As Syria approaches the seven month anniversary of its conflict, the following is becoming clear:<\/p>\n
1-\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The Syrian military and internal security apparatus is a cohesive group that seems unlikely to disintegrate anytime soon. There is no doubt that some desertions have taken place.\u00a0 But these have been too sporadic to make a noticeable rupture in the army\u2019s control over the Syrian territory.<\/p>\n
2-\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0The defining moment in the past seven months came on the eve of Ramadan.\u00a0 Hama was steadily moving away from central control.\u00a0 The sensitivities of moving the army into Hama on that day were not lost to Damascus. In the end, the risk of waiting was deemed too high. Leaving Hama the way it was for the whole month of Ramadan would have made any attempt to retake the city that much harder to accomplish thereafter.\u00a0 No one in the Syrian leadership wanted to have another Benghazi in Syria. This is why the tanks moved into Daraa earlier and Rastan just recently.\u00a0 Damascus will not allow any territory to fall outside of its control.<\/p>\n
3-\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0Armed with a strong and cohesive army that has been able to exert full territorial control over the whole country, the opposition must by now be aware that defeating this regime militarily is unlikely to happen without foreign help.\u00a0 Syria is not Tunisia or Egypt. The popular uprising that was going to sweep away the Syrian regime was an attractive option in theory. Members of the Syrian opposition saw it as the way forward. In practice, however, it is yet to yield any discernible result.<\/p>\n
4-\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0This leaves foreign help.\u00a0 Presumably, this\u00a0 can mean one of three things:<\/p>\n
The latter option is precisely why the Syrian leadership has made sure that no territory falls outside its control.\u00a0 Such an area would simply act as a base and an address for foreign arm shipments and would constitute a Syrian Bhangazi.\u00a0 Any foreign shipments that have come in so far seem to have been sporadic and light enough not to pose any legitimate strategic risk to the country\u2019s armed forces. Indeed, the Syrian army and security forces are so superior in numbers and firepower that it seems almost impossible for this strategy to ultimately work.\u00a0 The opposition is unlikely to defeat the army regardless of how many arms it can unilaterally source from outside.<\/p>\n
In an exclusive report entitled \u2013 War only option to topple Syrian leader<\/a>, Colonel Riad al-As\u2019aad seems to call for the international community to provide army rebels with weapons and enforce a no-fly zone. He concludes by saying:<\/p>\n “If they don’t give it to us, we will fight with our nails until the regime is toppled. I tell Bashar al-Assad, the people are stronger than you.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact is that the Colonel realizes that arming the rebels from outside needs both a Syrian address (Rastan or jabal al zawye) AND a No-Fly zone.<\/p>\n But what is a No-Fly zone?\u00a0 The concept seems a little confusing in the sense that the Syrian air force has not exactly been busy fighting the insurgents with chemical weapons (Iraq) or the like.\u00a0 One can think of this concept as the prelude or the poor cousin of the first option which involves sending foreign boots on the ground.\u00a0 The No-Fly zone, should it happen, would presumably involve NATO targeting and degrading Syria\u2019s extensive surface to air anti aircraft missiles.<\/p>\n Saddam survived everything that was thrown at him, including a No-Fly zone, for years till the foreign boots showed up.\u00a0 Once the latter happened, his regime simply crumbled in days.\u00a0 While the initial western success was intoxicating, what came after was enough to convince even the most hawkish elements in Washington that a repeat of that experiment in Syria now would be incomprehensible.\u00a0 The country does not have the financial, political or military stomach for this adventure at the moment.<\/p>\n The newly formed Syrian National Council faces a dilemma when it comes to foreign intervention.\u00a0 Quite simply, the opposition knows that it is nearly impossible to topple this regime without foreign help. Yet, they also know that inviting foreign military intervention into Syria is political suicide. What you get as a result is a muddled policy response and half-pregnant answers.<\/p>\n To be sure, no foreign intervention has been the consistent party line.\u00a0 During the latest interview with Aljazeera, Mr. Ghalyoun called for \u201cinternational observers to help protect civilians\u201d. While that does not sound like direct foreign military intervention, it surely is a prelude to one.\u00a0 What would happen if a team of international observers (UNIFIL?) were shot at or killed? Would the international community have to send real armed forced to protect the observers next?<\/p>\n The Syrian National Council is likely to keep dancing around this issue and avoid commenting on the subject directly. This is because they are in a catch-22 situation.\u00a0 As this conflict carries forward, the time will come when the SNC will have to face that fork in the road and convincingly describe how it intends to bring the slogan of \u201dIsqat al Nizam\u201d into reality on the ground.<\/p>\n [end of commentary]<\/p>\n Kurdish opponent of Assad shot dead<\/a> – Financial Times<\/p>\n Though the exact circumstances surrounding Mr Tammo\u2019s death are unknown, suspicion immediately fell on the regime, and could widen the opposition to Mr Assad\u2019s rule. Protests were said to have broken out in Kurdish areas on Friday night.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re very, very angry,\u201d said Massoud Akko, a Kurdish human rights activist and journalist living in Norway. \u201cHe was a very good man, very clever, respected by all Syrian people, not just the Kurdish.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Tammo was spokesman for one of the Syrian Kurds\u2019 14 illegal political parties, and was in prison until earlier this year. He was also a member of the recently formed Syrian National Council, the umbrella group of the opposition.<\/p>\n Although there have been anti-regime protests in the Kurdish areas, many expected the community to mobilise more fully than it has so far, given that Syria\u2019s Kurdish minority, which forms nearly 10 per cent of the population, is the only group with a history of serious, organised opposition to the Assad government.<\/p>\n The regime has sought to co-opt the Kurds since protests began by offering citizenship to approximately 300,000 who were left stateless by a 1962 census, and there have been rumours that Kurdish politicians are in dialogue with the regime, but these cannot be confirmed. Mr Tammo was reported to have spoken out against some Kurdish politicians, saying they had \u201ccontributed to the weakness of the Kurdish opposition\u201d.<\/p>\n According to Mr Akko, the death of Mr Tammo could be a turning point for the Kurdish community\u2019s participation in the uprising.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the death doesn\u2019t take them to the streets, I will be sure there is negotiation between the regime and other Kurdish parties,\u201d said Mr Akko.<\/p>\n Riad Seif, another leading opposition figure, was beaten by gunmen outside a mosque in the Damascus suburb of Midan on Friday, according to opposition activists, and was rushed to hospital.<\/p>\n The US state department described Mr Tammo\u2019s death, together with the beating of Mr Seif as \u201ca clear escalation of regime tactics\u201d.<\/p>\n The UN said earlier this week that 2,900 people had been killed in the regime\u2019s response to protests, which broke out in March. UN experts said on Friday that 187 of those killed were children.<\/p>\n