Qusair capture changes Syria conflict dynamics

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Photo: Reuters

June 5, 2013 by Jonathan Marcus

The defeat of Syrian rebel forces who have now withdrawn from their positions in the town of Qusair represents a significant victory for the government and its Hezbollah allies.

Potentially it changes the dynamics of the conflict - something that will have political and diplomatic ramifications. It also increases the likelihood of a more persistent spill over of the fighting into Lebanon.

Many of the key battles in the Syrian civil war have focussed on supply routes and the key towns that sit astride these vital arteries.

Qusair is a case in point - its location is crucial for both sides.

It is a focal point for arms supplies coming into Syria for the rebels from Lebanon via two main routes: the first coming up through Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, and the other coming from further west, from Tripoli and the coast.

But the town is also close to important supply lines for the government forces.

Qusair is important in terms of controlling the road to Homs to the north-east. The road from Damascus to Homs is a central armature for the Syrian regime. Homs is the crossroads that connects to the Alawite heartland on the the Syrian coast.

Hezbollah gamble

So the strategic importance of Qusair is not in doubt.

What is unclear for now are the wider implications of its loss for the rebels. It adds to a growing sense over recent weeks that the government forces are gaining ground.

The implication is not that they will win - but rebel forces as presently constituted cannot gain a victory either.

So the prognosis is for a divided Syria to battle on with neither side able to force a decisive outcome.

The longer the fighting continues so the greater the risk of regional contagion.

The battle for Qusair has highlighted the importance of fighters from the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah, which has openly waded into the fray on the side of President Bashar al-Assad.

This is a high-stakes gamble for Hezbollah, explicitly reinforcing its links to the Syria-Iran axis and - in the eyes of many Arab-watchers - linking it firmly to the Shia-cause in what is fast becoming a struggle with significant sectarian overtones pitting Sunni against Shia.

Hezbollah has in the past sought to present itself as a Lebanese national movement. Now it is engaged in an inter-Arab civil war.

Hezbollah’s image inside Lebanon has suffered.

The fear now is that the violence in Syria will spill over into Lebanon.

In a BBC interview, the military commander of the Free Syrian Army, Gen Selim Idriss, has spoken of his desire to confront Hezbollah fighters inside Lebanon.

Up to now there have been sporadic gun battles and some rocket fire in Lebanon linked to the conflict over the border. But any attempt to open up a Lebanese “front” in the fighting risks the wider regional conflagration that so many Western diplomats fear.

With Lebanon in turmoil again and Hezbollah potentially weakened, Israel, too, might be drawn into the fray - eager to settle scores with the Shia movement.

Unsavoury options

Given Israel’s concerns about the supply of sophisticated weaponry from Syria to Hezbollah, it is easy to see a scenario involving further Israeli air strikes on arms convoys that escalates into a wider engagement.

It is precisely these concerns that are driving diplomatic efforts to convene a peace conference in Geneva.

But for now the diplomatic machine seems to be turning in a void.

The Qusair offensive is unlikely to make the Syrian government more conciliatory.

And as the struggle continues, Western powers are faced with a range of unsavoury options with some arguing for the arming of the rebels or even for more explicit military action against the Syrian regime.

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Source: BBC

Lebanon: Lebanon snipers open fire in Syria-linked clashes

07/12/12

Source: Agence France-Presse
Country: Lebanon, Syrian Arab Republic (the)

12/07/2012 17:45 GMT

TRIPOLI, Lebanon, Dec 7, 2012 (AFP) - Snipers in the north Lebanese city of Tripoli on Friday fired across a street-turned-frontline that divides two districts wracked by deadly sectarian clashes, an AFP correspondent said.

On Tuesday, intermittent clashes erupted in between the city’s Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen districts, pitting Sunnis against Alawites belonging to the same religious community as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A total of 13 people — including a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old — were shot dead by snipers across Syria Street dividing the neighbourhoods.

The majority of Tripoli’s residents are Sunni Muslim and support the anti-Assad revolt in neighbouring Syria. A minority of Alawites support the regime, and fear potential sectarian violence should Assad fall.

Tensions in Tripoli, Lebanon’s second city, remained high on Friday as snipers held their positions, occasionally opening fire.

The death toll reached 11 by Thursday evening, while two other civilians were killed overnight, a security official[…]

Source: humanitariannews.org

Tripoli Alawites behind Lebanese deaths in #Syria, relative says

04/12/12

The brother of one of the Lebanese men reportedly killed in an ambush in Syria denied reports on the incident, saying that instead the young men had been captured in Lebanon by fighters from Tripoli’s Jabal Mohsen district before being delivered to their death in Syria.

Jihad al-Hajj Dib told NOW that fighters from Jabal Mohsen’s Assad Brigades “shot the men in Lebanon and later delivered them to Syrian intelligence, who tortured them.”

“The car that the [Lebanese] men were in did not contain any weapons,” he added.

“My brother was tortured before he was killed. The pictures broadcasted on the Syrian State television showed clear torture marks.”

Dib’s borther, Malek, was one of the twenty-two young men, including a Palestinian, from the Lebanese city of Tripoli who were reportedly killed last Friday in the Syrian border town of Tal Kalakh.

Tripoli has repeatedly been the locus of sectarian conflict linked to the troubles in Syria between pro- and anti-Syrian regime gunmen from Sunni and Alawite groups, whose Bab al-Tabbaneh and Jabal Mohsen district respectively — are divided by the main thoroughfare Syria Street.

-NOW Lebanon

Source: nowlebanon.com

#Syria, Alawite Group Against Assad

29/10/12

A flag bearing a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad placed on a trash container in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, on Oct. 26. (Philippe Desmazes/AFP/Getty Images)

The otherwise bloody revolt taking place in Syria experienced an unexpected positive development when a new group of anti-regime activists was formed in early October. Unlike the dozens of rebel brigades proliferating across the country, the new organization is trying to resurrect the nonviolent tactics that the Syrian opposition used during the first few months of the rebellion last year, when demonstrations and calls for civic activism filled the squares of towns across Syria.

But more important is who formed the group: Syrian Alawites.

When the protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime began in March 2011, virtually every ethnic and sectarian sect in Syria participated. Sunni, Shi’ite, and Christian families alike all complained about their country’s poor human rights record and their bleak economic prospects, all the while lambasting Assad for promises of political reform that were broken.

But a year and a half later, what was once an anti-Assad opposition movement that used words as weapons is now a full-fledged armed insurgency. Some of Syria’s most historically rich cities are being burned to the ground in active combat, while a capital that was once a quiet tourist destination is now an open warzone.

The composition of the anti-Assad rebellion has changed as well. The vast majority of the rebel brigades targeting the Syrian army and security forces are Sunni Muslims. The most powerful of the battalions, such as the Farouq Brigades, originally sprung up in areas of the country that are predominately Sunni—and which have been leveled by the Syrian army and air force.

U.S., European, and Arab intelligence officials are increasingly concerned that Sunni extremists and jihadists affiliated with the al-Qaeda brand are forming their own groups or influencing the direction of others. The Syrian army’s active suppression of cities such as Homs, Deir Ezzor, Daraa, and now Aleppo has drawn the anger and resentment of millions of Sunni Muslims against a regime that is formed around a core of Alawites loyal to the Assad family.

Yet this is precisely why the formation of the Free Alawites is so significant. Although there are plenty of Alawites who oppose Bashar al-Assad’s repression of the opposition, there is a popular perception that the entire Alawite community is actively supporting the ruling system and actively aiding in Assad’s security crackdown. The fact that not a single major Alawite official or military officer has deserted Assad adds to the misconception.

Assad himself is more than willing to do his part to keep the belief alive; there are a number of reports in the media speculating that the Syrian army is beginning to hand out weapons to Alawite villages in the hopes that they will do the government’s work. All of this has generated an enormous amount of consternation from Syria’s Sunnis, some of whom have threatened to take revenge on the Alawite community once Assad is removed from power.

The establishment of the Free Alawites—and their message to others in the community to “rise in unity against (Assad’s) corrupt family”—is a welcome break from what many now consider a Sunni–Alawite civil war.

Of course, just because a small collection of Alawites is making its opposition to Assad known does not mean that Syria’s 2 million Alawites will defect to the opposition entirely. Some Alawites may not like Assad, but they are equally opposed to a disorganized and fractious Free Syrian Army that at times kills civilians, executes Syrian soldiers, and frames the struggle in purely sectarian terms.

The bad blood will not dissipate immediately, but the establishment of the Free Alawites is nonetheless a ray of hope for some in the opposition who have assumed that the entire Alawite sect is with Assad to the very end. It is also a demonstration that the nature of the revolt in Syria today is not strictly black and white, but rather more nuanced and complicated than some have believed.

Daniel R. DePetris is an independent researcher and a contributor to FPIF. Courtesy of Foreign Policy in Focus (fpif.org).

Source: theepochtimes.com

Defected woman general trains #Syria’s rebels

23/10/12

Zubaida al-Meeki was the first woman officer to quit President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to join the Free Syrian Army.
Basma Atassi
Al-Meeki says she joined the rebels to train new recruits due to ‘the crimes committed by the regime’ [Al Jazeera]

In a revolution that has become associated with masculine bravado and gunfights in the streets, Zubaida al-Meeki stands out.

A former Syrian army general, she became the first woman officer to publicly announce her defection from President Bashar al-Assad’s army after seeing what she describes as “crimes and atrocities committed by the regime”.

An Alawite originally from the Occupied Golan Heights, bordering Israel, al-Meeki used to work in the army’s recruitment division in Bibila, a town south of Damascus that was mostly seized by rebels in August after heavy fighting with regime forces.

Al-Meeki says she had planned to defect and join the Free Syrian Army (FSA) since October last year but was unable to do so because of constant surveillance imposed on army officers by the regime.

“When they suspected that I may defect, they stormed our house [and] broke the front door,” she told Al Jazeera. “Then early in 2012, they fired my brother from his government job in the health administration in the city of Quneitra.”

But after the FSA took control of major parts of Bibila, al-Meeki approached a checkpoint manned by opposition forces and told them she wanted to join the fight against Assad’s regime.

“When she first approached us, we were surprised and suspicious. Here you have an Alawite woman telling you ‘I would like to fight on your side’,” Khaled, a co-ordinator with the FSA’s Jond Allah battalion - which operates in Bibila and nearby towns - told Al Jazeera. “We made enquiries about her to make sure she is trustworthy. We found out she was.”

While being suspicious because she belongs to the same religious sect as Assad, Khaled learnt from his research on al-Meeki that most Alawites who were displaced from the Golan Heights were considered second-class Alawites in Syria.

“For the regime, not all Alawites are the same. Those from Qurdaha [the Assad family hometown] are treated differently from those from Latakia, Tartus or the suburbs of cities. Those from the Golan Heights are treated the worst,” he says.

Source of inspiration 

Al-Meeki believed in the uprising from its first day in March last year, she says, contending that sectarianism is used to distract people from the reality of a popular uprising.

“The revolution gave dignity to the Syrian people and gave minorities a sense of belonging to one country. All of the sects in Syria have suffered so much under this regime,” she says.

“When the regime shells towns, the shells do not discriminate between a sect and the other.”

After she defected from the military, al-Meeki stayed behind for two months to help out members of the Jond Allah - or Soldiers of Allah - battalion before fleeing to Turkey. She trained 40 to 50 volunteers who had just joined the battalion to fight Assad’s regime.

“I spent most of the time in a military camp training people who possessed no military background. I trained them on how to load guns and use weapons, among other military techniques,” she said. 

Ahmad, a fighter in the battalion, said the presence of al-Meeki in the group was helpful amid the lack of high-level military expertise. She was a source of inspiration for the fighters, he said.

“While al-Meeki did not participate in the fighting itself, she was very close to the frontline. Her courageousness and dedication to the group were very positive for the morale of the soldiers. Most high-level generals who defect usually flee right away. She didn’t.”

Al-Meeki, who studied at a military college, acknowledged that it is unusual for females to train males in Syria. She says that there were hundreds of females in the country’s military but they mostly had administrative positions with little pay or benefits.

Fighting for ‘freedom’

Among the opposition, videos have emerged of women holding guns, claiming to be fighting with the FSA, but activists say these videos are merely a show of a support.

“Videos of women battalions or women fighters are sometimes meant to embarrass men who are sitting on their bums and not participating in the struggle,” Omar, an activist in Homs, says.

But al-Meeki’s case is different.

“She slept in the military camp and wore her military uniform everyday. The fighters respected her and obeyed her orders,” Abo Adnan, a Syrian filmmaker who travelled to the south of Damascus to film clashes between government forces and the FSA, says.

“This was very unusual to see,” he laughs. “I came to the town thinking the Jond Allah battalion is some al-Qaeda inspired group of fighters.

“But they were not. They treated al-Meeki like an older sister. They are normal people. They laugh and joke. Some pray, some don’t. Some smoke, some don’t. Some even drink.”

Abo Adnan’s upcoming film “The Southern Heartlines” will feature footage of al-Meeki training the fighters.

Raghda, a 25- year-old activist in the southern city of Deraa, says she cannot wait for her family and for the rest of Syria to see the film.

“We need to shake people, to show them that women can participate in the armed struggle that emerged in Syria. While I’m only a civilian activist, I’m still stigmatised as a loose woman because I travel a lot from one place to the other to deliver food and medicine.” 

“Yes, Bashar al-Assad is giving me a hard time, but so are my parents and the whole neighbourhood,” she says, laughing.

Al-Meeki, however, says her family is proud of her and of what she has done.

“They watched my defection video on TV channels and they were very happy about it,” al-Meeki says.

“I told them to say they disown me after I announced my defection. I was very scared that they would be subjected to threats and harassment. But they categorically refused to do that.

” ‘You are free and Syria, God willing, is also free,’ my parents told me.”

Source: aljazeera.com

Gunmen, soldiers fight in Lebanon in spillover from #Syria

22/10/12


By Dominic Evans and Angus MacSwan

(Reuters) - At least seven people were killed and dozens wounded in gunbattles in the Lebanese capital Beirut and coastal Tripoli on Monday in further unrest linked to the conflict in neighbouring Syria, security and hospital sources said.

The clashes have heightened fears that Syria’s civil war with its sectarian dimensions is now spreading into Lebanon, pitting local allies and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against each other.

The Lebanese army promised decisive action to quell the violence, which was touched off by the assassination of a senior intelligence officer last week.

That killing has plunged Lebanon into a political crisis and the army command urged party leaders to be cautious in their public statements so as not to inflame passions further.

It issued the warning after troops and gunmen exchanged fire in Beirut’s southern suburbs overnight and on Monday morning while protesters blocked roads with burning tyres.

Many politicians have accused Syria of being behind the killing of Brigadier General Wissam al-Hassan, an intelligence chief opposed to the Syrian leadership, who was blown up by a car bomb in central Beirut on Friday.

Opposition leaders want Prime Minister Najib Mikati to resign, saying he is too close to Assad and his Lebanese militant ally Hezbollah, which is part of Mikati’s government.

YOUNG VICTIM OF SNIPER

The worst of the clashes since late Sunday took place in the northern city of Tripoli, the scene of previous fighting between Sunni Muslims backing the Syrian insurgents and Alawites sympathetic to Assad.

Six people were killed and about 50 wounded in fighting between the Sunni neighbourhood of Tabbaneh and the Alawite Jebel Mohsen, security and hospital sources said. The two sides exchanged rocket and gunfire, residents said.

Among the victims were a 9-year-old girl shot by a sniper.

Fighting in Beirut occurred on the edge of Tariq al-Jadida, a Sunni Muslim district that abuts Shi’ite Muslim suburbs in the south of the capital.

Residents had earlier reported heavy overnight gunfire around Tariq al-Jadida between gunmen armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Soldiers killed one gunman in Tariq al-Jadida, the army said, a Palestinian from a refugee camp who had shot at them.

The violence escalated on Sunday after thousands of people turned out in Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square for the funeral of Hassan, who was buried with full state honours in an emotionally charged ceremony.

As the funeral ended, hundreds of opposition supporters broke away and tried to storm the nearby government offices, prompting security forces to fire tear gas and shots in the air to repulse them.

The army command said in its statement that Lebanon was going through a critical time.

“We will take decisive measures, especially in areas with rising religious and sectarian tensions, to prevent Lebanon being transformed again into a place for regional settling of scores, and to prevent the assassination of the martyr Wissam al-Hassan being used to assassinate a whole country,” it said.

Troops in full combat gear and armoured personnel carriers stood guard at traffic intersections and government offices, with barbed wire and concrete blocks protecting buildings.

Beirut was noticeably quiet as people stayed at home because they feared being caught in more violence. In the downtown, many shops, offices, restaurants were shut or empty and the area was free of its normal traffic chaos.

Lebanon is still haunted by its 1975-1990 civil war, which made Beirut a byword for carnage and wrecked large parts of the city.

Since then it has undergone an ambitious reconstruction programme and enjoyed periods of economic prosperity due to its role as a trading, financial and tourist centre. All that is now threatened.

POWER VACUUM

The crisis underscores local and international concern that the 19-month-old, Sunni-led uprising against Assad, an Alawite, is dragging in Syria’s neighbours, which include Turkey and Jordan as well as Lebanon.

The slain Hassan was a senior intelligence official who had helped uncover a bomb plot that led to the arrest and indictment in August of a pro-Assad former Lebanese minister.

A Sunni Muslim, he also led an investigation that implicated Syria and the Shi’ite Hezbollah in the 2005 assassination of Rafik al-Hariri, a former prime minister of Lebanon.

Mikati offered to resign at the weekend to make way for a government of national unity, but President Michel Suleiman persuaded him to stay in office to allow time for talks on a way out of the political crisis.

Mikati, a Sunni Moslem, had personal ties to the Assad family before he became prime minister in January last year, two months before the anti-Assad uprising erupted. His cabinet includes Assad’s Shi’ite ally Hezbollah as well as Christian and other Shi’ite politicians close to Damascus.

If he was to stand down before an alternative was worked out, it would mean the collapse of the political compromise that has kept the peace in Lebanon and leave a perilous power vacuum.

Ambassadors from the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France met Suleiman on Monday and appealed to Lebanese leaders to resolve the situation peacefully.

One Western diplomat, asked if he thought the Mikati government would survive, told Reuters: “I think it looks more likely today than yesterday that he will come through in the short term. It will take time to form a consensus on an alternative and in the meantime the security situation needs time to recover.”

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: uk.reuters.com

#Syria strife tests Turkish Alawites

21/10/12

Turkey’s small Alawite minority reacts warily as Ankara backs armed groups seeking to topple Syrian government.

Matthew Cassel


The Alawites who stayed behind became part of the Turkish state founded on secularism [Matthew Cassel/Al Jazeera]

Antakya, Turkey - The mountains melt away into the waters of the Mediterranean outside the Turkish-Alawite city of Samandag, nestled just beside the border with Syria.

Beyond the peaks is Latakia province, the ancestral homeland of the Assad family that has ruled Syria for more than four decades.

But on this side lies Hatay, Turkey’s southernmost province, which is home to most of the country’s Alawites. At around one million, they represent a small but vocal minority leading the opposition to the government’s role in the conflict in neighbouring Syria.

“When something is happening in Syria we feel it,” said 31-year-old Kemal sitting in a park in central Samandag. “We have Turkish citizenship, but our origins are Arab.”

He spoke in a Syrian dialect of Arabic, like most Turkish Alawites are able to. Although ethnically Arab, the community leaves little doubt about its strong patriotism for the modern Turkish state and its secular model of government.

When asked whether he felt more loyal to Syria or Turkey, Kemal presented his upturned forearms: “Cut open my veins and I assure you Turkish flags will pour out.”

Kemal, who declined to give his surname, was on a brief break from work as a barber in Saudi Arabia. Because of their common language, many Alawites from Turkey travel to the oil-rich Gulf for work.

Kemal says he hates living in what he described as Saudi Arabia’s ultra-conservative Muslim society. Most members of the Alawite faith, an offshoot of Shia Islam, are secular.

Opposing the opposition

But even more than living in Saudi Arabia, Kemal dislikes the country’s arming of opposition movements inside Syria. His criticism also extended to other Gulf and western governments he believes are partaking in a larger “American game” to exert further control over the Middle East.

As the effects of the Syrian conflict spill across its northern border into Hatay and other neighbouring provinces, Kemal’s views largely reflect those held by the larger Alawite community in Turkey.

The situation is even tenser 20 minutes down the road in Antakya, Hatay’s main city. Pointing to the Orontes river that runs through the city’s heart, a colleague said, “It flows north from Syria, just like the refugees.”

What began as a popular uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has since turned into a bloody conflict that has created a refugee crisis as large numbers of Syrians flee to neighbouring countries.

According to the United Nations’ refugee agency (UNHCR), almost 350,000 Syrian refugees have registered or are waiting to register with the organisation. Turkish authorities recently said more than 100,000 Syrians have sought refuge within its borders.

When the refugees first started arriving in mid-2011, Selim Matkap, an Alawite emergency room doctor and one of the heads of the union of medical workers in Hatay, said he and other Turkish human rights organisations tried to help by requesting permission to enter the refugee camps, which are all under tight control of the Turkish army.

“We wanted to go to the camps as associations from Hatay, because if people come here [in such circumstances] then we have responsibility to take care of them,” Matkap said.

For months he said that the groups repeatedly tried to gain access to the camps through the local government, with each refusal spawning more suspicion as to why the government seemed determined to keep them out.

Outrage

Soon after, residents of Hatay were outraged when the Free Syrian Army, the main umbrella organisation fighting against the Syrian government, on its website claimed its main base to be “Hatay, Turkey”. After complaints to Turkish officials, it was later changed to “Damascus, Syria”.

The Apaydin refugee camp near Antakya houses dozens of former Syrian army generals and hundreds of army defectors, and is the suspected location of FSA commander Riad al-Assad.

“The Turkish government is not supporting a democratic transition in Syria, it’s supporting armed groups,” Matkap said.
“We believe the Syrian regime is not democratic, but using weapons and the tactic of war is not a legitimate method to oppose it.”

“It’s the poor people who will suffer from this war, not the regime.”

As time progressed, Maktap and others began organising protests in Antakya against the government’s support for the armed opposition in Syria. He admitted that the overwhelming majority of the thousands of protesters were Alawites.

Matkap said Alawites have faced persecution since the time of Selim I, a 16th century Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, and today still feel marginalised in Turkish society.

When Hafez al-Assad, Bashar al-Assad’s father, took power in Syria in 1970, Maktap said Turkish Alawites began to feel more confident.

“It’s natural for Alawites in Hatay to think, ‘If something bad happens to me, then there is the Syrian government behind me’,” Matkap said.

After a number of large demonstrations in early September, the local governor banned all protests in Hatay as reports started to emerge of sectarian tensions between Alawites and Sunni Muslims in Antakya.

As the war in Syria drags on, fears have risen that the conflict has become increasingly sectarian, pitting Syria’s minority Alawites against the majority Sunni population.

But Ali Yeral, the head of an Alawite cultural organisation in Antakya, dismissed this characterisation.

“[Syria] doesn’t have a Sunni-Alawite problem,” he said, adding that he considers armed groups to be “terrorists” for taking up arms against the state.

“Like Turkey has the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party], Ireland has the IRA [Irish Republican Army], Syria also has this problem.”

Yeral said that at first, he was excited upon hearing calls for more democracy in Syria.

Alarmed Alawites

But he said that Alawites became turned off from the uprising when videos showed Syrian protesters chanting not only against the regime, but also against Alawites more generally.

He also pointed to the sectarian rhetoric of exiled Syrian Sheikh Adnan al-Arour. The radical Sunni cleric, who hosts a popular satellite TV show in Saudi Arabia, infamously said that Alawites should be put through the meat grinder once the regime is toppled.

Syrian opposition activists in Hatay told Al Jazeera that these views do not represent the majority of their movement, which opposes sectarianism and sees the decision to take up arms as one of self-defence.

But as the battle for Syria continues with little end in sight, reports have increased of radical Islamist fighters, including many non-Syrians, taking part in the war.

Many people in Antakya, the main hub for foreigners travelling to opposition-held areas of northern Syria, say in recent months, they have seen a greater number of Arab and other Muslims who they suspect of being foreign fighters.

“Antakya is peaceful,” Yeral said. “But now we have foreign fighters turning up on the streets.”

Yeral feels that if any anti-Alawite backlash in Syria were to spill over into Turkey, it would not only include the relatively small Alawite community, but the much larger Turkish Alevi population believed to number some 20 million.

Because they share the same name in Turkish (Alevi), Arab Alawites and Turkish Alevis are often thought to be the same religion, despite the fact that members of the respective faiths observe different religious practices and beliefs.

However, they both consider themselves followers of Ali, the prophet’s relative, from whom their name derives, setting them apart from Turkey’s Sunni-dominated ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). 

But while Turkish Alevis are spread throughout the country and harder to define as a coherent political group, Alawites are mostly concentrated in Hatay, a region with its own unique history.

‘Betrayed’

After the Ottoman Empire collapsed during WWI, France, then in control of Syria, helped Turkey gain control over Hatay in the 1930s. The region had been considered part of Syria, but France was eager to win Turkey over to the allies’ side in WWII.

Furious by what they felt was the theft of much of their Arab territory, many Alawites and other Arabs left the area for Syria.

The Alawites who stayed behind became part of the Turkish state, founded on the strong secularism of Kemal Ataturk, its first president, whose ideology they still subscribe to.

But today, Alawites in Turkey feel betrayed by a government they say is acting against their interests by supporting armed groups.

“We are Turkish citizens and the owners of this land, we have to ask why we’re not getting support from our government [like the Syrian opposition is],” Maktap said.

“Instead we see rebels firing bullets at the government that has supported us.”

When asked what would happen to Turkish Alawites if the Assad regime in Syria falls, Matkap replied, “It’s going to be difficult.

“We never really felt we belonged to this state. It will be the same way if the regime goes.”

Source: aljazeera.com

#Syria conflict deepens sectarian rifts in Lebanon

17/10/12


In this Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2012 photo, Bassel Hojeiri, 37, principal of the local middle school, with his wife, Hanan, and their son Muhammed, speak at his house during an interview with The Associated Press, in Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town eastern Lebanon near the Syrian border. This Lebanese border town has become a safe haven for war-weary Syrian rebels, a way station for wounded fighters and home to hundreds of frightened Syrian refugee families. Residents of Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town of 40,000, have strong motives to help those trying to topple Syria’s brutal regime: they themselves were harassed and abused by it during three decades of de facto Syrian control of Lebanon. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

KARIN LAUB

ARSAL, Lebanon (AP) - This Lebanese border town has become a safe haven for war-weary Syrian rebels, a way station for wounded fighters and home to hundreds of frightened Syrian refugee families.

Residents of Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town of 40,000, say they have strong motives to help those trying to topple Syria’s regime: they themselves were harassed and abused by it during three decades of de facto Syrian control of Lebanon.

But in siding with the rebels, many of them fellow Sunnis, Arsal is also deepening rifts with its Shiite Muslim neighbors in the Bekaa Valley that runs along Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria. Large areas of the scenic valley are controlled by Hezbollah, the powerful Shiite militia that is supporting and - according to the U.S. and the Syrian opposition - also fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

For now, Lebanon’s rival political and religious groups have largely tried to keep a lid on domestic tensions stoked by the conflict next door, with collective memories here still scarred by Lebanon’s own 15-year civil war that ended in 1990. But any major escalation in Syria or miscalculation by the combatants’ Lebanese supporters could ignite Lebanon’s explosive sectarian mix.

Unlike some parts of Lebanon, the Bekaa has not been hit so far by sectarian violence linked to the bloodshed in Syria, although a drive along the valley’s bustling main thoroughfare and the string of towns that line it, shows where the region’s Shiite and Sunni loyalties lie.

In predominantly Shiite Baalbek, one of the Bekaa’s larger towns, a downtown billboard shows Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah next to Assad, who is decked out in a military uniform and aviator glasses. “They will not weaken our resolve,” reads a defiant caption.

The presence of Iran, the region’s Shiite power and a patron of both Hezbollah and Assad, is also visible: A poster of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with the slogan, “We can,” hangs from roadside poles along a four-lane highway that signs boast was partially funded by Tehran.

A turn off the highway and down a winding uphill road, leads east toward the Syrian border and Arsal.

Homes here are bare-bones, made of raw gray cinderblock, without stone facades. A spray-painted Syrian rebel flag - with green, white and black horizontal stripes and three red stars on the white - decorates one of the walls in the center of town.

Bassel Hojeiri, principal of the local middle school, said people in Arsal back the rebels as fellow Sunnis fighting a regime controlled by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, but also because of deep-seated hatred of Syria’s rulers.

As a border town, Arsal suffered under a particularly oppressive Syrian military presence when Damascus held sway in Lebanon from 1976 to 2005. Syrian troops at checkpoints near Arsal would sometimes beat area residents, arrest them without reason, demand cash or even seize cars, said Hojeiri, 37, a former mayor of Arsal.

“People hated them,” Hojeiri said of the Syrian occupiers. “Now hopefully their time is ending.”

The town has stood by the rebels from the start, and now is deeply involved in the conflict. Last month, Syrian warplanes in pursuit of rebels fired missiles that struck near Arsal. Lebanese media have also suggested weapons smuggled from Lebanon to the rebels go through Arsal; residents acknowledge there’s a rich tradition of smuggling in Arsal, but say they don’t know anything about arms smuggling.

Volunteers from Islamic charities have sneaked scores of wounded rebels into Lebanon, driving them from there to hospitals in Tripoli, a Sunni stronghold in northern Lebanon, and bypassing clinics in Hezbollah-run areas in the valley, said Mohammed Hojeiri, a local activist.

Arsal has also taken in hundreds of Syrian refugee families, most from villages in Homs province, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) to the northeast. Some of the refugees rent apartments, while others live with Arsal families or in a small camp on the outskirts of town, where tents are being replaced by cinderblock shacks to prepare for the harsh mountain winter.

Rebel fighters have also used Arsal as a temporary haven to rest from the fighting across the border.

Peach farmer-turned-fighter Mohammed Yousef left his village of Zara in Homs province late last month after airstrikes destroyed his home and many others in the village. He reached Arsal after a seven-hour cross-border trek across mountainous terrain, he said, adding that several dozen of his fellow rebels do the same from time to time.

“Arsal is the … mother of the revolution,” the 25-year-old said affectionately of his Lebanese hosts who have sheltered his extended family of 10 in an empty building.

Yousef dismissed Syrian troops as largely ineffective, saying most can be bribed, but swore to exact revenge from Hezbollah, which he blamed for the destruction in his village. “We want to slaughter Hassan Nasrallah, the dog,” Yousef said of the Hezbollah leader. “He shelled us, he destroyed our houses, and killed our children.”

Hezbollah denies that it is fighting alongside regime forces, and a spokesman declined further comment Monday.

Lebanese security officials have said a number of Hezbollah activists recently buried in the Bekaa Valley had been killed in fighting in Syria, while Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the U.N. Security Council on Monday that “Nasrallah’s fighters are now part of Assad’s killing machine.”

Hojeiri, the school principal, said tensions between Shiites and Sunnis in the valley have been rising since the start of the Syrian revolt. Each side is aware of the other’s loyalties, and people are careful not to talk about politics when someone from the other sect is present, he said.

“People here don’t want another (sectarian) war,” he said.

In the past, ties between the communities were civil and even warm, he said, noting that some 200 men in Arsal are married to Shiite women from nearby villages.

For years, religious differences seemed unimportant, he said. Even during Lebanon’s civil war, with its frequently shifting alliances, Shiites and Sunnis were partners more often than they were foes.

Timor Goksel, a former official in the U.N. peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, said he believes the two sides have too much to lose by bringing the Syrian conflict home.

“Sunnis are very much involved in stone quarrying and the Shiite families are mostly involved in the hashish business,” he said. “Both sides respect each other’s turfs and have their own livelihoods, hashish and stone.”

Perhaps that’s why the valley has not seen sectarian clashes - unlike the majority-Sunni Tripoli, where sporadic fighting between pro- and anti-Syrian groups has killed more than two dozen people since May.

However, Sarkis Naoum, a columnist for Lebanon’s An Nahar daily said the sectarian tensions bubbling under the surface could erupt at any time.

“If anything major happens, what is happening in Syria could expand into Lebanon,” he said.

Source: m.apnews.com

Turks Fear What #Syria’s War Will Bring

16/10/12


Turkish soldiers stand near the Turkey-Syria border in Akcakale, Turkey, early Friday.

In Turkey’s southern Hatay province, it is harvest time — the second harvest since the uprising began in neighboring Syria.

In the village of Hacipasa, Turkey, located right along the Syrian border, children play alongside tents on the edge of the farm fields. The tents belong not to Syrian refugees, but to Turkish farmworkers helping to bring in the cotton, tomatoes, peppers and pomegranates waiting to be harvested.

As the autumn morning fog burns off the Syrian hills just across the Orontes River, the sound of gunfire and a Syrian military helicopter signal that another day’s bloodshed is resuming in the embattled Syrian village of Azmarin.

On the Turkish side, three flop-eared goats sit in a field, and a tethered horse and foal nibble at the brush, while across the border the helicopter circles Azmarin before striking.

Residents of Hacipasa line the fields, gesturing to the plume of smoke rising from the Syrian side. This isn’t a spectator sport — many of the families on the Turkish side have relatives in Syria. They wait for the calls from the river announcing more refugees fleeing the violence.

The refugees bring stories of bodies lying in the streets, and no respite from the shells and gunfire. Ahmed Juha, a 34-year-old Syrian, says he won’t stay long in Turkey, despite the horrific scenes in his small village near Azmarin.

“The situation is very bad there,” Juha says. The Syrian army “stormed in and started killing people, not just the [rebels]. They shot 15 people in the mosque, and then the helicopter bombs came.”

An elderly man gestures to a reporter to sit and have tea. He wants to talk about how difficult it’s been here lately, but just then a car pulls up, and the mayor gets out to discuss arrangements for the wedding of the old man’s son.

The mayor doesn’t want to talk about the Turkish government’s Syria policy. But his driver, a 46-year-old man named Latif Fansa, has no such qualms.

“They say [President Bashar] Assad is a dictator, but our prime minister is an even bigger dictator,” Fansa says, referring to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“He’s just following orders from the U.S.,” the driver adds. He says the American policy “is driving Turkey into a sectarian conflict” with various ethnic groups in Syria.

Fansa has relatives from Aleppo, in northern Syria, and he says that one relative who just came from there says there’s nothing left that’s recognizable as the beautiful and historic old city.

“It’s a disgrace for all humankind, not just for Syria or Turkey,” he says. “It is a disgrace that the world allowed that beautiful city to be destroyed. World leaders should fight for peace, but it seems we have no leaders right now.”

Not long after that interview, word came from Aleppo that the historic 13th century Umayyad mosque had been set ablaze.

The complex social mix in Hatay province is also coming into play; most notably, the Turkish Alawite community sympathizes with Syria’s Alawites, led by Assad and his family.

A small but vocal demonstration in Antakya, Turkey, recently denounced the country’s ruling AK Party and Turkey’s ties to the U.S.

Ali Yeral, head of an Alawite cultural foundation in Antakya, says many of the people he talks with have no doubt that the Syrian uprising could be a disaster for Syria’s Alawites, Christians and Shiites.

He says people have seen videos of al-Qaida fighters in Syria, and that one showed a fighter saying, “As soon as we finish Assad, we’ll come back and kill all the Alawites and the other minorities.” It is no wonder people are concerned, he says.

Some opposition groups are working hard to prove such fears unfounded, but as the violence rages on along the border, Turks living here are having a hard time seeing a happy ending to this struggle.

Source: NPR

#Syrian troops blast Homs, residents plead for help

10/10/12

Syrian forces on Wednesday hammered rebel belts in the central city of Homs, where besieged residents desperately pleaded for humanitarian assistance, and in the northern city of Aleppo, a watchdog said.

Shells rained down from early morning on parts of Homs and on the nearby town of Qusayr, near the Lebanon border, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The army has intensified operations against Homs and Qusayr, which have been besieged by regime forces for months, vowing to overrun them by the end of the week to free up troops for battle zones in the north, such as Aleppo.

The onslaught has sent a new flood of refugees across the border into Lebanon, a Lebanese security official said, who noted on Tuesday that up to 400 people had crossed the frontier in a 24-hour period.

An activist in the Homs Old City, reached via Skype on Wednesday, said the district was “totally surrounded.”

“There is no way out. Our situation is so bad it makes anyone cry,” said the activist, who identified himself as Abu Bilal.

“The field hospitals are full of injured people needing operations and who need to be evacuated. There is no way out at all, at all.”

The Old City neighborhood of Homs has been under total siege by the army for more than four months. According to the Observatory, thousands of civilians remain trapped in the Old City and other besieged, rebel-held districts of the city rebels refer to as “the capital of the revolution.”

“We call on the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on the Red Crescent, to come to our assistance,” said Abu Bilal.

The ICRC made several failed attempts in the early summer to enter into Homs. The army and rebels exchanged blame for a failed ceasefire, a prerequisite for the mission’s entry to evacuate wounded and civilians.

In Qusayr, the situation was “terrible” overnight, activist Hadi al-Abdallah told AFP via Skype on Wednesday.

“People are afraid of what might happen if the army enters into the rebel-held areas of Qusayr. They say they would prefer to die in the shelling than be executed by the army,” said Abdallah.

Qusayr has been in rebel hands – and under siege – since September last year. The Observatory says thousands of people are trapped in the town, and that the only way out is via secret tunnels.

“There is no way out for anyone here,” said Abdallah.

The Observatory also reported heavy shelling on Wednesday against a string of rebel-held neighborhoods in Aleppo, which has been the theatre since mid-July of an increasingly bloody battle between rebels and the army.

The Britain-based watchdog, which collates information from a network of activists and medics on the ground, added that on Tuesday alone 22 civilians died in a shelling blitz against Aleppo.

The Observatory added that 180 people died across the country on Tuesday – 84 civilians, 45 rebels and 51 soldiers.

According to the watchdog, more than 32,000 people have died since a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime erupted in March last year.

The revolt began as pro-reform protests but morphed into an armed insurgency when demonstrations were brutally crushed. Most rebels, like the population, are Sunni in a country dominated by a minority Alawite regime. Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

-AFP

Source: nowlebanon.com

One of #Syria’s richest men to help fund a rebel army

28/09/12

The Syrian regime’s richest opponent, the business magnate Firas Tlass has pledged his fortune to the “revolution”, promising to fund rebel groups, humanitarian aid and an organisation to deal with the chaos after President Assad has gone.


The Tlass family has long been a stalwart of the Syrian regime

By Ruth Sherlock, Istanbul

In his first interview with a western newspaper since leaving Syria, the country’s biggest industrial tycoon has told the Daily Telegraph of how the ownership of his conglomerate of huge companies is to be given to a panel of leading opposition figures, and the profits used to help to build a democratic society in Syria.

“I am supporting a complete program [to oust the regime]. I am putting my fortune behind this, totally, until the end,” said Mr Tlass. “But this is nothing. If I give all my money it is not worth one gram of the blood spilt by the Syrian people.”

The Tlass family has long been a stalwart of the Syrian regime. Mr Firas’ father Mustafa Tlass and Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez, worked together to bring the Assad family to power. His brother is the defected Brigadier General Manaf Tlass who was a close childhood friend of the Syrian president.

For decades the family benefited from its insider status. Firas Tlass was thought to have been influential on the privatisation process started by the regime in recent decades. Named Min Ajl Suriyya (MAS), or ‘For the sake of Syria’, Mr Tlass’ empire spans several industries in Syria, from roasting coffee beans to construction and is thought to be worth billions of Syrian pounds.

“What Syria gave me I will give it back to Syria,” said Mr Tlass.

After the collapse of the Syrian regime Mr Tlass said he plans to create a non-governmental organisation that will have formal ownership of MAS. “I am preparing the legal papers now. It will be owned by a panel of seven leading figures of the opposition, and I will make the accounts public and transparent,” said Mr Tlass.

The NGO will use the company’s profits to “prepare the people of Syria for new way of thinking”, said Mr Tlass: “My dream is that Syria becomes a real democratic country”.

His antipathy with the Syrian government stretches back for nearly a decade said Mr Tlass. “The Assad family thinks that they own this country and that the people in it are their sheep. Only the family owns the farm. Even us, people close to the regime, we were just seen as their guards. That’s how they work with Syria,” said Mr Tlass, recounting a catalogue of examples where businessmen who had garnered favour with the country’s leadership were given sizeable business contracts.

“In 2005 I made friends with part of the opposition. We put together a study for political, economic and social reform and sent it to Bashar. Two months later I received a cold reply asking me why, as a businessman I was dealing in politics?” said Mr Tlass.

Mr Tlass told the Daily Telegraph that he would never seek a political leadership role in a future Syria, but he dismissed exiled opposition groups, including the bedraggled Syrian National Council as lacking the vision saying Bashar al-Assad would stay in power for “50 more years” if they led the revolution.

Instead he said he would fund a new leadership from “inside Syria”. Refusing to give names he said a number of community leaders from cities across Syria were part of a group being groomed to form a transitional government.

“We need to create a national front, a council of 30 people that can form a transitional council and govern for the period up until the election of a new parliament,” said Mr Tlass.

The council should represent the dozens of groups that currently make up Syria’s fragmented opposition as well as Alawite figures from the ousted regime he said. “The Alawites look to the regime as their representatives, non-regime figures are seen as traitors if they join the opposition. We have to include some of the old guards”.

In the past weeks Mr Tlass had been speaking with key figures of the country’s business elite and working to convince them to join the revolution, he told the Daily Telegraph. As businesses close and the country’s economy slides to a standstill amid the civil war, the country’s commercial core is beginning to jump ship he said. Even business partners of Syria’s biggest businessman and regime loyalist Rami Makhlouf are beginning to move away from the Assad family he said.

“Most of Makhlouf’s business partners are leaving him,” said Mr Tlass. “Now we need the Syrian businessmen from inside and outside the country to group together and provide funds for the opposition”.

Source: mcaf.ee

SNC: We will ‘not allow acts of vengeance’ on #Syria’s Alawites

25/09/12

Syria’s main opposition coalition issued a statement on Monday, guaranteeing no vengeance attacks would be carried out against the country’s minority Alawite sect, to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.

“No one should fear the victory of the revolution,” said SNC spokesperson George Sabra, a prominent Christian dissident who penned the statement, responding to fears that members of the Alawite sect could suffer sectarian attacks at the hands of armed rebels.

“We tell our Alawite brethren and all the Syrians, we will not allow any acts of revenge or attacks against innocent people who are not implicated in acts of killing or bloodshed,” said Sabra.

Assad’s regime has blamed terrorists and fundamentalists for violence in Syria since an uprising broke out in March last year.

Over time, the armed insurgency has grown in response to the regime’s violent crackdown on dissent.

Among those fighting are some extremist Islamists, and they have helped stoke fears over the shape Syria might take should the regime fall.

Alawites constitute the second-largest sect in Syria, which is made up of a patchwork of religious and ethnic groups.

Around 80 percent of Syrians are Sunni, while around 10 percent belong to Assad’s Alawite community, five percent are Christian, three percent Druze and one percent Ismaili.

Faced with the extremism of some elements of the armed opposition, there has been an increasing number of voices from within the revolt in recent weeks, condemning the radicalization of the uprising.

“The state will be for all, and it will provide a real opportunity for reconciliation and for the creation of genuine national unity,” Sabra said.

In the statement, Sabra issued a call to “our brothers in suffering and in aspirations” to join the revolt, noting that only those behind the commission of crimes in Syria would be held legally responsible should Assad’s regime fall.

-AFP

Source: nowlebanon.com

#Syria, ‘Assad blamed his sister for conspiring with rebels’

24/09/12

Syrian sources report Bushra Assad fled to Dubai with her children after disagreements with her brother made her fear for her family’s safety

Syrian President Bashar Assad blamed his sister Bushra for making contact with his rivals, a known anti-Assad news website reported Sunday. According to the website, that was the main reason for Bushra’s defection from Syria.

According to the report, the Syrian president’s only sister has fled with her five children to Dubai. Bushra Assad’s decision followed the death of her husband, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Syrian Armed Forces Assef Shawkat, who was victim to a bomb attack in Damascus in July.

According to an Al-Arabiya report, a source in Syria stated that Bushra decided to flee the country due to clashes within the Alawite minority, and since she was worried for the safety of her children and herself.

According to the Syrian source,some Alawite leaders fear that the entire sect would eventually be implicated because of Assad’s crimes against civilians.”

As a result, a few of the Alawite leaders have turned against Assad and are working alongside the opposition army in an attempt to take down the presidency.

Assad’s sister flees #Syria : Report

19/09/12

Moscow, Sep 19 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s sister has fled the country along with her children to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Al Arabiya reported Wednesday citing an unnamed source.

Bushra al-Assad defected to Syria several weeks after her husband Assef Shawqat, formerly deputy chief of staff of the Syrian armed forces, was killed by Syrian opposition forces July 18, the report said.

Bushra, who already enrolled her children at a school in Dubai, fled Syria amid reported disputes within the Alawite sect, to which President Assad and the majority of the ruling Syrian elite belong, a source said.

“Some Alawite leaders are worried that the whole sect would eventually be implicated by President Assad in crimes against civilians,” the source said, adding a “front of Alawite officers” had reportedly already formed against him to side with the Free Syrian Army in overthrowing the ruling regime.

Bushra feared she could be killed by other Alawite sect members implicated by her late husband Shawqat in killing civilians, the source added.

Since demonstrations began against Assad’s regime in March 2011, the Syrian conflict has escalated into a full-scale civil war that has claimed up to 20,000 lives, according to estimates by various Syrian opposition groups.

—IANS/RIA Novosti

Source: Yahoo!