The last option for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, who is determined not to back down after 21 months of deadly conflict, is to battle to the end from a fortified Alawite statelet, analysts believe.

Driven from large swaths of territory in the north and east by rebels, the army is now focused on maintaining its grip on the key axis stretching from Damascus to the central province of Homs and on to the coastal Alawite heartland.

The embattled Assad will “cling to power until the end, even if it means more massacres,” said Middle East analyst Agnes Levallois of the prolonged crackdown and fighting that the United Nations says has left more than 60,000 dead.

“The longer he hangs on the more assured he becomes of his ability to stay in power… not through retaking the whole country but by holding onto Damascus, the key junction of Homs province and the route to the Alawite mountains,” she said.

According to Andrew Tabler, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy: “Bashar’s options are to stay put in Damascus and try to retake areas lost… or perhaps a reconstituted Alawite-dominated area on the Syrian coast.”

“The regime will be forced out of the north and east soon, although it seems at a terrible price… with more artillery and missiles and the threat of chemical weapons,” Tabler said.

The regime has since mid-2012 claimed to be launching its final crackdown on rebels in the Damascus suburbs.

Levallois said Assad “still has the ability to control Damascus for months before considering the option of the Alawite region,” a coastal stronghold of his co-religionists from the offshoot branch of Shiite Islam.

It is an open secret, Syrians and analysts told AFP, that the army had arsenals throughout the Alawite mountains between the coastal cities of Latakia and Tartus, long before the outbreak of the uprising in mid-March 2011.

These arms depots have not yet been used by the some 120,000 troops still loyal to Damascus, analysts say.

With these strengths, “Assad is not considering dialogue because he feels - wrongly of course - that he can win and that he still has the resources to reject negotiations on his departure,” Levallois said.

She believes Assad is squandering his chances to leave on his own terms.

“He could have capitalized on [international envoy] Lakhdar Brahimi’s visit to Damascus and the openings by the Russians to explore the possibility for dialogue. Instead, he resorted to even greater violence,” she said.

“If Assad refuses the Brahimi initiative it means he is really living in a total bubble, cut off from the world with zero sense of reality, or thinks that forces on the ground can still ensure his survival,” Levallois said.

On the heels of a flurry of diplomacy, including trips to key Damascus ally Moscow, UN and Arab League envoy Brahimi announced a proposal to end the conflict in Syria through a ceasefire, the formation of a new government and elections.

But the plan did not specify the fate of Assad, whose departure is a given for the Syrian opposition before any national dialogue can take place.

Peter Harling, a Syria specialist at the International Crisis Group, said the Assad regime has stuck to the same logic since the crisis began.

“He believes he is defending himself, and by extension Syria, against an aggression that leaves him no other option,” Harling said.

It follows that the violence is not Assad’s fault but the product of a conspiracy, for which there is a solution.

“That solution will not come from him, but from his enemies, who will at some point realize that the price of change is too high and abandon their undertaking.”

The regime, which maintains a cohesive core and military power, can “continue to raise the stakes as it has done for nearly two years in the hope that someone will offer a solution that takes their interests into account,” Harling said.

The recent UN announcement that 60,000 people have been killed so far will do little to deter Assad.

“He is relying on the logic of a scorched-earth policy, even if it means 300,000 people are killed,” Levallois said.

01/05/2012

Rebels began to push into a strategic town in Syria’s central Hama province on Thursday and laid siege to at least one town dominated by President Bashar al-Assad’s minority sect, activists said.

The operation risks inflaming already raw sectarian tensions as the 21-month-old revolt against four decades of Assad family rule - during which the president’s Alawite sect has dominated leadership of the Sunni Muslim majority - rumbles on.

Opposition sources said rebels had won some territory in the strategic southern town of Morek and were surrounding the Alawite town of al-Tleisia.

They were also planning to take the town of Maan, arguing that the army was present there and in al-Tleisia and was hindering their advance on nearby Morek, a town on the highway that runs from Damascus north to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and another battleground in the conflict.

“The rockets are being fired from there, they are being fired from Maan and al-Tleisia, we have taken two checkpoints in the southern town of Morek. If we want to control it then we need to take Maan,” said a rebel captain in Hama rural area, who asked not to be named.

Activists said heavy army shelling had targeted the town of Halfaya, captured by rebels two days earlier. Seven people were killed, 30 were wounded, and dozens of homes were destroyed, said activist Safi al-Hamawi.

Hama is home to dozens of Alawite and Christian villages among Sunni towns, and activists said it may be necessary to lay siege to many minority areas to seize Morek. Rebels want to capture Morek to cut off army supply lines into northern Idlib, a province on the northern border with Turkey where rebels hold swathes of territory.

From an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, Alawites have largely stood behind Assad, many out of fear of revenge attacks. Christians and some other minorities have claimed neutrality, with a few joining the rebels and a more sizeable portion of them supporting the government out of fear of hardline Islamism that has taken root in some rebel groups.

Activists in Hama said rebels were also surrounding the Christian town of al-Suqeilabiya and might enter the city to take out army positions as well as those of “shabbiha” - pro-Assad militias, the bulk of whom are usually Alawite but can also include Christians and even Sunnis.

“We have been in touch with Christian opposition activists in al-Suqeilabiya and we have told them to stay downstairs or on the lowest floor of their building as possible, and not to go outside. The rebels have promised not to hurt anyone who stays at home,” said activist Mousab al-Hamdee, speaking by Skype.

He said he was optimistic that potential sectarian tensions with Christians could be resolved but that Sunni-Alawite strife may be harder to suppress.

12/21/2012

08/12/12

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
Amman

(Reuters) - Syrian rebel groups have chosen a former officer to head a new Islamist-dominated command, in a Western-backed effort to put the opposition’s house in order as President Bashar al-Assad’s army takes hits that could usher his downfall.

In Turkey, a newly formed joint command of Syrian rebel groups has chosen Brigadier Selim Idris, one of hundreds of officers who have defected from Assad’s army, as its head, opposition sources said on Saturday.

Idris, whose home province of Homs has been at the forefront of the Sunni Muslim-led uprising, was elected by 30 military and civilian members of the joint military command after talks attended by Western and Arab security officials in the Turkish city of Antalya.

The unified command includes many with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Salafists, who follow a puritanical interpretation of Islam. It excludes the most senior officers who have defected from Assad’s military.

On the Damascus battlefront, Assad’s forces used multiple rocket launchers on Saturday against several suburbs that have fallen to rebels who have fought their way to the edge of the city’s international airport, where foreign carriers have suspended all flights.

Rebels, who have overrun several army bases near Damascus over the last month, appeared to be holding their ground, encircling a main military base in the northeastern suburb of Harasta, known as “idarat al markabat”, near the main highway to Aleppo, according to opposition campaigners.

“The fighters made slight progress today. They captured a weapons depot and got to a tank repair facility in the base, but all 20 tanks inside were inoperational,” said Abu Ghazi, a rebel who was speaking from the area.

“The weather cleared and MiG fighters hit rebel positions around the base. Rocket launchers did not stop for the last three days. The site is crucial for the regime,” he added.

BOMBARDMENT NEAR AIRPORT

Heavy army bombardment was also reported on the town of Harran al-Awamid near the airport, which is 20 kilometers southeast of Damascus, and on the suburb of Hajar al-Aswad, at the southern entrance of the capital, which has been at the forefront of the Sunni-led revolt against Assad.

Western officials have begun speaking about faster change on the ground in a conflict that is becoming increasingly sectarian and deepening the Shi’ite-Sunni fault lines in the Middle East, a hallmark of politics in the region since the 1979 Iranian revolution.

Like his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad who ruthlessly put down an Islamist challenge, the younger Assad is portraying himself as the only hope for survival of the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has dominated power in majority Sunni Syria since the 1960s.

Moscow, Assad’s strongest foreign backer, and Washington, which says it supplies only “non-lethal” aid to the rebels, sounded downbeat about the prospects of a diplomatic push to end the conflict after talks this week.

The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency said Assad’s government is its final stages and will be unable to survive as more parts of the country slip from his control.

“Armed rebels are coordinating better, which is making their fight against Assad more effective,” Gerhard Schindler told the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung newspaper, in an interview made public on Saturday.

“Assad’s regime will not survive. “Evidence is mounting that the regime in Damascus is now in its final phase,” Schindler said

Setbacks for the Alawite-led military, whose core units are stationed in Damascus and on hill tops surrounding the capital, have raised Western concerns that the ruling elite may use chemical weapons to turn the tide of the war.

In a letter to the United Nations Security Council published by official state media, the Syrian foreign ministry said “Syria will not use chemical weapons under any circumstances”.

“We are seriously afraid that some countries that support terrorism would supply chemical weapons to the terrorist armed groups and claim that the Syrian government is the one that is using them,” the letter said.

(Reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Amman newsroom; Editing by Stephen Powell)

11/10/12

Claimed footage of the first Alawite woman to defect from the #Syrian army, Colonel Zubaida al-Miqi:

Al-Miqi says, according to The Guardian, “My people, my sect: the ongoing conflict in Syria now is a conflict between the oppressor and the oppressed and that means the conflict was never between religious sects and minorities but the regime is turning it to a sectarian conflict to contain the revolution and destroy it.”

Syria. An opposition conference due to take place in Qatar has been postponed until November, at the urging of western governments, to encourage wider representation.

The conference is being presented as “major makeover”, with new political and civil society groups, from inside and outside Syria, joining the Syrian National Council.

07/10/12

#Syria, Alawite villages are under #FSA control in #Latakia mountains

01/10/12

By Caroline Akoum

Beirut, Asharq Al-Awsat- The Syrian military is forming a new elite force of made up of 60,000 fighters, according to a report from the “tar-Tass news agency. The agency cited an expert at the London-based International Strategic Research Institute as saying that “western intelligence has obtained information that the armed security regiments (the shabbihah) that are made up of the Alawite community would be integrated in a division similar to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”

The expert pointed out that the preparation and training of this elite division is being done by Iranian experts in Syria who number around 2,000 and added, “We are expecting the number of government forces to double in the coming months which portends a prolongation of the conflict in Syria and provides Al-Assad’s regime with new prospects.” According to British analysts’ conclusions, this division that is being set up will when necessary provide protection for the Alawite areas on the Mediterranean coast.

Commenting on this information, the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) deputy chief of staff, Colonel Arif al-Hamud, told Asharq Al-Awsat that the regime resorted from the beginning of the revolution to forming divisions it called “popular committees” in the Alawite areas that are made up of the community’s members. It armed and subjected them to military crash courses by Syrian intelligence services.

“But the regime is today resorting to turning these popular committees into military regiments that are sent to the hot areas and the best evidence is what happened in Darat Izzah in Aleppo countryside when the FSA succeeded in killing around 40 shabbihah elements from one village, Wadi al-Uyun,” Al-Hamud told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“We have confirmed testimonies by officers working in military intelligence and special forces who defected recently confirming that Iranian experts and from the Lebanese Hezbollah have started to run courses for trainees from the special forces and military intelligence, the majority of them Alawites in addition to some Sunni officers. These started in February and are continuing to this day with the course running between three and four weeks in (Al-Durayj) area that is near Damascus which was before then a training center for the Special Forces before the storm troopers and paratroopers’ school was built.” Al-Hamud added.

The FSA’s deputy chief of staff asserted that these officers who have defected had also taken these courses which focused on sniper and individual killing by forming small units capable of carrying out lightning and quick operations.

Al-Hamud went on to say that these divisions being professionally trained might form the nucleus of a special army that the regime is establishing for the purpose of suppressing the revolution, confronting the FSA and protecting the Alawite state, adding that a large quantity of military equipment and heavy weapons were recently transferred to the Alawite areas.

15/09/12

By Asma Alsharif and Amena Bakr
JEDDAH/DUBAI

(Reuters) - Loath to foster a new generation of militant Islamists, Saudi Arabia is trying to stop its citizens from joining what some of them see as a holy war against the Syrian government.

The Saudi public has grown incensed at the bloody images continuously broadcast of Syria’s violence alongside reports of government forces massacring civilians, and $140 million was raised for Syrian refugees in the first two weeks of a government-organized campaign in August.

Riyadh has backed the rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad, publicly calling on the international community to “enable” Syrians to protect themselves, while sources in the Gulf, Syria and Turkey have said it is secretly funneling money and arms to the Free Syrian Army.

But mindful of the blowback it previously suffered after Saudi nationals returned home from foreign conflicts politically fired up and ready to wage war on their own government, Riyadh has moved to prevent volunteers from going to fight in Syria.

Islamists in Saudi Arabia, who follow a puritanical version of Sunni Islam, denounce Assad and his regime as infidels because of their roots in the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

But in June, Ali al-Hakimi, a member of the Senior Judicial Council, a government-appointed religious body, said in response to calls for jihad on online forums that this was forbidden unless permitted by the authorities. He added, “Some individual actions can place the state in an awkward position”.

Another cleric, Siraj al-Zahrani, was quoted in Okaz daily last week expressing regrets he had participated in jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s and warning “families must watch over sons who can be lured into the hot spots in this world”.

“It’s illegal to go abroad and get involved in any … military actions or fighting. This is known to all Saudis and many people have been prosecuted,” said Mansour Turki, the Interior Ministry security spokesman.

“If we have evidence that somebody is leaving Saudi Arabia for the purpose of joining militants he will be stopped and investigated for that,” he said, adding that the authorities had no evidence that Saudis had traveled to Syria so far.

“If you allow these things to go on, you are effectively militarizing society. And if you allow your people to get involved in these things and the so-called jihad, other people use it against you,” said Saudi analyst Khalid al-Dakhil.

Some Saudis already appear to be fighting in Syria alongside anti-government rebels, but in seemingly much smaller numbers than during Iraq’s civil war last decade, analysts say.

In an online film called “A message from a Saudi fighter with his Syrian brothers”, a young Saudi hunched against a wall clutching a rifle alongside rebels wearing bulletproof vests and carrying bazookas.

“I ask God to unite us in heaven and say to my brothers in the Arabian peninsula to fight in the name of God as your brothers in the Levant need fighters of strong faith and chivalry,” he said in a Saudi accent.

The video, posted on August 16, has been watched more than 121,000 times, according to YouTube, hinting at the allure of jihad in a war constantly broadcast on both private and state-run Arabic satellite channels.

BLOWBACK

A Gulf source familiar with military movements in the region said thousands of Saudis had sought to head to Syria to join the uprising against Assad, although there is little evidence that many of them have succeeded.

“Saudi fighters went into Syria to fight with the rebels … These fighters are from the people and not official fighters,” the source said, adding they were entering Syria via Turkey and Jordan and that some had been captured.

Those who have gone, caught up in the spirit of adventure and religious zeal, are following a well-trodden path.

Saudi Arabia is Islam’s birthplace and the ultra-conservative clerics who controlled the education system in the 1980s and 1990s preached a message of intolerance towards other religious groups and what they saw as heretical Muslim sects, a message they have since reformed.

Saudi-born Osama bin Laden led a battalion of Arab volunteers fighting as mujahidin against the Soviet forces occupying Afghanistan in the 1980s, while others joined local Muslim forces in civil wars in the 1990s in Bosnia and Chechnya.

“If you’re Saudi it’s less logistically difficult than for other Arabs. You can buy a ticket to Beirut or Istanbul and make your way. And there is a feeling in Saudi Islamist circles you have to go and fight for Islamic causes,” said Stephane Lacroix, the author of Awakening Islam, a book about Saudi Islamism.

At first, bin Laden and the other fighters were lionized in the Saudi press, welcomed effusively by top royals and praised by the kingdom’s powerful clergy.

But even before he dispatched 15 young Saudis and four other Arabs to carry out the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, bin Laden had turned against the ruling al-Saud family, mainly because of its cozy relationship with the West.

“They don’t want to repeat the same mistake they made in Afghanistan. Young men went there and learned to fight with many groups of jihadists. Some of those groups accused Islamic countries of being infidels and the young people were influenced by that and went back to their countries and caused problems,” a Saudi who fought in Afghanistan said.

The effect of September 11 and a series of attacks by al Qaeda inside Saudi Arabia from 2003 to 2006 heightened the government’s alarm just as a new generation crossed the permeable border with Iraq to fight against Shi’ite Muslim militias and occupying Western forces.

The result was a crackdown on militants that included those who had fought in Iraq, and a fatwa from the Grand Mufti against travelling abroad to wage jihad.

In the years since, some of the thousands of suspected militants arrested by the Interior Ministry who have been tried in a special criminal court were accused of travelling to Iraq to fight alongside al Qaeda.

JIHAD

While state-affiliated clerics have spoken out against fighting abroad, they have also used strong language to denounce the Assad government and urge support for Syrians.

Sheikh Abdullah al-Mutlaq, a member of the Senior Council of Ulama, said that those in charge of carrying out the fighting and jihad in Syria are the Free Syrian Army, “who must be supported”.

The talk in Saudi Internet chatrooms does not focus on such distinctions.

“Abdullah, call for jihad against this Syrian tyrant and his aides and you will find, God willing, strong men who have faith in God to lift the banner of Islam. Enough weakness,” one user said on a forum on news site al-Weeam, without giving his name.

A Saudi who fought in Afghanistan said Saudis were going to Syria but under the radar of the state. “The youth of jihad don’t listen to the Council of Senior Clerics,” he said.

The approbation of society at large was a different matter, however.

“For me personally, if it were not for my family and current circumstances, I would have gone. The banner is clear for jihad. These are Alawites, hostile toward the Sunnis and Islam,” he added. “The numbers (of Saudi jihadists) will be a lot less than the past. In the past the fighter goes and his family is proud of him, now instead they worry about the issue.”

(Additional reporting and writing by Andrew Hammond and Angus McDowall; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

05/09/12

The Free Syrian Army plans to reform to overcome divisions and address the growing number of militias fighting on its behalf, as well as to rename itself, a rebel general said on Wednesday.

Following discussions due to end in around 10 days, the FSA would go by the name of the Syrian National Army, General Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the military council grouping rebel chiefs, told AFP.

The FSA, which has grown from a rag-tag force of military defectors into a popular guerrilla insurgent movement buoyed by civilian recruits, was also set to appoint General Mohammed Hussein Hajj Ali as its highest-ranking officer.

“After a long period, we must restructure the army because we fear the proliferation of militias in Syria and want to preserve the country’s future,” said the brigadier general, who was among the first to defect to the FSA.

Among those areas that needed restructuring was the control of funds that reach rebel fighters, in order to “prevent the creation of militias because that is very dangerous,” said Sheikh.

While rebel groups are gathered under the auspices of the FSA, the structure of the rebel army remains vague and lacks a strong and cohesive central command.

“There are many groups that claim to be the FSA but do as they please,” said the general.

He said reforms were key to winning the support of the international community which has so far been reluctant to arm the rebels “on the grounds that the [FSA] is not a real institution.”

The rebel army has thousands of fighters, among them about 3,000 officers of various ranks, including 70 generals, according to Sheikh.

Unifying the FSA ranks would prevent Sunni majority countries from “sinking into a civil and confessional war after the fall of the regime” of President Bashar al-Assad, who hails from the Alawite offshoot of Shiite Islam.

-AFP

25/08/12

(Reuters) - Syrian opposition activists accused President Bashar al-Assad’s forces on Sunday of committing a massacre of scores of people in a town close to the capital that the army had just retaken from rebels.

More than 200 bodies were found in houses and basements around Daraya, a working-class Sunni Muslim town to the southwest of Damascus, according to activists who said most had been killed “execution-style” by troops on house-to-house raids.

Due to restrictions on non-state media in Syria, it was impossible to independently verify the accounts.

“Assad’s army has committed a massacre in Daraya,” said Abu Kinan, an activist in Daraya, using an alias to protect himself from reprisals.

“In the last hour, 122 bodies were discovered and it appears that two dozen died from sniper fire and the rest were summarily executed by gunshots from close range,” Kinan told Reuters by telephone.

Video footage from activists showed numerous bodies of young men side-by-side at the Abu Suleiman al-Darani mosque in Daraya, many with what looked like gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

“A massacre,” said the voice of the man who appeared to be taking the footage. “You are seeing the revenge of Assad’s forces … more than 150 bodies on the floor of this mosque.”

The southern fringe of Damascus is a frontline in what has snowballed over the last 17 months from anti-Assad protests into a sectarian civil war.

Tanks deployed on the Damascus ring-road shelled the southern neighbourhoods of al-Lawwan and Nahr Aisheh late into Saturday night, local residents said.

BOMBARDMENT

The army overran Daraya, one of a series of large, mostly rundown Sunni Muslim towns that surround Damascus, on Saturday after three days of heavy bombardment that killed 70 people, according to opposition sources and residents. They said most of the dead were civilians.

The Daraya Coordination Committee activists’ group said in a statement that among those found with shots to the head were eight members of the al-Qassaa family: three children, their father and mother and three other relatives.

U.N. investigators said in a report this month that both sides in the conflict had performed summary executions - a war crime - but that Assad’s troops and militia loyal to the president had committed many more offences than the rebels.

The report said government forces and militiamen loyal to Assad committed a massacre of more than 100 civilians in the town of Houla in May that the government blamed on Islamist “terrorists”.

The United Nations estimates that more than 18,000 people have been killed in the conflict that pits a mainly Sunni opposition against a ruling system dominated by the Assad’s family for the last five decades.

Assad is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam and the sectarian nature of the conflict has already had an impact on neighbouring countries.

A Lebanese man who was abducted with a group of 10 other Lebanese Shi’ite pilgrims in Syria in May, triggering tit-for-tat kidnappings of Syrian activists in Lebanon, arrived home on Saturday, hours after Syrian rebels released him as a “goodwill gesture”.

With Russia leading resistance to Western and Arab pressure for action against Assad, the United Nations Security Council remains deadlocked.

A new U.N. envoy, Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, has said he is “humbled and scared” at the task of seeking a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis.

(Writing by Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Ralph Gowling)

At least 33 people were wounded in running clashes between pro- and anti-Damascus regime supporters in Lebanon’s second largest city of Tripoli, security and army officials said on Tuesday.

The fighting erupted days after a wave of kidnappings targeting Syrians in Lebanon, in a new sign that violence in neighbouring Syria is exacerbating tensions in the small Mediterranean country.

Lebanon lived under three decades of Syrian hegemony and remains deeply divided between supporters and opponents of Damascus.

Exchanges of gunfire erupted on Monday and continued through the night between Tripoli’s mainly Sunni district of Bab el-Tebbaneh and the largely Alawite area of Jabal Mohsen.

“Clashes are ongoing, and the army is currently intervening,” a military official told AFP.

Several houses caught fire and cars were damaged in the fighting, which has added to fears that the conflict in Syria is increasingly spilling over into Lebanon, destabilising the already fragile security situation.

Ten soldiers were wounded as were 23 civilians, both Sunni and Alawite, security and army officials said.

The violence was centred around the aptly named Syria Street, the symbolic “dividing line” between the rival Tripoli districts, and many civilians have fled the area.

The Sunni-majority port city has been the scene of intense and sometimes deadly clashes between Sunni supporters of the anti-Syrian opposition and Alawite Muslims loyal to a Hezbollah-led alliance backed by Iran and Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is fighting an increasingly bloody 17-month uprising against his regime, hails from the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The fighting in Tripoli erupted after a wave of mass kidnappings of Syrians in Lebanon, with the opposition Syrian National Council accusing the authorities of failing to act over the attacks.

“Syrians in Lebanon have been abducted by political parties, and subject to arbitrary arrests by security agents, without the authorities so much as lifting a finger,” the SNC said in a statement, implicitly blaming Hezbollah.

Last week, an armed Shiite clan claimed it had kidnapped around 20 Syrians in retaliation for the abduction of a family member by a Syrian rebel group, which accused him of being a Hezbollah sniper.

Many more were reportedly seized as rioters went on the rampage in Beirut, attacking shops and cars belonging to Syrians.

Hezbollah, considered the most powerful military force in Lebanon, has denied any connection with the clan member or the kidnappings.

The SNC also said Lebanese army intelligence on Monday raided the home of a Syrian humanitarian activist and arrested two of his colleagues, and that they also arrested a Syrian lawyer.

President Michel Sleiman on Tuesday urged Lebanon’s judiciary to “issue immediate arrest warrants for the kidnappers” and called on security officials to “act to free those abducted.”

New York-based Human Rights Watch called on the Lebanese authorities to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the kidnappings.

“Lebanese authorities need to enforce the law and end impunity for kidnappings and other violent acts carried out against Syrian citizens in the name of reprisal,” said Nadim Houry, HRW’s deputy Middle East director.

A rebel fired toward government snipers in Aleppo on Friday. The White House has accused Hezbollah of helping Iran train Syrian forces against the opposition.

10/08/2012

‘There will be no winner in #Syria,’ UN chief warns, as refugee crisis grows

After months of protests and violent crackdowns, a look back at the violence that has overtaken the country.

10/08/2012

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned Friday “there will be no winner in Syria,” as the world body said nearly 150,000 refugees fleeing the 17-month-old conflict had registered in neighboring countries.

In Aleppo, rebels fighting in the Salaheddine district, a southern gateway to the commercial hub, said they had been forced to fall back from frontline positions on Thursday by a fierce bombardment which had reduced buildings to rubble.

“There have been some withdrawals of Free Syrian Army fighters from Salaheddine,” rebel commander Abu Ali told Reuters. Others said the main frontlines in the area, which had been held by rebels for more than a week, were now deserted.

The center of the district, near Salaheddine mosque, was abandoned when Reuters journalists visited on Thursday. The only sound was the constant echo of artillery shelling. There were no rebels, no security forces, and only a few residents darting in and out to pick up belongings — while evading army snipers.

All-consumed fighting
President Bashar Assad, engaged in an all-consuming fight with his mostly Sunni opponents, appointed a Sunni as his new prime minister on Thursday after his predecessor fled Monday in the highest-level defection so far in an uprising that has killed around 20,000 people.

Wael Nader al-Halqi, from the southern province of Daraa where the revolt began, replaces Riyad Hijab, who had spent only two months in the job before making a dramatic escape across the border to Jordan.

Assad’s authority was shaken by the assassination last month of four of his top security officials and by rebel gains in Damascus, Aleppo and swathes of rural Syria.
But he has persevered with a crackdown on opponents seeking to end half a century of Baathist rule and topple a system dominated by members of the president’s minority Alawite sect.

Video (top): Rebels say minority Shiite and Alawite Muslims, the groups that have ruled Syria for decades, are being left alone in the carnage inflicted by Syrian troops. NBC’s Richard Engel reports.

As the battle for Aleppo raged, Iran, Assad’s closest foreign backer, called for “serious and inclusive” negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition.

Assad replaces fugitive PM, deals blow to rebels in key Aleppo district

Assad has repeatedly said he is ready for dialogue, but he has vowed to crush the armed rebels he says are terrorists. His opponents say he must step aside before any talks, arguing negotiations would be meaningless while the bloodshed persists.

Machine guns operated by motorcycle brakes? Get a glimpse at the rebels fighting against Assad’s forces in Syria’s mountainous Jabal al-Zawiya area.

Iran made the call after gathering diplomats from like-minded states in Tehran for talks on the conflict not attended by Western and most Middle Eastern states, which have demanded Assad end his family’s 40-year rule.

‘Long-term civil war’
The violence has already shown elements of a proxy war between Sunni and Shiite Islam.

“There will be no winner in Syria,” Ban said in a statement read by a U.N. representative to the conference in Tehran.

“Now, we face the grim possibility of long-term civil war destroying Syria’s rich tapestry of interwoven communities,” it said.

Refugees pour across borders
In Geneva, Adrian Edwards, spokesman of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, told a news briefing that the number of registered Syrian refugees in four neighboring countries continued to grow.

‘Situation is desperate’ at makeshift hospitals on Syrian-Turkish border

The total includes 50,227 recorded in Turkey, where more than 6,000 Syrians arrived this week alone, the United Nations said.

“There certainly in the past week has been a sharp increase in the numbers arriving in Turkey, and there many of the people are coming from Aleppo and surrounding villages,” Edwards said.

People resisting the army of President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria cope with loss and prepare for fighting.

“Now if you look at other areas, I think that the situation is more of a steady and continued increase, but where fighting happens we tend to see the consequences,” he said.

As of Thursday night, there were 45,869 Syrian refugees registered in Jordan, 36,841 in Lebanon and 13,587 in Iraq — which has also seen the return of 23,228 Iraqis from Syria since July 18, according to the agency.

Complete international coverage on NBCNews.com

“In several countries we know there to be substantial refugee numbers who have not yet registered,” Edwards said.

Some Syrian refugees have also turned up in other countries including Algeria, Egypt and Morocco, and Evros, the Greek region that borders Turkey, he said, adding that the numbers were “really tiny” compared to the flows to Syria’s neighbors.

Reuters contributed to this report.

09/08/12

BEIRUT – Clashes between government troops and rebels raged Thursday in opposition bastions of besieged Aleppo as President Bashar Assad’s key state backer Iran hosted a gathering of allies for talks on how to end the conflict.

he overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels have also abducted 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims who have been held in northern Syria since May.

Assad, meanwhile, appointed a new prime minister to replace the one who defected to neighboring Jordan this week in a humiliating blow to the regime. State-run news agency SANA said he appointed Health Minister Wael Nader al-Halqi, a Sunni member of the ruling Baath party who hails from the southern city of Daraa, birthplace of the 17-month-old uprising. He replaces Riad Hijab, who defected to Jordan this week. Like nearly all prominent defectors so far, Hijab is a member of Syria’s majority Sunnis — the Muslim sect which forms the bedrock of the uprising.

Still power remains closely held within Assad’s inner circle and the leadership is dominated by members of the president’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

The regime pressed its new assault on Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and commercial hub, for a second day. But blistering attacks on rebel positions from the ground and the air appear to be only slowly chipping away at the opposition’s grip on its strongholds.

The state news agency claimed Wednesday that Assad’s force had regained control of the Salaheddine neighborhood, the main rebel area in Aleppo. But activists said rebels were still putting up a fight there on Thursday.

“It’s difficult to know exactly what’s going on because of the scale of the bombing, but the rebels are still fighting,” Aleppo-based activist Mohammad Saeed told The Associated Press by Skype.

He said troops were using warplanes and tanks to shell the towns of Hreitan and Tel Rifat, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Aleppo, from where most of the rebels converged on the city.

“They are trying to cut the main lines from Tel Rifat to Aleppo,” he said.

Syrian fighter jets launched airstrikes Wednesday on Tel Rifat, hitting a home and a high school and killing six people from one family, residents said.

They said government forces often shelled the village, but that this had been the first airstrike. They acknowledged that there were some rebels in the village, though an Associated Press reporter saw no armed men during a brief drive through the area.

Aleppo holds great symbolic and strategic importance. Some 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Turkish border, it has been a pillar of regime support during the uprising. An opposition victory there would allow easier access for weapons and fighters from Turkey, where many rebels are based.

State television in Iran, Syria’s closest ally in the Middle East, said Tehran was hosting the conference of “friends” of Syria in the hope of finding a peaceful solution to the crisis.

Salehi said some 30 countries attended the meeting, including Russia and China, as well as Pakistan, Iraq, Algeria and Venezuela.

The meeting was called at short notice and most countries were represented at the ambassador level.

Russia in the past has urged the West to allow Tehran to take part in international discussions on how to settle the Syrian crisis, arguing that the Islamic republic could play an important role. Moscow has been the main protector and ally of Assad’s regime, shielding it from the United Nations sanctions over its brutal crackdown on an uprising that has evolved into a full-blown civil war.

Sana/Handout/European Pressphoto Agency

Iran’s Saeed Jalili (left) met President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Tuesday.

08/08/2012

LONDON — Before rushing to judgment on Iran’s latest expression of solidarity with the embattled regime in Syria, it is worth considering how the conflict looks from Tehran.

In the 33-year history of Iran’s Islamic Republic, Syria is the only state to have consistently stood by it while hostile neighbors and outside powers conspired to bring about its downfall.

Small wonder then that Saeed Jalili, Iran’s visiting head of national security, assured President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, “Iran will not tolerate, in any form, the breaking of the axis of the resistance, of which Syria is an intrinsic part.”

Neither is it surprising that Tehran should view the internal conflict in Syria as part of a wider international war — with Iran as the ultimate target.

To understand the roots of Iranian paranoia, just look at the map. Iran has been steadily encircled by a network of U.S. military bases in the decades since the Iranian revolution of 1979.

Its situation was exacerbated by the collapse of the Soviet Union, a development that meant Iran’s leaders could no longer play one superpower against the other and that opened the former Soviet republics across Iran’s northern border to Western influence.

The departure of U.S. forces from Iraq has given Tehran a strategic benefit on its western frontier but that would be outweighed by the emergence of a potentially hostile regime in Damascus.

Iran’s opponents would argue that it has only itself to blame for its present isolation. Decades of hostile rhetoric towards the West and towards Israel have fostered an equally hostile response.

If Iran now faces a possible military assault to destroy its alleged nuclear weapons installations, it is because it has persistently defied international demands to come clean on its nuclear program.

However, Iranian leaders might consider that, in a region where two local powers — Israel and Pakistan — have the bomb, possession of the ultimate weapon is the best way to stay safe.

There have been opportunities over the years to break the cycle of hostility between Iran and the West, but these have invariably foundered, to the benefit of hardliners in Tehran.

Kofi Annan, the outgoing international peace envoy, wanted to bring Iran into discussions on Syria and make it part of the solution, given its historic ties with the regime. The idea was firmly slapped down by the Western powers.

A decade ago in Afghanistan, Iran cooperated with the U.S. in its post-9/11 assault on the Taliban regime. (Tehran had identified the threat posed by the Taliban much earlier than the West). But Washington took the opportunity for rapprochement no further.

Iran could be a natural ally in the war against Sunni fundamentalists such as those of Al Qaeda, who regard the Iranian Shia as heretics. But the West’s key allies in the region are Sunni states that are deeply suspicious of the Shia.

That innate suspicion has been further fueled by Iran’s attempts to portray itself as spiritual godfather of an “Islamic” Arab Spring (after the Tehran regime quashed its own domestic revolt in 2009).

The impact of regime change in the Arab World has in fact been largely negative from Tehran’s perspective. The Muslim Brotherhood leadership in Egypt is closer to Saudi Arabia than it is to Iran. If the Alawite-dominated regime in Damascus were to fall, it would mean the loss of a non-Sunni ally.

So, how far will Iran go towards protecting its long-term partner? It will not be happy if Mr. Assad goes. But beyond cash and supplies and the loan of military advisers, there is not much Tehran can do to determine the outcome.

Its best hope might be the emergence of a post-Assad regime that is not openly hostile to its interests, reserving the option of trying to destabilize a successor regime that was.

Indeed, Mr. Jalili’s assurances to Mr. Assad were ambivalent.

The only solution to the turmoil in Syria is democracy and respect for the choice of the people, he said.

In a sideswipe at Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are widely reported to be arming the rebels, he said, “How can those who have never held an election in their country be advocates of democracy?”

His conclusion, which could have been penned by the White House or the United Nations, was: “We believe that a new path should be followed, through which the crisis can be resolved based on national and domestic dialogue.”

Support of a kind, but scarcely a declaration that Tehran is prepared to fight for Mr. Assad down to the last Iranian.

31/07/2012