the Arab Spring, or Islamic winter, and I salute the Syrian people who seek freedom, democracy and reform.” This was disturbing for Iranian officials. Hossein Shikholeslam, a veteran Iranian diplomat, expressed his dismay at Haniyeh’s speech by saying that “this was not the position of those who struggle against Israel”. The former Iranian ambassador to Syria stated that “if Hamas abandons armed resistance, it will be no different from other Palestinian factions”. Again, in the latest sign of cooling in the Iranian-Hamas relationship, a member of the group’s political wing in Gaza said “Hamas will not do Iran’s bidding in any war with Israel”.

Hamas’ Syrian position is still quite nebulous as the movement’s leadership in Gaza and abroad remain divided over the Syrian crisis. But it is clear that the shadow of tensions between the movement and President Assad has already fallen over Hamas’ relationship with Tehran. For Iran, supporting Hamas is linked to its alliance with President Assad. In other words, despite the Iranian commitment to the Palestinian resistance, the Islamic Republic saw its relationship with the Palestinian as well as the Lebanese resistance from a Syrian perspective. This is well understood in the light of the three decades of Iran’s Levant policy and partnership with Syria.

Thirty three years ago, after the fall of the Shah, Yasser Arafat was the first foreign leader who arrived to revolutionary Iran. When the PLO leader, who was indeed a long time ally of many anti-Shah revolutionaries who had just risen to power in Tehran, delivered a zealous speech in front of thousands of Iranians in Tehran, the prospect of a strong Iranian-PLO axis could not have been brighter. In that speech he proclaimed “we will march to Jerusalem under a united Islamic flag”. But as developments began to unravel in Iran and Middle East, things changed between Tehran and the PLO.

From the very beginning, Hafez al-Assad carefully watched the PLO courting of Khomaini’s Iran. The B’ath regime kept a wide open eye on the extent of Iranian relations with Yasser Arafat, who was a challenge to President Assad’s initiatives both in Lebanon and on the Arab-Israeli front. Syrians were eager to make the new regime in Iran adopt its  Palestinian  vision  and  ensure  that  the  Islamic  Republic  did  not  go  too  far  with  the PLO. Initially Tehran was oblivious to Assad’s concerns on both the Lebanese and Palestinian fronts. When in late 1979, radical factions in Iran endeavored, in coordination with al-Fatah, to dispatch volunteer corps to Southern Lebanon, Syrians thwarted the initiative. From  the  perspective  of  President  Assad,  the  translation  of  an  emerging  Iranian-PLO  alliance into  creating  an  independent  axis  in  Lebanon  could  have  undermined  his  grand strategy in Lebanon which  was  contingent  on  eliminating  al-Fatah  autonomy  and  Arafat’s  state-within-a-state  in  his  backyard.

Iran learnt greatly from that early failed experience; that it could not ignore Syria’s regional weight nor Assad’s calculations in the Levant. Yet, it took a decade before Tehran and Damascus reached a modus vivendi. During the formative years of Syrian-Iranian relations throughout the 1980s, their disagreements ranged from the Palestinian issue to the Iraq-Iran war, to Hezbollah and Amal in Lebanon. In the mid 1980s, the Camp Wars and Assad’s policy to oust Arafat from Lebanon strained their bilateral relationship. The shelling of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon by pro-Syrian Amal forces shocked the Iranian leadership and led to a period of friction with Damascus and even military confrontation with the Shi’i Amal movement which fought the PLO forces in Beirut and the Southern Lebanon. Nevertheless, over time, Tehran’s line steadily converged with Assad’s “Palestinian vision” which became a factor in the deterioration of the once much hoped for Iran-Arafat partnership. Indeed, Tehran realized that without Assad’s approval, making inroads into the Levant and their goal of “exporting the Islamic revolution” would not succeed.

No doubt that Arafat’s close ties with Saddam Hussein, a nemesis of both Assad and Khomeini, and his concession to recognize Israel also widened the chasm between the PLO and the Islamic Republic. From Assad’s standpoint, Arafat’s relationship with Iraq, Jordan and Egypt was to side-step Damascus and give other Arab parties decisive influence within the PLO at Syria’s expense. When in 1985 Arafat announced his acceptance of a joint Palestinian-Jordanian peace initiative, Syria and Iran alike lambasted the PLO chief. “Disillusioned” with Yasser Arafat and his moderation toward Israel, revolutionary Iran began to acknowledge Assad’s standpoint toward the PLO leader: that they had initially been, against all the advice of Assad, too optimistic about Arafat.

Since the early 1990s, Syrian-Iranian relations have turned into an enduring and strategic partnership with considerable achievements in keeping their common adversaries in check. In the Palestinian arena, Hamas and Islamic Jihad were the fruits of the convergence and cooperation between Islamist Iran and the Ba’thist Syria. Inspired by the 1979 revolution and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas rose from the first intifada that Iran rallied strongly to it. Unlike Arafat’s PLO, Syria and Iran had a great deal in common in collaborating with Palestinian Islamists to derail grand US plans in the Middle East. Hamas emerged as the main Palestinian opponent of the Oslo accords, the US-sponsored peace process. It challenged a secular-Nationalist PLO that “betrayed Palestine” and defied Arafat’s authority who had once been the epitome of anti-Israel struggle for many Iranian revolutionaries.

The senior Assad wanted tractable leadership at the head of the PLO that would act according to his strategy in Lebanon and on the Arab-Israeli front. It was Hamas that inserted itself into his strategy and won exceptional support from Damascus. Now Hamas, reorienting itself in the wake of the “Arab Spring”, has turned into an ungrateful ally for Bashar al-Assad, who sees the movement’s leaders dealing with Arab states without consulting Syria and lauding the protests against his rule. Before the dust settles in Syria, Hamas is unlikely to shift from its equivocal position.

The movement’s cold shoulder to Damascus has posed a serious challenge to the integrity of the “axis of resistance”. Iran, for “the good of resistance”, is making every effort to prevent a break between the two key parties of the resistance camp. This is no easy position for Tehran, which has found itself locked between two pillars of its foreign policy; that of backing the Palestinian resistance and safeguarding its unique alliance with Syria.

—

Mohammad Ataie is an Iranian journalist and documentary film maker who writes on Iranian foreign and regional policy and on Arab affairs. He contributes to Diplomacy-e-Irani and other publications.

The main pillars of the Syrian regime are collapsing one after the other. The closing of the University of Aleppo signifies the beginning of the end for public education. It will only be the first of the universities to close. Most are trying to limp to the end of the academic year, but they will probably not be able to open in the fall. Students are becoming mobilized and radicalized.

The stories coming out about the government’s inability to import wheat and fuel-oil suggest that authorities can no longer provide the basic commodities that have long been the central job of the government. Electricity is already limited and will likely be cut further as fuel-oil scarcities become more acute. Bread scarcities will mean starvation for many. Refugees fleeing Syria have been reached 60,00 according to some sources, but those numbers include middle class Syrians who are re-locating as well as those driven into Turkey from Idlib, for example. But these numbers will seem small as the year wears on. Many Syrians of means that I know have left the country or are seeking employment outside the country. Most of my good friends in Damascus have already abandoned ship and moved to Amman. The car bombs at the Palestinian Intelligence Branch drove home the point that the insurgency is getting more lethal and capable all the time. Damascus must worry about becoming more like Baghdad and Kabul.

The government will shift tactics and learn to find wheat and possibly fuel, but it will become ever more expensive and difficult. Reports from some friends in Syria suggest that Iran is pumping a fair amount of money into the Syrian regime to keep it solvent and hold the pound steady. This suggests that collapse is not imminent and that the government will be able to continue to provide basic food and necessities if it can find new short-cuts around sanctions. All the same, the pillars of the regime are wobbly and the opposition, despite taking a pounding, seems poised to continue growing in strength and organization.

Haytham Manaa makes the case for dialog and peaceful change. He almost makes it sound possible.

Assad Still Standing, By Stuart Draper
An excellent short documentary and overview of the struggle in Syria by Draper

Assad still Standing from Stuart Draper on Vimeo.

Lebanon Star: Sanctions block Syria’s vital grain trade,
2012-05-08

LONDON: Syria is finding it increasingly hard to buy grain on international markets because sanctions have blocked its access to trade finance, while growing numbers of its citizens are struggling to obtain food after more than a year of conflict. …

Syria is finding it increasingly hard to buy grain on international markets because sanctions have blocked its access to trade finance, while growing numbers of its citizens are struggling to obtain food after more than a year of conflict.

… Syria relies on food imports for almost half of its total needs, with wheat used for food, while maize and barley are used mainly for animal feed. “Syria has deep problems at the moment finding companies willing to offer grain such as barley. You can’t open a letter of credit and the risks associated with any deal seem to be rising all the time,” one trade source said.”The Commercial Bank of Syria (the country’s largest state-owned bank) is not accepted any more and there are currency related difficulties, so they are going to find it hard to meet their grain needs.”

….Last month the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation forecast that Syria’s cereal import needs in the marketing year 2011/12 would rise to 4 million tonnes, 1 million tonnes higher than the previous year.Separately, the International Grains Council has forecast Syria will need to import 900,000 tonnes of wheat in 2011/12, up from 500,000 tonnes in 2010/11.

“Syria is facing trade problems and based on anecdotal reports what seems to be happening now is that companies are pulling out of the country due to the security and operating risks, so that is a challenge for the government in terms of imports,” “In Syria bread is subsidised, so controlling bread prices will be an important strategy for the government.”

A confidential United Nations aid document obtained by Reuters showed at least 1 million Syrians need humanitarian aid. “Access to food has become an increasing issue in Syria,” the U.N. aid document said.

“Over the past 12 months, there have been sharp increases in food prices in many locations, unemployment has risen, the Syrian pound has depreciated in value; and many of those who have relocated no longer have access to subsidised food.”

….While western sanctions are not meant to target food imports, the complexity of trade, including extensive due diligence, is expected to weigh on deals. Legal specialists say for companies operating in the EU, dealing with Syrian state entities involved in food or receiving payments over a certain amount require authorisation from national authorities.”No big player would want to burn their fingers on Syria at the moment and when it comes to selling on your own name or account, forget it – there are just too many hurdles,” another trade source said….The World Food Programme said the number of people to whom it was supplying aid in Syria was expected to rise to half a million in coming weeks from the 250,000 assisted during April.”Informal observations and field monitoring have shown that vulnerability to food insecurity has increased dramatically in areas affected by the unrest,” WFP spokeswoman Abeer Etefa said.”Overall poverty levels are also increasing, access to basic supplies and services is deteriorating; since May 2011, prices of most items, notably food and fuel, have risen by approximately 50 percent and the Syrian pound has devalued by approximately 50 percent against international currencies.”

Red Cross: 1.5 Million in Syria Lack Basics
By AP / JOHN HEILPRIN Tuesday, May 08, 2012

(GENEVA) Fighting in parts of Syria has morphed into local guerrilla wars, the Red Cross said Tuesday, where the number of prisoners remains unknown and 1.5 million people need help getting food, water, shelter, power and sanitation.

Syria Central Bank Chief Says Reserves Steady as War Hits Growth
By Donna Abu-Nasr, 2012-05-10

May 10 (Bloomberg) — Syria’s foreign currency reserves are intact and the currency is holding steady even after more than a year of conflict that is weakening the economy, central bank Governor Adib Mayaleh said.

The Syrian pound is “steadfast” at about 68 per dollar after weakening from about 47 before the unrest began in March last year, Mayaleh said in an interview at the bank in Damascus today. “The proof is that there have been no shortages of any products in the market,” though the economy will suffer “a big weakness in growth” this year, he said.

Mayaleh said foreign currency reserves “haven’t retreated by one dollar or euro” since his term began in 2005. The bank said last year that reserves were about $18 billion. Syria’s inflation rate was 15 percent in January, Mayaleh said….. “We are facing a fierce and existential war on Syria,” Mayaleh said. He said attacks such as the bombing in Damascus today, which killed at least 40 people according to state media, are “aimed at shaking the stability of the regime and harming the unity of the people.”

The Economist Intelligence Unit estimates that Syria’s foreign reserves will drop to $10 billion this year while its economy shrinks 5.9 percent. Syria is under international sanctions including an oil embargo imposed by the European Union that has cost $3 billion in revenue according to Syrian government estimates.

Twin explosions rock Syrian capital,CNN International

Syrian troops say cease-fire hasn’t stopped rebel attacks
By David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers

IDLIB, Syria — With a United Nations-sponsored peace plan nearly one month old, Syrian soldiers in the country’s north say rebel forces trying to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad are continuing to launch attacks on their positions daily in apparent violation of a cease-fire and are strong enough that government troops cannot enter several towns and villages near this city.

The soldiers, who were interviewed by a McClatchy correspondent traveling with U.N. monitors, described attacks that had taken place every day this week. Gunfire and explosions could be heard after dark on Tuesday in Idlib and into early Wednesday morning, testimony to ongoing fighting. On Wednesday, soldiers manning a checkpoint outside the town of Ariha, south of Idlib, showed reporters damage to an armored personnel carrier that they said was caused by a bomb planted on a nearby road last week.

“I know 17 soldiers who have died in the last two or three months,” said Ahmed, who asked that he be identified by a single name only because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. “We can’t leave the city unless we are in armored vehicles.”

“For six months we have not been able to enter Ariha,” said another soldier, who asked that he be identified only as Mazen because he, too, had not been given permission to talk to visiting journalists. “Today there was an attack on every checkpoint here. Last night they attacked a checkpoint and detonated a bomb.”….

Ahmed and other soldiers in Idlib said there had been explosions in the city on Monday, when Syrians voted for a new Parliament.

“Many people didn’t vote because they were afraid,” Ahmed said.

Supporters of the anti-Assad uprising called for a boycott of the vote and said it was observed in many areas. In some places, polls didn’t open at all. Both sides have accused each other of threatening people who refused to go to the polls or supported the boycott.

Mazen listed nine towns and villages in the area around Idlib where soldiers were unable to go. He said the pace of attacks had remained steady for months as the army continued its campaign against the rebels.

Idlib itself, a city of about 150,000, was out of government control for months before the Syrian military retook it in March. Despite a heavy military presence here, attacks have continued, including a car bombing that destroyed a six-story building in late April.

Ahmed said the violence in Syria amounted to a civil war. Asked about the motivations of the men they were fighting, Ahmed said that the rebels wanted to destabilize Syria. He did not repeat government claims, however, that many of the rebels are foreigners, and most of the soldiers agree that the opponents they face are Syrian.

The Syrian government news agency, SANA, reported that three members of the military killed by rebels were buried on Wednesday. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said that more than 11,000 people have been killed in the past 14 months, the majority of them civilians…..

The logic of the opposition: the right to kill
NYTimes – By ANNE BARNARD and HWAIDA SAAD

BEIRUT, Lebanon — More than a year into the Syrian uprising, protesters and fighters say, disparate opposition cells inside the country still scramble on their own for money and weapons, creating a risk that different factions will form conflicting loyalties to whoever ends up financing or arming them.

…The fighters and activists knew they were talking to journalists and have an interest in appearing neither sectarian nor extremist. But many spoke candidly of the uprising’s flaws and challenges, and one — a former interior decorator — volunteered that he had executed three men.

Abu Moayed said the battalion had captured about 35 government soldiers and militiamen and executed 10 after the authorities refused a prisoner exchange. He said he shot three, two Sunnis and an Alawite, who were implicated in killing hundreds. “Don’t ask the reason,” he said. “It’s not vengeance — it’s our right.”

…While many invoke God, expected in a religious country, seven identify explicitly as Islamist, for instance waving black flags with Koranic script, said Mr. White, who advocates military aid to rebels. There have been separate reports of fundamentalist groups operating in the north.

One fighter from Abu Omar’s group, the Golan Liberation Gathering, said he and friends sold their cars, rented an apartment, posed as laborers and staked out a government official. When they attacked, security forces overwhelmed them, killing his friends. “We knew we would die,” he said. “I’m not religious, I’m leftist — but all Syrians became suicidal.”…

But he admitted he acted from anger after the government killed two of his uncles, Khalid and Jamil al-Khatib. His father is missing and his wife and children are in hiding, he said, after a defecting soldier showed him a picture of his 5-year-old with words scrawled on the back: “To be executed.”

Recently, he said, he bought weapons on the Iraqi border with $35,000 from wealthy Syrians abroad — but does not take orders from anyone outside. …

Obama Hits Syria With Brutal Blast of Adverbs, By Jeffrey Goldberg

…. The administration’s unprecedented verbal and written sorties against the Assad regime have included some of the most powerful adjectives, adjectival intensifiers and adverbs ever aimed at an American foe. This campaign has helped Syrians understand, among other things, that the English language contains many synonyms for “repulsive.”….

Syria is holding parliamentary elections, which the government has characterized as a sign of its commitment to reform.

Syria holds parliament vote; opposition boycotts
Published May 07, 2012,Associated Press

DAMASCUS, Syria – Syrians cast ballots Monday in parliamentary elections billed by the regime as key to President Bashar Assad’s political reforms, but the opposition dismissed the vote as a sham meant to preserve his autocratic rule.

There were scattered reports of violence, including accounts from activists and witnesses that security forces launched deadly attacks on villages in central Syria where opposition supporters were refusing to vote. The reports could not be indepedently confirmed.

The voting for Syria’s 250-member parliament is unlikely to affect the course of Syria’s popular uprising, which began 14 months ago with largely peaceful protests…

Syrians questioning whether armed revolt works
By ZEINA KARAM | Associated Press – 2 hrs 38 mins ago

BEIRUT (AP) — The woman wearing a blood-red dress stood in the middle of a busy intersection outside Syria’s parliament holding up a red banner: “Stop the killing, we want to build a homeland for all Syrians.” Drivers tooted their horns and supporters clapped.

Rima Dali’s act of defiance last month — which landed the 33-year-old in prison for several days — was a call for the opposition to focus again on peaceful protests to bring down President Bashar Assad. It has inspired other activists who worry that their cause is going astray as more Syrians take up arms in the face of the regime’s withering crackdown.

They say armed resistance costs the opposition the moral high ground and boosts the regime line that it is battling terrorists, not a popular uprising. The spiraling violence has also taken on fearsome sectarian overtones, threatening to push the country into full-blown civil war. Al-Qaida-style suicide bombings have become increasingly common……

The parliamentary elections planned for May 7 become the first serious check for observers who have already arrived to Syria.
They will pass on the basis of the new constitution of the country accepted by the vast majority of voices on a referendum on February 26. The opposition already declared non-recognition of the new constitution and all decisions accepted on its basis that automatically means non-recognition of elections and a possible new round of opposition.

Syria cease-fire gives nonviolent activists a new beginning
Bloodshed alienates the silent majority, activists say. The truce, while not perfect, has eased violence and provided peaceful protesters a chance to be heard.
By Alexandra Sandels, Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2012

BEIRUT — More than a year after the uprising began, only 50 people were still around to protest in a Syrian town of burned buildings and pockmarked storefronts.

But for the residents of Anadan who came together to call for freedom and dignity on the morningSyria’scease-fire began last month, it was as though the revolution had begun again.

“We were willing to come out like it was our first day,” said Abu Ghaith, an activist in the town near Aleppo that rebels seized and lost again to government forces. “Our strength is in being peaceful.”

For months, activists who helped spark the uprising against the regime of President Bashar Assad by nonviolent means had seen it slip away as others in the opposition took up arms and the conflict began to resemble a civil war….

The conflict over the course of the revolution is not only about who speaks for the opposition but also about the consequences of toppling the regime.

“Our purpose is to build Syria more than to destroy Syria; we don’t want to destroy the country as we try to oust the regime,” said Yusuf Ashami, an activist using a nom de guerre who fled Syria months ago because he was wanted by the security forces for organizing protests.

Last month, he joined about 200 other activists in Cairo to found the Syrian Democratic Platform, a coalition of activists who feel that the revolution has been overtaken by armed factions.

Like others in this camp, Ashami doesn’t oppose armed rebels defending protesters, but doesn’t believe they should be on the offensive. History, he said, proves that armed revolutions take a long time to unseat regimes and often result in another form of oppression and dictatorship….

UN convoy attacked in Syria; 7 killed
Arab News – 10 May, 2012

Syrian rebels killed at least seven pro-government militiamen in a Damascus suburb yesterday, activists said, and an explosion wounded eight soldiers escorting UN cease-fire observers in the southern province of Daraa.

The Damascus attack with rocket-propelled grenades on a bus carrying the fighters through the suburb of Irbin prompted the army to seal off the area and respond with shelling, activist Mohammad Saeed said.

Post-Assad Syria
By Neil MacFarquhar

“…A broad spectrum of political organizations outside the country are jockeying for position, anticipating a new, democratic government in Syria for the first time since a 1963 military coup established the supremacy of the Baath Party and emasculated the rest… The jockeying has alienated many Syrians, particularly those inside, who complain that members of the fractious opposition exile group, the Syrian National Council, are fixated more on grabbing appointments that they can leverage into domestic influence later than on forging the unity needed to defeat the government. The wrestling continues nonetheless. It remains unclear which group, if any, will emerge the dominant player…All the Islamist groups agree this is not the time for pushing divisive social issues like banning alcohol or veiling women, and they acknowledge that internal squabbling only serves Mr. Assad’s interests. The longer and more militarized the fight, they and others worry, the greater chance that radical jihadists will become the face and power of the resistance…The Brotherhood’s supporters argue that Syria’s diversity, with large minorities of Alawites, Christians and Druze, will defeat any effort to impose Islamic law. They argue as well that democracy is a natural fit because Syria has long adhered to the Sufi school of Islam, …Ultimately, the battle for Syria’s future boils down to identity, whether Syrian society is by nature religious or secular, and how either identity might be represented by whatever replaces the stifling Baath Party. Will Syria’s diversity tear it apart, or can a pluralistic, democratic nation that respects equal rights emerge from its jumble of rival religious sects, ethnic groups and age-old tribes?”

Syrian activists: Explosion in Aleppo kills 5
By BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press – 5 minutes ago

BEIRUT (AP) — An explosion in a car wash in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo killed at least five people on Saturday, activists said, while another blast in the capital destroyed nine cars.

Bomb attacks have grown more common in Syria’s two largest cities as the uprising against President Bashar Assad grows increasingly militarized. Many in the opposition have taken up arms since protesters first took to the street in March 2011 and now regularly clash with government forces around the country.

But Aleppo and Damascus have remained largely in Assad’s grip, shaken only by bomb blasts that often appear to target buildings associated with the military and security services.

The U.N. says more than 9,000 people have been killed since the uprising’s start.

Saturday’s blast in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, hit a car wash and killed six people, Aleppo activist Mohammed Saeed said via Skype. He said the business in the city’s southern Sukari neighborhood is owned by a man who serves in pro-government militias known as the shabiha.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on activists inside Syria, said five people were killed in the attack.

The blast follows increasing unrest in the city with university students taking to the streets and being violently dispersed by security forces.

A 16-year-old was shot dead during a protest Friday, one day after four students were killed during arrest raids in university dorms.

Also Saturday, an explosive planted under an army vehicle in Damascus blew up, damaging nine cars.

The blast shook a downtown neighborhood near a military food cooperative, and left a crater in the street, according to a reporter from The Associated Press who visited the scene.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the explosions.

UN mission chief says Syrian army must cease fire first
May 4, 2012

UN Observer Mission in Syria chief Robert Mood (C-R) on Thursday called on regime forces to make the first move to ensure a ceasefire in the strife stricken country. (AFP/Joseph Eid)

The head of the UN mission in Syria said on Thursday that government forces must make the first move to end nearly 14-months of bloodshed after a watchdog said a security force raid on a university campus left four students dead.

The Syrian Opposition, Non-state Players, and the Peace Process
Sami Moubayed in Huff Post

The Syrian opposition today has to sit back and come up with answers to the following questions: What to do with the military, governmental, and security institutions if they come to power? How to manage the Syrian economy? How to handle Syria’s relationship with people like Muqtada al-Sadr and Hasan Nasrallah? More importantly, what to do with the Syrian-Israeli peace process, which is now on hold? This is something that is extremely important to both Israel and the U.S., and which is being completely overlooked in all rhetoric and strategy since March 2011. Israel has not changed its conditions for peace, after all, since the famous Assad-Clinton meeting in Geneva in March 2000. Back then, it explicitly asked for full sovereignty over the Jordan River and Lake Tiberias, which is their major freshwater reservoir. Israel wanted a sovereign corridor of ten meters on both sides of the creek from the springs of Banias in the northern Golan down to Lake Tiberias. Hafez al-Assad said no, refusing to accept the 1923 international borders, abiding by the June 4 borders, while turning down all suggestions for territorial swaps. At one point, if the regime is changed in Syria, new rulers will have to answer these very thorny questions, and U.S. officials are doubtful that neither they nor the current regime can deliver anymore when it comes to peace. And if they do, it is doubtful that their peace can last.

These are challenges that are yet to be addressed properly. If the opposition does have answers, then they have not yet been articulated properly to those who matter in Washington circles, which might explain why the U.S. is seemingly so reluctant to push for real change in Syria.

Op-Ed Contributor
Syria’s Threatened Minorities
By JONATHAN RANDAL
Published: May 4, 2012

The longer the struggle for power in Syria drags on, the greater the danger for its minorities and, equally ominously, for those in neighboring states. This is the human dimension of the stalemated Syrian violence that is often obscured by overarching geostrategic considerations….
the region’s minorities increasingly risk becoming expendable collateral damage in the open-ended civil war in Syria. Many of Syria’s ruling Alawites — and their Kurd, Assyrian, Maronite Christian, Greek Catholic and Orthodox fellow minorities, indeed even the prudent Druze — feel caught in a vicious zero-sum game.

Like many another dominant minority throughout Middle Eastern history, President Bashar al-Assad’s beleaguered Alawites both protect and manipulate Syria’s other minorities. Assad relentlessly insists they are all under growing threat from the still disorganized and disparate opposition drawn from the Sunni Muslim community which accounts for 70 percent of Syria’s population.

That way, the longer the strife goes on, the less isolated his Alawites (perhaps 12 percent of Syrians) feel and the more they justify their backs-to-the-wall defense of privileges accumulated over more than 40 years in power. The counterexample is Iraq, where America’s war put the majority Shiites in power and minorities paid a heavy price. …

“To counter that fate and prevent further turmoil spreading throughout the region, the United States and allies would do well to work with — rather than against — Russia to prod all Syrian parties to the negotiating table and have them eschew escalating violence. That again involves swallowing hard and somehow persuading Assad and the insurgents to talk. That’s a tall order and the hour is late.

Halabi writes in the comment section May 5th, 2012, 1:24 am :

This is why minorities support Assad? The fear of retribution for crimes committed against innocent civilians? The New York Times op/ed mentions Hama and Sabra and Shatila in 1982. We also have thousands of people murdered in this era, all to prevent the possible bloodbath against minorities in the future.

This kind of thinking, as well as believing that the Baath party is popular or the upcoming elections are anything but a farce, will never, ever solve the crisis in Syria nor bring democracy to the country. By supporting a regime that kills its own citizens while its enemy occupies its territory, that has oppressed people from every class and sect, the we-love-you gang has made it clear what they want: to rule over Syrians by force, forever.

I think the revolution will succeed in the long term. Along the way there will be a lot of pain, mostly suffered by the opposition, but there will be no peace for Assad and his supporters. I wake up in the morning hoping for a better future; we-love-you wake up hoping that Assad’s soldiers continue to raze towns and villages they don’t like, worrying about summer vacations, the value of their dubious fortunes and how to spin the latest conspiracy theory while enjoying freedom in the West.

Perhaps the solution is for Assad’s soldiers to kill and expel enough Sunnis so the minorities become the majority. Of course, according to we-love-you logic, the new minority would feel threatened so it should then be allowed to massacre as many minorities as they want. Or we could get rid of the criminal police state that has destroyed our country for two generations and try to establish a just government for all…

Two bombs explode on Damascus highway: residents
By Mariam Karouny | Reuters

DAMASCUS (Reuters) – Two bombs detonated on a central Damascus highway on Saturday, destroying nine cars, residents said, in a further sign that rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad are shifting tactics towards homemade explosives.
…
An Islamist group calling itself the Support Front for the People of the Levant claimed responsibility for that bombing and for an April 24 attack on the Iranian cultural consulate in Damascus. Iran is one of Syria’s closest allies.
more…

Pentagon Defends Buying Copters From Russia Trader Aiding Assad
2012-05-08, By Tony Capaccio

May 8 (Bloomberg) — The Pentagon must pay Russia’s state- run arms trader to provide helicopters for Afghanistan’s air force even though the company also been has supplying Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with weapons to kill his own people, according to the Defense Department’s top policy official. The U.S. Army has taken delivery of nine Russian-made MI-17 helicopters for the Afghans from Rosoboronexport under a $375 million contract issued in May 2011, with six more awaiting shipment and another six to be delivered by May 31, Acting Undersecretary for Policy James Miller said in a previously undisclosed March 30 letter to lawmakers. The U.S. has an option to buy an additional 12 Russian helicopters for the Afghans, who have been flying them for 30 years…..

The Syrian Democratic Forum/Platform
Haytham Khoury [[email protected]]

Dear Joshua,

I am writing to express my unhappiness with Syria Comment. Since we established our group the Syrian Democratic Forum/Platform last February, the only news that was published on SC regarding our group was under the title “Two different Syrian Opposition organizations expressed their own formulations of the Kurdish question in Syria”. Although our vision of Syria, as a multi-national state and from which our group’s view for the question Kurd arises, is an original one, I believe this is not the most significant contribution of our group for the political and civil life in Syria.

First, the idea of our group is a creative one. Indeed, our group is not a political organization per se. It is “a political, civil and democratic forum. It is a platform for critical appraisal, knowledge exchange and field activities”, as it has been defined in its identity statement released on Feb 18, 2012. Our group’s mission is the advancement of the Syrian society and public life at all levels, including political, intellectual and social.

Second, the plan of actions that we have set for our group is an audacious one. One of the major goals that we have set for our group is to unify the infamously fragmented Syrian opposition, as it has been stated in The Declaration of the Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Syrian Democratic Forum, released on April 17th, 2012. In this declaration, our goal to unify the opposition has been expressed as follows: “Indeed, the SDF perceives that one of its tasks is to launch a plan to unite the Syrian opposition of all spectra, accompanied by mechanisms and timetable for its implementation, through the formation of internal and external committees for cooperation and consultation. These plan and mechanisms are to be put into effect as soon as possible; with the reaffirmation that what is meant by unity of the opposition is to have a common vision, program, and political will; and taking into account that the basis for the indispensable unity of the opposition is the unity of purpose. By this purpose, we mean bringing the regime down; building a democratic civil state based on equal citizenship; clearly specifying the path leading to the future of Syria after the fall of the regime; and providing a clear vision for the new Syria. In this regard, it is the responsibility of the committee elected by the General Assembly to put this into practice.”

Here is a link for a video an interview that I did with the Egyptian satellite TV channel, Nile TV, in which I explained our plans for unifying the opposition.

Best regards, Haytham

The Syrian Uprising Special Report on the Jamestown Foundation website for $20.00.
Militant Leadership Monitor subscribers will receive a free PDF copy of this and all future QSRs in their email. Content:

Measuring The Temperature Of Revolt In Syria: A One-Year Assessment, By Chris Zambelis Sheikh

Adnan Al-Arour: The Salafist “Godfather Of The Syrian Revolution”, By Jacob Zenn

Who’s Who In The Syrian Opposition: An Overview Of 15 Key Opposition Leaders, By Sami Moubayed

The Right Hand Of Bashar Al-Assad: A Profile of Maher Al-Assad, By Wladimir van Wilgenberg

The Free Syrian Army: An In-Depth Profile Of Colonel Riad Al-Asaad By Francesco F. Milan

Salih Muslim Muhammed: Leader of PKK Syrian-Affiliate PYD, By Michael Gunter

Syria beats back its rivals
Samuel Segev,  05/8/2012

TEL AVIV — Syrian President Bashar Assad proved Monday once again that with the support of Russia and Iran, he is still able to politically defeat the United States, Turkey and the Persian Gulf countries.

Based on a new “constitution” that was unilaterally approved last February, the Syrian people were asked Monday to elect 250 new members of parliament, from among 7,195 candidates in 15 electoral districts. The Syrian opposition boycotted the elections. So did the Western powers. But it really didn’t matter.

For Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies, the purpose of the elections was to demonstrate that the country is moving towards normalcy, even when the elections were held under the threat of a gun. The opposition argued that the presence of 60 United Nations observers, who came to Syria at the request of former UN secretary general Koffi Annan, was not sufficient to assure “real free elections.

On the eve of Monday’s elections, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey that “your power is increasing by the day and your victory is near.”

This sounded like an empty promise. The day Erdogan made his statement, Dennis MacDonough, the U.S. deputy national security adviser, told an academic gathering in Washington that a military solution in Syria is not now under consideration and that the U.S. is working with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan to find other solutions for Syria.

But what are these other solutions? A quick look on the ground reveals that little is under control, whether in political or security terms. Despite the regime’s announced acceptance of Koffi Annan’s ceasefire plan, violence continues, with the depressingly familiar daily toll of casualties.

American officials are well aware of this situation. They acknowledge that Syria is not Libya and Homs is not Benghazi. The air defence of Syria is thicker than that of Libya. The Syrian army, in general, is stronger. Thus, there is in Damascus a strong feeling that the introduction of outside weapons would deepen the internal conflict.

This is not a serious argument. The regime and its vigilantes are fully armed. The helicopter gunships thrown into battle are a reminder of the disparity in firepower between the regime and its opponents

There are suspicions that the Obama administration does not want to see the Assad regime fall. Some even believe that Obama’s Syrian policy is hostage to his electoral ambitions in November. The president has no real interest in fully taking on the Iranian regime, so Syria continues to twist in the wind.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and Iran are engaged in a process of pressuring Lebanon to maintain its neutrality…..

Maps of the Syrian Conflict: Please acknowledge either syriamap.wordpress.com or, if you have space, as Brendan O’Hanrahan & Esther Kim, or Kim & O’Hanrahan..

The Week’s Round UP –

Because the Annan Truce has been so badly observed by both sides – government and rebel- most observers have struggled to apportion blame. The Syrian government has insisted that the rebels are the primary violators. It highlights the list of bombs being set off in Syria’s major cities and attacks against security personnel. For example, On Friday, a week ago, a suicide bombing in Damascus killed nine people in the Midan quarter and wounded others. Earlier this week, attacks on a government security compound and the country’s central bank killed nine and injured 100. In Aleppo, an explosive device was detonated in the car of the headmaster of Jaber bin Hayyan school in Aleppo, causing his death. Evidently, Headmaster al-Freij was killed when the explosive device went off as he was getting on his car in front of his house in Hanano area. Sana reported that eight students at the police academy in the countryside of Aleppo were kidnapped by armed elements. On the coast of Latakia, a group of insurgents who reportedly came from Turkey in inflatable boats landed off the coast of Latakia and staged an attack on a military unit stationed north of the city about 20 miles from the Turkish border. A number of Syrian soldiers were killed and perhaps some of the insurgents before they escaped back to Turkey.

The Syrian opposition insists that the Syrian government is responsible for these killings, i.e. they are setting off the bombs in Syria’s cities and that defecting soldiers attacked their own in Latakia. In Hama, where scores of people were killed by a deadly explosion in a poor section of town, opposition spokespeople insisted that the military had fired Scud missiles into the apartment block. The Syrian government insisted that rebels were responsible for the deaths due to the accidental explosion of an opposition “bomb factory”.

Hama – Explosion kills many
The BBC’s Jim Muir: “This kind of devastation would have been hard to cause by conventional shelling”

Opposition explanations for these deaths are not convincing. The government and Syrian military have taken the gloves off and are executing opposition members in ever greater numbers. There is no need to exaggerate their role in Syria’s brutality. The truth is horrifying enough. The reality is that the insurgency is become every more skilled and competent at killing. Far from destroying the opposition, the government crackdown is only serving to drive the opposition to ever more lethal methods of gaining power.

A harrowing report by Amnesty International of the Idlib crackdown will send shivers down anyone’s spin. After the retreat from Homs, the opposition became centered in the Idlib region on the Turkish boarder. The government crackdown there over the last few months has been brutal. Syrian forces have been executing and burning the residents of Idlib, Amnesty says.

In the Sarmin area near Idlib a mother claimed that her three sons had been taken from their home early on 23 March and killed. “[The military] did not let me follow them outside; every time I tried to go out they pushed me back,” the mother said. “When I was able to go outside, after a couple of hours, I found my boys burning in the street. They had been piled on top of each other and had motorbikes piled on top of them and set on fire.”

The son of Ali Haydar, a long-time and much respected leader of the Syrian Nationalist Party who was jailed for decades, was assassinated on the road to Tartus. This is not the branch of the SSNP which had taken a place in the “Progressive Front” in the Syrian Parliament.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has blamed the regime for widespread violations of the truce — prompting Syria to fire back that his comments were “outrageous” and accuse him of bias. Ban and Annan have cited violations by both sides, but generally portrayed the regime as the main aggressor. A Tishrin editorial said Ban has avoided discussing rebel violence in favor of “outrageous” statements against the Syrian government. The editorial said the international community has applied a double standard, ignoring “crimes and terrorist acts” against Syria and thus encouraging more violence.

At least four students were reportedly killed when Syrian security forces cracked down on a student demonstration at Aleppo University. Aleppo University suspended all lectures and classes, and evacuated the dorms of all residents as army units raided the campus. Aleppo University, the second largest university in the country, has been witnessing several demonstrations daily for over a month. Killing students and closing down the dormitories for the rest of the school year is a new phase in Syria’s metastasizing conflict.

So far, the uprising had been largely kept out of the schools. There had always been small, quick demonstrations organized at the University of Aleppo, but they were contained. The regime has depicted this uprising as the work of the rural poor and unemployed — those left behind by globalization and economic reform — and most importantly to the propaganda of the regime, those most likely to become salafists and jihadists.

University students are Syria’s future. They are the youth of Syria’s middle class and elite families – the ones who are supposed to be sympathetic to the regime and leery of chaos and revolution.

The class divide in Syria is now meeting the generation gap. Young Syrians – even those from “good” families – can no longer remain silent or remain on the sidelines. They are rebelling against their parents who are ordering them to shut up and stay out of the line of fire.

There are unlikely to be any great watersheds in this revolution. Syria is slowly grinding toward civil war and the collapse of the state. Universities – just one additional state institution, even if a very important one – have now slipped over the edge. They have become part of the boiling ocean of Syrian discontent. Next fall, they will probably not open. Parents will be thinking how to get their kids enrolled in foreign schools for the next year — and probably for years to come. The killing of university students has caused thousands to protest in Aleppo, the largest the city has seen since the start of the uprising.

Ahmad Fawzi, Annan’s spokesman, told a U.N. briefing in Geneva that “there are small signs of compliance,” despite continuing violations. On Thursday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the plan might be doomed.

“If the regime’s intransigence continues, the international community is going to have to admit defeat,” he said, adding that new measures might have to be taken, including a return to the U.N. Security Council. He gave no further details.

— News Round Up —

Daily life in Syria
Produced by Gari Sullivan, Friday, 4 May 2012

For those living in Syria, Normal is impossible. Even the most mundane, everyday tasks become difficult and dangerous when your home is a war zone.

Defying a Dictator: Meet the Free Syrian Army
by Jonathan Spyer in World Affairs

In Sarmin, the FSA appears to consist almost entirely of defectors from Assad’s army, several hundred of them. The force appeared disciplined and serious. The fighters are uniformed, equipped with AK-47 rifles; I saw RPG-7s, heavy machine guns, and a mortar. They are commanded by an impressive figure, Lieutenant Bilal Khabir, a twenty-five-year-old former officer of the airborne forces of Assad’s army. He and his men are motivated, respond to commands with military precision, and appear willing to fight to the end. “Either Bashar stays or we stay,” Khabir told me. “The regime has the heavy weapons—the people are with us.”

Khabir speaks with the earnestness and sincerity of a youth counsellor—hardly a macho stereotype. Yet volunteer soldiers seem far more likely to trust a leader like Khabir over a glory-seeker (especially when they are out-manned and out-gunned), and the young officer left me with the impression that the fighters in Sarmin mean business

In Binnish, on the other hand, the FSA is a smaller force, the majority of which is made up of local men who have taken up arms rather than former members of the army. Uniforms are scarcer, and the local FSA fighters do not bear arms during the Friday demonstrations that accompany prayer services, and hence have a less imposing and visible presence in the town.

Not surprisingly, given its organic development, and consistent with similarly formed rebel groups in Libya, the FSA generally appears to be a loose collection of local militias, consisting largely of army deserters but also of Syrian civilians who have taken up arms against the regime. It is well equipped for street fighting, but does not have the weaponry or the expertise to withstand a frontal assault from Assad’s forces at this stage. It also does not appear to have an efficient or centralized command structure, though there is clearly communication on some level between different?local elements. There is a notional, Syria-wide leadership cadre based in Antakya, Turkey, and headed by former Air Force Colonel Riyad al-Asaad. But local FSA commanders readily admit that they are not under the daily command and control of this leadership. One civilian activist whom I spoke to openly dismissed the “national” leaders, noting (accurately) that they are confined to their compound by Turkish authorities and unable to keep up with, much less direct, fast-moving events on the ground in Syria. The FSA officers I spoke to also acknowledged the splits that have emerged in the ostensible leadership of the organization—with General Mustafa al-Sheikh, a recent defector from the Syrian Army, emerging as a rival potential leader to Riyad al-Asaad.

Asked what they needed to win their fight against Assad, the FSA men I spoke to—Lieutenant Khabir in Sarmin, Captain Ayham al-Kurdi in Antakya, and the fighters Mohammed and Ahmed in Binnish—all repeated a single demand: an internationally imposed zone from which they could organize and operate. A secondary, often-repeated demand was for arms and supplies—from the West, from Arab countries, or, as a few men said, “even from Israel.” When I asked if the FSA could win in the absence of outside assistance, they demurred. Kurdi and Khabir both acknowledged that, without international aid, the situation could continue “for?years” (Kurdi’s phrase). Khabir also mentioned the?possibility of a long guerrilla war, “like pesh merga,” as he put it, referring to the Kurdish guerrilla force. Kurdi added that the regime would not ultimately fall solely at the hands of the FSA, but rather as a result of a combined political struggle,…..

Idlib Province is a deeply conservative Sunni area. There is also a considerable presence of Salafi Islamist fighters in the FSA in both Binnish and Sarmin. Although these fighters appeared to be local men, not foreign jihadis, the Salafi presence, and the prominent role a number of these individuals have taken in recent fighting against Assad’s forces, should not be ignored.

In conversation with FSA fighters and activists, the sectarian issue, and the differing loyalties of the various Syrian communities, surfaced regularly. Inevitably, I heard a somewhat sanitized version of this from FSA commanders, while rank-and-file fighters and civilian activists were more likely to express openly sectarian views. Captain Ayham al-Kurdi echoed others when he observed that the fight represented a struggle primarily between Sunni Arabs and Alawi Arabs. “Ninety percent of Alawis,” he said, are with the regime. “Christians are neutral, the Druze are split, and the Sunnis who benefitted from the regime support it, while the others are opposed.” A civilian activist speaking to me in Binnish was more blunt: “This is civil war between the clans,” he said, then hurriedly reminding me that Sunnis nevertheless rejected the possibility of sectarian warfare as a matter of principle….

What I saw in Syria was a young but authentic insurgent movement, developing in a mode well established by others before it and set to fight a long and costly war of attrition against a classically ruthless foe who will do anything to stay in power. The daunting forces of Assad’s dictatorship have already shown their capability in Homs and elsewhere, but the rebel fighters I encountered displayed the will and determination to take on those forces, despite limited weaponry and weak central authority. As Lieutenant Khabir in Sarmin put it to me, “The regime is fascist and criminal. We expect what happened in Homs to happen here. But even with our simple weapons, we’re ready to fight. Our morale is high. We don’t know how to run away.”…

…..The authorities have recently been targeting famous non-violence figures. During the last few days they arrested the writer Salama Keileh and the religious figure Mouaz Al-Khatib, in addition to other recent similar arrests for peaceful figures such as the human rights activists Mazen Darwish and Mahmoud Isa; the non-violence campaigner Mohammad Ammar and many tens of young activists who campaigned for the killing to stop and for ending the Syrian blood shed.

We urge you to intervene with the Syrian authorities to release immediately and unconditionally, all these detainees in addition to the thousands of other peaceful detainees. Otherwise, time will pass and the political process that you are trying to build will find no partner outside the prisons, nor any party would have any faith in the authority or even the possibility of a peaceful solution.

Econmy

Syrian economy spirals downward as deposits, loans plunge
By Donna Abu Nasr, Tamara Walid, May 04, 2012, Bloomberg

Syria’s economy is collapsing. Deposits fell by an average of 35 percent in 2011 at Bank of Syria and Overseas SA, Bank Audi Syria and Banque Bemo Saudi Fransi, according to April filings to the Damascus Securities Exchange.

Lending plunged 22 percent last year, the filings by the three banks show, compared with a 6.9 percent increase in Egypt and a 3.9 percent gain in the United Arab Emirates. The central bank’s foreign reserves may drop to $10 billion this year, half the 2010 peak, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.

The 14-month long uprising that has claimed more than 9,000 lives is taking an increasing toll on the economy and the business class, mostly drawn from the majority Sunni Muslim community. Their support for President Bashar Assad – who stems from the minority Alawite sect – may buckle as the economy, which is forecast to contract 5.9 percent in 2012 by the EIU, spirals downward.

If “the government cannot come up with a consistent policy to stop this economic deterioration, at some point in time Syrian businesses are going to realize that backing Bashar Assad himself is too costly,” Ayesha Sabavala, an EIU economist on Syria, said in a telephone interview.

Syria’s pound weakened to about 68 per U.S. dollar, from 47 per dollar before the uprising started in March 2011, according to data on the Syrian central bank’s website. Unofficial money exchangers on the Lebanese side of the border sell the pound at about 72 per dollar.

Syria’s economy shrank 3.4 percent in 2011 because of the unrest, the EIU’s estimates show. Inflation may accelerate to 14.7 percent in 2012 from 4.8 percent in 2011, it said.

One of the country’s main exports has slumped since the European Union’s decision to stop importing Syrian crude oil last year. That has cost it $3 billion in revenue, Oil Minister Sufian Alao told the official Syrian Arab News Agency on April 30. State media regularly report “terrorist” attacks on the country’s oil pipelines, most recently in Deir Ezzor province this week.

Syria produced about 380,000 barrels a day before the move to impose sanctions, of which 150,000 barrels were exported, Alao said.

“The economy is a downward spiral and is trapped,” said Jarmo Kotilaine, chief economist at National Commercial Bank, Saudi Arabia’s biggest bank by assets. “This spiral can continue, and if it does, everyone including the government and individuals will revert to a more simple way of doing business. It’s not the ideal scenario.”…

Protracting crisis worsens poverty in Syria
2012-04-29

DAMASCUS, April 28 (Xinhua) — Life turns increasingly unaffordable for a large segment of the Syrian society as the spinning-out crisis in the country beats hard on the less well-off and spirals the percentage of the poor.

A recent report issued by the Labor Union in Syria reveals that the proportion of the poor has amounted to 41 percent of the 23 million Syrian population. It says that the Tenth Five-Year Plan was ambitious to create 625,000 new jobs in the first two years, but it actually provided 277,000, or only 44 percent.

Workers in both public and private sectors and retirees complain about their salaries which have been eroded in light of the skyrocketing prices of almost all commodities, as well as about the failure of the government to control the markets.

The daunting pressures on all businesses in Syria have forced many employers to sack workers, raising thus the number of the jobless.

The report says special attention should be paid to the workshops and crafts and to motivate them to shift from the shadow economy to formal and legal economy, and also emphasizes the need to restrict the activities of investment and holding companies in the high-cost projects, and to increase the state’s support for the poor and develop a consistent policy of wages compatible with the cost of living.

As observers fear that the rising poverty caused by prolonged uncertainties would foment popular wrath, the report calls for the need to reduce unemployment, especially among young people, by increasing government investment in public sector with the cooperation of the private sector to provide new job opportunities.

Prominent Syrian economic expert Aref Dalileh recently told media that the economic problems in Syria have stemmed from the decades-long political system, while the economic factor in turn constitutes the main reason for the current events in Syria today.

According to Dalileh, the roots of the economic problems lie in the way the government manages the national economy and the economic surplus, especially its failure to use the surplus in development.

The Syrian unrest that erupted over a year ago and the ensuing U.S., EU and Arab sanctions have tightened the squeeze around the already slow-moving economy that has been striving to shift from the socialist style to open market, hitting hard all businesses in the country ranging from tourism, oil to banking sectors, and after all, people’s daily life.

As the EU said lately that it is mulling new package of sanctions on Syria, Amru Eiz-eldin, a 35-year-old worker, told Xinhua that “It’s not a secret that prices have gone up tremendously and that people’s purchasing power has decreased. We’ re all feeling it.”

“Some people are no longer eating meat,” he said.

Der Spiegel: Losing Hope In Syria’s Devastated Countryside, 2012-05-01

The world is still hoping that the efforts of United Nations envoy Kofi Annan will succeed in Syria, but regime forces have inflicted such brutal destruction in the country’s northwest Idlib province that no one there believes peace is possible …

Regime Change in Syria: We Should Learn the Lessons of Iraq
Huffington Post – Steven Strauss

Obama’s critics cite our success in Libya as a model for intervening in Syria. … America’s worst case scenario in Syria would be a civil war, resulting in a failed state. That failed Syrian state could become a regional base for terrorism, whereby chemical weapon stockpiles fall into the hands of Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda or other terrorist groups. The Assad regime is evil; the successor regime could be even worse. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff emphasized, we know almost nothing about the Syrian rebels.

In Libya, the Qaddafi regime openly threatened genocide against the opposition. While this remains a risk in Syria, currently violence is at a murderous (but not genocidal) level. Over the last year, approximately 9,000 to 11,000 people died in Syria as a result of the Assad regime’s brutality. The death of even one person is a tragedy, and the Assad regime has murdered many times over.

However, to put this in context: people are being killed at the rate of about 40-50 deaths per 100,000 Syrians, per year. This is equivalent to the murder rate in New Orleans or Detroit. Perhaps we should intervene in New Orleans before tackling Syria.

The Politics of Sectarian Insecurity: Alawite ‘Asabiyya and the Rise and Decline of the Asad Dynasty – Leon T. Goldsmith began his study in 2008; this is his PhD dissertation

ProjectSyndicate: The Anarchy Factor in Syria
2012-05-02

The failure of the Obama administration, its Western allies, and several Middle East regional powers to take bolder action to stop the carnage in Syria is often explained by their fear of anarchy. In fact, anarchy is setting in now: it is preceding …

INTERVIEW: Opposition says al-Assad’s regime is a “stinking corpse”
By Jackline Zaher, DPA 2012-05-01

Cairo (DPA) — The leader of Syria’s main opposition group believes the country’s regime is finished and says its citizens are already preparing for a post-Bashar al-Assad era. The president’s regime is “no longer a regime, just an organization of military, security and militia forces that are killing the people,” Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council (SNC), told dpa by phone. “As far as we are concerned it is finished, the only question that remains is how we can bury this stinking corpse,” he said. Ghalioun nevertheless expects al-Assad’s government to remain in place until its security forces becomes powerless. “As a regime it has collapsed on every level, politically, economically and culturally, and it no longer enjoys any relations with the Arab world or internationally,” the Paris-based professor said.

He also said that after the fall of al-Assad, “there will be no basis for continued preferential relations with Iran; and Hezbollah will have to change its approach and deal with the new Syria if the regime changes.”

Al-Assad’s government has been Iran’s military and strategic ally in the region, and both countries provide support to Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and the Islamist group Hamas, based in the Gaza Strip. Ghalioun also rejected reports that the SNC or any revolutionary group in Syria might strike a deal over the future of the strategic Golan Heights in return for Western or Israeli support in bringing down the al-Assad regime. “The Golan is and will remain Syrian territory, and is recognized as such by all the world. Syria’s democratic revolution will be in a better position to regain the Golan.”

“It is the regime, not the opposition, that has collaborated with Israel and allowed it to stay in the Golan,” Ghalioun argued.

Son of former Syrian PM wants to form government in exile
Father imprisoned by Baath party when it came to power in 1963
April 26, 2012,

PARIS (AP) — The son of a former Syrian prime minister says he wants to form a government in exile aimed at bolstering Syrian rebels and encouraging international military intervention.

Nofal al-Dawalibi’s attempt at forming a government of those who oppose Syrian President Bashar Assad only highlights divisions among those trying to oust his regime from outside the country. Al-Dawalibi said Thursday the opposition Syrian National Council, which has enjoyed support from several countries, has failed to accomplish anything and is an “artificial” body.

French diplomats say anti-regime activists in Syria appear to operate on their own and don’t take orders from opposition groups abroad. Al-Dawalibi’s father, Maarouf, was elected prime minister in 1961, but was later jailed and fled to Saudi Arabia in 1963. [ … ]

Syria faces neo-mujahideen struggle
By Victor Kotsev

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may have won a battle earlier this year (as the retreat of the Free Syrian Army from the ruined city of Homs testifies), but he is nowhere near winning the war. The uprising is quickly turning into a full-scale insurgency – a foreign-sponsored insurgency, to be more precise, which some analysts term a “neo-mujahideen strategy”.

2012-04-28, Thomas Friedman

If the Annan plan fails, then the West, the United Nations and the Arab League need to move swiftly to set up a no-fly zone or humanitarian corridor — on the Turkish-Syrian border — that can provide a safe haven for civilians being pummeled by the regime and send a message to the exhausted Syrian Army and residual supporters of Assad that it is time for them to decapitate this regime and save themselves and the Syrian state. The quicker Assad falls, the less sectarian blood that is shed and the more of the Syrian state that survives, the less difficult a difficult rebuilding will be….

It’s like a kid who was beaten and left uneducated by his parents for 50 years and one day the kid finally decides to fight back, he added. “Morally, you have to support his right to revolt, but this guy is very traumatized.” So let’s help in an intelligent, humane way, but with no illusions that this transition will be easy or a happy ending assured.

CLINTON SAYS TURKEY MULLS REQUEST FOR NATO SUPPPORT

Ghalioun’s statement that there is “No Syrian Kurdistan” Stirs Controversy.

Al-Qamishli: Further demonstrations in the Kurdish regions: Kurdwatch Newsletter

KURDWATCH, April 27, 2012—Despite the existing ceasefire, nationwide protests on April 20, 2012 again resulted in numerous dead and injured. Throughout the country, demonstrators demanded the fall of the regime. Whereas in the previous week, all Kurdish demonstrators took to the streets under a unified, all-Syrian slogan, this week there were once again two slogans. The majority demonstrated under the nationwide slogan »We will win, Assad will lose«. Other demonstrators took to the streets under the slogan »Here is Kurdistan«. This slogan was in protest of the Syrian National Council chairman’s remarks that there is no »Syrian-Kurdistan« [further information on the remarks].

Erbil: Chairman of the Syrian National Council comments on the Kurdish question

KURDWATCH, April 23, 2012—In an interview on April 16, 2012 with the Iraqi-Kurdish magazine Rûdaw, Burhan Ghaliun, Chairman of the Syrian National Council, commented on the Kurdish question. He explained that in Syria there are areas that are predominantly settled by Kurds, but there is no »Syrian Kurdistan«—neither geographically nor politically. To speak of Syrian Kurdistan is to apply the Iraqi model to Syria. He further explained that if the Syrian Kurds continue to cling to a federalist model, this will lead to misunderstandings with other groups who will interpret these demands as a desire for secession. At the same time, he emphasized that in past decades, the Kurds have been discriminated against and marginalized, and that the Syrian parties and political movements recognize Kurdish national identity. »I say the Syrian state and the political rulers must provide the conditions for protecting this identity. The right to education in Kurdish and developing Kurdish culture and literature, as the second culture in Syria, must be provided.« He further stated that the Syrian National Council stands for a decentralized system, in which provincial and city councils will receive a broad-range of authority. In reaction to Ghaliun’s comments, numerous dissident demonstrations took place in the Kurdish regions on April 20, 2012 under the slogan »Here is Kurdistan!«. Ghaliun had already drawn criticism in 2011, when he compared the Syrian Kurds to immigrants in France—he subsequently retracted this statement.

 Two different Syrian Opposition organizations expressed their own formulations of the Kurdish question in Syria – they are  the General Assembly of the Syrian Democratic Platform which met in Cairo from April 13 to April 16, 2012, and the National Union of the Forces for Democratic Change which met in Paris on April 14.

CIA Asset Gloria Steinem’s “Women Under Siege” Joins Syrian Propaganda Campaign
admin Apr 27, 2012 The International Campaign to Destabilize Syria

How Russia, Iran keep fuel flowing to Syria
By Jessica Donati and Julia Payne, Thu Apr 26, 2012

(Reuters) – Russia and Iran are helping Syria import fuel which it needs for heavy vehicles including army tanks, allowing Damascus to avoid the full impact of tightening Western sanctions imposed over its violent suppression of dissent.

Nikolaos van Dam [[email protected]] Recommends books on Syria – He adds: I had also strongly recommended Lisa Wedeen’s book and the new book of Carsten Wieland, but due to lack of space they are now olny mentioned in the footnote (which is better than not to be mentioned at all).

Time for a rethink of U.S. policy towards Syria
Posted By Geoffrey Aronson Thursday, April 26, 2012 – 6:01 PM Share

Simply opposing Assad is not a policy, but that is what the current U.S. policy risks. By demonizing the regime, Washington has walked away from the table. This decision left the U.S. ill-placed to tease out disaffected members of the regime in the hopes of mounting an insider’s coup, the best hope for a less violent transition. That power now rests in the hands of Moscow and Teheran, who may yet decide that a change in the regime is the best means of preserving their interests. Efforts by Syria’s Arab antagonists to undermine the ruling family have come to naught. This vacuum has left the diplomatic field to Kofi Annan, Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow, who appear united in an effort to craft a diplomatic solution with the regime — repudiating Washington’s preferences both tactically and strategically.

Washington’s ambivalence about the Annan mission is a product of the squeeze Moscow, Beijing, Baghdad, and Teheran are putting on U.S. policy. “Walking back” American support for regime change and the concomitant opposition to everything short of this goal, is not easy, but some former U.S. diplomats and even others currently wearing pinstripes believe it can be done. Our lukewarm support for Annan reflects the first, tentative baby steps in this direction

The Obama administration, however, cannot bring itself to support a solution with the regime and its allies. It is has proven easier to embrace a number of more vague and often incompatible policy options: to snipe at the Annan mission from the sidelines, to debate tactical questions relating to humanitarian relief, or to engage in internal debates about the ease with which, for example, Syrian air defenses might be taken out

Lacking a strategic compass, Washington finds itself not leading from behind but being dragged from behind in support of the policies and agendas of others — including in the Gulf and among the Syrian National Council — that promise at best to continue bleeding the regime, its opponents, and the long-suffering Syrian people, and that threaten the institutional and even the territorial integrity of the Syrian state.

These are the stakes of the game now being played by diplomats in drawing rooms and rebels in the alleys of Daraa and Homs. The Assad regime and the ruling state institutions are heinous, but there is still room for Washington to champion an engagement that aims at moving the Syrian government and the Syrian public to a wary, uneasy accommodation.

Syria In Vogue But On The Outer
Posted by Prof. Brian Stoddart on April 27, 2012

Syrian Psychosis – www.weeklystandard.com
Yesterday the Washington Post inexplicably published a piece about the Vogue profile of Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad—a profile published in March 2011.

The Islamization of the Uprising and the Loss of Syria
by Randa Kassis

The Islamists in Syria are increasingly swooping down on the popular movement, suggesting that they are the strongest and the most widespread among the Syrian groups through their dependence on the religious and conservative bases of certain communities. Their presence is due first to the sense among the Syrian street participating in the uprising that the international community had abandoned them and that they have been left prey to the brutality of the Syrian regime. Second, this is due to the Islamists’ exploitation of the Syrian psyche in order to slowly penetrate the Syrian street in an organized fashion. In addition, the Islamists’ control over the distribution of supplies and humanitarian assistance significantly contributed to their extensive appearance in the squares and streets, resulting in the appearance of gaining a monopoly over this uprising. The Islamists have taken advantage of the divide between the communities previously supported by the ruling regime and those they call the majority group, thus upholding sectarian discrimination and fueling feelings of aggression and repulsion between the groups in order to gain a wider segment of the Syrian society. They also capitalize on the principle of “the strongest majority,” which gives that majority the right to direct society according to its desires and standards. Here, we are entitled to review what they consider the majority and the minority, who comprise, according to their view, singular, collective blocks.

How Many Syrians Will Die?
2012-04-28, By Jennifer Rubin

April 28 (Washington Post) — Paul Wolfowitz writes:

“American policy on Syria today seems paralyzed by the understandable fear of getting into another war like those in Afghanistan or Iraq. But no one, least of all the Syrian people, wants to see an American invasion and occupation of Syria.” In essence President Obama has set up one of those false choices to justify doing nothing effective to oust Bashar al-Assad:….

Perhaps one day an American president will go to the Holocaust museum and ask his fellow citizens, ” How could we allow mass atrocities in Syria?” The answer: Obama wanted a second term.

Al Jazeera, “Searching for a ‘plan B’ in Syria”, Jonathan Paris, Sami Hermez, and Farah Atassi, a Syrian political activist. The introductions are 3:20 minutes into the program.

Assad intensifies cyberwar against Qatar
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad©AFP

The Qatari prime minister’s daughter is arrested in London. Qatar’s army chief stages a coup against the emir. Hamad bin Jassim, the prime minister, is sacked. None of these stories is true, but for a while Syria’s embattled regime tried to make them credible partly thanks to a group of loyal hackers. Late on Monday, the so-called Syrian Electronic Army, the cyber activists who spam Facebook and Twitter with pro-government messages, hacked into the Twitter account of Saudi Arabia’s al-Arabiya news channel and planted the report of Mr bin Jassim’s removal. As al-Arabiya rushed to report that its social networks were infiltrated, the hackers posted news about an explosion at a Qatari natural gasfield.

The cyberwar against Qatar is part of escalating efforts by Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, to paint the revolt against him as a geopolitical struggle by wealthy Gulf monarchies bent on Syria’s destruction, rather than a brutal attempt to put down a popular uprising . To a certain extent the regional battle is real: Qatar and Saudi Arabia, long-time rivals in the region, have been remarkably unified over Syria, and have taken the harshest line against Mr Assad. The removal of the Syrian strongman, Iran’s main ally in the Arab world, would alter the balance of power in the Middle East in the Sunni Gulf monarchies’ favour.

US News: Syria’s cultural treasures latest uprising victim
2012-05-01 By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press BEIRUT (AP) —

On its towering hilltop perch, the Krak des Chevaliers, one of the world’s best preserved Crusader castles, held off a siege by the Muslim warrior Saladin nearly 900 years ago. It was lauded by …Besides the break-in at Krak des Chevaliers in March, gunmen have also targeted a museum in the city of Hama, making off with antiques and a priceless gold statue dating back to the Aramaic era, said Jammous, of the government’s museum agency….Government assaults on opposition stronghold cities and neighborhoods — often with shelling and heavy machine-gun fire — have also caused extensive damage.

From Foreign Policy – Violence continues in Hama

An explosion in the Masha at-Tayyar district in the city of Hama killed up to 70 people. The Syrian government and opposition activists have offered conflicting accounts of the blast. According to Syrian state media, 16 people were killed in an accidental explosion in a house that was used as a bomb factory by “armed terrorist groups.” However, activists have reported several houses have been destroyed by what they claim could have been a Scud missile attack, killing up to 13 children and 16 women. The BBC’s Jim Muir reported that the magnitude of devastation could not likely have been achieved by conventional shelling. The opposition Syrian National Council called for an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting “so that it can issue a resolution to protect civilians in Syria.” France has recommended stronger action by the United Nations, calling for a Chapter 7 mandate that would allow for the use of force if President Bashar al-Assad’s forces do not pull back according to Kofi Annan’s peace plan.

Members of the UN monitoring team in Syria, with opposition activists in Homs. Photograph: Handout/Reuters

Nour said:

The previous blog entry seems to be inciting against the Annan plan and hoping it would fail so that a subsequent phase of possible military intervention may take place. Moreover, the report on the electoral list is misleading and disingenuous. It links to an article listing the candidates of the Baath Party only, implying that those are the only candidates running in Lattakia, which is not true. Members of other parties as well as independents are running both in Lattakia and across the rest of the country. The Popular Front for Change and Liberation, for example, which includes the opposition SSNP and Qadri Jamil’s The Will of the People Party, has 45 candidates across Syria. Other new parties have also listed their candidates and the ballot boxes will determine who wins the majority of the seats in the People’s Assembly.

[Landis adds: thanks for this correction, Nour]

Ghufran said:

The next 6 months are unlikely to include a major shift on Syria unless the opposition scores a significant military defeat against the regime. This period will be used by both parties to strengthen their position on the ground. The lack of any serious political proposal that adresses the grievances and concerns of the sizable pro regime Syrian forces mean that the only option on the table is to fight and preserve as much as possible of the gains made in the last 2 months. If Syrians themselves are not willing to compromise nobody will do that job on their bahalf.

Observer said:

I have been in the ME for some time now. The regime is losing grip on significant part of the countryside including around Damascus. Only 15% of new conscripts showed up to be recruited this year. The number of defectors has reached 100 000.

Cham Press announces that the dollar is trading below 70 pounds in a so called sign of improvement therefore countering the official rate of 60.

Very little support is available to the FSA from the outside and this will await the US elections before any real policy to emerge

zoo said:

Rice: The “friends of Syria” have been ironically promoted to the “Friends of Democratic Syria” when the most influent members, Qatar and KSA are non democratic countries preaching democracy to others…

Amir in Tel Aviv said:

Rami Khouri: “…For many tens of thousands who were prepared to demonstrate peacefully – albeit at the cost of their lives – this has become a disaster. Syrian friends of mine call it a “tragedy”. They blame the Gulf states for encouraging the armed uprising. “Our revolution was pure and clean and now it’s a war,” one of them said to me last week. I believe them”.

I utterly agree with Khouri and his friend. The irreversible mistake of resorting to arms will be fully revealed in the coming years, if not decades.

amnesia said:

In comments above I read that the secular opposition will join the Assad government, and that the opposition arming was a mistake. Please make some sense guys for a change. The soldiers who defected did so rightfully, and their willingness to risk their lives to create a challenge for Assad’s remaining forces is laudable.

DAWOUD said:

The Syria Revolution against Bashar’s, and his father’s before him,oppression began as completely peaceful. I has become militarized because of the regime and its allies (Hasan Nasrallah, Iran,…) began to use violence and murder innocent unarmed demonstrators. People have the right to defend their lives, property, dignity, and honor!.. The overwhelming majority of Syrians are opposed to the murderous Bashar and his shabiha. Free Syria, Free Palestine!

irritated said:

Dawood, What proof do you have that the “overwhelming majority of Syrians are opposed to Bashar?” If it was true how come nobody goes on strike when asked to? That’s the least the ‘overwhelming majority’ could do. … Most anti-Syrian government types keep repeating “It started peacefully’ trying to justify the issue that ‘it continued violently’ and that it is now made of death squads infiltrated by islamist extremists and criminals.

ZOO said:

This is what will happen in Syria whether Bashar stays or not?

“The terror network has taken advantage of the country’s political turmoil of the past year to capture several southern areas, and the Americans are eager to coordinate efforts with the Yemenis to push them back.

An al-Qaida settled and safe in the remote interior of southern Yemen would allow its militants to plan and execute more attacks on Western interests, taking advantage of proximity to strategic shipping lanes in the Red and Arabian seas through which much of the West’s energy needs to pass.
(…)

The Candidates for Parliamentary Elections in Syria have been published – They reveal that Bashar al-Assad’s supposed reforms are the ruse that most thought they would be. The candidates from Latakia are sprinkled liberally with the names of well known crooks and Baathists of the region as well as their sons. There does not seem to be any potential reform going on in Latakia. The Baath may have been disestablished, but its members insist that they will win the upcoming elections to parliament.

Syrian military forces subjected the Arba’in district of Hama to intensive machine gun fire on Monday,

A car bomb in Damascus outside the Iranian cultural center killed and wounded several Syrians. Rebels launched three separate attacks on security forces around Damascus on Tuesday, killing two ranking officers activists and state media said. Satellite images show that the roads going into Idlib are all manned by tanks and road blocks

Kofi Annan told the U.N. Security Council Thursday that the situation in Syria is “bleak” and expressed alarm at reports that government troops are still carrying out military operations in towns where U.N. observers are not present.

“If confirmed, this is totally unacceptable and reprehensible,” he said.

Annan told the  U.N. Security Council that the situation in Syria remains “unacceptable” and is expressed particular alarm at reports that government troops entered the central city of Hama firing …

President Obama’s Speech on Syria at the Holocaust museum provoked an uproar from the neoconservatives who insist that the US should bomb Syria and do a Libya on it. Obama imposed some new sanctions on Syria but refused to give the green light to arming the opposition or taking military action. Tamara Cofman Wittes, who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs until January 2012, argued at Brookings that the Obama should not try to discourage the growing militarization of the Syrian opposition, but rather to step in a try to direct it toward the opposition members most likely to further US interests in the region.

This is precisely what the US seems to be doing. The model for its actions is Afghanistan of the 1980s, when Washington and Riyadh armed the Mujahedin to take down the pro-Soviet regime. Everyone in the Obama administration is acutely aware of the outcome of that successful campaign: the creation of al-Qaida.  No one wants to repeat that. Hence, Clinton’s insistence that all foreign aid to the Syrian opposition go to Burhan Ghalioun. He looks to the ideals of the French Revolution rather than those of an Islamic revolution as did Bin Laden. Clinton even got the Saudis to publicly sign on to this strategy in Istanbul. where the last “Friends of Syria” meeting was assembled.

Recent reports on the Syrian opposition suggest that it is beginning to score some military successes. They also suggest that the regular pious youth who are doing the fighting are looking to Jihadists who fought in Iraq for their expertise. They will also likely look to the motivational power of radical Islamism, something they are going to need if they hope to defeat the Syrian Army.

News Round Up

Rare inside view of Syria’s rebels finds a force vowing to fight on
By David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers[photo: Mohamed Idris, shown in Qusayr, Syria, was the leader in the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs of the Katiba Farouq, the largest group operating under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army. ]

QUSAYR, Syria — After more than six months of fighting, Syria’s largest rebel group appears to have developed into a resilient guerrilla force, unable perhaps to hold large swaths of territory for very long but still capable of inflicting heavy casualties on the Syrian military and operating fluidly within supportive populations….

What the Farouq fighters have found is that the Syrian army, as a force built for a potential conflict with Israel, is poorly equipped for the type of asymmetrical combat the guerillas engage in. That allows the guerillas to inflict heavy casualties on the military when the two sides engage in close combat. It is one reason the Syrian military prefers launching artillery attacks on rebel-held cities from long distances.

The rebels also have suffered heavy losses. Idris said he had 250 soldiers under his command during the fighting in Baba Amr, and that 114 of those had been killed in the fighting…..

“If the international community really wants peace in Syria, they will help us with weapons,” Idris said, making it clear the group was planning to step up attacks against the Syrian military. He said his fighters would continue to plant roadside bombs to destroy military vehicles outside of populated areas.

“We will attack the Syrian army in their bases and their checkpoints and try to capture their weapons,” he said. “We are also training fighters. We have many new volunteers without military experience.”….

More than a half-dozen fighters, when a reporter told them he had spent time reporting in Iraq, offered that they also had fought there during the U.S. invasion and occupation. Often, their first question was whether the reporter had visited Fallujah,…

Last week, Farouq’s commanders were making preparations to expand their reach into the suburbs of Damascus, which are presently the domain of other rebel groups….

According to Abu Ali and another fellow fighter, Jawhar arrived in Qsair two weeks ago with a group of 30 Lebanese fighters. While many were members of Fatah al-Islam, they were not traveling under the terror group’s banner. Instead they called themselves mujahideen, holy warriors seeking to help fellow Muslims under attack by the Syrian regime. Jawhar, an explosives expert and a charismatic commander, sought to train fellow fighters how make bombs. In the short time he had been in Qsair, says Abu Ali, he was able to set up dozens of improvised explosive devices destined for members of the Syrian security forces. “His aim was to make a tour in all the districts of Syria to teach the fighters on how to fight a guerrilla war.”….

A 30-year-old biochemist from northern Lebanon, Jawhar came of age during the country’s brutal civil war.  First he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, but left over doctrinal disputes—he felt that the group was not strict enough in its interpretation of Sharia, or Islamic law. He then joined, and left, the extremely conservative Salafis for the same reasons, and finally became a member of Fatah al-Islam in 2008. He was promoted to leader after his predecessor was killed in a 2010 shootout with Lebanese security forces. According to the Lebanese intelligence official, he was a master recruiter, and even managed to induct Lebanese soldiers to his cause. His terror efforts spanned Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, where he is thought to be responsible for several of the devastating explosions that killed international troops.  “He was a network by himself,” says the official. “He had relations all over the region; he was a ruthless killer.”…

It’ll be a cakewalk, says Ba’ath Party
2012-04-22 The Hindu:

Even though it is yet to announce candidates for the coming elections to the Syrian Parliament, the ruling Ba’ath Party predicts that it will return to power. “It is mathematically impossible for any other party to win,” claims Speaker Mahmoud …

VOA – Europe and US extend sanctions to include caviar and other luxury products

Luxury goods ban

Meanwhile, the European Union banned the sale to Syria of luxury goods and dual-use items that could be used for repression. The restrictions were adopted at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg Monday. The extent of the luxury ban has yet to be defined but the aim is to deliver a symbolic blow against the posh lifestyle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his British-born wife, Asma The dual-use goods could include anything from vehicles to fertilizers and other chemicals.

Technology sanctions

The United States announced Monday plans to impose technology sanctions on Syria and its ally, Iran. Meanwhile, Lynn Pascoe, the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, told the 15-nation Security Council during an open debate on the Middle East that “the cessation of armed violence remains incomplete” in Syria.

Daily Caller: Krauthammer castigates Obama on ‘embarrassing’ Syria policy: ‘Be quiet’
2012-04-24

On Monday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer attacked President Barack Obama’s Monday speech at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., where he announced the first meeting of …

I have an effective response: Deployment of the U.S. military to, at the very least, provide, as Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute urged:

• Safe corridors for Syrians to leave their country.
• Safe cities for civilians in which they can shelter.
• Arms for the Free Syrian Army, which is far better organized than many wish to admit.
• Overt support for the Syrian National Council, including
• assistance with a transition plan, reconciliation among parties, a new constitution and more.
• NATO air support.

That would approach doing “everything we can.”

Weekly Standard: Will Obama Help Syria?
2012-04-23

Robert Zarate, writing in an FPI bulletin: In a high-profile speech today at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, President Obama highlighted new efforts to “prevent and respond to mass atrocities,” including a new Executive Order imposing …

From POMED

Committee Hearings – The House Armed Service Committee and Senate Committee on Foreign Relations discussed the situation in Syria
From Washington – The Obama Administration explored new options in Syria after the ceasefire failed

On Thursday (4-19), the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee held a hearing on the situation in Syria. The speakers were Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, and General Martin Dempsey. Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) chaired.

On Thursday (4/19), the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on U.S. policy options for Syria. The speakers were Murhaf Jouejati, Jon B. Alterman and Tamara Wittes. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) chaired.

U.N. observers arrived in Damascus. Syrian forces shelled Homs. SANAreported two separate roadside bombs killing ten members of the security forces and a civilian.A German-owned ship, suspected of carrying weapons and ammunition heading to Syria, was towed for inspection to Turkey. Der Spiegel reported that the Atlantic Cruiser had been stopped with Iranian weapons on board. Violence ensued in a town outside of Damascus where opposition members reported two activists dead due to indiscriminate shelling. Syrian state-run media reported that the government was fully cooperating with Kofi Annan’s peace plan.

Bend Bulletin: In Syria, signs of Islamist influence
2012-04-23, By Liz Sly / The Washington Post

Activists and rebel soldiers based inside Syria say a small but growing number of Islamist radicals affiliated with global jihadi movements have been arriving in opposition strongholds in recent weeks and attempting to rally support among disaffected residents.

Western diplomats say they have tracked a steady trickle of jihadists flowing into Syria from Iraq, and Jordan’s government last week detained at least four alleged Jordanian militants accused of trying to sneak into Syria to join the revolutionaries.

A previously unknown group calling itself the al-Nusra Front has asserted responsibility for bombings in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo using language and imagery reminiscent of the statements and videos put out by al-Qaida-affiliated organizations in Iraq.

Foreign Policy

According to the BBC’s Ian Pannell reporting from northern Syria, helicopters have been firing at villages in Jabel al-Zawiya,

At a “Friends of Security” meeting, French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of lying, while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for “stronger measures” to bolster the ceasefire, such as an arms embargo and the Chapter 7 Security Council Resolution allowing for the use of military force. Meanwhile the U.N. Security Council negotiated terms for the U.N. observer mission with Syria. The mission is permitted to travel to any location in the country by foot or car, but is not allowed control over a private aircraft. While there are currently seven monitors in Syria, the United Nations hopes to have 30 by Monday, and wishes to expand the mission to 300, which must be approved by the U.N. Security Council and Syria.

The Militarization of the Syrian Uprising
Samer Araabi | April 18, 2012 – Right Web

As pressure mounts to arm rebels in Syria, there is need for a sober assessment of the costs and consequences of the increasing militarization of the conflict there. If history is any guide, a foreign-backed armed rebellion will likely not produce the kind of victory—or engender the kind of support—that the anti-Assad fighters will require to usher in a new Syria. Additionally, there is the very real possibility that many of the rebels—as we’ve seen in Libya—will turn out to be little better than the regime they seek to replace….

Tamara Cofman Wittes .US. Policy Options in Syria:

… The United States cannot halt or reverse the militarization of the Syrian uprising, and should not try. What the United States can usefully do is manage this militarization by working with other governments, especially Syria’s neighbors in the region, to try to shape the activities of armed elements on the ground in a manner that will most effectively increase pressure on the regime – to drain the Syrian military’s ability and will to fight, to help induce a political transition, and thereby to bring an end to the violence as quickly as possible. Without a strong lead driven by the strategic logic of weakening the regime’s pillars, disparate actors both inside and outside the region could provide lethal support in ways that would exacerbate spillover effects and increase the damage militarization will cause to the goal of restoring order in a post-Assad Syria. To do this, the United States should drive the international planning and engagement necessary to identify key armed leaders and elements, improve coordination and communication, build effective fighting units, and shape an effective insurgent strategy.

Kurds: Salih Gado, member of the politburo of the Kurdish Left Party in Syria: »Some Kurdish parties are coming up with lots of excuses to avoid joining the Syrian National Council. The truth is they are still afraid of the regime.«

The Kurdish Issue and Syria’s Democracy
by Hassan Saleh [Hassan Saleh is the deputy secretary of the Kurdish Yekiti Party in Syria and a member of the Kurdish National Council and former political prisoner.]

At a moment of uncertainty surrounding the relationship between the Kurdish National Council (KNC) and the Syrian National Council (SNC), this week’s article by KNC member Hassan Saleh affirms the Kurdish desire for a decentralized federal democracy and their critical role in the future success of the Syrian revolution.

I believe that the federal system is the best way for internal peaceful coexistence. This allows for all peoples and minorities to enjoy their rights and preserve their identities and existence. Federalism is considered a guarantor system for the unity of the state and a way to boost the state’s development and stability….

In Syria, there are contiguous Kurdish areas that the Kurdish community can manage as their own federal region by managing their own legislative, judicial, and executive affairs, but participating in federal authorities, institutions, and councils according to the proportion of their population. If other communities choose to select federalism, it is possible to establish other provinces as well. The Druze reside in al-Sweida province, surrounding the capital city and Jabal al-Sheikh. The Alawites are particularly concentrated in the coastal areas, though there are a number of Sunnis living among them in cities such as Latakia, Banias, and Tartous. The (Christian) Assyrians and Syriacs are spread throughout most of the regions and do not form large contiguous areas. Accordingly, the adoption of a federal system will achieve the wishes of the Syrian people in getting rid of the dominance of the central authoritarian regime and providing real opportunities for the territories to develop their lives and enjoy their share of power and wealth.

It must be noted that due to their bitter experience, the Kurds are determined to manage their own affairs as their interest is in maintaining Syria’s unity. Kurdish nationalism should be respected and the resolution of this issue is considered to be the key to democracy and a guarantee of stability. The Kurdish regions are rich in oil, gas, and agricultural crops, particularly grains and olives, and it is unfair that the central government has taken hold of them while the Kurdish people live poor, deprived, and homeless….

NPR: Journalist: ‘I Should Never Have Gone Near The Assads’
2012-04-20

A video appeal to the wife of Syrian President Bashar Assad asks her to persuade her husband to stop the killing. The campaign for Asma al Assad to “stand up for peace” was started by the wives of British and German ambassadors to the United …

Counter-revolution — the next deadly chapter in the Arab Spring. (h/t War in Context)
by News Sources on April 21, 2012

Robert Fisk writes: It was my old Jordanian-Palestinian chum Rami Khouri who first spotted what is going on in the Middle East right now: it’s the counter-revolution. Bahrain is crushing dissent. Syria is crushing dissent. Mubarak’s former head of intelligence, the sinister Omar Suleiman, is standing for president in Egypt – the cancellation of his candidacy last week by a dodgy “electoral committee” may well be overturned. Libya is at war with itself. Yemen has got its former dictator’s sidekick back. Sixty-one dead in a battle between soldiers and al-Qa’ida last week – in a single day. All in all, a pretty mess.

But let me quote Khouri. “In Washington-speak, a ‘crisis’ is like love: you can define it any way you want, but you know when it happens to you. So a popular revolt in Bahrain for full civil rights is a crisis that must be crushed by force. But a revolt in Syria is a blessed event that deserves support. Similarly, this peculiar mindset warns against Iranian support to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, while accepting as perfectly logical and legitimate for the US and its allies to send arms and money to their favourite rebel groups around the region – not to mention attacking entire countries…”

And there you have it. As Khouri notes, there’s now a new group called the “Security Cooperation Forum” linking the US with the Gulf Cooperation Council. La Clinton turned up to assure the oil states of Washington’s “rock solid and unwavering commitment” to the GCC. Now where have we heard that before? Why, isn’t that what Obama is always saying to the Israelis? And weren’t Bibi Netanyahu of Israel and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia the two guys who called Obama to ask him to save Mubarak.

And in Syria – where the Qataris and the Saudis are all too keen to send weapons for the rebels – things are not going very well for the revolution. After claiming for weeks a year ago that “armed bands” were attacking government forces, the bands now exist and are well and truly attacking Assad’s legions. For many tens of thousands who were prepared to demonstrate peacefully – albeit at the cost of their lives – this has become a disaster. Syrian friends of mine call it a “tragedy”. They blame the Gulf states for encouraging the armed uprising. “Our revolution was pure and clean and now it’s a war,” one of them said to me last week. I believe them.

The Hill: Gen. Dempsey: US in for ‘wild ride’ in the Middle East over the next decade
2012-04-22

Tweet America is heading into an increasingly tumultuous decade in the Middle East, punctuated by repeated popular uprisings that will continue to dismantle long-standing power structures in the region, according to the Pentagon’s top uniformed …

Films on Syria – reviewed by Rana Khoury

Rana writes: I recently reviewed two Syrian films that were screened at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown. I can’t speak highly enough about the films. Revolving around prisoners of conscience, they are an important window for understanding the unfortunate circumstances the country now finds itself in. Here’s the link:

Brookings: Turkey: The New Model?
2012-04-24

The following is a chapter written by Ömer Ta?p?nar from the book, The Islamists Are Coming: Who They Really Are, co-published by the Wilson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace. In the twenty-first century, Turkey is arguably …

Syria seems to be trying to sell Gold from its reserves in Dubai. A sign that it’s money is running low due to sanctions and revolt.

The Obama administration insists that it is about to make some important changes to its Syria policy. Everyone expects that it will assume greater leadership by helping to arm the opposition. So far Washington has raised the rhetorical bar while refusing action. Sanctions have been the most it is willing to offer. The other countries — Turkey, Saudi and France – have refused to take the lead. They want to see an American commitment before taking their hands out of the pockets.  On the NSC, Steve Simon, who has not been keen on military involvement, seems to be making way for Derek Chollet, whose old boss was Anne-Marie Slaughter. She is for military intervention in Syria, as she made clear on the Charlie Rose Show that I appeared on with her, Fouad Ajami and Thomas Friedman. Ajami makes the most compelling argument for a more active US role in embracing the “future” in Syria. Here is what Josh Rogin has to say about Chollet’s appointment in Obama searches for a ‘Plan B’ in Syria:

The new push includes adjustments in personnel handling the portfolio. Before March, National Security Council Director Steve Simon headed up the internal interagency process. Now, multiple officials confirm that NSC Senior Director for Strategy Derek Chollet has been added to the leadership of the Syria policy team and has been coordinating the interagency process for several weeks. Simon, Assistant Secretary of State Jeff Feltman, and State Dept. Special Advisor Fred Hof are still active on the Syria portfolio.

Clinton says Syria is at a “crucial turning point”. She will be in Paris tomorrow to try to figure out what the Western states can do that won’t suck them into another Iraq, but that will show some teeth. Right now, Russia is calling the shots in Syria. Ironically, the last country we pushed Russia out of,  because we demanded greater control over its affairs, was Afghanistan. Most American policy makers today would probably agree that Russian controlled Afghanistan was much better than what came after. Ammar Abdulhamid suggests that Syria is more liberal and less Islamist than Afghanistan or even Egypt and Tunisia. He believes that US caution about the rise of Islamists in Syria is ill-founded. Amal al-Hanano hares Abdulhamid’s determination to promote secular and pacifist Syrian interests.  She is calling on secular Syrians to organize and counter-balance the Islamists.

News Round Up

Syria Said to be Seeking Gold Sales From Reserves: Reuters Link
By John Irish and Amena Bakr

PARIS/DUBAI, April 18 (Reuters) – Syria is trying to sell gold reserves to raise revenue as Western and Arab sanctions targeting its central bank and oil exports begin to bite, diplomats and traders said.

Western sanctions have halved Syria’s foreign exchange reserves from about $17 billion, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Tuesday after a meeting with about 60 nations aimed at coordinating measures against President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

“Syria is selling its gold at rock bottom prices,” said a Western diplomatic source, declining to say where it was being sold.

A second diplomatic source confirmed the information, adding that Damascus was looking to offload everything it could to raise cash, including currency reserves.

On Feb. 27, the European Union agreed more sanctions including prohibiting trade in gold and other precious metals with Syrian state institutions, including the central bank.

Two gold traders in the United Arab Emirates said the Syrian government had been offering gold at a discount, with one saying it was making offers at about 15 percent below the market price.

The trader said Damascus was selling small volumes of around 20-30 kilos which were easier to offload, with offers being made through private accounts set up with free email providers……

The World Gold Council estimates Syria had about 25.8 metric tonnes of gold as of February 2012, representing about 7.1 percent of its total reserves….The Syrian pound hit a record low on the black market in March of around 100 to the dollar, compared to 47 before the protests erupted, sharply raising the cost of imports…

At Wednesday’s spot prices, Syria’s total gold reserves are worth around $1.36 billion. …

“The most stunning, unsettling conclusion I drew from the leaders of the Free Syrian Army was that they have essentially got no help from anyone. They are literally running out of ammunition while Assad’s forces are being resupplied by Iran and Russia,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told The Cable in an interview.

Lieberman and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spent their Senate recess on the Turkish side of the Turkey-Syria border, meeting with Turkish officials, FSA leaders, and refugees.

“What they want us to do is to lead. They want us to lead the Friends of Syria, who have given them increasingly sympathetic rhetoric but not the wherewithal to defend themselves,” he said

The Syrian internal opposition is buying weapons and ammunition on the black market at exorbitant prices and claims that large parts of the Syrian military are demoralized but are unwilling to break with the government until they see the opposition has real international support.

“They are all waiting for the U.S. to say ‘We’re in this,'” Lieberman said.

There was at least one State Department official inside the McCain-Lieberman meeting with leaders of the FSA, Gen. Mustafa al-Sheikh and Col. Riad al-Asaad, two U.S. officials confirmed. The FSA leaders asked the United States to provide RPGs, anti-aircraft guns, and ammunition. The FSA leaders also said they have proof that the Assad regime is using helicopter gunships to attack civilians in the city of Idlib, as apparently shown in this YouTube video.

Turkish officials told McCain and Lieberman that they were willing to let weapons flow over their borders and consider other more aggressive steps to help the internal Syrian opposition, but that they won’t do so unless Washington leads the way…..

Obama administration searches for a ‘Plan B’ in Syria
Posted By Josh Rogin Wednesday, April 18, 2012 -Foreign Policy

The White House is unhappy with the options it’s been given on Syria and is searching for a new strategy for removing President Bashar al-Assad, The Cable has learned.

“There was a fundamental decision made at the highest level that we need a real Syria policy with more options for the president,” one administration official with knowledge of the internal deliberations said. “Our allies were coming back to us and saying ‘What’s your next move?,’ and we were forced to admit we didn’t have one.”

The new push includes adjustments in personnel handling the portfolio. Before March, National Security Council Director Steve Simon headed up the internal interagency process. Now, multiple officials confirm that NSC Senior Director for Strategy Derek Chollet has been added to the leadership of the Syria policy team and has been coordinating the interagency process for several weeks. Simon, Assistant Secretary of State Jeff Feltman, and State Dept. Special Advisor Fred Hof are still active on the Syria portfolio.

Chollet, the former deputy to Anne-Marie Slaughter at the State Department’s Policy Planning shop, has also been nominated to be the next assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, replacing Sandy Vershbow, who is now deputy secretary general of NATO. Chollet has taken on the day-to-day management of the interagency process while he awaits confirmation.

New options are now being considered internally, including another discussion of setting up buffer zones inside Syria, one administration official confirmed. The administration has also authorized direct contact with the internal Syrian opposition, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA), and at least one State Department official has met with the FSA’s nominal leaders in Turkey.

The rethink comes eight months after Obama explicitly demanded the Syrian leader’s removal, saying, “The time has come for President Assad to step aside.”

His administration is still struggling to come up with a way to make that call a reality…..

UN monitors flee Syrian protest after gunfire
By BEN HUBBARD,

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian security forces opened fire Wednesday on anti-regime demonstrators surrounding the cars of a U.N. team meant to monitor a shaky cease-fire, sending the observers speeding off and protesters dashing for cover, according to activists and amateur videos.

The fresh violence in a suburb of Damascus, the Syrian capital, provided the first public glimpse of the work of the small team struggling to reinforce the international community’s stumbling efforts to end 13 months of deadly conflict in Syria.

The shooting, which wounded at least eight people, could also complicate the deployment of a larger U.N. mission to help a cease-fire take hold between President Bashar Assad’s forces and opposition fighters.

The difficulties of the team’s mission was clear Wednesday during its visit to the suburb of Arbeen, just northeast of Damascus.

The team did not announce its plans to visit the area, but a local activist said residents guessed they were coming when tanks posted throughout the area withdrew early Wednesday.

People quickly drew up signs as well as a list of the 34 residents killed since the start of the uprising and information on the scores who have been detained, an Arbeen activist named Ahmed said via Skype. He declined to give his last name for fear of retribution.

Amateur videos posted online showed hundreds of demonstrators crowding around at least three U.N. Land Cruisers, waving Syrian flags and chanting against the regime. In one video, a man with a microphone and huge speakers on the back of a pickup truck led the crowd in singing “Bashar, Bashar, we will not kneel!”

A handwritten sign apparently taped by a demonstrator on one of the cars read, “The murderer keeps killing, the observers keep observing and the people keep up the revolution.”

In another video, the protesters were walking down a boulevard surrounding the cars when a boom rang out, sending demonstrators scattering. Smoke rose in front of the crowd and the cars sped off, sirens blaring. In yet another video, protesters sprinted down side streets while gunfire is heard nearby.

Ahmed, the local activist, said the group was marching toward a square where the government had posted plain clothes security offices called shabiha and government supporters holding a counter demonstration.

“We started walking with the observers thinking that they’d protect us, but then the shabiha started shooting at us, even when the observers’ cars were at the front of the march,” he said.

After the observers left, security cars drove through the area firing, injuring about 20 people, he said.

“Once the committee was gone, there was no one else to see what they were doing,” he said.

The team’s head, Col. Ahmed Himiche, declined to comment on the incident, saying the team would report only to the U.N.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said eight protesters were wounded in Arbeen.

The group, which relies on an activist network in Syria, also said government forces shelled opposition areas in the provinces of Homs in central Syria and Idlib in the north.

For its part, Syria’s state news agency said roadside bomb attacks in Idlib and Aleppo killed 10 security officers and one civilian. The incidents could not be independently verified. The Syrian government bars most media from working in the country…..

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Syrian opposition forces of provoking the government’s backlash in order to thwart the cease-fire. He urged nations that have leverage with the opposition to force it to abide by cease-fire….

“There must be a tough demand not to allow any provocations and respect the cease-fire,” Lavrov said….

Clinton Says Syria Measures to Be Discussed Tomorrow in Paris
2012-04-18 By Roxana Tiron

April 18 (Bloomberg) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she will attend a meeting in Paris tomorrow to dicuss with allies what further measures may be taken against the Syrian government and in support of the opposition movement. The “ad hoc group” meeting will be led by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, Clinton said, speaking to reporters today in Brussels.

Syria is at a “crucial turning point” at which the government either will abide by the UN-backed peace plan or face further sanctions, she said.

Foreign Policy

The ceasefire appears to have broken down, as levels of violence remain high in several regions in Syria. Up to 70 people have been killed by heavy shelling in the Jourat al-Shayah, Qarabis, Bayada, and Khaldiya districts of Homs, areas that have remained out of government control. According to the Local Coordination Committees, clashes continued in Deraa and Aleppo, as well as in the Idlib province where government troops were accompanied by tanks and helicopters. The Syrian government has said it is willing to comply with Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan. However, the regime has only agreed to a small United Nations’ observer mission of 250 monitors, and it refuses independent air support despite recommendations of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who said, “I think this is not enough, considering the current situation and considering the vastness of the country.” Meanwhile, the advance team of monitors has not yet been permitted to operate throughout the country as negotiations on a memorandum of understanding between the Syrian government and the U.N. team have stalled.

The leading voice of the opposition talks to PJ Media about the state of the conflict.: Syria’s Revolution: An Interview with Ammar Abdulhamid
by Barry Rubin, April 17, 2012

(Ammar Abdulhamid has been the most articulate and credible voice of the Syrian opposition and the movement to overthrow the current regime. Barry Rubin interviewed him to get a clearer view on what’s going on in Syria and on what the future prospects are for the bloody conflict.)

What should we know about the Syrian regime that we don’t already know?

That it is not reformable and that its key leaders can never be part of the solution.

What are the causes of the uprising?

Lack of developments when it comes to basic services and infrastructure along with increasing poverty, absence of any accountability on part of the leadership, the sense of impunity that corrupt officials on the local and national levels exhibit on a daily basis, the failure of President Bashar al-Assad to show himself as a true reformer, and his increasing involvement with the corrupt practices of his family and friends.

Can you describe for us the Syrian opposition, both within the country and outside?

We have two types of opposition: the traditional and the new. The traditional opposition is made of old parties and figures who have been around for decades, and the new one is made up of the activists who started and continue to lead the revolution.

The arrogance of the traditional opposition and their inability to provide effective representation and guidance to the revolutionaries created a problem of mistrust between the two, and does not augur well for the ability of such coalitions as the Syrian National Council (SNC) to provide effective leadership either now or during the transitional period. The new opposition is pragmatic, goal-oriented, and open to new possibilities as far as relations with the outside are concerned, or how the state should be administered in the future. The traditional remains ideological, dominated mostly by Leftist and Islamist elements, and unable to be proactive or to come up with actual strategies and programs for effective communication and representation.

So, the real dichotomy is between these two types of opposition groups, not between those inside the country and those outside.

You have often been critical about the organization and strategy of the leading opposition groups. Can you tell us more about your view, and also provide a description of the main opposition organizations?

Traditional opposition groups keep thinking along ideological lines, and they fail to listen to the protesters and their demands. They keep seeing leadership as a right rather than a responsibility. They keep confusing making policy with making pronouncements and confusing coming up with strategies with academic research. This is why they can never be effective leaders.

For this, the international community needs to conduct outreach efforts to identify leaders and forces on the ground. They need to work with existing traditional opposition in order to make them better at the task of communicating with grassroots protesters and enablers of the new emerging leadership. Many believe that the regime will never negotiate its way out of power, but it seems the same applies for traditional opposition figures and parties. They will never accept giving their positions to the new emerging figures; they seem incapable of coming to terms with the failure of their ideologies at inspiring this mass moment.

Many observers are concerned that the Syrian opposition might be dominated by Islamists who would institute an even worse government for Syria, at least in international terms. How would you respond to that view?

There are Islamists, that’s for sure. But Syria’s ethnic makeup is simply too diverse to allow for the kind of dominance we saw in Egypt or Tunisia. However, since winning elections is about organization and not just demographics, and since Islamists are better organized and funded, there is definitely a need for domestic and international players concerned about Islamist influence to begin preparing themselves with all seriousness for the transitional period ahead.

What is the strategy of the Assad regime in trying to survive?

Transforming the crisis into a sectarian conflict; play on minority fears about the Sunni Arab majority in order to bring these minorities to the side of the regime or at least to neutralize them. Use overwhelming force and foster the expansion of pro-Assad militias and death squads to terrorize and punish the population of restive communities. Play on the fears of Western powers toward Islamists by trying to cast the revolutionaries as Salafist. Rely on support from Iran, Hezbollah, the Maliki government in Iraq, and Russia to keep the international community at bay and incapable of adopting strong policies toward the situation….

Why should the world support the Syrian opposition’s struggle?

Besides the geopolitical gain of weakening Iran’s grip over the Middle East and containing its rise as a major source of instability there, there is the added humanitarian advantage of preventing a rapid balkanization of our troubled region. The Assads are driving the country and the region to the brink of implosion into warring ethnic enclaves. The world needs to stop them and to help the Syrians in their search for alternatives.

What do you think is likely to happen in Syria?

Irrespective of my wishes, the inability of the Obama administration to move quickly on this matter has allowed for the situation to turn into a proxy war involving all major regional players as well as Russia and China. This is going to be a longer-term struggle and the humanitarian cost will be too high. I will keep up my activities meant to support the local resistance and empower the more pragmatic and representative elements to emerge as the true leaders of Syria down the road, but this will not be an easy task.

We were let down by the leaders of the international community and the leaders of the traditional opposition, not to mention our intellectual elite, and it’s clear by now that we have no true friends. Still, we have no choice but to soldier on, as we transform from a protest movement into a more complex resistance and liberation movement.

(For more on Ammar Abdulhamid: he is a liberal Syrian pro-democracy activist whose anti-regime activities led to his exile in September 2005. He currently lives in the United States. He is the founder of the Tharwa Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to democracy promotion, and is a fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He writes Syrian Revolution Digest, a blog dedicated to following events and monitoring trends related to the Syrian Revolution.)

Any Given Friday
How a battle over a Facebook page became a war for the soul of the Syrian revolution.
BY AMAL HANANO | APRIL 18, 2012

….Last week, before the Facebook polling closed for the name of the April 13 protests — the day after the U.N. ceasefire deadline, the day in which solidarity was key — one name was in the lead: the Friday of the Armies of Islam. Yet another divisive (and completely off message) choice. This time, however, peaceful activists were ready to take action and fight back in a battle for the Friday name.

On Wednesday, April 11, media activists on Facebook and Twitter began a campaign to “rock the vote” for Friday’s name. They advocated the secular, inclusive choice, “A Revolution for all Syrians.” It was an intense campaign. Usually around 8,000 votes are cast each week, but last week there were more than 30,000. It was as much a battle between Islamic sentiment and secular inclusiveness as it was a struggle between those dedicated to solely an armed resistance, and those who still valued the power of nonviolent activism. ….
The gap between the two names slowly narrowed, and eventually the message of unity won by almost 2,000 votes. This small but significant victory unleashed palpable excitement among Syria’s online activists: There was a sense that they had been heard and gained control of the revolution’s message, at least for the moment. It was a needed boost of energy to a group of worn-out activists and, more importantly, it proved that a revolution within the revolution was not only possible but necessary.

ASSAD MUST BE FORCED TO ALLOW PEACEFUL ASSEMBLY
By Andrew J. Tabler
April 18, 2012

…Syrians are afraid to express their demands as part of the “Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, pluralist system” and have demonstrated in lesser numbers than expected over the past week. Even if a viable ceasefire can eventually be brokered, protests and other forms of civil resistance will be the key means to judge what the people want going forward….  severely limiting the people’s ability to use civil resistance to make Assad “step aside” — the stated goal of President Obama. The regime has had a far harder time dealing with civil resistance over the past year than armed resistance. Assad’s actions thus far indicate that he wants to use the Annan plan to grind down not only the armed opposition, but the overall protest movement as a whole….

WSJ RT Brussels: EU Goes Silent On Assad Departure
2012-04-18 By Laurence Norman

….Last August, to considerable fanfare, Washington and Brussels made a joint declaration on Syria. Enough was enough, they said. The rising death toll, continued repression and broken reform promises of President Bashar al-Assad …Officials note that Mr. Annan’s six-point plan is not just about stemming the violence. It also demands the Assad regime allows peaceful protests and accepts a Syrian-led political process to address what it calls “the aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people.”

The hope in Brussels is that once the violence has ebbed, Mr. Annan will unleash a political reform and democratization process whose momentum will sweep away Mr. Assad, like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh before him.

Syria must be held to the law of war
By Laurie R. Blank and Geoffrey S. Corn, Special to CNN
April 4, 2012

The Annan truce is shaky but neither the Arab League nor the West has a better Idea about what to do in Syria. They opposition militias in the Idlib region are fight among themselves. The growing violence has scared or repulsed many educated and middle-class Syrians, who had been hoping for greater help from outside powers.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the sanctions had depleted Syrian government financial reserves by half.  Egypt’s reserves have also been depleted by half, oddly enough. Juppe said the regime of President Bashar Assad was trying to maneuver around the sanctions and that “we must respond to these maneuvers.” Syrian reserves were reported at 18 billion before the revolt began. The sanctions have been unpopular with most Syrians because of the inflation, scarcity, and monetary collapse that has made the average Syrian much poorer than he was.

 The following article describes how the free Syrian Army militias in Idlib province have taken a beating by the Syrian army and in public opinion because many of them turned to kidnapping, robbery, and fighting among themselves.

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Addendum (7 hours later) : Thomas Pierret writes in an email

Dear Joshua, I’m writing to warn you against the article you put on your blog today, on Idlib militias fighting among themselves. I’ve read several articles of that kind over the last weeks, always on websites that are strongly pro-regime (Arabi Press is one of them). It might well be pure propaganda, and in any case I wouldn’t take these articles at face value. Best, Thomas

Addendum: Landis replies to Pierret.

Dear Thomas. Many thanks for this cautionary advice. You are absolutely correct to warn against taking pro-government news at face value. There is so much bad, half-truth, and false news coming out of Syria that it is very hard to know what to trust and how to report on it or summarize it. I have been erring on the side of linking to as much as I can, and try to publish contradictory reports next to each other when I can in order to underscore the confusion.  I must confess that this report seemed possible to me as I have reliable reports from friends and relatives who travel through the Idlib region being robbed. Two different co-workers of my brother-in-law stopped by gangs on the Aleppo-Idlib road. Both were Sunnis. They were beaten and robbed. None of them take the highway anymore or travel between the two cities because the roads are considered unsafe. Firas, my brother-in-law, who kept a small apartment in Aleppo and traveled there every week in order to oversee a small clothing factory had to find other work based in Latakia, give up his apartment, and stop traveling to Aleppo. The stories of highwaymen attaching people for money are legion. These stories are at the heart of the article I quote above. This was the reason I went with it and quoted from it. All the same, I do not have independent verification of the militias attacking each other, although I have heard many accounts of people who support the revolution during its firs – and largely peaceful phase – losing confidence in it for the reasons reported in this story and because they fear growing lawlessness the emergence of armed groups who are using revolutionary activities as cover for less savory activities. Of course, this is exactly what the government and security forces who have provoked this violence are hoping for in order to discredit the revolution. One does not want to play into their cynical plans, but equally one does not want to whitewash reality. You warning is important. Government papers have incentive to paint the opposition is criminals and must be read with caution and skepticism.

A FRIEND WRITES:

Recent developments in Aleppo Province. The so called FSA has abandoned its checkpoints in the northern countryside of Aleppo, but these checkpoints remain intact (not demolished). It is not clear yet whether the FSA has abandoned its checkpoints in compliance with Anan’s plan or because it cann’t confront regime’s superior air force and army or both.

Foreign Policy: Who Broke Syria?
Bashar al-Assad did. But the international community and the media made things worse.
BY JAMES HARKIN | APRIL 17, 2012, Foreign Policy

In December, the Syrian National Council seems to have made an orchestrated effort to turn Homs into a Syrian Benghazi…. The council spread stories in the international media, for example, suggesting that the Syrian Army had moved up reinforcements with which to strike the city, and that it had given the rebellious Homsies 72 hours to lay down their weapons or be killed. When I phoned a respected veteran activist in Homs, he told me that the charge simply wasn’t true. Things were bad enough, he said, without having to make up scary stories….

The United Nations bought it. Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said that “many voices are warning that a major assault” on Homs is about to begin, that a further military buildup had already begun. ……

If there was a strategy to internationalize the conflict, however, it failed. The United Nations could do nothing, but the promise that it might may have put ordinary activists and Free Syrian Army rebels in the city at even greater risk. Many were led to believe that help was coming, when it most definitely wasn’t….

….Nor is it lost on them that Qatar and Saudi Arabia are so democratically backward as to make the Syrian government look like a hippie commune. The SNC’s apparent decision to accept money from the Gulf States to pay salaries to Free Syrian Army guerrillas sounded breathtakingly arrogant, and makes for shockingly bad politics. Not only does lend credence to the conspiracy theories peddled by the government that the uprising is the handiwork of foreign agitators; it risks splitting the indigenous opposition movement and empowering exactly the kind of Sunni extremist groups who are most likely to stoke sectarian tensions.

Whatever the Syrian government now says, the influence of these extremist Sunni factions is currently marginal, even inside the Free Syrian Army. Most of the military defectors are simply conservative Sunnis from farming communities. But Syria is currently exhibiting a brand new irony of our post-war-on-terror era. The secular Syrian liberals and leftist groups that have most in common in Western values don’t want NATO intervention, while it’s exactly the kind of people who don’t much like us — the aging remains of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the newer, more radical Sunni salafists — who are begging for our help.

Who knows: If the unthinking drift toward creating neo-mujahideen in Syria and Iran (a strategy advocated by Foreign Policy’s own James Traub) continues, following a decade in which radical Sunnis became America’s Public Enemy No. 1, Osama bin Laden might have to be posthumously converted back into the freedom fighter America saw him as in the 1980s, marching into battle to drive out one of the last vestiges of godlessness in the Middle East.

Fox News: Syria regime’s finances cut in half by sanctions
2012-04-17

PARIS – France’s foreign minister says an array of international sanctions targeting Syria’s repressive regime have depleted its financial reserves by half — and Damascus is actively trying to evade them. Alain Juppe called Tuesday for a solid …

France24 (EN): Al-Assad’s ‘modest and sensitive’ cousin publishes romantic thriller
2012-04-16

Al-Assad’s ‘modest and sensitive’ cousin publishes romantic thriller By Tony Todd the 16/04/2012 – 18:30 While President Bashar al-Assad suppresses an uprising in Syria, his first cousin has written a romantic thriller warmly praised by Paris …

SYRIA’S 31 PERCENTERS: HOW BASHAR AL-ASAD BUILT MINORITY ALLIANCES AND COUNTERED MINORITY FOES
By Phillip Smyth April 15, 2012, MERIA

As the Syrian revolution against Bashar al-Asad’s rule enters its first year, Asad appears to have a good command over Syria’s large and fractious minority community. Three of the most prominent minority groups include the Christians, Druze, and Kurds. Asad’s control of these groups was not happenstance but the result of a number of hard- and soft-power moves executed by the regime. These calculations did not simply involve direct internal dealings with said minorities, but also outreach to their populations living in neighboring states and abroad. Due to the regime’s many policies, minority support may continue for some time.

Foreign Affairs: Alawites for Assad
2012-04-16

Since the start of the revolt in Syria, the country’s Alawites have been instrumental in maintaining President Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power. A sect of Shia …

The Alawites’ loyalty to Assad today is hardly assured, however. Despite popular notions of a rich, privileged Alawite class dominating Syria, the country’s current regime provides little tangible benefit to most Alawite citizens. Rural Alawites have struggled as a result of cuts in fuel subsidies and new laws restricting the sale of tobacco — their primary crop for centuries. Indeed, since the provision of basic services by the first Assad in the 1970s and 1980s, most Alawite villages — with the exception of Qardaha, the home of Assad’s tribe, the Kalbiyya — have developed little. Donkeys remain a common form of transport for many, and motor vehicles are scarce, with dilapidated minibuses offering the only way to commute to the cities for work.

Some Alawites are explicitly breaking ranks. Last September, for example, three prominent Alawite sheikhs, Mohib Nisafi, Yassin Hussein, and Mussa Mansour, issued a joint statement declaring their “innocence from these atrocities carried out by Bashar al-Assad and his aides, who belong to all religious sects.” According to Monzer Makhouz, an Alawite member of the Syrian National Council, a leading opposition group, Alawites are joining protests in the coastal cities of the Alawite territory. And in recent weeks, evidence has emerged of defections of Alawite soldiers and intelligence officers, seemingly from less privileged Alawite tribes, who have described themselves as “Free Alawites” and called for other Alawites to join them. …

Two Car bombs exploded in Aleppo on Tuesday killing 5 and wounding 16.

Salon: Syrian rebels’ man in D.C.
2012-04-17

Radwan Ziadeh fled Syria with his wife via the Jordanian border in October 2007. He had come to Washington many times before that, for conferences dealing with his work on Syrian politics. But upon returning to his homeland after one Washington …

ASSAD CONTINUES ATTACKS ON THE OPPOSITION
By Jeffrey White – WINEP
April 17, 2012

Data from one of the key Syrian opposition groups, the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), shows a persistent pattern of violent, armed regime actions against the people despite the ceasefire that supposedly went into force last week:

The regime has effectively continued its struggle against the armed and unarmed opposition, even using heavy weapons at times, though less frequently than before. Around twenty people are dying each day since the beginning of the ceasefire.

From Friday through mid-Sunday, the LCC reported some sixty-eight violent regime actions across the country. All major centers of opposition were targeted: Aleppo, Deraa, Homs, the Damascus countryside, Idlib, Deir al-Zour, and Hama. Regime tactics included shelling of cities with heavy weapons (artillery, tanks, and BMP armored vehicles), shooting at demonstrators and other individuals, raids with armored vehicles on opposition towns and neighborhoods, breaking up demonstrations with gunfire, physical assaults on demonstrators, and arrests.

The widespread use of violent tactics will be a challenge for the UN monitoring mission, even if it reaches its projected strength of 250. The regime’s actions also suggest that it has no intention of negotiating anything but the opposition’s surrender.

A FRIEND WRITES:

Recent developments in Aleppo Province. The so called FSA has abandoned its checkpoints in the northern countryside of Aleppo, but these checkpoints remain intact (not demolished). It is not clear yet whether the FSA has abandoned its checkpoints in compliance with Anan’s plan or because it cann’t confront regime’s superior air force and army or both.

COULD THE GULF STATES INTERVENE IN SYRIA?
By Michael Knights – winep

If the Gulf states decide to aid the Syrian armed opposition, they have considerable equipment and expertise they could bring to bear.
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The participation of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the Libyan conflict demonstrated the Gulf Cooperation Council’s activism and capability. In recent months, therefore, speculation has focused on possible GCC intervention in the Syrian civil war. On February 27, Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani told the Friends of Syria conference in Tunis that “we should do whatever is necessary to help [Syrian oppositionists], including giving them weapons to defend themselves.” On March 31, Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal echoed this statement: “The arming of the [Syrian] opposition is a duty.” What capabilities, then, would the Gulf states bring in terms of support to armed proxies? And what would be the risks related to their intervention?

BACKGROUND
External security assistance to states and substate groups can be divided into two broad categories: foreign internal defense (FID) and unconventional warfare. FID support comprises security assistance provided to a government for the purpose of overcoming insurgent or terrorist groups, while unconventional warfare refers to support provided by external actors to the insurgents. In either case, foreign support may include provision of training, equipment, or operations, in some cases via direct involvement of foreign combat forces.
GCC states have a significant track record in FID and are quickly gaining experience in unconventional warfare missions. Both FID and unconventional warfare accentuate funding, technology, airpower, and special forces — attributes possessed by the Gulf Arab monarchies. Likewise, factors that have traditionally hindered GCC military effectiveness — limited manpower, inability to field large numbers of high-quality units — are deemphasized. The partial deniability afforded by the use of militant proxies is also attractive to the cautious Gulf monarchies.

PRECEDENTS FOR SYRIA INTERVENTION
Saudi Arabia offers a significant pedigree in terms of unconventional warfare campaigns: ..

Why Turks don’t smile

A Turkish friend of mine who has lived in the United States for many years once told me an amusing experience of hers. After more than a decade in the land of freedom, she came back to Istanbul for a few weeks. While strolling the streets, she inadvertently smiled at people with whom she came face to face. In return, though, she did not get the polite response that she was used to. Instead, the women she smiled at looked surprised, and worse, the men she smiled at looked aroused.

“I realized that those men took my smile as a sexual hint,” my friend told me. “One of them even began to follow me in a very excited mood!”

Soon, my friend wisely adapted to the Turkish manners: In this country, you don’t smile at strangers. You simply look the other way, and, if you come eye to eye, you try to look tough.

For a while, and as a sociologist-wannabe, I have been wondering why this is the case. Gradually, I have become convinced that this no-smile attitude tells us a lot about the nature of Turkish society: As surveys also prove, this is one of the places on earth in which people trust each other the least. Hence, they can easily see other members of society as potential threats or even enemies.
But why? Are Turks inherently rude, antisocial or nasty people?

Not really. Quite the contrary, Turks are famous for their hospitality and generosity, and they are also known to be very loyal to their friends.

But there is a catch here: Turks are very good to people that they know well, such as their family and kin. Yet, for the people with whom they are less familiar, their attitude dramatically changes. In other words, if they see a familiar face on the street, they go out of their way to show affection. For unfamiliar faces, however, they have nothing but suspicion.

This social reality of Turkey seems to tell us a lot about the nature of its politics as well: Here, every political camp is filled with contempt and paranoia for the other camps. (In the 1970s, this led the country to near civil war; …..

Burhan Ghalioun’s email hacked. Published by al-akhbar. No real surprises

http://www.al-akhbar.com/node/62452

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http://www.al-akhbar.com/node/62449
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http://www.al-akhbar.com/node/62450

Fred Hof email … Saud Alfaisal …

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