President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has put together a new paramilitary force of men and women, some trained by key ally Iran, to fight what is now becoming a guerrilla war, a watchdog said Monday.

The force, dubbed the National Defense Army, gathers together existing popular committees of pro-regime civilian fighters under a new, better-trained and armed hierarchy, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The popular committees were originally formed to protect pro-regime neighborhoods from rebels.

“The [regular] army is not trained to fight a guerrilla war, so the regime has resorted to creating the National Defense Army,” said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.

Most of the new fighters are members or supporters of the ruling Baath party, said Abdel Rahman. “They include men and women, and members of all the sects.”

The new force is not connected to the pro-regime shabiha militia, which the army and security forces have deployed ever since the outbreak of an anti-regime revolt to help it suppress dissent across the country.

Members of the paramilitary force, like the popular committees before, will focus on fighting in their own neighborhoods.

On Friday, Moscow’s Russia Today reported on its website that the new National Defense Army was being set up to “defend districts against gunmen.”

“The Syrian authorities are set to create … a National Defense Army, parallel to regime forces, so that the [regular] army is freed up for combat,” the website reported citing an unnamed official.

Abdel Rahman, whose Observatory relies on a network of activists and medics on the ground, said Iran was involved in building the paramilitary force.

“The paramilitary force includes an elite fighting force trained by Iran,” Abdel Rahman told AFP.

“Iran has provided training to the paramilitary force’s commando fighters.”

Iran, Damascus’ key regional ally, staunchly backs Assad and in September 2012 said its elite Quds Force, which is tasked with carrying out operations outside the Islamic republic, was giving Damascus “counsel and advice.”

On the ground, an activist said the new force was already active in the central province of Homs.

“The number of regime fighters in the province has swelled in recent days, as the National Defense Army has started to come into action,” anti-regime activist Hadi al-Abdullah told AFP via the Internet from the rebel-held town of Qusayr.

01/21/2013

Bashar al #Assad relieved by French intervention in Mali

courtesy @fargar

Picture: Would you pull the trigger? #Assad #Syria

- by Mohamad7799

Kafranbel masterpiece. (via @TheMoeDee) - #Syria

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

This is my guide for Syria analysts and journalists who want to defend Bashar Assad while continuing to retain their credibility in the West. 

1. Keep mentioning Jubhat al Nasra and other Islamic jihadi groups without mentioning that the vast majority of armed groups are not nearly as extreme, are mostly locally based folks defending their towns and villages.

2. When referring to the armed opposition keep using the magic word: AL QAEDA

3. Make cursory mention of the regime’s brutality (you won’t have any credibility if you don’t) but avoid resurrecting the roots of the conflict in peaceful opposition to Bashar’s dictatorship. Avoid mention of wanton use of air power against civilians in bread lines and in their homes. 

4. Keep talking about NATO, the Gulf countries and Western support for opposition; that will boost Bashar’s anti-imperialist creds among the campus leftists. 

5. Focus on faults of incompetent and disorganized Syrian opposition abroad instead of networks of activists and homegrown civil society already establishing governance inside.

6. Frame Russia as an honest broker trying to peacefully resolve conflict instead of a shrewd chess player that doesn’t give a damn about Syrian civilians and murdered tens of thousands of Chechens in an attempt to put down a rebellion in the 1990s.

7. Keep warning about consequences of Syria state’s collapse: sectarian war, refugees in Europe, rise of an Islamist state.

8. Keep raising rare instances of rebel misconduct and faked videos and frame them as emblematic of the overall opposition.

9. Make the opposition look intransigent; they’re the ones who won’t agree to a peaceful settlement, not the president who did no reforms for 10 years and dispatched shabiha to murder peaceful protesters when they spoke out.

10. Pray to God (even if you are an athiest) that the rebels don’t get to Damascus, open up the files and find out what you did for the regime, the details of conversations on how you got your visas and your access to officials.

by Borzou Daragahi

12/31/2012

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said on Saturday his country supported the Syrian revolution and that President Bashar al-Asasd’s administration had no place in Syria’s future.

Mursi said Egypt’s priority was to halt the bloodshed and to work, with “Arab, regional and international support and consensus”, for a political solution that would allow “the Syrian people to replace the current regime” with elected leaders.

“All of that while preserving the unity of Syria,” Mursi, an Islamist, said during a televised speech to Egypt’s Shura Council, or upper house of parliament. “There is no place for the current regime in the future of Syria.”

Assad has been losing ground to rebels waging a 21-month-old uprising. Egyptians ousted their longtime authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, in a popular revolt in February 2011. Mursi won office in a free election earlier this year.

“The revolution of the Syrian people, which we support, will go forward, God willing, to realise its goals of freedom, dignity and social justice,” Mursi added.

Sat Dec 29, 2012 7:42am EST

Syria’s opposition National Coalition said Thursday it would agree to any solution for a political transition as long as it excludes President Bashar al-Assad and his family.

“We will accept any political solution that does not include the Assad family nor those who harmed the Syrian people,” Coalition spokesperson Walid al-Bunni told a press conference in Istanbul.

“Our first condition for them is to leave the country,” Bunni said in remarks translated from Arabic, referring to the Assad family and the regime’s inner circle.

His comments came after international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi called for “real change” in Syria and the installation of a transitional government until elections can be held. But he made no mention on the fate of Assad, whose term expires in 2014.

The conflict in Syria has killed more than 45,000 people since it began with a brutal crackdown on peaceful demonstrations in March 2011, according to rights groups.

Western media reports have speculated on a new Russia-US initiative that would allow Assad to stay in power. Moscow has already denied the existence of any such joint plans.

12/27/2012

Joint UN-Arab League representative meets with Syrian president after dozens are killed in air strike on a bakery queue.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, has met with Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, in Damascus, a day after an air strike killed dozens of civilians in Hama province.

“I had the honour to meet the president and as usual we exchanged views on the many steps to be taken in the future,” Brahimi told reporters at his hotel in Damascus on Monday.

“Assad expressed his views on the situation and I told him about my meetings with leaders in the region and outside,” said the veteran Algerian diplomat, who took over his present task from former UN chief Kofi Annan.

Assad described his meeting with Brahimi as “friendly and constructive”, according to state television.

“The government is committed to ensure the success of all efforts aimed at protecting the sovereignty and independence of the country,” Assad said. State news agency SANA said Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, his deputy Faisal Muqdad and presidential advisor Buthaina Shaaban all attended Assad’s meetings with Brahimi.

Brahimi arrived in Syria on Sunday from neighbouring Lebanon. He had last visited the country on October 19.

Bakery air strike

On Sunday, anti-government activists in the town of Halfaya said that at least 90 people had been killed in an air strike on a bakery in the central Syrian town.

Halfaya was seized by rebels few days ago as part of a campaign to push into new territories in the 21-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.

Mousab al-Hamadee, an activist in the suburbs of Hama, told Al Jazeera that Halfaya and nearby towns have witnessed heavy shelling since rebels began advancing in the province.

Samer al-Hamawi, an activist in the town, said that more than 1,000 people had been queueing at the bakery. Shortages of fuel and flour have made bread production erratic across the country, and people often wait for hours to buy loaves.

“We hadn’t received flour in around three days so everyone was going to the bakery today, and lots of them were women and children,” Hamawi said.

‘Terrorist attack’

Syrian state media, however, disputed that account, saying instead that a “terrorist” group had carried out the attack.

SANA, the country’s official news agency, citing residents of the town located in the central province of Hama, said: “An armed terrorist group attacked the town of Halfaya committing crimes against the population, killing many women and children.”

The report added that the Syrian army intervened during the assault and “killed and wounded many terrorists”, a term Syrian officials and state media use to refer to rebels fighting to oust the Assad government.

“Terrorists then shot video images to accuse the Syrian army when the international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Syria,” the agency said.

The opposition Syrian National Council blamed the international community for “being responsible for this massacre… by not supporting the Syrian people”.

Both sides in the Syrian conflict have been accused by rights groups of carrying out attacks that could amount to war crimes, including summary executions and attacks on civilians.

12/24/2012

Syrian rebels are gaining ground and might win, Russia’s Middle East envoy said on Thursday, in the starkest such admission from a major ally of President Bashar al-Assad in 20 months of conflict.

“One must look the facts in the face,” Russia’s state-run RIA quoted Mikhail Bogdanov as saying. “Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be ruled out.”

Bogdanov, a deputy foreign minister and the Kremlin’s special envoy for Middle East affairs, said the Syrian government was “losing control of more and more territory” and Moscow was preparing to evacuate Russian citizens if necessary.

Advancing rebels now hold an almost continuous arc of territory from the east to the southeast of Damascus, despite fierce army bombardments designed to drive them back.

The head of NATO said he thought Assad’s government was nearing collapse and the new leader of Syria’s opposition told Reuters the people of Syria no longer needed international forces to protect them.

“The horrific conditions which the Syrian people endured prompted them to call on the international community for military intervention at various times,” said Mouaz al-Khatib, a preacher who heads Syria’s National Coalition.

“Now the Syrian people have nothing to lose. They handled their problems by themselves. They no longer need international forces to protect them. The international community has been in a slumber, silent and late (to react) as it saw the Syrian people bleeding and their children killed for the past 20 months,” he added in the interview on Wednesday night.

He did not specify whether by intervention he meant a no-fly zone that rebels have been demanding for month, a ground invasion - which the opposition has warned against - or arms shipments.

He said the opposition would consider any proposal from Assad to surrender power and leave the country, but would not give any assurances until it saw a firm proposal.

In the latest blow to the government, a car bomb killed at least 16 men, women and children in Qatana, a town about 25 km (15 miles) southwest of Damascus where many soldiers live, activists and state media said.

The explosion occurred in a residential area for soldiers in Qatana, which is near several army bases, said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

He put the death toll as 17, including seven children and two women. State news agency SANA said 16 people had died.

State television blamed the blast on “terrorists” - its term for rebels - and showed footage of soldiers walking by a partly collapsed building, with rubble and twisted metal on the road.

The attack follows three bombs at the Interior Ministry on Wednesday evening, in which state news agency SANA said five people were killed, including Abdullah Kayrouz, a member of parliament from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

Apart from gaining territory in the outskirts of Damascus in recent weeks, rebels have also made hit-and-run attacks or set off bombs within the capital, often targeting state security buildings or areas seen as loyal to Assad, such as Jaramana, where twin bombs killed 34 people in November.

The Pakistani Foreign Office said on Thursday security concerns had prompted it to withdraw the ambassador and all Pakistani staff from the embassy in the central suburb of East Mezzeh, a couple miles from the Interior Ministry.

BACK TO THE WALL

Insurgents launched an offensive on Damascus after a July 18 bombing that killed four of Assad’s closest aides, including his feared brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, but were later pushed back.

With his back to the wall, Assad is reported to be turning ever deadlier weapons on his adversaries.

“I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday.

U.S. NATO officials said on Wednesday the Syrian military had fired Scud-style ballistic missiles, which are powerful but not very accurate, against rebels in recent days.

Human Rights Watch said some populated areas had been hit by incendiary bombs, containing flammable materials such as napalm, thermite or white phosphorous, which can set fire to buildings or cause severe burns and respiratory damage.

The British-based Syrian Observatory said war planes were bombing rebel-held eastern suburbs of Damascus on Thursday and artillery was hitting Daraya and Moadamiyeh, southwestern areas near the centre where rebels have been fighting for a foothold.

At least 40,000 people have been killed in Syria’s uprising, which started in March 2011 with street protests which were met with gunfire by Assad’s security forces, and which spiraled into the most enduring and destructive of the Arab revolts.

The United States, European powers and Arab states bestowed their official blessing on Syria’s newly-formed opposition coalition on Wednesday, despite increasing signs of Western unease at the rise of militant Islamists in the rebel ranks.

Western nations at “Friends of Syria” talks in Marrakech, Morocco rallied around a new opposition National Coalition formed last month under moderate Islamist cleric Mouaz Alkhatib.

Russia, which along with China has blocked any U.N. Security Council measures against Assad, criticized Washington’s decision to grant the coalition formal recognition, saying it appeared to have abandoned any effort to reach a political solution.

Bogdanov’s remarks were the clearest sign yet that Russia is preparing for the possible defeat of Assad’s government.

“We are dealing with issues of preparations for an evacuation. We have mobilization plans and are clarifying where our citizens are located,” Bogdanov said.

Thu Dec 13, 2012 9:32am EST

12/12/12 - #Syria - Eastern Ghouta - Assad forces setting up a big long range missile, ready to fire

Michael Weiss

Destruction in Homs. In line with the regime’s slash-and-burn policy, it may use chemical weapons against its own people. (AFP photo)

One of the gravest concerns in the West about Syria is whether or not the Assad regime will deploy chemical weapons either against the civilian population and armed rebels or against a neighboring country. While accurate data is hard to come by in Syria, Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies reckon that the regime has as many as 1,000 tons of chemical weapons disbursed in stockpiles throughout 50 cities. And not that it would matter if Syria had signed or ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which outlaws the manufacture or storage of these arsenals, though the fact that it hasn’t only amplifies fears of just how catastrophic Assad’s end-game might be.
 
Major General Adnan Silou is the former head of Syria’s chemical weapons program. He left that post three years ago and defected from the Assad regime in June. Silou now resides in the officers’ refugee camp in Antakya, Turkey, which doubles as the Free Syrian Army headquarters. Here’s his defection video.

NOW Lebanon was able to speak briefly with Major-General Silou recently about the worst of all outcomes for Syria.

Will the regime ever use chemical weapons?

Silou: If Assad feels restricted, he may use them. As long as conventional weapons—tanks, artillery, the Air Force—are successful in damaging things from afar, he won’t need to deploy them.

Under what conditions could you see Assad ordering them used?

Silou: If Aleppo falls to the Free Syrian Army, he’ll deploy them because he’s insane.

Deploy them against whom? The rebels or civilians?

Silou: He’d use them against everyone, rebels and civilians. This would be total destruction. These weapons hurt everyone.

Why would Aleppo be the decisive factor?

Silou: Because it’s the industrial and economic city of Syria.

Describe how this would work. How would the orders be delivered to deploy chemical weapons?

Silou: The chain of command is Bashar al-Assad, Ali Mamluk [who, following last month’s assassination of key regime insiders, now oversees the entire security apparatus], Jamil Hassan, the head of Air Force intelligence. But only Bashar only can give the order.

If Assad were killed or if he left the country, who could then take such a decision?

Silou: Constitutionally, it would be Farouq Al-Sharaf, the current Vice President of Syria.  But if Assad was still alive but overthrown, he could delegate authority to any other Syrian general.

Would Maher al-Assad, Bashar’s brother and the commander of the Fourth Division, not assume that role?

Silou: He could. The constitution in Syria doesn’t matter, so it’s whatever Bashar decides.

Where are the chemical weapons being kept now? Is it true that they’re scattered throughout 50 cities in Syria?

Silou: I only know of two storage facilities: “417”, which is northeast of Damascus, and “418”, which is in eastern Homs.

What kinds of weapons are kept there?

Silou: Sarin [gas], VX [nerve agent] and mustard agents.

How would these be delivered or fired?

Silou: Through tanks, missiles and aircraft.

You left your position as head of the chemical weapons division three years ago. How sure can you be that the chemical arsenal is the same today as it was then?

Silou: Everything’s the same as I left it. I did everything and managed everything — I was the chief administrator.

Who’s the head of chemical weapons now?

Silou: Brigadier General Talib Salameh is in charge of training the Syrian troops on how to avoid being affected by chemical weapons. But the responsibility for deploying them belongs to Jamil Hassan.

Were chemical weapons ever used while you were the head of the program?

Silou: No.

There have been reports from other defectors that chemical weapons have already been used in Syria since the uprising began a year and a half ago. Is this true?

Silou: In Rastan, the regime sprayed pesticides. This was done to make the people fear the regime and to disperse the protests.