At least 42,000 people have been killed in violence since an uprising broke out against the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in March last year, a monitoring group said on Thursday.

December 6 2012

The spread of Syria’s civil war has made it increasingly difficult for civilians to escape the conflict, and many are afraid to seek medical care, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

“Through the spreading of the fighting people lose … escape routes out of the fights,” Peter Maurer told reporters in Stockholm after a meeting with Sweden’s Development Aid Minister Gunilla Carlsson.

“In summer, when fighting was going on in Aleppo and Homs, you could still move to Idlib or to some other places. Those places are increasingly rare because fighting is covering more parts of Syria.”

The latest toll brought the number of people killed in 20 months of violence in the country to more than 40,000, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Maurer also warned that “a much deeper humanitarian crisis” would unfold if attacks on medical workers and ambulances continued.

“The general population of Syria is afraid to see medical doctors and go to hospital because hospitals have become” military targets, he said.

Although the aid agency has managed to double the amount of aid brought into the country over the past three months, it was sometimes difficult to negotiate access for “neutral, impartial” deliveries in the highly polarised country, he added.

The Syrian uprising began as peaceful reform protests last year, inspired by the Arab Spring. It has since been transformed into an armed insurgency after the government began crushing demonstrations.

Most rebels, like the population, are Sunni Muslims in a country dominated by a minority regime of Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

22/08/12

22/08/12

The attacks may have been designed to kill or capture rebel mortar teams who have used the two neighborhoods in recent days to target the city’s Mazzeh military airport, activists said.

The violence is part of a dramatic surge in fighting over the past month in Damascus, which is just one of many fronts President Bashar Assad’s regime is struggling to contain as the rebellion against his rule gains strength. Government forces are also engaged in a major battle for control of the northern city of Aleppo as well as smaller scale operations in the south, east and central regions.

An activist, who only wanted to be identified by the name Bassam for fear of retribution, said 11 people were killed in Kafar Soussa and that as many as 22 tanks stormed the district with about 20 soldiers on foot behind each one. He spoke via Skype from central Damascus.

The British-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll in Kafar Soussa at 12.

Bassam and the observatory also reported heavy government shelling of Nahr Eishah early Wednesday. They said regime forces then conducted house-to-house raids in search of rebels. Bassam said as many as 12 people were killed in Nahr Eishah, while the observatory had no word on casualties.

It was not clear whether those killed in the two areas died in the shelling or later. Other activists, including one reached by Skype in Kafar Soussa, spoke of execution-style killings in both areas.

The activists’ reports could not be independently verified.

Syria’s ongoing civil war has its roots in a mostly peaceful uprising against Assad’s regime that began in March last year. The uprising grew increasingly violent as the regime employed brutal methods to suppress street protests, including the use of live ammunition and the detention and torture of thousands.

The conflict has to date defied all international efforts to end it.

15/08/12

Turning rockets into goal posts, abandoned tanks into playthings, and war into a game, children in Syria are hostages to a conflict that has forced them to try to normalise death, loss and violence, residents and activists say.

In rebel-held but besieged Old City of Homs, in central Syria, young children play Free Syrian Army versus Assad regime, using okra for ammunition and aubergines for hand grenades.

Football lovers in the city, parts of which are shelled almost daily, take rockets and turn them into goalposts, according to activists’ photographs.

Speaking to AFP from Homs via Skype, Umm Mohammed says her five grandchildren — the eldest of whom is just nine — are not afraid of the sound of shelling or bullets, and that shrapnel has become just another toy for them.

“But at night, they sometimes wake up screaming,” lamented Umm Mohammed. “No child should see what they are seeing, and they have already seen so much.”

Some older children have it even worse. In northern Aleppo, scene of heavy violence since July 20, an AFP reporter saw several boys in their teens armed with Kalashnikovs, taking part in the fighting.

According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 1,300 children have been killed in violence in the past 17 months.

Nor are children exempt from detention. According to the Centre for Documentation of Violations in Syria, as of August 14, 698 children have been detained since the outbreak of the anti-regime uprising.

On Tuesday, Syria’s main opposition coalition said a 14-year-old was tortured to death in a prison in the coastal province of Latakia.

“Children are hostages of the violence,” said Omar, a Hama-based activist and uncle of two. “They did nothing to create it, but they are trapped in it.”

Having suffered violence, directly or indirectly, children develop high levels of resilience, experts say, which at once acts as a psychological shield against horror, and at the same time allows them to accept the abnormal as normal.

“My nephew is a seven-year-old child who acts like a man,” Omar told AFP via Skype. Wanted by the authorities, Omar sends his nephew out to tour the neighbourhood and check whether there are military or security forces nearby. “As an uncle, I am sad he has lost his childhood.”

Such examples may be extreme, but they do provide some insight into the way that conflict in Syria has transformed children’s lives, forcing them to adapt to violence, and in many cases, become immersed in it.

“Death has become all too normal for many children,” says Beirut-based psychologist Lina Issa, who works with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, a country that has itself suffered years of war and violence.

“And as much as children are being raised as the heroes of one side or another, that is not a way for children to grow. They need the situation to change.”

Children may be more resilient, Issa said. “But it will take a long time for the real symptoms of their distress to show. Only when stability returns will we know the real psychological cost of this conflict,” she added.

Different children react in different ways to violence, said Issa. “I have seen some young children who should have started walking or talking, but haven’t,” she said.

“Others become defensive, and pretend like nothing is really happening,” she says, noting that some children draw only hearts and flowers, while others’ artwork focuses on violence and conflict.

Indeed, a dramatic amateur video posted by activists on YouTube shows a young wounded girl crying in her father’s arms in Aleppo, as a doctor puts his hand to her back. She has just been wounded by a bullet, but she cries: “I am fine! I am fine!”

Many Syrian children have grown all too accustomed to feeling unsafe, says Isabella Castrogiovanni, a child protection expert at UNICEF Lebanon.

A recent UNICEF survey of Syrian refugee families in Lebanon showed 54 percent of children felt something bad will happen, even after they found shelter outside Syria.

“One child in a UNICEF child-friendly space in Lebanon panics every time he sees someone walking on a rooftop, because he is scared of snipers,” adds Castrogiovanni, who notes how disruptive forced flight is to a child’s development.

Even in the most tragic circumstances, some children manage to retain hope. In Homs Old City, seven-year-old Maryam (not her real name) told AFP via Skype: “When I grow up, I want to become a doctor, so that I can help the injured.”

Twice displaced, Maryam, a granddaughter of Umm Mohammed, does not recognise she is besieged, nor does she say that her family was forced to flee their home in Bab Dreib.

To Maryam, home is her current shelter. “I live at home, with my family. We are fine.”

Others are less positive, and their imagination is a mirror-image of the daily loss of life in Syria. “One child tells me stories every day, as part of his therapy,” says Issa. “His storyline changes, but the ending is always the same.”

In this child’s world, whatever the outcome in Syria, she says, “everybody dies.”

© AFP 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.

“Any expectation of a short-term outcome, for example, an escalation with Turkey or the Assad regime being somehow magically whisked away through force or a political outcome doesn’t change the reality of the underlying social, economic political and communal pressures…” said Aram Nerguizian of the Center for Strategic and International Studies,

A diplomatic solution to Syria’s crisis may be remote. It remains to be seen if Assad, who has all but ignored a six-point peace plan put forward by joint U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, will honor his latest commitment to end the violence less than three weeks before the mandate of 300 U.N. monitors in Syria is set to expire. Even Russia agreeing recently in Geneva to an Action Group for Syria road maptoward the formation of a “transition government” in which Assad would play a role offers no end to the fighting as Syrian opposition leaders have unanimously rejected the agreement.

The first 15 months of the conflict, according to some sources, have resulted in more than 16,000 deaths – mostly civilians. Thousands more have been detained and tortured, according to a Human Rights Watch investigationreleased July 3. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports an average of a 100 killings in Syria per day.

Rebel military councils dominate in crucial rural areas

Military offensives on both sides are changing the strategic landscape of Syria daily. The government’s heavy weapons have destroyed rebel-held neighborhoods in at least a half dozen cities with rebel forces fading into the countryside only to return and attempting to reclaim positions lost.

Joseph Holliday, author of ”Syria’s Maturing Insurgency,” a report released in mid-June by the Institute for the Study of War, writes that the Assad regime “retains the capacity to clear whatever it chooses through the use of overwhelming firepower” but did little in the first year of the conflict to try to capture and hold several urban rebel strongholds. In major engagements over the past few weeks, Assad’s security forces have retaken three urban centers – Idlib, Homs and Zabadani – and established large military garrisons for their defense. However, Holliday added that the regime does not have the forces necessary to pursue rebel divisions that now prosper in the countryside.

“Neither side has the strength to defeat the other,” Holliday writes.

Holliday’s report provides a graphic look at the positions of rebel forces listing political and military structures of the opposition inside Syria, as well as the names of leaders and battalion strengths of military councils in Homs, Hama, Deraa and Idlib. A map identifies enclaves in rural areas within striking distance of all major cities along the Route M5 corridor that links all major inland population centers along a western corridor from Lebanon to Turkey, including Damascus, the capital, and the major commercial city of Aleppo.

Nerguizian said the Holliday report “is accurate to the point that you have an Assad regime which has largely failed in implementing a security response over the early months of 2012.” The regime tried to retake the rebel-held rural areas around Aleppo and Idlib, but “those have been largely unsuccessful efforts so far,” he said.

Many of the government advances were “short-term successes” in cities closer to Damascus such as Hama and Homs, Neeguizian said. He pointed to sizeable pockets of rebel autonomy in Idlib and on the Lebanese frontier that “reflect a decision by the Assad regime that it’s far more important to maintain support and over-watch in Damascus and… Aleppo.”

Riad Khawaji of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai believes the Holliday report is “a bit out-dated.”

“Most of the rural areas and especially the major urban centers of Idlib and Aleppo in the north are now under the control of the rebels,” Khawaji said. He added he had seen reports that FSA forces had taken control of two Syrian military airfields. Khawaji said Turkish jets that were scrambled recently along the Syrian border to prevent another downing of a Turkish jet by Syria have, in effect, created a no-fly zone that gives the rebels air cover for their advances in the north.

Looking for new leadership in Syria

“An alternative source of authority and security in Syria may be emerging,” writes Josh Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma and author of the Syria Comment blog. Following the Geneva agreement of last weekend, Landis speculates that, in time, the militias of the FSA that can effectively cooperate with the revolutionary councils and can deliver field successes “will rise to the top, pulling the smaller brigades into their ranks.”

Experts attribute the successes of the FSA and its array of militias to several factors: growing popular support among majority Sunnis who see no government reforms coming from Damascus; increasing defections from Assad’s forces to the anti-government militias; a government and national economy weakened by global sanctions; and increasing FSA access to better weapons and communications systems smuggled across the Turkish and Lebanese borders.

Despite the early summer stalemate, the regime refuses to order many battalions into action to reduce defections by predominantly Sunni divisions, said Khawaji. Instead, it seems to rely on four Alawite divisions of known loyalists, supplemented by intelligence services and non-uniformed militia knows as the shabiha.

“Today they are over-stretched and they focus on Damascus,” Khawaji said.

Provincial military councils of the FSA have also coordinated closely with the three major organizations of the civilian opposition within Syria, said Elizabeth O’Bagy of the Institute for the Study of War. In addition to staging the protests that sparked the revolution, revolutionary councils organized a number of general strikes in several cities. In her “Syria’s Political Struggle: Spring 2012” backgrounder,” O’Bagy describes a three-week commercial strike in May in Hamadiya, the major marketplace in central Damascus where 70 percent of the shops shut down.

“Even after government forces ordered the shops to open, about 50 percent of them remained shut” for the entire three-week period, O’Bagy said.

O’Bagy said rebels have created alternative civic institutions in areas they control. In the Homs and Idlib countrysides under militia control, she said, “they are training teachers for the upcoming school year, opening medical services, food and aid distribution, sending representatives to Turkey and Lebanon to solicit aid.”

Experts believe that cooperation between protesters and the FSA militias may eventually produce a new type of Syrian political leadership, one more promising than the mostly expatriate Syrian National Council which seems unable to garner the support of rebel forces and the political opposition inside the country.

Signs of strength within FSA forces and the revolutionary councils that drive the revolution do not, however, assure an end to the conflict any time soon. And a possible alternative political structure coming either from a power-sharing agreement crafted by the Action Group for Syria, or competition for power from within a successful rebel leadership would also not promise a quick end to the crisis either, experts say.

“We don’t talk in terms of an Arab Spring in Syria, anyway,” said Nerguizian. “It was always going to be a decade.”

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations mission in Syria will remain suspended because the conflict between government and opposition forces is intensifying, a top UN official told the UN Security Council on Tuesday.

And UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has still not secured agreement on a political transition plan that all the major powers can back so that an international meeting on the conflict can go ahead this week, diplomats said.

Herve Ladsous, UN peacekeeping chief, said civilians in Syria face “increasing danger” and “conditions are not conducive to resume operations,” diplomats at a closed Security Council meeting on the conflict said.

The almost 300 unarmed UN monitors halted operations on June 16 as President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown against opposition groups intensified.

Ladsous said the UN mission was still trying to help humanitarian workers. But he added that the Syrian government was throwing up obstacles such as refusing to allow satellite telephones, which the UN official said were “key tools.”

The UN is working on options for the mission when its mandate ends on July 20. Diplomats expect the mission to be cut back to a mainly civilian operation.

Annan’s deputy envoy, Nasser al-Qudwa, told the council there were “massive” rights violations in Syria with more civilians being killed each day and growing attacks on government forces by opposition fighters, the diplomats reported.

With Syrian activists now estimating more than 15,000 people have died in the 15-month old conflict, France demanded at the meeting that UN rights chief Navi Pillay brief the Security Council on Syria to keep up pressure on Assad.

Qudwa said foreign ministers from the major powers and other key countries around Syria could meet in Geneva on Saturday to discuss political efforts to implement Annan’s floundering six-point peace plan.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accepted an invitation to Saturday’s Geneva meeting, the country’s UN envoy said. But diplomats added there is not yet an accord on a political plan so that Annan can officially convene the meeting.

“We attach great importance to this meeting. As you know Russia proposed an international conference on Syria and this is very much in line with our thinking,” Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters.

Because of the “grim” situation in Syria “we need to work even harder,” he added. Russia wanted the Geneva meeting to “provide a powerful impetus for political efforts to put an end to the conflict in Syria.”

The United States, Britain, France and China — the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council — have not yet said whether they will attend the Geneva meeting.

The main powers have been in intensive consultations in recent days on a political plan for Syria that would tempt Assad into talks on his future.

Qudwa said the Geneva meeting should identify measures to secure implementation of Annan’s peace plan and agree on guidelines for a political transition.

Because of the growing death toll, the Geneva meeting must not be a “talking shop” which is why the key states must agree on the guidelines, Qudwa was quoted as saying.

He added that a decision on whether to hold the meeting depended on “agreement on the scope of participation and an intention to reach an outcome,” Council diplomats said.

Annan has said he wants key states that can influence Syria, as well as the main powers, at the Geneva meeting. Annan and UN leader Ban Ki-moon have both spoken in favor of Iran taking part. The United States opposes Iranian involvement.

By Aram Nerguizian

Gulf Kingdom Is Pressing Jordan for a Route to Border, Officials Say; Iraq Warns of ‘Regional and Global Proxy Wars’

By MARIA ABI-HABIB

Saudi Arabia has pressed Jordan to open its border with Syria to allow weapons to reach rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, officials from both countries say, a move that could buoy Syria’s opposition and harden the conflict in the country and across the region.

In a March 12 meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah asked his Jordanian counterpart to permit weapons shipments into Syria in exchange for economic assistance to Jordan, these officials say. Jordan hasn’t yet agreed, they said.

The U.S. has opposed furnishing arms to the rebels, fearing that weapons could end up in the hands of al Qaeda or other extremist groups. But late Thursday, a top U.S. defense official suggested such a policy could potentially shift. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Syrian opposition appeared to be taking steps to unite as a group, a development he said could help clear the way for international aid including arms.

Such international support, he said, may hinge on assurances from a “coherent, credible” opposition that it would form an inclusive government and not fan sectarian flames. But some fear arming the opposition could escalate prospects for a broader regional conflict. Syria’s fighting has already added to the rancor between Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies, who support the country’s largely Sunni opposition, and Shiite Iran, whose government backs Mr. Assad.

Saudi Arabia has argued strongly for weapons supplies to Syrian rebels despite U.S. concerns. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was traveling Thursday to Saudi Arabia to meet with the king and other senior Saudi officials, was expected to raise any Saudi plans to arm the Syrian rebels, U.S. officials said. The officials said the Obama administration remains opposed to introducing more arms into the conflict.

Gen. Dempsey’s comments suggested the rebels could change that. “They’ve been listening to what we’ve been saying—not only us but the international community—that there has to be some coherence to their effort,” he told reporters with him aboard a military aircraft after a four-day trip to Latin America. But he said he wasn’t currently recommending that the rebels have come far enough to support giving them weapons.

The Saudi request to Jordan adds to sentiment that Arab leaders have hit the wall in their efforts to resolve Syria’s impasse diplomatically. Top officials from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab nations were notably absent from Thursday’s Arab League summit in Baghdad, where leaders called on Damascus to adopt a United Nations plan to stop fighting and begin political dialogue. The plan doesn’t call for Mr. Assad to step aside, as the Arab nations had sought. Mr. Assad said Thursday he would support the U.N. plan, but only once foreign countries stopped aiding rebels.

Many Middle East officials view Saudi Arabia’s arming of Afghan jihadis in the 1980s, through official and unofficial channels, as a prime contributor to the Afghan civil war and the rise of violent Islamic jihad. That has led to worries in many countries over the prospect of Saudi Arabia arming Syrian rebels now.

In Baghdad, Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warned that arming the Syrian opposition could invite a repeat of the insurgency and sectarian strife that consumed Iraq for years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. “It will lead to regional and global proxy wars in the Syrian arena,” he said.

Jordanian officials said they are unlikely to resist Saudi pressure for long. “We are a non-interventionist country. But if it becomes force majeure, you have to join—this is the story of Jordan,” said a top Jordanian official.

An arrangement between Saudi Arabia and Jordan, even if informal, would mark the first attempt to send in large quantities of weapons to Syria’s rebels. Limited, individual smuggling efforts have so far supplied Assad opponents with light arms, say rebels and locals near the Syrian borders with Lebanon and Iraq.

Rebel fighters fleeing escalating regime attacks on anti-Assad strongholds, including Idlib and the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, have said they are running out of ammunition, arms and supplies of medicine and other aid. They have said that the Syrian government has blocked traditional smuggling routes.

The officials didn’t say what sort of arms Saudi Arabia would propose sending.

The United States has long been Saudi Arabia’s leading weapons supplier, and the kingdom has high-end U.S. weaponry such as F-15 fighter jets, Patriot air-defense systems and Abrams main battle tanks. Such weapons are unlikely to end up in the hands of Syrian rebels; even smaller U.S.-made weapons, such as anti-tank missiles, are typically covered by strict terms that prevent re-export. Saudi Arabia’s arsenal also includes rocket and missile systems, grenades and field artillery.

Syria’s government—led by Alawites, whose faith is an offshoot of Shiite Islam—has been at odds with the Sunni kingdom for a decade. Saudi leaders believe Mr. Assad is repressing his majority Sunni population.

During last month’s Friends of Syria meeting in Tunisia, which brought together opposition supporters including Saudi Arabia and the U.S., Saudi’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al Faisal said arming the rebels was “an excellent idea.”

Jordanian officials point to Iraq as a precedent, saying they would expect to support the rebels at the last minute, when sentiment to arm them peaks.

Jordan at first denounced the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq but later aided the war effort, despite the lucrative oil deals it held with Iraq. “We have to have both feet on the ground. Do you think we could have turned the tide against the U.S. [Iraq] invasion? Why would Syria be different?” another Jordanian official said.

Jordan bought Iraqi oil at well below market values for over a decade before 2003, receiving much of it free in exchange for keeping diplomatic relations strong. Now, Jordan is incurring big budget losses as it buys increasingly expensive oil that it subsidizes at home. These expenditures are contributing to a budget deficit that by international estimates will run 7.5 percent to 10 percent of gross domestic product this year.

Jordan remains nervous about arming the rebels, worried that a larger conflict in Syria could engulf the region. Adding to these concerns are beliefs by several governments that extremist groups such as al Qaeda are now actively fighting against Mr. Assad’s government, and that they may have been behind bombings in Damascus and Aleppo, Syria’s two largest cities. In 2005, Amman was hit by three bombings in one day, seen as retaliation for its support to the U.S. in the Iraq war.

“You have to be very careful who you arm and don’t arm. We don’t quite know who this opposition is,” said a third Jordanian official.

The Syrian crisis is already affecting Jordan’s economy. Before the conflict, about 70% of Jordan’s imports and about 25% of its exports were routed through Syria, according to the country’s Transport Ministry, which didn’t provide dollar figures. Now those imports and exports have fallen to virtually zero, the ministry says.

To help alleviate economic woes, the Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia, have pumped billions of dollars into Jordan’s coffers. Saudi Arabia alone gave nearly $1.5 billion in grants to help Jordan manage its deficit last year, while the U.S. government says it earmarked $660 million in assistance to Jordan in 2012.

Jordan, which abuts Saudi Arabia and shares a border of nearly 250 miles with Syria, would be the most direct conduit for Saudi arms to the rebels.

Lebanon and Iraq also border Syria, but influential blocs of these countries’ governments are sympathetic to Mr. Assad. Turkey supports Syria’s opposition, but any Saudi arms delivered through Turkey would have to cross land, seas or airspace of countries that support Mr. Assad’s government.

Jordan may argue it needs additional aid to help it support the influx of Syrians since the bloodshed began a year ago. More than 90,000 Syrians have crossed into Jordan since then, the government says, more than to any other country. More than 6,000 Syrians have registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to receive aid, while the rest live in cramped apartments, with several families sharing a few rooms.

Earlier this month, according to refugees and a Jordanian border police officer, a pregnant Syrian woman was fleeing across the rolling green hills of the border with her husband and eight-year-old son when Syrian snipers fired on the family.

The officer said he opened fire on the snipers to provide cover for the family. “This was for humanity. It came from the heart, not orders from above,” the officer said.

The officer said he took the family to the hospital. Some refugees staying in homes near the border say she died during labor.

Several of these refugees said the Jordanian border police have helped them return to Syria with medical supplies, informing them when Syrian snipers are stationed in their towers or when troops are on patrol.

The government of Jordan—which, like Syria’s opposition, is largely Sunni—hasn’t cracked down on such actions.

“You’ll see it’s quiet now,” the police officer said, gesturing to the open field dotted with dandelions and Syrian guard towers. “But they’ll start running over the border once its dark.”

—Adam Entous, Summer Said, Suha Ma’ayeh, Nour Malas, Nathan Hodge and Jay Solomon contributed to this article.

Turkey considering “buffer zone” along #Syria border

Mar. 16 - Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is considering setting up a safe area inside Syria to tackle the flow of refugees fleeing the conflict. Deborah Lutterbeck reports.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses a news conference at United Nations headquarters, Monday, March 12, 2012.(AP / Richard Drew)

Updated: Mon Mar. 12 2012 13:01:04

The Associated Press

The United States and Russia clashed over Syria at the UN Monday after Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the divided Security Council to speak with one voice and help the Mideast nation “pull back from the brink of a deeper catastrophe.”

Washington and Moscow both called for an end to the bloody yearlong conflict — but on different terms, leaving in doubt prospects of breaking a deadlock in the council over a new resolution.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton rejected any equivalence between the “premeditated murders” carried by President Bashar Assad’s “military machine” and the civilians under siege driven to self-defence.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Syrian authorities “bear a huge share of responsibility” but insisted opposition fighters and extremists including al-Qaida are also committing violent and terrorist acts.

Lavrov said if the priority is to immediately end any violence and provide humanitarian aid to the Syrian people “then at this stage we should not talk about who was the first to start, but rather discuss realistic and feasible approaches which would allow (us) to achieve the cease-fire as a priority.”

Clinton declared that the Security Council cannot “stand silent when governments massacre their own people, threatening regional peace and security in the process.”

The ministerial debate in the council on challenges from last year’s Arab Spring was dominated by the yearlong conflict in Syria, which has killed over 7,500 people, according to the United Nations.

Secretary-General Ban, who led off the debate, said the conflict has led the entire region into uncertainty and subjected citizens in several cities to disproportionate violence.

Russia, which is Syria’s most powerful ally, and China have vetoed two U.S. and European-backed Security Council resolutions which would have condemned Assad’s bloody crackdown, saying they were unbalanced and demanded that only the government stop attacks, not the opposition. Moscow accused Western powers of fueling the conflict by backing the rebels.

Earlier this month, the United States proposed a new draft which tried to take a more balanced approach, but diplomats said Russia and China rejected it.

Lavrov flew to New York from Cairo, where he had a tense meeting with Arab League foreign ministers. They have endorsed a plan for Assad to hand power to his vice-president, but the Russians are adamantly opposed to any resolution endorsing regime change.

In the end, the Arab League and Lavrov agreed on a plan that the Russia foreign minister said could lead to an early solution of the Syrian crisis: an immediate cease-fire, a clause preventing foreign intervention, assurances about humanitarian aid, an impartial monitoring mechanism and an endorsement of the mission by former UN chief Kofi Annan, the new U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria.

Annan left Syria on Sunday without a deal to end the conflict, while regime forces mounted a new assault on rebel strongholds in the north.

On Monday, Annan met Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara and told reporters the diplomatic process would take time.

“This a very complex situation,” said Annan. “We are going to press ahead for humanitarian access, for the killings of civilians to stop, and that get everybody to the table to work out a political solution.”

Clinton told reporters after meeting privately with Lavrov that she appreciated the opportunity to discuss the way forward and pointed out to him “my very strong view that the alternative to our unity on these points will be bloody internal conflict with dangerous consequences for the whole region.”

She said everyone is waiting to hear Annan’s advice on the best way forward, and the U.S. hopes that after Monday’s council session and the recent meetings in Cairo and Damascus “we will be prepared in the Security Council to chart a way forward.”

Lavrov said separate discussions with Clinton and the British and French foreign ministers “indicated that there is a growing understanding of the need not to talk to each other on the basis of take it or leave it, but to bring the positions together and to be guided not by the desire of revenge or punishment, who is to blame … but by the interests of the Syrian people.”

On the sidelines, the Quartet of Mideast peace mediators — the UN, U.S., European Union and Russia — met behind closed doors on the escalating Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is witnessing the worst flare-up in violence in more than a year.

The ministerial meeting reviewed efforts to get the Palestinians and Israelis back to the negotiating table, but deep divisions remain and there is little hope of a breakthrough.

March 6, 2012

Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) today released the following statement on the situation in Syria:

“After a year of bloodshed, the crisis in Syria has reached a decisive moment.

“The United Nations has declared that Syrian security forces are guilty of crimes against humanity and that more than 7,500 lives have been lost. The kinds of mass atrocities that NATO intervened in Libya to prevent in Benghazi are now a reality in Homs and other cities across the country. Syria today is the scene of some of the worst state-sponsored violence since Milosevic’s war crimes in the Balkans. And the bloodshed continues, with no end in sight.

“What is all the more astonishing is that Assad’s killing spree has continued despite severe and escalating international pressure against him. This has been an impressive international effort, and the Obama Administration deserves credit for helping to orchestrate it.

“Unfortunately, this policy is increasingly disconnected from the dire situation on the ground in Syria, which has become a full-blown state of armed conflict. Despite a year’s worth of diplomacy backed by sanctions, Assad and his lieutenants show no signs of giving up. To the contrary, they appear to accelerating their fight to the finish. Unfortunately, with each passing day, the international response to Assad’s atrocities is being overtaken by events on the ground in Syria.

“Some countries are beginning to confront this reality, as well as its implications. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are calling for arming opposition forces in Syria. The newly-elected Kuwaiti parliament has called on their government to do the same. Most importantly, Syrians themselves are increasingly calling for international intervention, including military assistance. The opposition Syrian National Council recently announced that it is establishing a military bureau to channel weapons and other assistance to the Free Syrian Army and armed groups inside the country.

“To be sure, there are legitimate questions about the efficacy of intervention in Syria, and equally legitimate concerns about its risks and uncertainties. It is understandable that the Administration is reluctant to move beyond diplomacy and sanctions. But our current policy is not succeeding, and the current course is no longer strategically or morally sustainable.

“For this reason, the time has come for a new policy. As we continue to isolate Assad diplomatically and economically, we should work with our closest friends and allies to support opposition groups inside Syria, both political and military, to help them organize themselves into a more cohesive and effective force that can put an end to the bloodshed and force Assad and his loyalists to leave power, which has been the goal of United States policy since August 2011.

“What opposition groups in Syria need most urgently is relief from Assad’s tank and artillery sieges in many cities that are still contested. Providing military assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is necessary, but as Assad continues to intensify his assault, that alone will not be sufficient to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. The only realistic way to do so is with foreign airpower.

“Therefore, if requested by the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, the United States should help organize an international effort to protect civilian population centers in Syria through airstrikes on Assad’s forces. To be clear: This will first require the United States and our partners to suppress the Syrian regime’s air defenses in at least part of the country.

“This should not mean the United States must act alone. Any intervention should include Arab partners such as Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Jordan, and Qatar, and willing allies in the E.U. and NATO, the most important of which in this case is Turkey.

“The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to protect civilian population centers from Assad’s killing machine and establish safe havens in which opposition forces can organize, rest, refit, and plan their political and military activities against Assad. These safe havens could serve as platforms for the delivery of humanitarian and military assistance – including weapons and ammunition, body armor and other personal protective equipment, tactical intelligence, secure communications equipment, food and water, and medical supplies. These safe havens could also help the Free Syrian Army and other armed groups in Syria to train and organize themselves into more cohesive and effective military forces, likely with the assistance of foreign partners, and provide political space for the Syrian National Council to organize on Syrian soil.

“The benefit for the United States in helping to lead this effort directly is that it would allow us to better empower those Syrian groups that share our interests – those groups that reject Al-Qaeda and the Iranian regime, and commit to the goal of an inclusive democratic transition, as called for by the Syrian National Council. If we stand on the sidelines, others will try to pick winners, and this will not always be to our liking or in our interest.

“There will be no UN Security Council mandate for such an operation. Russia and China took that option off the table long ago. But let’s not forget: NATO took military action to save Kosovo in 1999 without formal U.N. authorization. There is no reason why the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), or NATO, or a leading coalition within the Friends of Syria contact group, or all of them speaking in unison, could not provide international legitimacy for military measures to save Syria today.

“Are there dangers, and risks, and uncertainties in this approach? Absolutely. There are no ideal options in Syria. All of them contain significant risk. Many people will be quick to raise concerns about the course of action we are proposing. Many of these concerns have merit, but none so much that they should keep us from acting.

“For example, it is often said that we should not assist the opposition in Syria militarily because we don’t know who these people are, or that by doing so, we could end up benefiting Al-Qaeda or Hamas. In fact, the surest way for Al-Qaeda to gain a foothold in Syria is for us to turn our backs on those brave Syrians who are fighting for their lives.

“Another objection to intervention is that the conflict has become a sectarian civil war, and our involvement would enable the Sunni majority to take revenge against the Alawite minority. This is a serious and legitimate concern, but it is only growing worse the longer the conflict goes on. Furthermore, the risks of sectarian conflict will exist in Syria whether we get more involved or not. If we work to assist the armed opposition now, we will at least have some ability to try to mitigate these risks. Engagement with these groups is the best way to understand them better, to seek to establish trust and influence with them, because we took their side when they needed it most.

“We should not overstate the potential influence we could gain with the armed opposition in Syria, but it will only diminish the longer we wait to offer meaningful support, and what we can say for certain is that we will have no influence whatsoever with these people if they feel we abandoned them.

“We also hear it said that we should not contribute to the militarization of the conflict. If only Russia and Iran shared that sentiment. Instead, they are shamelessly aiding Assad’s killing machine. We need to deal with reality as it is, not as we wish it to be – and the reality in Syria today is a one-sided fight where the aggressors are hardly lacking for military means thanks to the intervention of foreign powers.

“There are always plenty of reasons not to do something, and we can list them clearly in the case of Syria. We know there are divisions in the opposition and among the armed resistance inside the country. We know that some elements of the opposition may sympathize with violent extremist ideologies or harbor dark thoughts of sectarian revenge. We know that many of Syria’s immediate neighbors remain cautious about taking overly provocative actions to undermine Assad. And we know the American people are weary of conflict – justifiably so – and would rather focus on domestic problems.

“These are realities, but while we are compelled to acknowledge them, we are not condemned to accept them forever. With resolve, principled leadership, and wise policy, we can shape better realities. That is what the Syrian people have done.

“By no rational calculation should this uprising against Assad still be going on. The Syrian people are outmatched. They are outgunned. They are lacking for food, and water, and other basic needs. They are confronting a regime whose disregard for human dignity and capacity for sheer savagery is limitless. For an entire year, the Syrian people have faced death, and those unspeakable things worse than death, and still they have not given up. Still they take to the streets to protest peacefully for justice. Still they carry on their fight. And they do so on behalf of many of the same universal values we share, and many of the same interests as well.

“The people who are fighting for freedom in Syria are natural allies. They have expanded the boundaries of what everyone thought was possible in Syria. They have earned our respect, and now they need our support to finish what they started. The Syrian people deserve a chance at freedom, and shame on us if we fail to help them now in their moment of greatest need.”