Syrian army on offensive in Aleppo after university blast - #Syria

Syrian armed forces launched a renewed offensive in the northern city of Aleppo on Wednesday, state media said, a day after 87 people were killed in explosions at the city’s university.

The state news agency SANA said the military had killed dozens of “terrorists” - a term Damascus uses for rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad - in the new fighting.

“The Armed Forces carried out several special operations against the mercenary terrorists in Aleppo and its countryside, inflicting heavy losses upon them in several areas,” SANA said.

Aleppo is split roughly in half between government and rebel forces. SANA said dozens of “terrorists” were killed in the rebel strongholds of Sukari, Bab al-Hadeed and Bustan al-Qasr.

Government forces also killed militants in al-Laramon, a area of Aleppo from which Damascus says two rockets were fired into the University of Aleppo on Tuesday, it added.

If confirmed, the government’s report of a rocket attack would suggest rebels in the area had been able to obtain and deploy more powerful weapons than previously used.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said 87 people were killed and dozens wounded in the explosions, but it could not identify the source of the blasts. It said the toll could rise to more than 100 as there were still body parts that were unaccounted for.

State television showed a body lying on the street and burning cars. An entire facade of a multi-story university building had crumbled and cars were overturned. An interior shot of a corridor showed that the ceiling had caved in.

Amateur video footage showed students carrying books out of the university after one of the explosions, walking quickly away from rising smoke. The camera then shakes to the sound of another explosion and people begin to run.

Syria has been plunged into bloodshed since a violent government crackdown in early 2011 on peaceful demonstrations for democratic reform which turned the unrest into an armed insurgency bent on overthrowing Assad.

Each side in the 22-month-old conflict blamed the other for Tuesday’s blasts at the university, located in a government-held area of Syria’s most populous city.

Some activists in Aleppo said a government air strike caused the explosions, while state television accused terrorists of firing two rockets at the university. A rebel fighter said the blasts appeared to have been caused by surface-to-surface missiles.

The nearest rebel-controlled area, Bustan al-Qasr, is more than a mile away from the university.

The Observatory said rebel sources on the ground reported they were fighting with government forces in the early hours of Wednesday around Bustan al-Qasr, implying a renewed push by government forces to expel the insurgents.

01/16/2013

Source: reuters.com

Syria’s Opposition: Increasingly Coordinated, Armed, Analysts Say #Syria

BY: LARISA EPATKO AND P.J. TOBI


Syrian security forces inspect an explosion that targeted a military bus near Qudssaya, a neighborhood of Damascus, on June 8. Photo by AFP/Getty Images.

Syria’s opposition is advancing in terms of weapons and communications support, and the regime under President Bashar al-Assad is responding by clamping down on towns and villages, racking up casualties on both sides, some analysts are saying.

But while the Free Syrian Army’s weapons, some which reportedly come from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are getting more sophisticated, they still are no match for the regime, said Andrew Tabler, senior fellow in the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The anti-tank weapons are a potential game-changer, said Frederic Wherey, senior associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Previously, when the regime launched a withering armored assault, the opposition could not respond at all. Individual soldiers now are also better equipped with body armor and personal weapons, he said.

The Free Syrian Army itself has different levels: Some members are deserters of the Syrian army — they are the ones who conduct military operations against the Syrian army — and regular civilians who are like the minutemen in the American Revolutionary War and are working to push security forces back so that they can protest in the streets, Tabler said.

There is no command structure among them, but nonetheless they are becoming more coordinated possibly because of the help they are getting from international supporters in the area of communications, he said. The U.S. administration, which has taken the stance that Assad must go, is providing non-lethal support such as medical aid to the opposition.

Because of these advancements, the Syrian regime is stepping up its attacks by shelling villages and using pro-government militias for on-the-ground fighting, said Tabler. But Assad can only regain control of areas temporarily in a “whack-a-mole”-style resistance, he said.

Syrian mourners gather June 11 for the funeral of nine of the 13 people killed a day earlier in the town of Maaret al-Numan in the Idlib province. Photo by AFP/Getty Images.

On the other side, support for the regime is coming mainly from the Iranians and Russians in terms of political allegiance and arms, said Tabler.

The danger to escalating fighting and a balancing out of militaries is that the regime will use paramilitary groups more and “sectarianize” the conflict, which would mean a deepening of civil war, said Wherey. “I’m not sure if the opposition can make real political or military gains against this; the end is nowhere in sight.”

Source: pbs.org

Syria’s Armed Opposition #Syria

Executive Summary  Full report here

This report provides detailed information on Syria’s armed opposition movement, highlighting where structure exists within the movement and where Syria’s rebels lack organization. This report does not advocate for or against the policy of arming the Syrian opposition.

  • Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7, 2012 about issues that were restraining the United States from supporting the armed opposition in Syria. “It is not clear what constitutes the Syrian armed opposition – there has been no single unifying military alternative that can be recognized, appointed, or contacted,” he said.
  • The armed Syrian opposition is identifiable, organized, and capable, even if it is not unified. The Free Syrian Army (FSA), nominally headquartered in Turkey, thus functions more as an umbrella organization than a traditional military chain of command.
  • Three of Syria’s most effective militias maintain direct ties to the Free Syrian Army. They include The Khalid bin Walid Brigade near Homs; the Harmoush Battalion in the northern Jebel al-Zawiya mountains; and the Omari Battalion in the southern Hawran plain, the name used by locals for the agricultural plateau that comprises Syria’s Dera’a province. Appendix 1 lists biographical details of the insurgent leaders affiliated with many effective fighting units. Appendix 2 provides an order of battle for the armed opposition groups by province.
  • Other large and capable rebel groups do not maintain such a close relationship with the FSA headquarters in Turkey, but nevertheless refer to themselves as members of the Free Syrian Army.
  • Despite the regime’s assault on Homs in February 2012, the insurgency remains capable. The rebels who withdrew from the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs at the beginning of March 2012 have demonstrated the tactical wherewithal to retreat in order to preserve combat power.
  • The Assad regime escalated attacks against the rebels after they defended Zabadani against the Army’s offensive. The affront was probably significant in itself, and the Assad regime could not allow the rebels to hold terrain against the Army. But Zabadani is also vitally important to the regime and to Iran because the city serves as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force logistical hub for supplying Lebanese Hezbollah.
  • The Assad regime is likely to continue its strategy of disproportionate force in an attempt to end the uprising as quickly as possible. Indiscriminate artillery fire allows the regime to raise cost of dissent while preserving its increasingly stretched maneuver force.
  • The rebels’ resiliency will make the Assad regime’s endurance difficult, but the external support to his regime makes predictions of his imminent fall premature. The Syrian regime has not yet demonstrated the capacity to conduct enough large, simultaneous, or successive operations in multiple urban areas to suppress the insurgency. But it is possible that the technical and material support that Iran and Russia are providing will enable the regime to increase its span of control and its ability to fight insurgents in multiple locales without culminating.
  • The rebels will have to rely on external lines of supply to replenish their arms and ammunition if they are to continue eroding the regime’s control.
  • The emergence of al-Qaeda-linked terrorist cells working against the regime poses risks to the United States and a challenge to those calling for material support of the armed opposition.
  • As the militias continue to face overwhelming regime firepower the likelihood of their radicalization may increase. Moreover, the indigenous rebels may turn to al-Qaeda for high-end weaponry and spectacular tactics as the regime’s escalation leaves the rebels with no proportionate response, as occurred in Iraq in 2005-2006. Developing relations with armed opposition leaders and recognizing specific rebel organizations may help to deter this dangerous trend.
  • It is imperative that the United States distinguish between the expatriate political opposition and the armed opposition against the Assad regime on the ground in Syria.
  • American objectives in Syria are to hasten the fall of the Assad regime; to contain the regional spillover generated by the ongoing conflict; and to gain influence over the state and armed forces that emerge in Assad’s wake.
  • Therefore, the United States must consider developing relations with critical elements of Syria’s armed opposition movement in order to achieve shared objectives, and to manage the consequences should the Assad regime fall or the conflict protract.

* Published by the Institute of Understanding War

Source: syriancouncil.org