Hassan Barari

07/09/12

IRAN’S strategic and sectarian interests in the Syrian crisis cannot be clearer. While its number one interest is to help Bashar Assad survive, Tehran has a Plan B in case Assad falls down: Transforming Syria into another Afghanistan. In other words, a civil war is Iran’s second best option. Not surprisingly, Iran provides the Syrian regime with weapons just to realize one of these goals.
Senior American officials are distressed that Iran has resumed shipping weapons to Syria via Iraqi airspace. The embattled regime in Damascus has so far managed to hold on thanks to the Iranian support. Undoubtedly, the new shipment will bolster the regime’s troops in its bid to crush the revolution. This new development came at a time when the Syrian Free Army and other revolutionary forces are gaining ground in the daily battles with the Syrian troops.
The Syrian rebels are aware of Iran’s crucial support to the regime. To stave off any destructive impact of Iran, rebels controlled some border crossing to prevent Iran from trucking weapons into Syria. And yet, Iran seems to find a way to overcome this obstacle by using air shipment via Iraq under the nose of the Americans. If anything, this means that the United States has been losing Iraq slowly but surely. The Al-Maliki government in Baghdad seems to be under the cloak of Iran and therefore the limit of American influence in Iraq cannot be more obvious.
Al-Maliki has increasingly allied himself with Iran and has been viewing the conflict from his sectarian perspective. For him, the fall of Assad regime in Syria could be a strategic blow. Al-Maliki — who is obsessed with his sectarian agenda inside Iraq — fears that the power of his Kurdish and Sunni opponents may be accentuated in case Assad steps down or is forced to leave. On top of that, Al-Maliki feels that he should be in the opposite camp of key Gulf States. In fact, Al-Maliki failed to cultivate a positive and constructive relationship with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Additionally, the United States has been losing influence. Far from being effective, President Barack Obama seems to be unintentionally hurting the Syrian people in their fight for independence and freedom. His inability or unwillingness to stop the Iranians from using the Iraqi space has given Assad the oxygen needed to hold on as much as possible while the rebels are not being aided with weapons that can match what Iran has been giving to the Syrian regime.
Explicit in Iran’s behavior is that it is having a hard time giving up on its staunchest Arab ally that has facilitated Iran’s influence in Lebanon. Now with Al-Maliki throwing his lot with Iran, it seems as if the dice has been rolled and the Syrian regime will be emboldened to continue its bloody crackdown on Syrians to the end. In a twist of events, many American reports talk about Iraqi Shiite militia fighters fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Syrian Army to defend Assad from a looming downfall.
Iran is planning for the day after Assad. For the Iranian leadership, a chaotic Syria without Assad is better than a political transition that produces a government friendly with the West. For Iranians, a stable Syria minus Bashar regime is a non-starter. They will do what it takes to create the seeds of anarchy or another Iraq. Seen in this light, Iran cannot be a positive force in Syria and this lesson should not be forgotten by the Gulf countries, Turkey and Jordan. It is highly unlikely that Iran will acquiesce to international calls not to interfere in the Syrian crisis. The stakes are high for Iranians and chances of Assad’s demise are high. Iran feels that Assad is fighting a proxy war at the behest of Tehran. So far Iran has bankrolled a huge percentage of the Syrian war efforts.
On the whole, pundits and analysts agree that the conflict has taken a brutal turn with the negative external intervention especially the one by Iran. And yet, Iran justifies its support by accusing some Gulf countries of arming rebels to help them bring down the regime in Damascus. Iran is not expected to see eye to eye with its opponents in the region. Seen in this way, if Iran can get away with this policy and go on unchecked, Assad will deepen his cruel and brutal polices and will guarantee that his departure will be followed by a civil war, the second best scenario for Tehran.

Diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi speaks with former U.S. President Jimmy Carter (not pictured) during a joint news conference in Khartoum in this May 27, 2012 file photo. (REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah)

11/08/2012

The less time spent discussing the news that a replacement for Kofi Annan is going to be made, the better.

But for now, the media will be obliged to deal with the news that Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi is being considered for the post, and then likely cover the official announcement of the appointment.

The “news,” as such, boils down to this: Annan’s mandate as the United Nations-Arab League envoy to Syria will elapse on the 20th of this month, so if Brahimi is actually selected, he will only serve for a short interval – much more pressing is the question of whether the post itself is renewed.

The move to actually consider appointing a successor to Annan appears to be designed to appease Moscow, and it’s another sign of the failure of the U.N. and the international community. The world’s leading powers are searching for a way to avoid coming up with a solution, if asking Brahimi to step in is what’s on the table.

People will inevitably use shorthand to refer to Brahimi as a veteran diplomat, with a track record of being selected to handle various “hot spots,” such as Haiti, Iraq and Afghanistan, for example. But would a special envoy ever be named to a place that isn’t a hot spot?

In fact, Brahimi’s record is one of disappointment. He’s the perfect public servant, as he is adept in standing before microphones and making upbeat statements that usually bear little relation to reality.

He has never been particularly creative or energetic in his missions, instead preferring to tell each side what it wants to hear, as his shuttle trips continue, along with the crisis in question.

The Lebanese have their own special memory of Brahimi during the final phases of the Civil War. He had excellent contacts with all sides, and spent his time shuttling between East and West Beirut, never managing to bring about the elusive cease-fire. The Taif Accord was not a Brahimi initiative; he was just the messenger for the arrangement that finally ended the war.

If experience in moving from one waste of time to another is the qualification for continuing Annan’s mission in Syria, Brahimi is perfectly suited for the job.

Annan’s mission died because every side’s stance was well known, and held no hope of a solution for the Syrian crisis. Since the U.N. envoy was named, several thousand people have been killed, and the Syrian public has become certain that the U.N. does not intend to take any serious action to end the bloodshed.

Neither side should welcome Brahimi, if he is tasked with picking up where Annan left off, unless someone, somewhere, makes it clear that the international community believes the crisis in Syria must be solved, and immediately. Otherwise, Brahimi will only have a rising body count to remember from his tenure.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, meets with Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama, at his residence in Accra, Ghana, on Aug. 9, 2012. On Saturday, Clinton will make her way to Istanbul for meetins on Syria’s enduring conflict.

10/08/2012

07/08/2012

A diplomatic resolution looks unlikely in Syria, but in the realm of Saudi politics, a personal invitation from the king is symbolically important

Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been invited by the Saudi king to attend a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images

The visit of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Saudi Arabia comes at a crucial time for the conflict in Syria. Few observers can be optimistic about the chances for diplomacy, with the Annan plan abandoned and the quieter efforts at reaching a US-Russia deal stalled.

Most analysts predict that Syria’s uprising against dictatorship – which began as a peaceful cross-sectarian movement calling for basic freedoms – will increasingly mutate into a sectarian civil war. Much of the western policy debate is moving on to the risks of prolonged state failure in a post-Assad future.

Within the Arab world, the debate over Syria is increasingly becoming polarised along ideological and sectarian lines, as the country’s strategic importance to the region’s great powers seems to be obscuring the commonalities between the basic demands of the Syrian protesters and their counterparts in other Arab countries. Any efforts to draw back from the brink – and to stop the Syrian uprising against dictatorship being derailed by a sectarian regional proxy war – deserve attention.

Ahmadinejad’s visit, which an aide has said will go ahead, is a rare one. He last visited Saudi Arabia in 2007, at a time when the Gulf states were trying so hard to reach out to Iran that Qatar even invited him to join in the annual summit of the Gulf Co-operation Council (the regional organisation representing the six Gulf Arab monarchies, which was founded in 1981 partly in response to the perceived threat of the Iranian revolution).

Although there is a long history of rivalry and competition between the Gulf Arab countries and Iran, relations have not always been so conflicted. Back in 2008, Ahmadinejad visited Bahrain and signed an agreement for Iran to supply Bahrain with natural gas. The deal, which seems almost unthinkable today, never materialised.

By contrast, Ahmadinejad’s most recent foray to the other side of the Gulf was in April, when he toured Abu Musa, an island occupied by Iran but claimed by the UAE. This prompted fury in the Gulf monarchies, where rulers saw it as a sign of Iranian expansionist tendencies, and were frustrated by the lack of reaction from their western allies (who were preparing for talks with Iran over the nuclear issue and who are not deeply engaged on the islands issue).

It is in Syria that the Saudi-Iranian confrontation has become the most pronounced and dangerous, but the two are competing for influence in the wider region. They back rival camps in Iraq, Lebanon, and to some extent Yemen and the Palestinian territories (though Hamas has always had some support in the Gulf and is now distancing itself from both Iran and Syria). They are also at odds over the treatment of Shia protesters in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s own eastern province. Saudi officials routinely suggest that Iran is fomenting the protests in both cases.

For its part, Iran’s interests seem to be best served by giving only moral support to the protesters, so it can sit back and watch its rivals challenged from within, without the kind of direct involvement that could spark retaliation.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are effective exploiters of “soft power”, making use of their various media channels and religious networks to try to discredit the other.

One of the disadvantages of this approach is that it is never quite clear how centralised the control of foreign policy really is. Another problem is that the Middle Eastern media are becoming increasingly sectarian – a trend that is worrying many people in the ethnically and religiously diverse countries of the Gulf.

Now, with the collapse of Kofi Annan’s mission to Syria, the Gulf Arab monarchies are becoming more open about their support for the Syrian opposition, including the armed Free Syrian Army. Saudi Arabia has hosted a variety of Syrian opposition visitors, from members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to Assad’s estranged uncle, Rifaat al-Assad and Manaf Tlass, a senior Syrian military officer who defected just a few weeks ago.

The latter visitors illustrate that Saudi Arabia is not only supporting the Islamist opposition; it has its own concerns about the rising regional influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose focus on electoral politics represents a major challenge to the Saudi model of partnership between clerics and hereditary rulers.

The UAE is also pursuing a delicate balancing act, as it is home to a number of Syrian National Council activists – who recently announced the defection of the Syrian ambassador to the UAE – but is extremely wary of the role the Muslim Brotherhood could play in its own territory, and is investigating around 50 imprisoned Islamist political activists who are accused of conspiring with foreign organisations.

Even before the Annan mission collapsed, the Saudi and UAE foreign ministers were expressing extreme frustration with what they see as international inaction over Syria. Saudi Arabia has never seemed particularly convinced by western diplomatic efforts; Kofi Annan did not visit Riyadh during his Syria mediation efforts, and neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran was included in the last “Friends of Syria” meeting.

Most indications point to further conflict rather than a diplomatic resolution. But in the highly personalised realm of Saudi politics, a personal invitation from the king is symbolically important.

In Lebanon, in 2008 and 2009, the confrontation between the Saudi-backed 14 March alliance and the Iranian-backed 8 March alliance occasionally looked like it could lead to renewed civil conflict. But there, the rival factions stepped back from the brink, negotiating power-sharing agreements before and after the 2009 elections.

This would be far harder to achieve in Syria, with its daily bloodshed and its asymmetry of forces, but the cost of conflict is high enough for any remaining diplomatic options to be worth exploring.

Mahmoud, a 21-year-old Palestinian resident of Syria, rests in a field hospital after he was found, Aug. 6, 2012, having been blindfolded, beaten and sprayed with bullets. (AP)

07/08/2012

(AP) ANADAN, Syria — The guards pulled him from his cell before dawn on Monday, bound his hands, blindfolded him and drove him to an empty lot in the Syrian city of Aleppo. They sat him in a row with 10 other captives, he said, then cocked their guns and opened fire.

“They sprayed us,” recalled 21-year-old Mahmoud, the lone survivor of the latest mass killing of Syria’s civil war. “The first bullet hit my chest, then one hit my foot, then my head. As soon as my head got hit, I thought, `I’m dead.”’

Reports of such killings have surfaced frequently during the 17 months of deadly violence that activists seeking to topple President Bashar Assad say has killed more than 19,000 people. But details are usually scarce — no more than activist reports or amateur videos of bloodied bodies or mass graves posted on YouTube.

Mahmoud related his grisly ordeal to The Associated Press hours after it happened. Struggling to speak, he lay in a bed in a makeshift rebel-run field hospital set up in a wedding hall in this town 13 miles north of Aleppo. Bandages covered his foot, head and chest. Plastic vines and colored lights adorned the walls of the darkened building, and two red velvet chairs once used by brides and grooms sat on a small stage.

Mahmoud gave only his first name to protect his family who still live in the area.

While his story could not be independently confirmed, Mahmoud’s wounds matched his story and residents who found him and his dead colleagues corroborated certain details.

Together, they painted a picture of the summary slaying of 10 men, at least some of whom had only loose links to the armed rebels seeking to topple the regime. That story jibes with activist claims of the increasingly brutal tactics regime forces are using to try to crush the rebellion that has spread to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Syria’s uprising started in March 2011 with peaceful protests calling for political reforms that were met with a fierce regime crackdown. Government brutality grew as dissent spread, and many in the opposition took up arms as the conflict morphed into a civil war.

Aleppo has been a stronghold of government support throughout the uprising, with a wealthy business class and many minority communities who fear they’ll suffer if Assad falls. Until recently, the city of some 4 million people had been spared the violence that has ravaged other Syrian cities.

But during the last two weeks, rebels have been pushing into Aleppo’s neighborhoods, clashing with security forces and torching police stations in a push to “liberate” the city. Syrian media has vowed the army is gearing up for a “decisive battle,” while anti-regime activists have reported swelling numbers of troops and tanks on the city’s edges.

The Syrian government blames the uprising on armed gangs and terrorists backed by foreign powers that seek to weaken Syria.

Mahmoud receives treatment in a field hospital after he was found Aug. 6, 2012, with three gunshot wounds in the town of Anadan

 (Credit: AP)

It was amid these tensions that Mahmoud, a Palestinian resident of Aleppo, had his fateful brush with Syrian security. On Thursday, Mahmoud said, he and a friend went to collect their paychecks from the thread factory where they work and heard clashes nearby. Soon eight men in civilian clothes stopped them and asked for their IDs and cell phones.

On Mahmoud’s phone they found videos of anti-government demonstrations and messages he sent to rebels from the Free Syrian Army, asking God to protect them and make them victorious. The men threw Mahmoud and his friend in the trunk of a car and drove them to a trash dump, where they were blindfolded, bound and beaten with sticks and large rocks before being taken to a security office.

Mahmoud was locked in a crowded cell with about a dozen other men, he said. Each day, some were taken out and new ones brought in.

“We were there for four days and they only gave us water to drink once. They never fed us,” he said. “They never asked us anything. Every day it was beating, beating, beating.”

Before dawn on Monday, guards pulled Mahmoud and 10 others from their cells and told they were going to see a judge. They were bound at the wrists, blindfolded and driven to Aleppo’s Khaldiyeh neighborhood, where they were lined up on a patch of rocky soil.

“They sat us all down next to each other, `You here, you here, you here,”’ Mahmoud said. “Then each one cocked his weapon and the shooting started.”

Mahmoud was shot three times. Bullets pierced his chest and foot and one grazed his skull. Minutes later, silence returned, and he realized he was still alive.

“I breathed, I said the shehada,” he said, referring to the Muslim declaration of faith meant to put him right with God. “I tried to get up then started screaming because blood was coming out of me.”

He scraped his face on a rock to remove the blindfold and crawled to where some nearby residents found him.

Among them was a 22-year-old electrician who said he heard the gunfire early Monday and worried that people were being killed because he had discovered six bodies in the same spot a day earlier. He showed videos of the victims on his cell phone, their bodies piled atop each other covered in blood, some bearing large bruises that appeared to be from beatings. He said all had been shot dead.

He and others asked not to have their names published because they have to pass through government checkpoints to get home.

The killings shocked residents of Khaldiyeh, a working-class neighborhood on Aleppo’s northwest side that has seen little violence until now. While many residents support the rebels, they have not established a foothold in the area, and the relative quiet has drawn thousands of people fleeing violence in other Aleppo neighborhoods or nearby villages.

As Mahmoud spoke, a white pickup pulled up outside the field hospital with the bodies of nine of the men killed Monday. The body of the tenth victim had been taken away by his family. All still had their hands bound and two still wore blindfolds. Two had bullet wounds to their heads, and others had blood on their faces and chests or coming out of their ears. None wore shoes.

Those killings convinced one Khaldiyeh resident who helped collect the bodies that the neighborhood needs arms.

“We want the Free Army to come to our neighborhood to protect us,” he said. “If they can’t come, then they need to give us weapons so we can defend ourselves.”

The field hospital’s doctor, Mohammed Ajaj, said he is no longer shocked when the dead and wounded pass through town on their way to burial in nearby villages or for treatment across the northern border in Turkey.

“We’ve gotten used to it,” he said.

An 18-year-old activist who helped collect the bodies said none of them had IDs.

“We really know nothing about them,” he said, adding that he would stop in neighboring villages to see if anyone recognized them before delivering them to a morgue further north.

“If nobody claims them, we’ll take their photos and put them on our Facebook page so their families can find out that they’re dead,” he said. 

One day after threatening to unleash chemical weapons if it were invaded, Syria denies havingunconventional weapons, and says West is preparing an Iraq-style intervention.

By Arthur Bright, Correspondent / July 24, 2012

Syrian rebels have accused the Assad regime of moving its chemical weapons to the borders, even as the Syrian government has been “backpedalling furiously” from its warning yesterday that it would use its chemical arsenal against foreign intervention in the civil war gripping the nation.

Agence France-Presse reports that the Free Syrian Army warned in a statement today that President Bashar al-Assad’s government has been moving its chemical weapons to new locations along the Syrian border. 

“We in the joint command of the Free Syrian Army inside the country know very well the locations and positions of these weapons,” the statement said. “We also reveal that Assad has transferred some of these weapons and equipment for mixing chemical components to airports on the border.”

“According to our information, the regime began moving its stocks of weapons of mass destruction several months ago … with the goal of putting pressure on the region and the international community.

The FSA’s statement comes as the Syrian government appears to be stepping back from yesterday’s warning that the regime has a chemical arsenal that it will use against foreign intervention.

Yesterday foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi publicly acknowledged Syria’s chemical arsenal for the first time, saying that “Those weapons will only be used in the case of exterior aggression.” Mr. Makdissi also said that the weapons “will not be used against Syrian civilians,” and that “they will never be used domestically no matter how the crisis evolves.”

But The Guardian writes that Syria’s foreign ministry and information ministry have been “backpedaling furiously” from yesterday’s statement, and speculates that Makdissi may have spoken out of turn. The Guardian notes that Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi said that “When the foreign ministry spokesman says that Syria will not use chemical weapons against its people, then this doesn’t mean that Syria has such weapons in the first place.” And the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) claimed today that Makdissi’s comments were taken out of context “as a declaration of possessing non-traditional weapons.”The Ministry said that the goal of the statement and the press conference wasn’t to declare but rather to respond to a methodical media campaign targeting Syria to prepare world public opinion for the possibility of military intervention under the false premise of weapons of mass destruction (similar to what happened with Iraq) or the possibility of using such weapons against terrorist groups or civilians, or transporting them to a third party.

The SANA statement suggests that the Assad regime may fear that acknowledgement of its chemical arsenal could incite, rather than deter, Western nations’ intervention in the Syrian crisis. Western nations roundly criticized yesterday’s statement, reports USA Today, and President Obama warned that Assad would be held accountable for use of Syria’s chemical weapons.

“Given the regime’s stockpiles of chemical weapons, we will continue to make it clear to Assad and those around him that the world is watching – and that they will be held accountable by the international community, and the United States, should they make the tragic mistake of using those weapons,” Obama said. 

Reuters reports that Israel believes that the Assad regime remains in control of its chemical weapons. “The worry, of course, is that the regime will destabilize and the control will also destabilize,” Israeli official Amos Gilad told Israel Radio. “At the moment, the entire non-conventional weapons system is under the full control of the regime.”

But while Assad’s chemical arsenal remains of prime concern, conventional guerrilla warfare continues on the ground in Syria. Col. Malik Kurdi, a Free Syrian Army spokesman, told The Washington Post that the rebels were forced to retreat from Damascus because they lacked the weapons to maintain a prolonged, toe-to-toe struggle with regime forces.

“The Free Syrian Army is carrying out a war of harassing the regime army until it is exhausted, using guerrilla tactics,” he said, speaking by telephone from the military refugee camp in southern Turkey where the rebel leadership is based. “We can’t keep control of an area, so this is a circular operation, moving from one place to another, one city to another, to tire the regime out.”

And Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi told pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat that the Assad regime is set to fall, and that he would soon be traveling to Russia and China to encourage them to end their obstruction of UN Security Council action on Syria. “Our message to the Russians will be, with clarity and frankness, that the veto decision they took is viewed as being against Arab interests. We hope for a review of the matter, especially given that they know that the days of the current regime in Syria are numbered,” he said.

(CNN) — The U.N. peacekeeping chief says Syria is now in a civil war.

Some experts agree with U.N. official Herve Ladsous that the war-torn country has reached that chilling milestone. Others say the country is hurtling in that direction. The conflict began in March 2011 when a fierce Syrian government crackdown on peaceful protesters morphed into a bloody government uprising.

Stephen Biddle, Roger Hertog Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations said popular conversation about civil war tends to be dominated by images of the U.S. Civil War and it conjures a vague picture of a “really bad conflict.” But the rigorously-defined scholarly meaning of civil war fits Syria now, just as it applied to Iraq last decade, he said.

“A civil war is a conflict in which at least one side is a non-state actor, with at least 1,000 total battle deaths and at least 100 on each side,” he said.

Anuradha Chakravarty, assistant professor of political science at the University of South Carolina, cites a similar threshold and notes that the estimates of 10,000 to 14,000 battle-related deaths so far in Syria fulfills the definition. She said the definition has “little to do with the growing use recently of attack helicopters” to wage war.

“Syria did not start out as a case of civil war because the opposition to the government mainly took the form of a popular uprising in March 2011,” she said.

“However, later that year, the Free Syrian Army and its organization of an armed rebellion against the government (in defense of the civilian uprising) fulfilled at least the most basic criterion of a civil war — the armed confrontation between a rebel group and the government. Thus, Syria turned into a civil war situation much earlier than recent observations by the U.N. would suggest.”

Like other civil wars, she said the situation has “notable international dimensions,” with reports of Russian military support for the regime and reports of the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey backing the rebels.

James Fearon, a professor of political science at Stanford University, defines a civil war as “an armed conflict within a country between organized groups who are fighting to control the central government or over control of a region.” The Syrian conflict “has qualified as a civil war for a while now,” said Fearson.

He cited the same academic thresholds political scientists and sociologists use for a civil war: 1,000 killed or a higher 1,000 killed per year, but added, “How many is enough to qualify is matter of opinion, and this arbitrariness might be the source of some of the disagreement about whether Syria, etc, is having a civil war or not. “

It doesn’t matter how much of the country is in conflict for unrest to be defined as a civil war, he said.

“For instance, we call the conflict in the U.S. in the first part of the 1860s a civil war even though things were entirely peaceful in almost all of the North,” he said.

Two organized forces facing off against each other is also a necessary part of the definition, said Joseph Holliday, a researcher at the Institute for the Study of War. In Syria, there have been sectarian tensions between the Sunnis and the Alawites, with the opposition overwhelmingly Sunni and the pro-government Alawites, who dominate the regime of Bashar al-Assad, also an Alawite.

“When you let the sectarian genie out of the bottle, it’s hard to put back in,” Fearson said.

He said the opposition fighters are becoming an organized militia force. The pro-regime Shabiha militias, dominated also by Alawites, are becoming more significant, signaling an erosion in the government’s chain of command.

“I think Syria is a civil war or has all of the components to become one in the future.”

Michael Weiss, Syria expert at the Henry Jackson Society, said parts of Syria are in civil war.

“Civil war suggests the previous state that exists all but failed and collapsed,” he said. In some regions, the government lacks control and there is a “growing equalization” of forces, he said.

Steven Heydemann, senior adviser for Middle East initiatives at the U.S. Institute for Peace, said the regime’s tactics, the escalation in violence and a growing supply of weapons to the opposition indicate the conflict is moving closer to a civil war.

While “some isolated areas in Syria where conditions have crossed the threshold for civil war,” Syria has not yet “crossed that threshold with respect to the conflict as a whole.”

He used Lebanon and Libya as the model for civil war.

In Lebanon during the 1980s, the state collapsed and “we saw a proliferation of armed groups across society in multiple directions” in a society with no controlling authority, Heydemann said. During last year’s civil war in Libya, there were two competing armed forces, with the quality of weapons and the scale of the units largely comparable on each side.

“Neither of those conditions exist in Syria,” he said.

The regime commands armed forces totaling about 200,000 troops and has ample resources such as tanks and helicopters, he said. The armed opposition is basically a “localized insurgency,” much smaller, poorly equipped and trained and “not integrated into any coherent command and control structure.”

So while the conflict between these forces does not constitute a civil war at the moment, said Heydemann, the pace and intensity of opposition activity could change that.

Jeff White, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Syria is edging toward civil war, but is not there yet.

“My definition of civil war is a situation which is characterized by conflict between two, or more, segments of society. I still see the situation in Syria as one of fundamentally an armed and unarmed insurrection against the government. That is, the people are fighting the state not each other.”

That said, the elements of civil war are taking hold.

“The regime is heavily, perhaps increasingly reliant on Alawite fighters both within the regular military and in its irregular forces. The regime has also begun using Alawite villagers in attacks on neighboring Sunni towns and villages. There are also reports of Sunni retaliation for attacks. This is the kind of activity that creates its own dynamic and can spread easily,” he said.

The tipping point could be a “tipping period.” That would be when “communal violence increases in scope and intensity until it dominates the situation,” White said.

“We will know it when we see it; but things to look for would include: organized and directed violence by one sect against another (as opposed to spontaneous actions), declarations by community political and religious leaders that the enemy is the other sect (as opposed to ‘Bashar’s dogs/pigs’ and ‘terrorists’), cleansing of areas, organization of irregular forces along sectarian lines, regime arming of Alawite villages for ‘defense’ against Sunnis, breakdown or Syrian military forces along sectarian lines. We have bits and pieces of this now and the bits and pieces seem to be accumulating.”

The rhetoric used to describe the conflict has important meaning. The term “civil war” can change the dynamics of a conflict.

“In the Iraq war, the Bush administration didn’t want the conflict described as a civil war because it feared that this would increase public opposition — if it’s a civil war, then it’s their business and we shouldn’t bother with it, or expect to be able to fix it,” Fearon said.

“In the Syria case, it is the advocates of greater intervention (and/or greater pressure on Russia) who are saying ‘It may be soon be a civil war,’ by which they mean ‘This is really bad and we have to do something about it,’ ” he said.

White said defining a conflict as a civil war has political implications.

“There is always reluctance to get involved in a civil war. So defining it so supports non-intervention. It also tends to spread the blame for violence more or less evenly across the parties. It is much easier to get behind an insurrection than take sides in a civil war.”

Chakravarty said once a conflict is deemed a civil war, it can compel “more assertive forms of actions from various international actors concerned about their interests in the country.”

This could be in the form of international intervention and heightened diplomatic efforts at negotiation, she said.

Heydemann said the specter of a civil war could increase pressure on policy makers to act so decisively that incremental measures to deal with the conflict might be “left by the wayside.”

Also, he said, the international community has been reluctant to support the opposition because it would contribute to instability, international spillover, the presence of jihadists, and the militarization of the opposition. Now that all of those factors have emerged, they might determine that “some form of engaging” would be the response to a civil war.

Holliday said labeling a conflict as a civil war matters politically, but doesn’t know how much it alone would make a difference. He cited the slaughter of civilians in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, which helped prompt international involvement in that civil conflict in the 1990s

“The instances of sectarian violence against civilians will make a difference,” he said. “That type of thing is the biggest factor to push toward U.S. involvement.”

The United States is worried Russia may be sending Syria attack helicopters and views Russian claims that its arms transfers to Syria are unrelated to the conflict there as “patently untrue,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on today.

Russia said it agreed to step up pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government to return to the negotiating table, as the United Nations warned the risk of sectarian war was increasing daily.

Kofi Annan, the UN special envoy to Syria, said that the level of violence has “escalated” and “the specter of total civil war, with a worrying sectarian dimension, grows by the day,” he told a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers today in Doha, Qatar.

Speaking to reporters later, Annan said he will brief the UN about Syria on June 7. Assad “must act now to implement all points” of the UN’s six-point plan to resolve the crisis, he said.

Annan spoke after President Vladimir Putin was pressed on Russia’s response to the Syrian conflict yesterday in Berlin and Paris during his first foreign trip since he returned to the presidency. Russia and China have blocked UN Security Council resolutions pushing for stronger sanctions on the Assad regime.

“With our German and French partners, we agreed to increase our work” with the respective sides in the Syrian conflict, Yuri Ushakov, a former ambassador to the U.S. who advises Putin on foreign policy, told reporters in Moscow today.

France, Germany, the U.K. and U.S. accuse the Assad regime of undermining Annan’s peace effort with continued deadly military assaults against opponents of the regime. A massacre of more than 100 people in Houla, including women and children, hasn’t broken the Security Council impasse.

Houla Probe

The UN Human Rights Council has called for a probe into the massacre, which it said was carried out by “pro-regime elements” and government forces. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Olso yesterday that Russia’s supply of weapons to Syria is propping up the regime.

France disagrees with Russia over “who is responsible for the violence and over the need for Assad to leave,” President Francois Hollande told a joint press conference in Paris with Putin.

Putin said he doesn’t support either side in the Syrian conflict, and that sanctions aren’t “efficient.” It’s “counter- productive” to conclude that Annan’s peace mission has failed, he said yesterday.

“We need to compel both the authorities and the opposition to get the political process going,” said Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser. “We’re prepared to do that, and we called on our partners to also use their areas of influence to actively weigh on the relevant forces and leaders.”

Russian Interests

Western and other leaders have called on Assad to stand down and quit the country, saying he has lost the legitimacy to lead.

Burhan Ghalioun, head of the Syrian National Council, said at the Arab League meeting in Doha that the opposition will accept Russians helping Assad leave the country and is willing to guarantee Russian interests in Syria. Arab League ministers called on Syrian opposition factions to meet in Cairo as they work on steps toward a political transition.

Ministers called on member states to withdraw their ambassadors from Syria and urged the UN to find ways to protect Syrian civilians, Kuwait Foreign Minister Sabah Khalid al-Sabah said in Doha.

The Syrians have failed to implement the first point of Annan’s six-point plan, and “are just playing for time,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, said in Doha.

“We have lost all confidence with the other side, the Syrian side,” he said. “The killing machine is still doing its work.”

(Reuters) - Syria is nearing full-blown sectarian civil war that would be catastrophic for the entire Middle East, Western nations said on Thursday, urging Russia to end its support for President Bashar al-Assad and put pressure on him to stop the bloodshed.

With anti-Assad rebels urging international envoy Kofi Annan to declare his peace plan dead, freeing them from any commitment to the tattered truce, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the prospect of spiralling violence presented “terrible” danger.

Russia, like China, has vetoed two Security Council resolutions calling for tougher action against Damascus, while stressing hopes that Annan’s plan can spur a political solution. Washington called a reported shipment of Russian arms to Syria “reprehensible” although not illegal.

“The Russians keep telling us they want to do everything they can to avoid a civil war because they believe that the violence would be catastrophic,” Clinton said.

“I think they are in effect propping up the regime at a time when we should be working on a political transition.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Syria was moving towards “all-out civil war or a state of collapse”. The European Union was drafting new sanctions against Syria, he added, calling on other nations to pressure Assad.

A bloody crackdown on what began 14 months ago as a peaceful mass uprising has increasingly turned it into an armed conflict between heavily armed forces representing an establishment dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, and rebel forces drawn largely from the Sunni majority.

Damascus says the rebels are backed by Sunni-ruled Gulf Arab states fearful of the growing influence of Syria’s main ally in the region, Shi’ite Iran.

HOULA MASSACRE

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that another massacre like Friday’s killing of 108 men, women and children in the western Houla region could pitch Syria into a devastating civil war “from which the country would never recover”.

The United Nations has said the army and pro-Assad gunmen were probably responsible for the Houla killings, but Syria said on Thursday that a preliminary investigation had shown that anti-government armed groups carried out the killings with the aim of encouraging foreign military intervention.

Washington’s U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, said Syria’s version of what had happened in Houla was “another blatant lie”. The massacre led a range of Western countries to expel senior Syrian diplomats and to press Russia and China to allow tougher action by the U.N. Security Council.

Syria’s main rebel commander, Colonel Riad al-Asaad, urged Annan to declare that his peace plan had failed.

“There is no deadline, but we want Kofi Annan to issue a declaration announcing the failure of this plan so that we would be free to carry out any military operation against the regime,” Turkey-based Asaad told Al Jazeera television, contradicting rebels inside Syria who issued a 48-hour ultimatum on Wednesday for Assad to abide by Annan’s plan.

Annan’s spokesman said it was not for the peace envoy to declare defeat.

“The Annan plan does not belong to Kofi Annan. It belongs to the parties that have accepted it and the international community that has endorsed it,” Ahmad Fawzi told Reuters.

“So a failure of the Annan plan would be the failure of the international community to solve this peacefully … If anyone has a better plan, they should come up with it.”

The United Nations says Assad’s forces have killed more than 9,000 people since the start of the uprising. Syria blames Islamist militants for the violence and says 2,600 soldiers and police have been killed.

Rebel leader Asaad said his fighters had so far honoured Annan’s plan. But activists have reported frequent attacks by militants and army defectors on government forces since the April 12 ceasefire agreement.

BODIES FOUND

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based network that collates reports of violence in Syria, said 11 bodies had been found outside the town of al-Qusair - killings that a Syrian television station blamed on “terrorist groups”.

At least one person was killed and dozens were wounded in artillery and rocket bombardment in the Houla region on Thursday following rebel attacks on soldiers and pro-Assad ‘shabbiha’ militiamen, opposition activists said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin flies to Berlin and Paris on Friday for talks that European leaders may hope to use to lean on him to loosen Moscow’s strategic links to Assad.

Russia has sought to justify its weapons deliveries to Syria, saying government forces need to defend themselves against rebels receiving arms from abroad. Damascus says Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Libya are among the countries helping the rebels.

The United States and the EU have suggested a U.N. arms embargo, but that would need the consent of Russia and China, which have so far resisted tougher action at the Security Council.

China said it still had faith in the Annan plan, despite the “pain and sadness over what happened in Houla”.

“Annan’s efforts are facing difficulties but no one can deny that they are making progress in some respects,” Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said.

“We knew from the beginning that his path would not be strewn with flowers.”

Annan met Jordan’s King Abdullah in Amman to discuss the regional impact of the Syrian crisis, before flying to Lebanon where he met President Michel Suleiman, telling his interlocutors he had urged Assad to “take bold steps now to end the violence” and implement the peace plan, his spokesman said.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati visited Turkey for talks with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on the fate of a dozen Shi’ite pilgrims taken hostage last week in northern Syria, shortly after crossing the border from Turkey.

Syrian rebels in Aleppo province said in a statement that the hostages were in good health and suggested that some had participated in fighting the rebellion.

They demanded an apology from Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, an ally of Assad, for remarks on Syria he made in a speech last week.

DAMASCUS — UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned on Thursday that Syria risks a “catastrophic civil war” following a massacre that sparked global outrage, as the US slammed Russia for resisting UN action against Damascus.

Armed Syrian rebels upped the ante meanwhile by threatening new action against the Syrian regime unless it falls in line by midday (0900 GMT) Friday with a six-point peace plan brokered by UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Anna.

Ban, addressing a forum in Istanbul, made it clear he too expected Damascus to implement Annan’s blueprint, which includes a ceasefire that should have taken effect on April 12 but has been violated daily.

“I demand that the government of Syria act on its commitment to the Annan peace plan,” he told a UN-led Alliance of Civilisations initiative.

“The massacres of the sort seen last weekend could plunge Syria into a catastrophic civil war, a civil war from which the country would never recover.”

He was referring to a mass slaughter near the central town of Houla on Friday and Saturday in which 108 people died, including 49 children and 34 women.

Some were killed by artillery and tank fire but most were summarily executed, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The assault prompted Western countries, including the United States, Britain, France and Australia to expel the senior Syrian diplomats in their countries.

In Denmark, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Russia’s policy of resisting UN Security Council action against Damascus could contribute to a civil war.

The Russians “are telling me they don’t want to see a civil war. I have been telling them their policy is going help to contribute to a civil war,” she told a mainly student audience in Copenhagen.

Clinton warned that unless checked, the deadly violence in Syria could lead to civil war or even develop into a proxy war because of Iran’s support for the Assad’s regime.

A team led by Annan visited Syria on Tuesday and called for “concrete gestures” from President Bashar al-Assad on halting the violence.

But with Annan receiving no firm commitments from Assad, the rebel Free Syrian Army’s command inside the country gave the president an ultimatum on Thursday.

A statement said that if the regime “does not meet the deadline by Friday midday, the command … will no longer be tied by any commitment to the Annan plan … and our duty will be … to defend civilians.”

Speaking in reaction to the “barbarous massacre of women and children at Houla,” the FSA said “there is no more justification for us to unilaterally respect the truce because (Assad) has buried Annan’s plan.”

It added that it would announce in the coming days “a series of decisive and courageous decisions for the next phase” of their struggle against Assad.

On Wednesday, the UN observer mission chief in Syria, Major General Robert Mood, disclosed a new atrocity.

He said 13 bodies of people killed execution-style had been found in the eastern town of Assukar, describing it as an “appalling and inexcusable act.”

The United States, France, Britain and Germany all emerged from a Security Council meeting on Wednesday urging stronger measures by the body.

UN Ambassador Susan Rice said if the Syrian government did not adhere to the Annan plan, then the Security Council had to “assume its responsibilities” and step up pressure on Damascus.

In the absence of either scenario, and if the violence continued to worsen, “then members of this council and members of the international community are left with the option only of having to consider whether they’re prepared to take actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of this council.”

Her remarks appeared to signal that Washington and its allies would consider whether to act alone if Russia and China continue to block tough action against Syria.

Russia and China, which have both blocked previous attempts at the Security Council to condemn the Assad government, joined other council members on Sunday in approving a statement condemning the Houla massacre.

But Russia is saying that rebuke went far enough.

“It is essential to give the plan of Kofi Annan time to work,” because intervention could “only exacerbate the situation for both Syria and the region as a whole,” Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said.

And President Vladimir Putin said Moscow’s position would not be affected by pressure.

“Russia’s position is well-known. It is balanced and consistent,” Interfax quoted spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Thursday. “So it is hardly appropriate to talk about this position changing under someone’s pressure.”

On the ground, Syrian forces resumed shelling in Houla, which had begun on Wednesday, with a young boy killed by a sniper, the Observatory said.

And battles raged as troops and rebels clashed across the country, with the Observatory saying at least three other people were killed.

CIVIL WAR FEARS: A SYRIAN PROTESTER HOLDS UP THE REMAINS OF FIRED AMMUNITION AS UN OBSERVERS VISIT HOMS LAST WEEK. PICTURE: AFP AFP

The international community has pledged to deploy 300 ceasefire monitors to Syria by the end of the month, Mr Annan said. He warned, however, that the world can’t wait forever for the truce to work.

Mr Annan said in Geneva that there has been “a spate of bombings that are really worrying” and that the UN’s ceasefire-monitoring mission “is the only remaining chance to stabilise the country.”

“There is a profound concern that the country could otherwise descend into full civil war, and the implications of that are frightening,” he said. “We cannot allow that to happen.”

Mr Annan spoke to reporters after briefing the UN Security Council by videoconference from Geneva, where he warned that failure to prevent a civil war “will not only affect Syria, it will have an impact on the whole region.”

Mr Annan said he also told the Security Council that “unacceptable levels of violence and abuse” are continuing in Syria - that government troops are still present in and around cities and towns and human rights violations are extensive and may be increasing.

“There have been worrying episodes of violence by the government, but we have also seen attacks against government forces, troops and installations. And there have been a spate of bombings that are really worrying and I’m sure creates incredible insecurity among the civilian population,” he said.

There has been “some decrease in the military activities, but there are still serious violations in the cessation of violence that was agreed and the level of violence and abuses are unacceptable,” he said.

Mr Annan warned that his six-point peace plan aimed at halting the fighting and initiating political talks to end the 14-month conflict is not an open-ended one.

The Security Council has endorsed Mr Annan’s plan and authorised 300 unarmed military observers to monitor actions by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime and opposition for three months.

The fighting between the two sides is estimated to have killed more than 9000 people.

“We may well conclude down the line that it doesn’t work and a different tack has to be taken, and that will be a very sad day, and a tough day for the region,” he said.

Yet, he also tried to sound a note of optimism.

“We’ve been small in numbers, but even where we’ve been able to place two or three observers, they’ve had a calming effect,” he said.

“And I think that when they are fully deployed and working as a team, establishing relations with the people, we will see much greater impact on the work that they are there to do

By Jonathon Burch | Reuters – 1 hour 2 minutes ago

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday of indirectly supporting the “oppression” of the Syrian people by failing to adopt a united stance on Syria.

Once a friend of Damascus, Turkey has become a fierce critic of President Bashar al-Assad over his year-long crackdown on his opponents and has called for the Syrian leader to step down.

“In not taking a decision, the U.N. Security Council has indirectly supported the oppression. To stand by with your hands and arms tied while the Syrian people are dying every day is to support the oppression,” Erdogan said.

In February, the Turkish prime minister described a veto by permanent Security Council members China and Russia of a U.N. resolution on Syria as a “fiasco for the civilised world”.

Russia and China have vetoed two council resolutions condemning Assad for turning his army on civilians.

“We will not turn our backs on the Syrian people, we will not leave the Syrian people to their own fate,” Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling AK Party on Tuesday.

On Monday U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan told the 15-nation Security Council that Damascus had agreed to an April 10 deadline to withdraw all military units from towns to pave the way for a ceasefire with rebels two days later.

But Annan also told the council there had been no reduction in violence so far and Western envoys have expressed scepticism about Damascus’ intent to halt its assault on opponents.

Assad has repeatedly promised to stop his campaign against anti-government activists, which has brought the country to the brink of civil war, but the fighting has continued.

On Tuesday, Annan’s spokesman said an advance team from the U.N. peacekeeping department was expected in Damascus within 48 hours to discuss deployment of observers to monitor a ceasefire in Syria.

MISSING JOURNALISTS

Erdogan also said his government was working to secure the immediate release of two Turkish journalists who went missing in Syria just under a month ago.

“We are continuing our intense efforts in relation to the two Turkish journalists detained in Syria. We are continuing our efforts on every level to secure their immediate release and ensure their return to Turkey,” he said.

Reporter Adem Ozkose, who works for the Milat newspaper, and cameraman Hamit Coskun went missing early last month in Idlib province, just across the border from Turkey, Turkish media and activists said.

There have been media reports the two men had been detained by Syrian security forces although Ankara has not confirmed this and last month the foreign ministry said it was still seeking information on their whereabouts.

Erdogan did not say who had detained the pair.

Turkey’s Hatay province has become a staging post for reporters attempting to cross the border to cover the protests and fighting in nearby areas of Syria.

Such work has become increasingly risky. U.S. veteran war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed during fighting in the city of Homs in February.

Some 20,000 Syrian refugees now live in camps in Turkey and about 400 more people flee across the border every day.