Syrian Freedom

US defense chiefs backed arming Syria rebels - #Syria

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that the Pentagon had backed proposals to arm the Syrian opposition battling to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

The idea — ultimately rejected — was first floated by then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who met privately with David Petraeus, CIA chief at the time, in the summer of 2012 as fighting raged in Syria.

They proposed vetting rebel groups and training fighters in a plan which they presented to the White House, according to the New York Times, quoting administration officials.

But the administration of President Barack Obama was worried about the risks of pouring more arms into the volatile conflict and rejected the idea, sticking instead to providing humanitarian assistance and non-lethal aid.

Panetta and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, admitted under questioning in the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday that they had both supported the idea.

“I would ask again, both of you, what I asked you last March when 7,500 citizens of Syria had been killed. It’s now up to 60,000. How many more have to die before you recommend military action?” Senator John McCain asked them.

“And did you support the recommendation by then secretary of state Clinton and then head of CIA General Petraeus that we provide weapons to the resistance in Syria? Did you support that?”

“We did,” replied Panetta. “We did,” added Dempsey.

McCain, who has long advocated arming the rebels, said in a statement later he “was very pleased to hear” both men say they supported the proposal.

“What this means is that the president overruled the senior leaders of his own national security team, who were in unanimous agreement that America needs to take greater action to change the military balance of power in Syria,” he said.

McCain called on Obama to heed the advice of his former and current national security leaders and “immediately take the necessary steps, along with our friends and allies, that could hasten the end of the conflict in Syria.”

“The time to act is long overdue, but it is not too late.”

02/08/2013

#Syria, Robert Fisk: ‘They snipe at us then run and hide in sewers’

21/08/12

Our writer was given exclusive access to the Assad Generals

accused of war crimes as they seek to defeat the rebels in

Aleppo

Mortars crashed into the middle-class streets around us and a T-72 tank baked in the heat under a road viaduct, but Bashar al-Assad’s most senior operational commander in Aleppo – a 53-year-old Major-General with 33 years in the military and two bullet wounds from last month’s battles in Damascus – claims he can “clean” the whole province of Aleppo from “terrorists” in 20 days. Now that is quite a boast, especially in the Saif el-Dowla suburb of the city, where sniper fire snapped down leafy streets. For the battle of Aleppo is far from over.

But this was a strange sensation, to sit in a private house, commandeered by the Syrian army – 19th-century prints still on the walls, the carpet immaculate – and talk to the Generals accused by Western leaders of being war criminals. I was, so to speak, in “the lair of the enemy”, but the immensely tall, balding General – his officers adding their own impressions whenever they were asked – had much to say about the war they are fighting and the contempt with which they regard their enemies. They were “mice”, the General said – he would not give his name. “They snipe at us and then they run and hide and in the sewers. Foreigners, Turks, Chechens, Afghans, Libyans, Sudanese.” And Syrians, I said. “Yes, Syrians too, but smugglers and criminals,” he said.

I asked about the rebels’ weapons and the clutch of conscripts staggered into the room under the weight of rockets, rifles, ammunition and explosives. “Take this,” the General said, grinning as he handed me a two-way radio, a Hongda-made HD668 taken two days ago off a dead Turkish fighter in Saif al-Dowla a few hundred metres from where we were sitting. “Mohamed, do you hear me?” the radio demanded. “Abul Hassan, did you hear?” The Syrian officers roared with laughter at the disembodied voice of their enemy, perhaps in the same block of buildings. We took this ID from the “terrorist”, the General said. “Citizen of the Turkish Republic” was printed on the card, above a photo of a man with a thin moustache. Born – Bingol (Turkey) 1 July 1974. Name: Remziye Idris Metin Ekince. Religion: Islam.

So, suddenly, we had a name for one of the mysterious “foreigners” who – at least in popular Baathist imagination – staff the “terrorist” army the Syrian military is fighting. And a lot of other names with far larger significance. As I prowled around the weapons – all captured within the past week, according to the Syrian officers – I found sticks of Swedish explosives in plastic covers, dated February 1999 and manufactured by Hammargrens, whose office address was printed as 434-24 Kingsbacka in Sweden; the words “made in USA” was also marked on each stick.

There was: a Belgian rifle, an FN from the town of Herstal, manufacturer’s code 1473224; a set of hand grenades of uncertain provenance numbered HG 85, SM8-03 1; a Russian sniper scope; a 9mm Spanish-made pistol – model 28 1A – manufactured by a Star Echeverria SA Eibar Espana; an ancient automatic rifle; a Soviet sub-machine-gun of 1948 vintage; a mass of Russian rocket-propelled grenades and launchers; and box after box of medical supplies.

“Every unit of the terrorists has a field ambulance,” an intelligence officer said. “They steal medicines from our pharmacies but bring other packets with them.” True, it seems. There were painkillers from Lebanon, bandages from Pakistan, much of the stuff was from Turkey. Interesting to know who the Spanish, Swedish and Belgian manufacturers originally sold their guns and explosives to. The haul went on and on, a newly out-of-date Visa card under the name of Ahed Akrama, a Syrian ID card in the name of Widad Othman – “kidnapped by the terrorists,” another officer muttered – and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The General agreed that weapons may have been taken from dead Syrian troops or soldiers who had been captured. Army defectors existed, he said, but they were “drop-outs, soldiers who had failed their basic tests who were motivated only by money”. This is what they say under interrogation, he said.

It wasn’t difficult to work out just how the fighting in Aleppo is developing. Walking the streets for more than an hour with a Syrian army patrol, individual snipers would shoot from houses and then disappear before government soldiers arrived. The army had shot dead one man with a sniper’s rifle who fired from the minaret of the El-Houda mosque. The Salaheddine district had been “liberated”, the Syrian officer said, and the Saif el-Dowla district was only two blocks from a similar “liberation”.

At least a dozen civilians emerged from their homes, retirees in their 70s, shopkeepers and local businessmen with their families and, unaware that a foreign journalist was watching, put their arms round Syrian troops. One told me he had stayed in his home as “foreign” fighters used his courtyard to fire on government soldiers. “I speak Turkish and most were speaking Turkish but some of the men had long beards and short trousers like the Saudis wear, and had strange Arab accents.”

So many Aleppo citizens talked to me, out of earshot of soldiers, about armed “foreigners” in their streets along with Syrians “from the countryside” that the presence of considerable numbers of non-Syrian gunmen appeared to be true. While much of the city continues its life under occasional mortar fire, tens of thousands of civilians displaced by the fighting between the Free Syrian Army and what the government always calls the “Syrian Arab Army” are now housed in vacant dormitories on the Aleppo University campus. And President Assad’s enemies are never far away.

Returning to the city centre yesterday afternoon, I discovered five Syrian soldiers – exhausted, with sharp, tense eyes – walking back to their barracks with a civilian called Badriedin. He had alerted the soldiers when he saw “10 terrorists” in Al-Hattaf street and the government troops had killed several of them – their bodies taken away on motor scooters, Badriedin said – and the rest escaped. The soldiers were high on their story, how they had been outnumbered but fought off their enemies. Even the operational commander of all Aleppo told me that a major battle was beginning in an area containing a mosque and a Christian school where his men had surrounded a large number of “terrorists”. “The Syrian army doesn’t kill civilians – we came here to protect them, at their request,” he said. “We tried to get civilians out of the area where we have to fight, with loudspeakers we give lots of warnings.”

I prefer the words emblazoned on the T-shirt of young man who said he was trying to reach his apartment in the snipers’ zone to see if it had survived. They read: “You see things and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were, and I say ‘Why not?’ – George Bernard Shaw.” Not a bad motto for Aleppo these days.

‘Killing’: Only language in common between foreign jihadists in #Syria

18/08/12

Syria’s rebellion attracts fighters from dozens of countries, making for colourful, multilingual crew with some very personal interpretations of jihad.

A fighter returns to a Free Syrian Army safe house after a shift on the Aleppo frontline, cranks up the volume of the television, lights a cigarette and looks at himself in a broken mirror.

“Anyone got hair gel? I look a mess.”

Meet Abu Zeid al-Tunsi, a Tunisian elite sniper and the group’s official jihadi troubadour.

Syria’s rebellion has attracted fighters from dozens of countries but their motivation do not always fit the Al-Qaeda mold, making for a colourful and multilingual crew with some very personal interpretations of jihad, or holy war.

Abu Zeid, who also fought alongside Libya’s rebels last year to help bring an end to Moamer Gathafi’s 42-year rule, describes himself as a “freelance” jihadi fighter who does not belong to any group.

President “Bashar al-Assad and his people are Shiite and it is my duty to help in restoring true Islam, Sunni Islam,” he explains, gulping down a bottle of ice-cold mandarin crush.

“I leave my country when I have to, to wage jihad, then I go home. It’s my personal decision, I don’t need a flag for my struggle and I just hook up with whoever needs my expertise,” Abu Zeid says.

His loose observance of the dawn-to-dusk fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan would likely bar him from joining some of the more radical Islamist groups sheltering many of Syria’s foreign jihadi corps.

The Free Syrian Army is an alliance of loosely-connected brigades operating under the theoretical leadership of a Turkey-based group of defecting army officers who have generally condemned the emergence of jihadi groups.

But many Syrian FSA rank-and-file argue they need all the help they can get.

“Groups such as Ahrar al-Sham, Liwa al-Tawhid, Fajr al-Islam, Jabat al-Nusra have experienced fighters who are like the revolution’s elite commando troops,” says Abu Haidar, a Syrian FSA coordinator in Aleppo’s Saif al-Dawla district.

“The rest of the world isn’t helping us, they are,” says the chain-smoking fighter during a lull in the shelling. “They are not all Al-Qaeda, many are just volunteers who want Syria to be freed.”

Abu Zeid is best known in the group as the nasheed (Islamic songs) singer.

“When I’m back home, I go on the Internet and find the latest nasheed. I write the lyrics down on a piece of paper and learn the melodies,” he says.

A wounded fighter is rushed in to a makeshift clinic in Saif al-Dawla. Once the rebel is successfully treated and bandaged, Abu Zeid breaks into song and many of the young Syrians from the neighbourhood join in joyfully.

He finishes his song, picks up his black and grey sniper rifle and, a broad smile on his face, skips out the door to return to the frontline, giving a quick bow like an artist between rounds of applause.

“Those little singing sessions are good for our morale,” says Abu Khaled, a young volunteer at the clinic.

Moments later, a young rebel fighter with a slight injury to his hand walks in. Nobody has ever seen him.

“Does anyone speak Turkish?”

He is from Azerbaijan, speaks no Arabic and lost his way after being separated from the rest of his unit during clashes.

“I saw some footage on television of the war and decided to come here to help the Syrians fight Bashar,” he says. “It’s the first time I do this.”

Later that day, a fighter from Turkey rolled up demanding treatment for a minor wound and the pair eventually spend the night chatting and resting in the clinic before leaving together the next morning.

Some foreign fighters’ reasons for being on the Syrian frontline are even more obscure.

Abu Mohamed, is a Dutch-Iraqi fighter who never talks to anyone and regularly returns from the front to sleep under the clinic’s air conditioner or read the Koran.

He left his wife and two children in the Netherlands to join the battle a few weeks earlier. He claims he belongs to no particular group but sometimes links up with the foreign-dominated Jabat al-Nusra (Support Front).

“I like to work alone, that’s it. But sometimes I get tired so I come here. I don’t want to talk about it,” he says.

Abu Mohamed, a big bear of a man always dressed in a traditional dishdasha robe, picks up his Kalashnikov and ammunition and walks wearily up the stairs from the basement clinic.

Ahmad, a young FSA supporter from the district whose role model is tennis player Roger Federer and who sometimes stands guard outside the clinic at night, watches Abu Mohamed walk down the street, all by himself, straight into the shelling zone.

“He never wants help but he’s helpful to us. We’re not quite sure what’s going on inside his head but we just let him be,” says Ahm

Pak supports #Syria, opposes foreign action, says Khar

11/08/2012

ISLAMABAD: Ending months of ambiguity over the crisis in Syria, Pakistan joined the group of countries supporting the Syrian government on Friday and warned against foreign interference and military intervention in the 17-month-old conflict.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was one of the three foreign ministers who attended an international consultative meeting on the Syrian crisis hosted by Iran.

“It is our considered view that any outside intervention would further complicate an already very complex situation. It must be avoided,” Khar said at the conference attended by about 25 countries, most of who were represented at ambassadorial level.

She urged the international community to respect Syria’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

Besides Pakistan, representatives from Russia, China, Belarus, Mauritania, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Turkmenistan, Benin, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Oman, Venezuela, Tajikistan, India, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Sudan, Jordan, Tunisia and Palestine attended the conference.

Western countries backing rebels had dismissed the Tehran meeting as an attempt to divert world attention from the bloody events in Syria where pro-government troops are fighting pitched battles against rebel forces in Aleppo and other parts of the war-torn country.

The West has accused Iran of broadening support for embattled President Bashar Al Assad by holding the conference.

“Syria needs political space to find a peaceful solution and reestablish its societal equilibrium by engaging all sides. Syria must forge its own destiny in accordance with the aspirations of its people,” Khar said.

Internews

For Putin, Principle vs. Practicality on #Syria

By ELLEN BARRY

Published: July 4, 2012

MOSCOW — For months now, Western policy makers have been racking their brains to figure out what strategic interests have made Russia so intent on supporting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad — a leader who, facing a popular uprising, seemed to be on his way out anyway.

It is an understandable question, but perhaps the wrong one. Decisions are flowing from President Vladimir V. Putin, whose career has left him overwhelmingly wary both of revolutions and of Western intervention.

This is a man who, during the death throes of the Communist system, personally defended the K.G.B.’s headquarters in Dresden against an angry crowd of Germans. And Mr. Putin’s already suspicious view of street politics only deepened with the “colored revolutions” of the mid-2000s, in which pro-Western protests, some supported by the United States, ousted a series of Moscow-friendly leaders.

Since the recent Arab uprisings began, Russian leaders have viewed them through this lens — as a product not of social change but of interference by the West, intended in part to damage Russia.

Mr. Putin takes little interest in the details of foreign policy, but this notion touches him personally. He memorably blew up in April 2011, when NATO warplanes were attacking Libya against Russia’s protestations, delivering a speech that scoffed at the notion that Western intervention aimed to advance democracy.

“Look at the map of this region, there are monarchies all around,” he said during a visit to Denmark. “What do you think they are — Danish-style democracies? No. There are monarchies everywhere, and this basically corresponds with the mentality of the people, as well as longstanding practice.”

“Libya, by the way, has the largest oil and the fourth-largest gas reserves in Africa,” he added. “This immediately presents the question: Isn’t this the basis for the interests of those now messing around there?”

From the first, Russia’s Middle East experts, most of them Soviet-trained, have been suspicious of the notion that street politics had the power to change governments.

In February 2011, when crowds of more than a million were thronging Tahrir Square, a Russian deputy foreign minister visited Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak. He delivered the soothing message that Egypt’s domestic crisis should be settled through dialogue, and affirmed Russia’s firm stance against foreign intervention in Egypt’s internal affairs. As it turned out, it was Mr. Mubarak’s last meeting with a foreign envoy — he stepped down two days later.

It is impossible to fully disentangle these reactions from what has been going on inside Russia over the last year, as a decade-long contract between Mr. Putin and his citizens began to fray.

Though there is little comparison on the ground between the Arab uprisings and Russia’s unrest — the Russian opposition movement remains small, Moscow-centered and moderate in its tactics — the sudden change has left the government wary of legitimizing any popular dissent. State-controlled news media paint a bleak picture of Arab countries that have seen uprisings, and Russian diplomats have approached new authorities in the Arab world slowly and awkwardly.

Meanwhile, Russian leaders fear that rising Islamism in the Arab world will breathe new life into the armed insurgency in the northern Caucasus, which is mostly Sunni.

In short, Syria has provided Russia with an opportunity to say no — to Western intervention and to the specter of revolution.

The argument has been framed as a matter of principle, making it difficult to dial back. Leonid Medvedko, who covered Syria for Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, said Russia could not publicly call for Mr. Assad to step down, because it would create “a very serious precedent for anyone who doesn’t like their government.”

“I don’t want to allow such ultimatums, because they could then be presented to any country,” said Mr. Medvedko, who is now a regional analyst at the Russian Academy of Sciences. “We cannot allow this precedent to be established. Now they don’t like Assad. Next they may not like someone in Lebanon. We’ve already seen how they didn’t like someone in Libya — we saw the fate of Qaddafi.”

Nevertheless, Russia is backing away from explicit support for Mr. Assad, albeit at a glacial pace. Last week, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov said that to accommodate the factions in Syria “it is necessary to have a transitional period, this is obvious.”

Each incremental move is followed by demonstrations that Russia is standing firm: for instance, its refusal, last weekend in Geneva, to approve language suggesting that Mr. Assad could not be part of a transitional government. These tactics serve to draw out the diplomatic process for weeks or months — not such an inconvenience, perhaps, for Western governments that are themselves deeply conflicted about intervening.

As the body count rises, one of Moscow’s real concerns may be the hardening of Arab public opinion against Russia, said a senior Arab diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in accordance with protocol. With the increasing reach of news channels like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya — which regularly run gruesome video of massacres in Syria — Russia’s officials have been forced to accept that “unlike the last four decades, now the Arab street has a voice,” the diplomat said.

“I think they are now waking up to a new reality,” the diplomat said. “They are realizing that their analysis was wrong and they have to take a new approach.”

This realization conflicts with the desire to stand on principle, and to repay the abject humiliation of being ignored on Libya, he said: “The question is, will they make a stand in Syria to the end?”

The answer will hinge on the calculations of Mr. Putin. He may judge that bending to Western pressure would hurt him more than losing Syria. Or, if he accepts the idea that Mr. Assad cannot extend his rule past the end of the year, he may seek to trade Russia’s stand for a concession.

All that would remain would be to sit back and watch in silence as opposition crowds celebrate their victory. Not a simple choice for the man who, two decades ago in Dresden, spent panicky days inside the K.G.B. compound, burning documents that represented years of work. Then — convinced he had been abandoned by the country he served — he walked out to defend himself and his colleagues from the crowd outside.

#Syria Dismisses Notions of Foreign Intervention

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, at the “Friends of Syria” conference in Istanbul on Sunday. Foreign ministers from 60 countries were in attendance.

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

Published: April 2, 2012

ISTANBUL — The United States and dozens of other countries moved closer on Sunday to direct intervention in the fighting in Syria, with Arab nations pledging $100 million to pay opposition fighters and the Obama administration agreeing to send communications equipment to help rebels organize and evade Syria’s military, according to participants gathered here.

The moves reflected a growing consensus, at least among the officials who met here this weekend under the rubric “Friends of Syria,” that mediation efforts by the United Nations peace envoy, Kofi Annan, were failing to halt the violence that is heading into its second year in Syria and that more forceful action was needed.

But, on Monday, Syrian authorities dismissed the gathering, news reports said, with the official Al Baath newspaper declaring: “Despite all the hype, the conference of the ’Enemies of Syria’ produced only meager results, showing it was unable to shake Syrians’ rejection of foreign intervention.”

The newspaper, the mouthpiece of President Bashar al-Assad’s Baath party, called the conference “another failure,” while activists reported continued fighting in several parts of the country and arrests of President Assad’s adversaries in the northern province of Idlib. News reports spoke of explosions in the northern city of Aleppo and in the capital, Damascus.

At the Istanbul gathering, with Russia and China blocking United Nations measures that could open the way for military action, the countries lined up against the government of President Assad sought to bolster Syria’s beleaguered opposition through means that seemed to stretch the definition of humanitarian assistance and blur the line between so-called lethal and nonlethal support.

There remains no agreement on arming the rebels, as countries like Saudi Arabia and some members of Congress have called for, largely because of the uncertainty regarding who exactly would receive the arms.

Still, the offer to provide salaries and communications equipment to rebel fighters known as the Free Syrian Army — with the hopes that the money might encourage government soldiers to defect, officials said — is bringing the loose Friends of Syria coalition to the edge of a proxy war against Mr. Assad’s government and its international supporters, principally Iran and Russia.

The assistance to the rebel fighters as Mr. Assad’s loyalists press on with a brutal crackdown could worsen a conflict that has already led to at least 9,000 deaths and is increasingly showing signs of descending into a sectarian civil war. Some say that enabling the uprising to succeed is now the best bet to end the instability and carnage sooner.

“We would like to see a stronger Free Syrian Army,” Burhan Ghalioun, the leader of the Syrian National Council, a loose affiliation of exiled opposition leaders, told hundreds of world leaders and other officials gathered here. “All of these responsibilities should be borne by the international community.”

Mr. Ghalioun did not directly address the financial assistance from the Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, but he added, “This is high noon for action.”

But for some inside Syria, the absence of promises of arms far overshadowed the financial and communications aid. Mohamed Moaz, an activist in the Damascus suburbs who coordinates with rebel fighters, held Mr. Ghalioun responsible for failing to unify the gathered nations on sending arms, calling him “a partner with the regime in these crimes.”

“I’m the only one who watched this conference in our neighborhood, because there was no electricity and people don’t care,” he said. “I only watched it because Al Jazeera wanted my comment.”

At the conference, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that Mr. Assad had defied Mr. Annan’s efforts to broker an end to the fighting and begin a political transition. She said that new assaults had begun in Idlib and Aleppo Provinces in the week since Mr. Assad publicly accepted the plan. It does not call for him to step down, but rather for an immediate cease-fire followed by negotiations with the opposition.

“The world must judge Assad by what he does, not by what he says,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement to officials who sat around an enormous rectangular table the size of a basketball court. “And we cannot sit back and wait any longer.”

Molham al-Drobi, a member of the Syrian National Council, said that the opposition had pledges of $176 million in humanitarian assistance and $100 million in salaries over three months for the fighters inside Syria. Some money was already flowing to the fighters, he said, including $500,000 last week through “a mechanism that I cannot disclose now.”

He expressed dismay on the lack of more material help in halting the onslaught by Syrian security forces. “Our people are killed in the streets,” he said on the sidelines of the conference. “If the international community prefers not to do it themselves, they should at least help us doing it by giving us the green light, by providing us the arms, or anything else that needs to be done.”

Mrs. Clinton announced an additional $12 million in humanitarian assistance for international organizations aiding the Syrians, bringing the American total so far to $25 million, according to the State Department. She also confirmed for the first time that the United States was providing satellite communications equipment to help those inside Syria “organize, evade attacks by the regime,” and stay in contact with the outside world. And according to the Syrian National Council, the American assistance will include night-vision goggles.

“We are discussing with our international partners how best to expand this support,” Mrs. Clinton said.

The countries providing most of the money for salaries — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — have long been the fiercest opponents of Mr. Assad’s rule, reflecting the sectarian split in the Arab world between Sunnis and Shiites. Mr. Assad and his inner circle are Alawites, a Shiite minority offshoot that has nonetheless dominated political and economic life in Syria, despite its majority Sunni population. It also has Christian and other smaller sectarian groups.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the host of Sunday’s meeting, called on the United Nations Security Council to act, saying Syria’s government was using its ostensible embrace of Mr. Annan’s initiative to buy time. “If the Security Council hesitates, there will be no option left except to support the legitimate right of the Syrian people to defend themselves,” he said. Mr. Annan is scheduled to brief the Council’s 15 members in New York on Monday.

Mr. Erdogan emphasized that Turkey, once Syria’s close ally, had no intention of interfering there, but that the world could not stand idle as the opposition withered in a lopsided confrontation with the government’s modern weaponry. “They are not alone,” he thundered. “They will never be alone.”

A final statement from Sunday’s meeting called on Mr. Annan to “determine a timeline” for the next steps in Syria. What those steps might be remains as uncertain as it has been since Mr. Assad’s government began its crackdown on popular dissent early last year.

Violence continued on Sunday, with shelling of the Khalidiyeh neighborhood in Homs and other areas of the city for what activists said was the 21st consecutive day. Clashes were reported in many areas of the Damascus suburbs, and activists reported government troops firing with heavy machine guns on several areas of the southern province of Dara’a. The Local Coordinating Committees, a coalition of activist groups in Syria, claimed overnight that 18 people had been executed by government forces in the province. The group also posted video of a demonstration on Khalid Ibn al-Waleed street in central Damascus.

Syria’s restrictions on journalists make it impossible to confirm such reports.

The State Department’s stated goals for the meeting in Istanbul reflected the constraints facing the United States and other nations without broader international support for military intervention like that in Libya last year. Proposals to create buffer zones and humanitarian corridors have garnered little support.

The United States and other nations agreed Sunday to set up a “working group” within the nations gathered here to monitor countries that continue to arm or otherwise support Mr. Assad’s government — “to basically name and shame those entities, individuals, countries, who are evading the sanctions,” as a senior American official put it. They also agreed to support efforts to document acts of violence by Syrian forces that could later be used as evidence in prosecutions if Mr. Assad’s government ultimately falls.

#Syria rebels ‘have a right to weapons from abroad’

Thomas Seibert 01/04/12

ISTANBUL // Rebels fighting the forces of Bashar Al Assad have the right to weapons supplies from other countries if the world fails to stop the bloodshed, Turkey’s foreign minister told The National on the eve of a second international conference on Syria.

“The international community should take very concrete steps to prevent a massacre,” Ahmet Davutoglu said. “If it doesn’t happen, of course those who are being attacked will look for all the alternatives to defend themselves.”

Saudi Arabia, one of the countries attending today’s conference in Istanbul, has called for the arming of rebels fighting to topple the Syrian president.

The kingdom, along with Qatar, is also in favour of carving out a safe haven inside Syria from which the opposition can operate. Turkey, which shares a border of 900 kilometres with Syria, would be a key route for any large-scale weapons shipments to the rebels.

“People say there should not be any foreign intervention, but the flow of arms to the Syrian regime continues, and that’s not acceptable,” Mr Davutoglu said.

He compared the situation in Syria to that in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina the early 1990s, when Serb forces attacked Muslim civilians in a war that eventually triggered armed intervention by Nato.

“I made an analogy to the Bosnia case, when there was an asymmetric war: on one side an army with full capacity of attack, on the other side victims without any proper equipment to defend themselves. This is not sustainable.”

The world should not allow the Syrian government to continue with the violence. “Either there must be some international effort to stop these attacks, or there should be a clear message to the regime that there will be some international position to stop the bloodshed.”

Mr Davutoglu was speaking before today’s second meeting of the Friends of Syria, a group of western and Arab nations seeking to increase the pressure on Mr Al Assad to end the violent repression of protests that has killed more than 9,000 people since March last year. At least 75 countries will be represented at the meeting, which follows a conference last month in Tunis.

The United Nations-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan called on the Syrian forces to end operations immediately. Mr Al Assad accepted Mr Annan’s plan on Tuesday, but his security forces have continued their attacks. Turkey, a former close ally of Syria, ended its own mediation efforts last year, when the Syrian regime refused to enact political reforms.

Mr Davutoglu said he expected the Istanbul meeting “to give a clear message to the regime that these methods will not be tolerated by the international community. In Tunisia we gave a strong message, but now the message will be much stronger.”

In fact, he said, Turkey hoped the meeting would “take certain measures, new measures, steps, to stop the bloodshed”.

Mr Davutoglu said he could not go into detail before the conference. “But we want to have some more concrete steps.”

He also said the meeting would discuss getting humanitarian aid into Syria and would strengthen the role of the Syrian National Council, an opposition umbrella group. A third meeting of the Friends of Syria would take place in Paris, he said.

The Syrian opposition and the Free Syrian Army, a group of Syrian deserters fighting government troops, have repeatedly called for weapons, but Mr Annan has warned against further militarisation.

Mr Davutoglu, who put the number of Syrian defectors at 60,000, would not be drawn on whether he agreed with the Saudi position on arming the opposition, but he stressed it was the international community’s duty to prevent further bloodshed.

“When the oppression continues and people are being killed - if the international community is idle and cannot do anything, people will start to think that they have the right of self-defence,” he said. “The responsibility is on the shoulders of the international community, rather on the people who are trying to defend themselves.”

While Mr Davutoglu, 53, a close aide and former chief adviser to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, reiterated his government’s support for Mr Annan’s mission, he warned that Damascus was trying to gain time. He said Mr Annan’s plan “should not be seen as if it’s a mediation for the continuation of the Syrian regime”.

The Turkish foreign minister said Mr Al Assad was hoping he could secure his position by crushing the opposition militarily.

“This is what I call the illusion of dictators,” said Mr Davutoglu, a former professor of international relations. “They think that if they have time, they will control the situation and then they will make a cosmetic type of change.”

In Syria, as in other countries that shook off authoritarian regimes, this tactic would fail, Mr Davutoglu insisted. Even after a year of repression, Syrians were still calling for their democratic rights. “A regime or a leader cannot survive if that regime or that leader fights against its own people.”

Mr Davutoglu said the Syrian government lost its legitimacy the moment the regular army attacked cities with artillery, helicopters and the navy. “Even during a war, this is unacceptable. When you fight another country - even in that case it’s a war crime to shell a city indiscriminately.” He said Turkey condemned that kind of military operation as a “crime” when Israel attacked Gaza in late 2008. “Now the Syrian army is doing this against their own cities.”

Mr Davutoglu said he had no doubt that the Al Assad regime was doomed. “Such a regime cannot continue after all the crimes they committed against their own people. It is just a matter of time.”

Exclusive: Iran helps #Syria ship oil to China: sources

Jessica Donati, Reuters March 30, 2012, 10:31 pm

LONDON (Reuters) - Iran is helping its ally Syria defy Western sanctions by providing a vessel to ship Syrian oil to a state-run company in China, potentially giving the government of President Bashar al-Assad a financial boost worth an estimated $80 million.

Iran, itself a target of Western sanctions, is among Syria’s closest allies and has promised to do all it can to support Assad, recently praising his handling of the year-long uprising against Assad in which thousands have been killed.

China has also shielded Assad from foreign intervention, vetoing two Western-backed resolutions at the United Nations over the bloodshed, and is not bound by Western sanctions against Syria, its oil sector and state oil firm Sytrol.

“The Syrians planned to sell the oil directly to the Chinese but they could not find a vessel,” said an industry source who added that he had been asked to help Sytrol execute the deal but did not take part.

The source named the Chinese buyer as Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp, a state-run company hit by U.S. sanctions in January.

A Zhuhai Zhenrong spokeswoman said: “I’ve never heard about this.” She declined further comment.

The U.S. State Department said in January that Zhuhai Zhenrong was the largest supplier of refined petroleum products to Iran, on which the West has imposed sanctions because it suspects Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons.

China’s willingness to start importing Syrian oil offers a rare break in the country’s growing isolation.

Syria, a relatively modest oil exporter, has been unable to sell its crude into Europe, its traditional destination until September last year when European Union and U.S. sanctions halted exports.

The crude oil cargo, worth around $84 million assuming a discounted price of about $100 a barrel, could provide Assad with much-needed funds after another round of sanctions designed to further isolate the country’s ailing economy were imposed by the European Union last week.

Syria’s Sytrol, which has been on the EU and U.S. sanctions list since last year, referred calls to the country’s oil ministry. No one answered repeated calls by Reuters at the oil ministry. Iranian authorities were not available to comment.

The source added Sytrol had enlisted contacts in Venezuela to help find a vessel that could pick up the cargo. The problem was ultimately resolved by the Iranian authorities, who sent the tanker M.T. Tour to take on the cargo.

The Maltese-flagged tanker is owned by shipping firm ISIM Tour Limited, which has been identified by the U.S. Department of Treasury as a front company set up by Iran to evade sanctions.

The M.T. Tour reached the Syrian port of Tartus at the weekend, where it loaded the 120,000 metric tonne (132,277 tons) cargo of light crude oil, according to the industry source and shiptracking data.

Satellite tracking showed the vessel was last spotted near Port Said in Egypt, where is was due to arrive on Wednesday. Its final destination was not available but the industry source said the vessel was likely to head to China or Singapore.

“I was asked to provide an option to ship to southern China or Singapore,” the source said.

(Reporting by Jessica Donati; Additional reporting by Chen Aizhu; Editing by Anthony Barker and Giles Elgood)

Conservatives lead from the front, but will Obama follow? #Syria

By Jennifer Rubin

The White House and the Pentagon remain reluctant to get involved in Syria’s civil strife, but senior defense officials revealed Wednesday they are mulling military strike plans.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Obama administration will continue its policy of invoking “diplomatic and political approaches rather than a military intervention.” Panetta announced Washington is ready to provide $10 million in humanitarian aid to the Syrian people.

Still, the defense chief revealed for the first time that U.S. officials are “reviewing all possible additional steps…including potential military options.”

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey is detailing potential options. It turns out there are lots of things we can do: “One option is a no-fly zone over Syria, Dempsey said. Another is an operation designed to get humanitarian supplies to besieged civilians. The Joint Chiefs chairman also said officials have examined a mission featuring ‘limited air strikes’ against regime targets, as well as a ‘maritime interdiction’ — presumably to intercept ships carrying weapons and other supplies meant for Assad’s forces.”

If this sounds familiar, it is. The White House, whether on Guantanamo or military trials for enemy combatants, crippling Iran sanctions or Libya, has brushed off conservative critics and resisted calls for more robust U.S. action against our foes. It as taken the pseudo-moral high-ground, dubbing its critics constitutional ignoramuses or warmongers. But then, after months of delay and sometimes thousands of lost lives, it has often meandered back to a position that isn’t all that different from the stance its political opponents have been arguing about for months (e.g. Gitmo is open; the administration is making use of military tribunals; President Obama used military force in Libya; and the president, kicking and screaming, signed onto the Menendez-Kirk Iran sanctions amendment).

On Syria, the administration dismissed Sen. John McCain’s call for military force just a few days ago. At the time, Jamie Fly of the Foreign Policy Initiative e-mailed me: “As the death toll mounts and the Assad regime shows no sign of giving up power, the humanitarian case for intervention grows. The Obama administration appears intent on outsourcing our Syria policy to others, but only American leadership, including on the question of military intervention, will ensure that additional bloodshed is kept to a minimum and that our interest in seeing a democratic post-Assad regime emerge is fulfilled.” Now maybe there’s something to the use of military force after all.

But, of course, conservatives have been railing against Obama’s inaction for a very long time. Just a couple of days ago Mark Palmer and Paul Wolfowitz were urging we arm the Syrian opposition.

In February, a distinguished list of conservative foreign policy experts including Liz Cheney, Cliff May and Max Boot wrote to Obama, warning: “Unless the United States takes the lead and acts, either individually or in concert with like-minded nations, thousands of additional Syrian civilians will likely die, and the emerging civil war in Syria will likely ignite wider instability in the Middle East. Given American interests in the Middle East, as well as the implications for those seeking freedom in other repressive societies, it is imperative that the United States and its allies not remove any option from consideration, including military intervention.”

In November, Rachel Abrams, co-founder of the Emergency Committee for Israel, was warning:“If the Arab League’s sanctions have the sharpest sting—and the greatest shock value — for Assad, they nevertheless share one thing with censures by the U.S., Europe, and the UN — they’re gestures only; they do no more than demand an end to his barbarity.” She, too, advised that military action was the only appropriate response.

In September, Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz wrote in The Post: “The arguments for supporting Syrian protesters are easily as strong as those mustered to save the people of Benghazi. After months facing the regime snipers’ machine guns, tanks and torture, demonstrators are openly calling for foreign intervention. And the regime’s strategic sins against the United States are far greater than those committed by the Libyan Nero. Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah — the two terrorist powerhouses of the Middle East — are Damascus’s closest friends. Almost every Arab terrorist group, spawned in the hothouses of Islamic militancy and Arab nationalism, has had a presence in Damascus.”

So how long — and how many dead Syrians will it take — before Obama adopts the McCain-Palmer-Wolfowitz-Cheney-May-Boot-Abrams-Gerecht-Dubowitz position on Syria? The longer he delays, the more suffering will occur and the more certain the mullahs in Iran will become that this president wants to avoid conflict at all costs.

Activists demand ceasefire, aid access in #Syria

By msnbc.com staff and news services

Warnings from Syrian activists of a humanitarian catastrophe in Homs grew more desperate Thursday as government forces resumed shelling an opposition stronghold in the central city, where hundreds have died in a weekslong siege.

The toll mounted a day after two Western journalists were killed in shelling in Homs, and there more international calls for a cease-fire to allow assistance to reach areas hardest hit by the regime’s crackdown on opponents.

U.N. investigators accused Assad’s security apparatus of crimes against humanity as world outrage mounted over violence that has cost thousands of lives during an almost year-long popular uprising against his 11-year rule.

A “Friends of Syria” meeting in Tunis on Friday will call on Syrian forces to stop firing to give international aid groups access to areas worst hit by the violence which are running out of medicine and food, according to a draft declaration obtained by Reuters.

Russia, however, said Moscow and Beijing — staunch allies of President Assad — remained opposed to any foreign interference in Syria.

Across the country, activists reported between 16 and 40 people killed in attacks by security forces in rebellious areas that included the Hama countryside in central Syria and the mountainous Jabal al-Zawiya region in the north. There has been no way to confirm independently the specific death tolls provided by the activists or by the Syrian government.

In London, diplomats from United States, Europe and Arab nations prepared to demand that Assad call a ceasefire and allow humanitarian aid in hard-hit areas.

The ultimatum, outlined by participants to the London talks, is likely to be presented Friday in Tunisia at a major international conference on the Syrian crisis. Further defiance by Assad could bring even tougher sanctions and isolation.

In a statement released Thursday, British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt said the U.N. Human Rights Council report on Syria is “damning.”

“I am appalled by the evidence that young children are being targeted by snipers, and that security forces continue to arrest and torture wounded patients in State hospitals,” Burt’s statement read.

The minister added that those responsible for these “terrible atrocities” will be held accountable. British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a news conference in London the Syrian government was guilty of butchery and murder.

Homshas been under a fierce government attack for nearly three weeks. The International Committee for the Red Cross said it was trying to negotiate daily two-hour ceasefires in Homs to provide aid to civilians in violence-hit areas.

Homs-based activist Omar Shaker said intense barrages hit residential districts in Baba Amr again Thursday, but there was no immediate word on casualties. He said food, water and medical supplies are running dangerously low in Baba Amr.

“Every minute counts. People will soon start to collapse from lack of sleep and shortages in food,” he said.

On Wednesday, shelling of Baba Amr killed American-born war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik.

They were among a group of journalists who had crossed into Syria illegally and were sharing accommodations with activists, raising speculation that government forces targeted the makeshift media center where they were staying. But opposition groups had previously described the shelling as indiscriminate.

At least two other Western journalists were wounded Wednesday — French reporter Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro and British photographer Paul Conroy of the Sunday Times. Bouvier, was shown in a video posted on YouTube Thursday pleading to be evacuated so she can have an operation. She said her leg is broken in two places.

Bouvier, propped up with pillows and covered in blankets, said field hospital doctors had treated her as well as they could but did not have the equipment to operate.

“I need to be operated on as soon as possible,” she said.

Bouvier, whose thigh was tightly wrapped in bandages and seemed very calm, said her femur was shattered.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman offered condolences to the families of Colvin and Ochlik but rejected any responsibility for their deaths. The spokesman urged foreign journalists to respect Syrian laws and not to sneak into the country.

Some Syrians held protests and vigils Wednesday night in several parts of Homs in commemoration of Colvin and Ochlik.

“Remi Ochlik, Marie Colvin, we will not forget you,” read one banner held by protesters in the town of Qsour in Homs province.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 16 people were killed in attacks by security forces in rebellious areas that included the Hama countryside in central Syria and the mountainous Jabal al-Zawiya region in the north. Another group, the Local Coordination Committees activist network, said the overall number of Syrians killed was 40. The reason for the differing tolls was not immediately clear.

In Geneva, a panel of U.N. human rights experts said Thursday that the United Nations has a secret list of top Syrian officials who could face investigation for crimes against humanity carried out by security forces in their crackdown against the anti-government uprising.

The U.N. experts indicated that the list goes as high as Assad.

Experts say the list is initially likely to be more of a deterrent against further abuses than a direct threat to the Assad regime. Syria isn’t a member of the International Criminal Court so its jurisdiction doesn’t apply there, and Russia would likely block any moves in the U.N. Security Council to refer the country to the Hague-based tribunal.

Thousands of Syrians have died in the violence since March and the panel, citing what it called a reliable source, said at least 500 children are among the dead.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague told BBC radio that military intervention was very unlikely, as “the consequences of any outside intervention are much harder to foresee.”

A senior EU official said foreign ministers meeting in Brussels next week will add seven Syrian government ministers to those already sanctioned. Sanctions include asset freezes and visa bans for officials, commanders of the security forces and others considered responsible for human rights abuses.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of EU rules, said additional restrictions may be imposed on Syria’s central bank, on imports of precious metals from the country, and on cargo flights.

The EU had already sanctioned more than 70 Syrians and 19 organizations and has banned imports of Syrian crude oil.

In Amman, Jordan, several dozen Syrians, mainly from Homs, staged a protest outside the U.S. Embassy asking for Western military intervention. “Almighty God, destroy Bashar,” they chanted.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Arab League says China, Russia may be shifting on #Syria; EU prepares fresh sanctions

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Araby said said that the forthcoming meeting in Tunisia will put extra pressure on Syria. (Reuters)

Tuesday, 21 February 2012

By Al Arabiya with Agencies

The Arab League chief said on Monday there were signs that China and Russia could be shifting their stance on Syria after the two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council vetoed a Western-backed Arab peace plan aimed at ending violence there as the European Union said it will likely adopt fresh sanctions against the Syrian government in the coming week.

“There are indications coming from China and to some extent from Russia that there may be a change in position,” League Secretary-General Nabil al-Araby told a news conference in Cairo.

China and Russia’s blocking this month of a draft U.N. Security Council resolution that backed an Arab plan demanding that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step aside angered the West and Arab states.

They also voted against a non-binding General Assembly resolution to back the Arab plan last week.

China has sent envoys to the region, stung by Western criticism that by vetoing the resolutions it was allowing the violence in Syria to increase.

Al-Araby also said a meeting on Friday in Tunisia of the “Friends of Syria” — a group that includes Arab and Western nations — was to “put extra pressure on Syria.”

The President of the General Assembly Nasser Abdel Aziz said before the news conference in Cairo the international community could no longer remain silent on the situation in Syria.

“We know there are difficulties in the Security Council but I think we cannot stay silent and have to exert the utmost pressure so that the (Syrian) government implements what was agreed upon, or make the Security Council look into the matter more seriously because it is dangerous and there are big violations,” he said, according to Reuters.

“The international community cannot remain silent in such a dangerous case as Syria’s,” he added.

Syria-based activist Mustafa Osso told The Associated Press that Assad’s military should face strong resistance as residents plan to fight until “the last person.” He added that Homs is facing “savage shelling that does not differentiate between military or civilians targets.”

The Baba Amro neighborhood on Homs’ southwest edge has become the centerpiece of the city’s opposition. Hundreds of army defectors are thought to be taking shelter there, clashing with troops in hit-and-run attacks each day.

Amateur videos posted online showed what activists said were shells falling into Baba Amro. Black smoke billowed from residential areas. Phone lines and Internet connections have been cut with the city, making it difficult to get firsthand accounts from Homs residents, according to AP.

Calling for Assad to step down

Meanwhile, the European Union will likely adopt fresh sanctions against the government of President Assad in the coming week, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Monday.

Germany and other Western powers have repeatedly called on Assad to step down to put an end to protests against his government, which have triggered a violent backlash from his security forces.

Syrian security forces have killed more than 5,000 people in the past year, according to human rights groups, while the Assad government says more than 2,000 soldiers and security agents have been killed.

“We will adopt further sanctions in Europe, and not just in Europe,” Westerwelle told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a meeting of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 economic powers in Los Cabos, Mexico.

“I believe sanctions will be tightened in the next week, because the violence is continuing,” he said, when asked whether Europe would adopt measures to blacklist Syria’s central bank.

Westerwelle declined to name specific sanctions under consideration, but a G20 official at the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the EU was on course to agree to measures to curb the central bank’s ability to operate.

New round of sanctions

EU diplomats said this month they were working on a new round of sanctions against Syria, which they hope to finalize by Feb. 27. These would include a freeze on the Syrian central bank’s assets as well as on most transactions with it.

Westerwelle said it was time to raise diplomatic pressure against Syria, and received support from the United States and Britain in Mexico, who also urged China and Russia to do more.

“We’ll send a clear message to Russia, China and others who are still unsure about how to handle the increasing violence, but are up until now unfortunately making the wrong choices,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters.

On Monday, Beijing and Moscow showed support for Assad.

Assad met a senior Russian politician in Damascus, who reiterated Moscow’s backing for his self-styled reform program and spoke out against any foreign intervention in the conflict, Russian and Syrian news agencies reported.

China accused Western countries of stirring up civil war in Syria and two Iranian warships docked at a Syrian naval base, underscoring rising international tensions over the crisis.

Westerwelle said he expected a meeting in Tunisia organized by the Arab League later this week to strengthen the hand of the Syrian opposition, which is hoping for official recognition as a government-in-waiting.

Clinton said the Feb. 24 meeting in Tunisia of the “Friends of Syria,” organized by the Arab League to build international momentum against Assad, would help weaken Assad’s government.

“Like the U.N. general assembly resolution that passed overwhelmingly last week, the upcoming meeting will demonstrate that Assad’s regime is increasingly isolated and that the brave Syrian people need our support and solidarity,” she said.

“We have to prepare for the likelihood that the Syrian regime is going to be under increasing pressure which will create perhaps more space for all of us to push hard on a transition, and we will intensify our diplomatic outreach to those countries that are still supporting the Assad regime.”

Arab countries will encourage the Syrian opposition to unite before they formally recognize them as a government-in-waiting, Tunisia’s government said as it prepared to host the meeting.

The Syrian National Council (SNC) has emerged as the international voice of the uprising but has yet to show a real command over grassroots activists and an armed insurgency.

British Foreign Office minister responsible for relations with Latin America, Jeremy Browne, said Assad’s government no longer reflected the will of its people and urged dissenters in the U.N. Security Council to provide a solution to the problem.

“We’d like to see the Russians and Chinese come forward with more suggestions on how we can bring about peace in Syria,” he said. “The regime is existing on borrowed time.”

#Syria intervention drive mirrors Bosnia’s history as atrocities provoke call for ‘humanitarian’ intervention

In its random cruelty, the conflict in Syria starts to resemble the war in Bosnia 20 years ago, when Serb, Muslim and Croat forces tore the Balkan country apart. (File photo)

Sunday, 19 February 2012

By Reuters
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM

Cold-blooded sniper killings, indiscriminate shelling, surgery by flashlight, death, fear and hunger in a darkened city under the ruthless hammer of a superior force.

In its random cruelty, the conflict in Syria starts to resemble the war in Bosnia 20 years ago, when Serb, Muslim and Croat forces tore the Balkan country apart and the besieged people of Sarajevo buried thousands of dead in sports fields.

Bosnia’s carnage was broadcast globally month after month by 24-hour satellite television news then in its early days. The slaughter in the Syrian city of Homs has been playing out to the world almost hourly on mobile phone and amateur video.

Images of dead babies, severed limbs, blood running in the gutters and people driven mad by grief provoke horror, followed by demands for armed foreign intervention.

Intervention did come to Bosnia, but so hesitantly that the agony of its people went on for nearly 4 years, in which tens of thousands were killed and a million lost their homes.

Western powers who finally stopped the slaughter say they have no intention of going into Syria, a move that would have incalculable consequences in a volatile region.

Bosnia was a small republic of Yugoslavia, a European crisis on NATO’s doorstep. Syria is a major Arab republic with powerful friends in Russia and Iran, situated on a strategic crossroads.

The most readily recognizable common denominator between them is the Soviet-era T-72 tank. It has smashed its way into cities to crush lightly-armed rebels and civilians alike in 11 months of suppression by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

There is an air of deja vu about these scenes and the “humanitarian” remedies now being demanded, aid missions which in Bosnia led inexorably to armed intervention.

“The Bosnian War and the conflict in Syria are different in nature,” Soner Cagaptay and Andrew Tabler of The Washington Institute say. But “any international groups looking to provide humanitarian intervention to protect vulnerable civilians in enclaves ‘liberated’ by the opposition (in Syria) should draw on lessons from Bosnia in the 1990s”.

Those lessons show it would require an international force protected by air power and with a mandate to shoot back. It would likely be NATO-led, headed by a Muslim general from NATO member Turkey, Syria’s northern neighbor, and including Arab units.

Havens and corridors

Turkey months ago called for safe havens for Syrians, and is now collaborating with the Arab League and France. At least 5,500 Syrians have been killed in 11 months, the UN says.

A “Friends of Syria” meeting to be held with Arab states in Tunisia on Feb. 24 “will produce a very strong message of solidarity with the Syrian people and also a warning for the Syrian regime”, says Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

France wants the United Nations Security Council to approve its plan for humanitarian corridors into Syria from Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan, to the Mediterranean coast or an airport.

If this won U.N. backing, Turkey, already hosting refugees and army defectors from Syria, seems the most likely bridgehead.

But French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday ruled out direct intervention, saying that in Syria “the revolution will not be led from outside … it must be led from the inside”.

In Bosnia, the world watched atrocities happening as intervention came in slow motion, held up by Western reluctance to wade into what was seen as an ethnic civil war, plus Russia’s adamant credo of non-interference and long-winded diplomacy blurred by a convenient pretense that it was a fair fight.

Similar factors are at play in Syria. The vetoes of Russia and China have so far blocked any action by the United Nations Security Council, insisting on non-interference in a guerrilla uprising against a legitimate state.

But last week the U.N. General Assembly condemned Assad’s government for gross human rights violations and told him he must go. Its resolution backed an Arab League plan demanding the withdrawal of Syrian heavy weapons from towns and cities. It was non-binding. But so were the early resolutions on Bosnia.

The best weapon in Bosnia against the unmatchable firepower of a Bosnian Serb army bristling with tanks and artillery turned out to be the anger and disgust of world opinion.

So far, there have been no mass demonstrations in Western capitals demanding that NATO governments intervene in Syria. But, judging by the demands piling up from foreign leaders for Assad to step down immediately, pressure appears to be building.

In Sarajevo last week, Hollywood star and human rights campaigner Angelina Jolie screened her new film about the war, In the Land of Blood and Honey. She said she hopes it will serve as “a wake-up call” to the world to stop Syrian atrocities.

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says that, even with a U.N. mandate and Arab backing, he doubts the alliance would get involved. Yet as Bosnia showed, policies can change.

“We got no dog in this fight,” U.S. Secretary of State James Baker famously said in 1991 after a failed mission to stop the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia which ignited Bosnia’s war.
But when it turned into Europe’s worst conflict since World War Two, NATO did get into the fight, starting with a token 50 peacekeepers but ending with 100,000 in the country, after bombing Bosnian Serb heavy weapons to impose a peace settlement.

It took five years and over 100 United Nations Security Council resolutions to extinguish the war the United Nations had hoped would end in the summer of 1992. It ended in the winter of 1995, with more than 100,000 dead and entire cities destroyed.

But many more lives were spared because Bosnia’s atrocities posed a challenge to the power of the United States and its European NATO allies that they could not afford to flunk.

Avoiding Bosnia mistakes

Establishing safe havens and humanitarian corridors in Syria would need a U.N. mandate. Russia, opposed to “regime change”, says it would have to see the language of such a resolution.

Intervention in Bosnia started with a humanitarian aid corridor and U.N.-protected areas in next-door Croatia, which required a lightly armed United Nations Protection Force, UNPROFOR. Modest at first, its role grew and become central.

In June of 1992, U.N. Security Council Resolution 761 emphasized the urgency of getting aid into Sarajevo. A convoy of white armored personnel carriers bearing U.N. symbols and UNPROFOR troops in helmets of U.N. blue duly made its way over the mountains from Croatia to take control of Sarajevo airport.

UNPROFOR became what historian William Shawcross calls “one of the unhappiest U.N. peacekeeping missions in recent times”, a classic case of ‘mission creep’ that learned painfully by its many mistakes.

By putting ‘boots on the ground’ NATO was committed to protecting its troops, who in time had to be backed up by tanks and alliance warplanes. After many contemptuous Bosnian Serb challenges, it finally acquired the “robust” U.N. mandate that military analysts said it needed from the outset.

But the right to shoot back came only after the humiliation of soldiers who saw people in “safe havens” being shelled with impunity, while TV cameras recorded NATO’s apparent impotence.

Right now, the prospects of a U.N. peacekeeping force for Syria are seen as slim, since “there is no peace to keep”. But there was no peace to keep in Bosnia either, in 1992.

Few Good Options for Syrian Opposition #Syria

By HUGO DIXON | REUTERS

When the Syrian revolution began, the activists employed almost entirely nonviolent tactics. They also rejected the idea of foreign intervention.

Published: February 19, 2012

Nearly a year later, the revolution’s character has changed. There are still protests, boycotts, strikes and funeral marches. But the opposition’s main strategy for overthrowing Bashar al-Assad’s regime has become one of outmuscling it. To achieve that, it is calling for military help from abroad — a request that will be pressed when Friends of Syria, a contact group of mainly Arab and Western countries, meets in Tunis this week.

The switch in strategy is understandable, though regrettable. The endless killing and torture have taken their toll. Homs, Hama and several other cities are being bombarded by Mr. Assad’s forces in what look like medieval sieges and could have similar grisly outcomes. The people worry they will be massacred if they do not take up arms to defend themselves. Meanwhile, they have seen how foreign military intervention in Libya tipped the balance there and got rid of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

The Assad regime probably likes the fact that the opposition has embraced armed struggle. This solidifies its support among its core constituency — the Alawites, who represent about 10 percent of the population — as well as other minorities like Christians. The regime can argue it has to hit back hard, otherwise it will be massacred.

What is more, it has seen brutality work in the past. Mr. Assad’s father survived a rebellion in Hama 30 years ago after killing around 20,000 people.

Nonviolent struggle has about twice the chance of bringing down dictators as armed struggle, according to a study of 20th- and early 21st-century conflicts, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan. Among the many reasons, those close to the regime feel less threatened by nonviolent tactics and so are more likely to shift their allegiance, while it is easier to involve millions of people in Gandhi-style civil disobedience than in military operations.

Outmuscling a dictator, of course, also works sometimes. Ms. Chenoweth and Ms. Stephan found that this was particularly so when foreign powers helped. The snag is that armed struggle results in more carnage than nonviolent struggle and reduces the chances that what follows the dictator will be a peaceful democracy. Involving foreign powers, meanwhile, means the revolution has to dance to those powers’ agendas.

Such a script is playing itself out now in Syria. The conflict has increasingly descended into a sectarian civil war, pitting the majority Sunni population against the Alawites, who are an offshoot of Shiite Islam. A glance at the map shows how this could further destabilize a volatile region. Turkey and the Gulf Arab states are Sunni — and outraged by the atrocities committed against their co-religionists. Iran and, to a lesser extent, Iraq are Shiite and do not want to see their man fall.

The West, meanwhile, is worried about the resulting effects on Israel and Iran as well as having some sympathy for a brave people being butchered. By contrast, Russia does not like the idea of autocrats being toppled, as its regime is shaky too.

This is the context of the upcoming Friends of Syria meeting in Tunis. There are various ideas on the table, all fraught with problems. One, touted by the French, would create humanitarian corridors through which aid could be ferried to the trouble spots. The snag is that a large and sophisticated military force would be needed to blast open and protect such corridors.

Another proposal is to create a safe zone by the Turkish border, where refugees and defecting Syrian soldiers could congregate. This could then be a base from which to launch a counterattack against Mr. Assad, in the same way that Benghazi was used against Colonel Qaddafi.

Again, a foreign army would be needed to secure such a haven. Western powers, which have just disengaged from Iraq, do not seem to have much appetite for that. There is also the complication that Russia and China have made it clear they would veto any resolution in the U.N. Security Council authorizing military intervention.

The rich Gulf Arab countries, led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, may not have such qualms. But they are not in a position to field an army to match Mr. Assad’s. Their main contribution is likely to be giving the Syrian opposition money to buy arms. If enough sophisticated weapons pour into the country, Mr. Assad might eventually be toppled. But the bloodshed would be horrendous, and Syria could be left with radical Islamist gangs as Afghanistan was after the West decided to arm the mujahideen as a response to Soviet occupation in 1979.

The least bad option would be to revert to a nonviolent struggle and support it from abroad with intensified economic sanctions in the hope that enough of Mr. Assad’s support would crumble that he could be eased out. The Syrian people would still be killed, but casualties might be kept lower if they emphasized tactics like labor strikes and boycotts rather than demonstrations, where they are out in the open and sitting ducks.

Defecting troops would also have to be given something to do other than attack the regime. One idea is to use them to persuade even more troops to defect.

Such an outcome does not look terribly likely. Conflicts that turn violent rarely revert to nonviolence. Probably the best known was the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, but that change in strategy took decades. Still, the other options for Syria and the region look ghastly.

Arm the Syrian opposition now! #Syria

16/02/12

By Tariq Alhomayed

This is a message to all the “friends of the Syrian people” to call on them to arm the Syrian opposition…and arm them now! Don’t stop at saying that arming the Syrian opposition is one of the options, for now is not the time for rebuking China, as US president [Barack Obama] did yesterday, nor is it time to investigate the Russian “price”, rather it is time to stop the al-Assad aggression, and this is something that will only be achieved by arming the Syrian opposition, particularly as nobody intends to intervene to stop the al-Assad killing machine.

Homs is being mercilessly bombarded by the forces of the tyrant of Damascus for the eleventh day in a row; indeed it is not just Homs that is facing such aggression, but also Hama and Idlib, whilst yesterday even areas of Damascus were suppressed by regiments of soldiers. This is not to mention the killings taking place in Aleppo, which is something that the media has failed to pay any attention to. Arming the Syrian opposition is now a critical demand, not to ignite a civil war in Syria, but in order to protect the country’s unarmed civilians. This is because war has already broken out in Syria, and it is the al-Assad regime that has ignited this war over the past 11 months, resulting in the deaths of approximately eight thousand Syrians, not to mention thousands more being injured and displaced. So what is the world waiting for? The concerned states are well aware that last week the al-Assad regime announced that it would crush the revolution before Saturday, and this deadline passed without the al-Assad regime succeeding in this; whilst today Damascus is saying that it needs an additional four days to achieve this. It is clear that the al-Assad regime is incapable of crushing the revolution, and so the tyrant of Damascus is utilizing all his military capabilities to destroy Homs, repeat the Hama massacre, and suppress other Syrian cities; therefore what is the world waiting for?

It is therefore up to the friends of the Syrian people today to directly arm the Syrian opposition. The Free Syrian Army [FSA], for example, is a part of the opposition, and is in dire need of arms in order to confront the violence being carried out by the tyrant of Damascus; arming the opposition will aid the Syrian soldiers who have defected from the regime, for their defection means nothing unless they have arms. It is also absurd to say that there is no Benghazi in Syria to allow the Syrian revolutionaries to receive arms, for this is simply not true; Homs has been liberated, which is why it is surrounded and being bombarded today, and the same applies to Zabadani and other areas of the country. However nobody has rushed to rescue the Syrians with arms as occurred in Libya, where the opposition was armed by the West and via “mediators”, in order to avoid legal problems with some Western states.

Therefore, now is not the time for talking about unifying the ranks of the Syrian opposition, rather it is time to arm the opposition, and for a very simple reason, namely that the al-Assad aggression against unarmed civilians is today more brutal than at any time before, and the Syrian people are now being killed in cold-blood, including children and the elderly, whilst the world is unfortunately standing back and watching this! As for those who are talking about their fears of “foreign intervention”, they are ignoring the fact that this has already happened, for how else would you describe Iran supporting al-Assad with arms and men, Hezbollah colluding with the tyrant of Damascus, and Moscow playing the role of international negotiator for al-Assad? Isn’t this foreign intervention?

In conclusion, everybody who is concerned about Syria, amongst the Arabs and the West, must begin arming the Syrian opposition sooner, rather than later.

Analysis - #Syria opposition split raises calls for foreign

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The collapse of a deal between Syria’s two main opposition factions shows that voices calling for foreign intervention to topple President Bashar al-Assad have gained the upper hand over those opposing it.

But the quick unraveling of the pact, which ruled out such international action, ensures that achieving that goal will remain elusive since Western powers are loath to throw their weight behind a fractured Syrian opposition.

Wary of the risks of engendering chaos and wider Middle East conflict given Syria’s internal sectarian divisions and Assad’s alliance with Iran, NATO says it has no plans to intervene as it did to back Libyan rebels who toppled Muammar Gaddafi last year.

And neighboring Turkey, Assad’s former ally, has said any intervention must be backed by the U.N. Security Council with Arab League support, must be justified on humanitarian grounds and not have regime change as its goal.

Ten days ago Burhan Ghalioun, head of the mostly exiled Syrian National Council (SNC), signed an accord with the mainly Syrian-based National Coordination Body (NCB) outlining a transition to a democratic post-Assad Syria.

The agreement rejected “any military intervention that harms the sovereignty or stability of the country,” while leaving the door open for an Arab role to stop Assad’s military crackdown on protests in which 5,000 people have died, by a U.N. count.

But members of Ghalioun’s own council denounced the deal, forcing him to disavow it. Many grassroots protesters inside Syria also rejected it, saying they had lost hope that 10 months of peaceful demonstrations - now accompanied by an armed insurgency in some regions - would bring down Assad.

“The paper has been cancelled after pressure from members of the council. Some threatened to resign,” said SNC member Khaled Kamal. “Ghalioun signed it without the knowledge of council members, so after consultation he withdrew his signature.”

SNC members were holding a meeting in Turkey on Monday to draft their own road map for change and were expected to decide whether to replace Ghalioun as council chief.

The NCB rejects foreign intervention, seeking instead a political agreement for a transitional government to replace Assad, a path it says would save Syria from disintegrating along sectarian and ethnic lines.

Kamal said many SNC members had originally shared the NCB’s rejection of an intervention such as a no-fly zone or buffer zone to protect Syrian civilians. “But now all roads are blocked and the political solution did not work,” he said.

“After ten months and after we knocked on all doors… foreign intervention is the only choice before us,” he said, adding that the SNC will begin a campaign to get recognition as the only opposition group representing the mass demonstrations.

COUNCIL SEEKS FOREIGN ROLE

The protests, driven by anger and frustration at corruption, poverty and lack of freedoms over 41 years of autocratic Assad family rule, have been mainly peaceful, though rights groups say the death toll among protesters now exceeds 5,000.

The revolt has become bloodier as protests have become overshadowed by armed rebels taking the fight to the security forces. Syria says it is fighting Islamist militants who it blames for killing 2,000 of its security forces and soldiers.

The National Council, ignoring Ghalioun’s concerns of possible civil war, wants to give a bigger role for the rebel Free Syrian Army that has been attacking security forces.

It is also seeking international steps to prevent Assad using warplanes against popular unrest and to create a buffer zone on the Turkish border, which would provide the FSA a base to escalate attacks on Assad’s forces.

Such views are echoed among many activists in flashpoint cities such as Homs and Hama who say Arab League monitors assessing whether Damascus is complying with a plan to end violence are toothless and will not protect civilians.

“The best thing they can do for us is to refer Syria to the (U.N.) Security Council,” said an activist called Ahmad.

Khalaf Dahowd, a member of the executive bureau of the National Coordination Body, said he had no sense during meetings held with foreign officials that the international community was ready to step in.

“Syria has strong allies. The Russians told us we will not use one veto - we will use 20 vetoes in the Security Council,” he said. Assad is backed by Iran and the powerful Shi’ite Muslim Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. He also has allies in Russia and China, which have blocked Western-generated draft resolutions against Damascus at the U.N. Security Council.

“We are against the militarization of the revolution because it justifies the oppression and the use of force. Tens of people are getting killed now but if the revolution becomes a military one then hundreds will be killed,” Dahowd said.

“Syria is a country of many sects and ethnicities. Foreign intervention will break the social infrastructure of Syria and its political borders,” he said.

Already many analysts and officials have warned that the increasingly lethal armed confrontations could tip Syria into a sectarian civil war, pitting majority Sunni Muslims against Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

RIFTS, MISTRUST EXPOSED

Years of oppression under Assad’s late father, Hafez al-Assad, have fragmented a Syrian opposition that includes liberals, Arab nationalists, Islamists and Kurds.

The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, whose armed revolt was crushed with up to 30,000 deaths by the elder Assad in the city of Hama in 1982, is believed to be a major force among those in the Sunni majority keen to throw off domination by Alawites.

Over the years Syria’s intelligence agents have worked tirelessly to divide the various opposition groups, playing on their rivalries to plant seeds of doubt among them and leaving a legacy of suspicion still evident in their responses to a grassroots uprising which they played little role in creating.

“Many of the members of the Coordination Body are agents of the Syrian regime and some are scared of the regime because many of them are inside Syria,” said Kamal of the National Council.

Privately other opposition figures level similar accusations against the SNC, saying it is riddled with “agents of Assad.”

An opposition source familiar with talks held with Western officials said that the officials spelled out to each group they met that the Syrian opposition should unite and that none of the groups could claim to be the main opposition movement.

A Syrian opposition figure in Damascus who refused to be named said: “There is opposition inside Syria that nobody should ignore. The (National) Council is not the only representative of the opposition.

“Even if they rejected the deal at the end of the day the opposition has no alternative (but) to sit down and talk. They must agree. The Council is crazy to think the United Nations is going to recognize them now,” he said.

(Editing by Dominic Evans and Mark Heinrich)