Syrian Freedom

#Syria’s Secular and Islamist Rebels: Who Are the Saudis and the Qataris Arming?

18/09/12

Out of Istanbul, the two Gulf states play a game of conflicting favorites that is getting in the way creating a unified rebel force to topple the Assad regime

Syrian rebels take position during clashes with regime forces in the northern city of Aleppo, Sept. 14, 2012.

Vast swathes of northern Syria, especially in the province of Idlib, have slipped out of the hands of President Bashar Assad, if not quite out of his reach. The area is now a de facto liberated zone, though the daily attacks by Damascus’s air force and the shelling from the handful of checkpoints and bases regime forces have fallen back to are a reminder that the rebel hold on the territory remains fluid and fragile.

What is remarkable is that this substantial strip of ‘free” Syria has been patched together in the last 18 months by military defectors, students, tradesmen, farmers and pharmacists who have not only withstood the Syrian army’s withering fire, but in some instances repelled them using a hodgepodge of limited, light weaponry. The feat is even more amazing when one considers the disarray among the outside powers supplying arms to the loosely allied band of rebels.

(PHOTOS: Syria’s Year of Chaos and Photos of a Slow-Motion War)

As TIME reports here, disorder and distrust plague two of the rebels’ international patrons — Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The two Gulf powerhouses are no longer on the same page when it comes to who among the plethora of mushrooming Syrian rebel groups should be armed. The rift surfaced in August with the alleged Saudi and Qatari representatives in charge of funneling free weaponry to the rebels clearly backing different factions among the groups – including various shades of secular and Islamist militias–under the broad umbrella that is the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The middlemen of the two countries operate out of Turkey, the regional military power. Ankara has been quite public with its denunciation of Assad even as it denies any involvement in shuffling weapons across the border to Syrian rebels. It claims its territory is not being used to do so. And yet, as TIME reported in June, a secretive group operates something like a command center in Istanbul, directing the distribution of vital military supplies believed to be provided by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and transported with the help of Turkish intelligence to the Syrian border and across to the rebels. Further reporting has revealed more details of the operation, the politics and favoritism that is undermining the task of creating a unified rebel force out of the wide array of forces trying to topple the Assad regime.

(The FSA is nominally headed by the Turkey-based Riad al-As’aad. Both As’aad and his chief FSA rival General Mustafa Sheikh are not party to the Istanbul control room which supplies and arms rebels who operate under the FSA banner. The two men each have their own sources of funding, and are independently distributing money and weapons to selected FSA units.)

According to sources who have dealt with him, Saudi Arabia’s man in the Istanbul control center is a Lebanese politician named Okab Sakr. He belongs to the Future Movement, the organization of former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, which has a history of enmity with Damascus (Syria was accused of complicity in the 2005 assassination of Hariri’s father Rafik). The party has not made Sakr available to TIME, denies his involvement in any weapons deals and insists that Sakr is in Belgium “on leave” from his political duties.

However, Sakr appears to have been in the southern Turkish city of Antakya in late August. A TIME inquiry with an Antakya hotel confirms Sakr was in the area at the time. According to rebel sources who dealt with him, theLebanese politician was there overseeing the distribution of batches of supplies — small consignments of 50,000 Kalashnikov bullets and several dozen rocket-propelled grenades – to at least four different FSA groups in Idlib province as well as larger consignments to other areas including Homs. The FSA sources also say he met with some commanders but not others – a selectivity that led to much chagrin.

(PHOTOS: Syria at War)

That kind of favoritism has caused problems on the ground in many ways. According to FSA sources, prominent activists and members of the Istanbul control room, Sakr was mainly responsible for designating the representatives in Syria’s 14 provinces to whom the Istanbul center would funnel small batches of light weapons — Kalashnikov rifles, BKC machine guns, rocket propelled grenade launchers and ammunition – to reach FSA groups operating in each area. But the 20 or so Syrians selected (some areas like Damascus have more than one representative) to distribute armaments were not all effective. These representatives were “supposed to deliver the support inside but they did not have a presence on the ground, they weren’t known,” says an influential U.S.-based Syrian activist with wide contacts inside Syria who played a role in setting up the Istanbul operations room. “I saw this weak point, so I connected Okab to people I knew were working on the ground, and I wasn’t the only one to do this, others did too because we wanted the room to succeed.”

But the selectivity has bred further favoritism in the distribution of arms. “Those who received goods would distribute them as they wanted. They started sending to people and saying, ‘this is a gift from me to you,’” a member of the control room representing eastern Syria told TIME. Other representatives were blunter, seeking pledges of loyalty from FSA groups inside the country before delivering the goods. To try to alleviate the problem, the provincial representatives were cycled in and out of the room’s operations but the problems remained. “The weapons are all being distributed in secret,” says one fighter inside Syria angrily, “and what is secret will stay unclear.”

The situation is compounded by Qatar’s man — a major who defected from Assad’s army who has not yet responded to TIME’s request for comment. The Qataris want to focus on aiding the regional military councils, FSA groupings within Syria set up earlier this year partly in order to get around the favoritism of the representatives. (There are at least 10 military councilsscattered throughout the country.) Goods would be delivered to a council, and then distributed to the brigades under its umbrella. In practice, it wasn’t quite as easy, or smooth. “We were given lists by brigade leaders of their men, but we stopped believing the numbers,” says a member of the Istanbul room from Syria’s Idlib province. However, the Saudis – via Okab Sakr – appear to only want to support certain groups within the councils, but not others.

“We felt that the sides giving us support weren’t on the same page,” says the control room member from eastern Syria. “They started having side meetings with some groups.” Still, he says, “what is most important is that the guys receive weapons, whether that is via an operations room or directly, we don’t care. Nobody knows the truth from the talk,” he says. “We have been lied to [by the international community] and we have lied to the guys inside, saying weapons would arrive in a week, in 10 days, and months have passed and someareas haven’t received supplies. So, unless I see it, and see it distributed, even I don’t believe it.”

In the town of Bdeeta in Idlib province—which happens to be the hometown of Riad al-As’aad–rebel fighters complain bitterly about the lack of assistance. “We are licking our plates, we beg for salt,” says Abu Mar’iye, who heads the Martyrs of Ibditha group in the tiny town, home to some 2,000 people. “It’s not enough, even the weapons that arrive, it’s like a drop, just enough so the fighting continues, so we can kill each other but not win.”

(MORE: The Need to Bear Witness in Syria)

The men claim that groups with higher media profiles, those thatproduce the most sensational snippets of amateur video, the ones with the most Youtube hits, receive the largest share of the spoils, regardless of the strategic importance of their operations. The videos serve as advertisements to solicit funding and weapons, not only from the Istanbul command center, but from private donors including clerics in the Gulf with massive fund-raising abilities. “They taught us; hit, film it, I’ll support you,” says a fighter named Nasr.

Colonel Afif Suleiman, the head of the Idlib Military Council, agrouping of 16 military units from across the vast province, is unhappy with the support he gets from the control room. He is angry with Sakr who he says “got involved in the issue of weapons to split our ranks, to divide the revolutionaries.” Sakr, he says, recently “chose three people on our council and supported them, I won’t name them. They are not the largest units. There is one big group but the others are just regular ones,” Suleiman told TIME. “He formed a rift within the council and we are working to heal this rift. We clarified the issue to our Saudi brothers about Okab. They promised that there will be no support, either military or financial, except via the councils. This is what they recently promised us.”

To complicate things further, the Qataris reportedly have strongties to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood while the Saudis “don’t want any ties to anything called Muslim Brothers,” says Ahmad Zeidan, the nom de guerre of a member of the Idlib military council. According to several sources, the large group in the Idlib military council that Sakrsupported – to the aggravation of Colonel Suleiman — is Jamal Maarouf’s Martyrs of Syria Battalion, because it “has a more neutral view of the Brothers,” a U.S.-based activist said.

The other big group in the Idlib military council is Ahmad Abu Issa’s Suqoor al-Sham, an Islamist group also based in Jabal al-Zawya. Abu Issa is also no great friend of the Brotherhood. On August 19, he announced his withdrawal from an Islamist coalition because he said the Brotherhood politicized it by naming it after their party, rather than calling it something that reflected the diverse nature of the grouping.

It’s debatable how much support the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has within Syria – politically and militarily – given that since the 1980s it has been a capital offense to be a member of the party. There has been much talk that the MB has little influence on the ground, and that it will provide military and logistical support only in exchange for pledges of loyalty, part of its attempt to beef up its numbers. It’s a claim vigorously denied by Molham Aldrobi, an executive member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a founding member of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the exiled political group that tried torepresent the opposition early on. “This is absolutely not true. We do not discriminate based on loyalty to the MB,” he told TIME from his home in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. “The MB does exist in the ground, we work under the FSA umbrella,” he said, although he would not disclose the number of units, nor where within Syria the MB’s military groups were strongest. He did say, however, that there was at least one member of the MB in the Istanbul operations room.

Still, the Brotherhood is only one of the many Islamist groups operating in Syria. Some, like the Salafi group Ahrar al-Sham are not strictly part of the FSA, although in Idlib the group is part of the Military Council and therefore gets a smattering of support from the Istanbul control center as well. It’s a reflection of the fact that in most cases in Idlib at least, rebel offensives are joint operations betweengroups of Free Syrian Army fighters, Islamists, Salafists and even the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra group that some claim has ties to al-Qaeda. Still, the bulk of Ahrar al-Sham’s substantial funding reportedly comes from Kuwait.

(MORE: Cover: Escape from Syria)

Similarly, some FSA groups, like Abu Issa’s Suqoor al-Sham, are also part of wider Islamist networks. It’s largely to maximize the amount of support they can get. In a major development, Abu Issa has joined a powerful new pan-Syrian Islamist coalition called the Jabhat Tahrir Syria, or the Syrian Liberation Front, which groups several formidable, battle-hardened rebel outfits including the famed Farouk Brigades of Homs.

Abu Issa insists that he will remain part of the Idlib Military Council and that the Liberation Front will not overshadow anyone, even though it will likely be the most powerful armed body in Syria. “We acknowledge the others just as they acknowledge us. The military councils can be a part of it,” he said. But the rebel leader bristled when asked about the influence of foreign players like Sakr. “We will not accept becoming tools for anyone, nor do we accept any living being, whether foreign or from within the revolution, acting in a manner to divide revolutionaries,” he told TIME.

Abu Issa, Suleiman and Maarouf, along with other high-profile rebel leaders from other provinces, spent much of August shuttling between Syria and Turkey to attend high-level meetings with diplomats and senior Syrian opposition. But U.S. diplomacy has yet to grasp the full complexity of the Syrian crisis. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to snub the SNC during an August trip to Istanbul was widely viewed as belated recognition by many activists inside Syria that the exiles comprising the body have littlesway or credibility. The fact is, the guys with the guns do, although the State Department denies any direct contact with members of the FSA. (The SNCdoes not have a role in the arming of the rebels inside Syria, though some individual SNC members are in the Istanbul control room, representing theirregions.)

The Obama administration does not deal directly with the armed opposition but it has authorized a non-profit organization, the Syrian Support Group, to fundraise for the FSA. The SSG is comprised of Syrian exiles in the U.S and Canada as well as a former NATO political officer.

Zeidan of the Idlib Military Council doesn’t seem to differentiate between official U.S. policy and that of the SSG. He says he’s been in contact with members of the SSG for months. “I know that they are afraid of something called Al-Qaeda, it’s all a big lie,” said Zeidan. “They talk about Ahrar al-Sham and Suqoor al-Sham. They are conservative Islamists, but they are not extremists. Many of these groups just want support.” He adds, “We are fighting to have a democratic country, not so that we can install people with American or European or Saudi agendas… We want to topple the regime, so whoever offers us help, we will call our units whatever they want as long as they support us. We just want to finish.”

#Syria, CIA Chief Petraeus Pays Surprise Visit to Turkey

03/09/12

Ankara was tight-lipped concerning a reported unannounced visit to Istanbul by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director David Petraeus, while U.S. officials were little different than their Turkish counterparts in response to questions.

Petraeus arrived in Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport with his private plane, according to an exclusive report by Turkish daily newspaper Akşam. The daily said the agenda of Petraeus’s talks with Turkish officials would be the Syria crisis and the anti-terror fight.

The visit was be the second unannounced visit by the CIA chief to Turkey in last six months. In March, the United States’s top spy paid an unannounced two-day visit to Ankara to discuss the deepening instability in Syria, the joint fight against terrorism, and closer cooperation on pressing regional issues “in the coming months.” On that visit, Petraeus held separate talks with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Turkish counterpart, MİT chief Hakan Fidan.

Contacted by the Hürriyet Daily News, both Foreign Ministry officials and Prime Ministry officials gave identical answers: “We do not have such information.” Neither denied nor confirmed the visit.

A Turkish diplomat, speaking under customary condition of anonymity, told the Daily News that “no such meeting [with Petraeus] is on our agenda for now,” while an official from the prime minister’s office said “no such meeting is on the agenda of the prime minister, and at the moment he is planning to return to Ankara from Istanbul.” The official from the prime minister’s office noted, however, that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s time in Istanbul might be extended to night time.

Officials from the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) joined the Prime Ministry and Foreign Ministry officials, as an official from MİT neither denied nor confirmed the visit, saying: “We haven’t received information regarding such a visit.”

When approached, U.S. Embassy officials in Ankara referred Hürriyet Daily News to a public affairs officer in Washington DC who was naturally not at the office since it was weekend holiday and due to time difference between Ankara and Washington DC; and Daily News found an answer-recording machine which directed it a public affairs officer on duty. The public affairs officer on duty said: “We are not able share information due to security reasons.”

#Syrian opposition ‘receives training’ in Istanbul

28/08/12

Syrian opposition activists are receiving training in a number of different fields in Istanbul, including using the vital equipment necessary in determining whether war crimes have been committed, a prominent member of the Syrian National Council (SNC), Fevzi Zakiroglu, has said.

“We are constantly organizing this kind of training for the Syrian activists. The training is mostly given by Western experts coming from international organizations. This is not a secret,” Zakiroglu told the Daily News yesterday.

The British Daily Telegraph reported on Aug. 26 that an underground network of Syrian opposition activists was receiving training and supplies of vital equipment, in a combined American and British effort to forge an effective alternative to the Damascus regime. “The training takes place in an Istanbul district where handsome apartment blocks line the steep slopes and rooftop terraces boast views over the Golden Horn waterway,” the newspaper said. Zakiroglu confirmed that training was indeed taking place in Istanbul, but that it was not given in houses or apartment blocks, but rather in hotels. Each training session lasts for about four or five days, he said. It is not just about how to use media materials, but also on legal issues such as how to determine whether war crimes have been committed in Syria,” he said.

The training is mostly given by Western experts or journalists from international organizations, Zakiroglu said. “Our last trainer was from Canada, for instance,” he said.

Zakiroglu said it was not only the SNC that was organizing such training for opposition activists, but also that a number of other opposition groups were organizing their own training programs, also with the help of international organizations. “Sometimes they ask us what names can be invited, and we help them in terms of finding the right people to invite,” he said.

Published: 8/28/2012 http://trkne.ws/382723

13/08/2012 Turkey, #Syria: Injured and displaced Syrians joined a demo at Taksim Square in Istanbul

Clinton heads to Turkey for meetings on Syrian rebellion #Syria

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

10/08/2012

ACCRA, Ghana — The Obama administration is unlikely to broaden military engagement in Syria at least until after the U.S. presidential election, despite rebel military gains, pleas for help from the rebels and criticism at home that President Obama is sitting on the sidelines, current and former U.S. officials said.

The officials agree that the gradual expansion of U.S. support for the Syrian rebels will stop well short of any armed intervention or aerial protection zone for now.

The United States imposed more economic sanctions on Syria on Friday and will announce an additional $5.5 million in humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees Saturday officials said.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to discuss other options Saturday, during emergency meetings in Istanbul with Turkish government leaders and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The one-day stop in Turkey follows a 10-day diplomatic trip to Africa.

“She certainly will be looking to see whether there is anything else we can do that will have a positive impact rather than a detrimental impact on the overall situation in Syria,” a senior State Department official said Friday.

The U.S. calculus of caution could change, as it did last year in Libya, despite the administration’s current policy that adding arms to the volatile and increasingly sectarian civil war in Syria would only make things worse.

Clinton is looking for a “clear picture of the effectiveness of what we are currently providing and how it can be made more effective, and then whether or not there are additional things we can do,” the official said.

But a combination of skepticism in the United States about the utility of any military move, a lack of international consensus and domestic political worries makes the possibility of any near-term military operation appear remote.

The upcoming U.S. presidential election in November casts the national security decision-making on Syria in a political light. Obama administration officials insist they are neither postponing nor hastening any policy change because of the election, but officials agree that unless Assad falls quickly, the United States is highly unlikely to significantly alter its current course before then.

“I just don’t see it coming that fast, with or without the election,” one senior U.S. official said earlier this week. The official, like others, agreed that the election does complicate the already difficult effort to understand the changing situation in Syria and react to it.

There is a debate within the administration about what to do next, with some advisers arguing that some wider help for the rebels would give the United States greater influence with the government that eventually replaces Assad, and would improve the chances for a democratic outcome.

Obama administration officials bristle at criticism from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and others that the United States has been a bystander and should arm the rebels. Doing so might provoke a wider war, with little gain for the United States, two senior U.S. officials said this week.

John O. Brennan, the White House’s top counterterrorism official, said Wednesday that President Obama has not ruled out any options for helping the Syrian rebels, although he noted that they already are “awash in weaponry.”

American public opinion has solidly favored winding down the Afghan war and the war in Iraq before it, and the public mostly sides against any new military intervention in Syria. There have been few calls, even from foreign policy hawks, for anything on the scale of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The administration is expanding contact with political opposition figures who might be leaders in Syria after the Assad regime falls, and it has gradually ratcheted up the level of assistance to the splintered military resistance inside Syria. It is now providing satellite equipment and sophisticated radios that allow the rebels to better coordinate their movements and detect regime attack helicopters and other heavy weaponry.

Clinton has never met any of the activists she will see Saturday, two State Department officials said. She will meet no armed fighters or commanders, they said. Previous meetings with opposition groups have revolved around an umbrella group of political exiles.

Armed with some tanks and heavy weapons supplied by Persian Gulf states or captured from the Assad army, the rebels have made significant gains, although not enough to shift the military balance of the 17-month conflict.

At the same time, a peace plan put forward earlier this year by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan has collapsed.

The plan, which included a cease-fire that never took hold, was not taken seriously even by some of its most ardent public backers, because they assumed that Assad would never go along. However, the plan did serve to answer the question of what the United States was doing to help. It also could have given cover to Russia, Syria’s close partner, to negotiate a political deal for Assad to step down.

The United States and several allies are likely to shortly endorse a replacement for Annan, who quit after the plan collapsed, and United Nations monitors are likely to maintain a small, and largely bunkered, presence in the country, officials said.

The changed circumstances are putting pressure on the United States, Turkey and European allies to seize the opportunity and help the rebels, perhaps with more weapons or some form of military protection from the air.

U.S. officials appear no closer to that kind of intervention, however. Clinton has led a gradual embrace of the opposition forces over the past half-year that now includes provision of sophisticated communications and other “nonlethal” military gear. Significant expansion of the U.S. role is unlikely in the short term, and there is little appetite in Turkey for a strong military response, despite worry over the consequences of a prolonged civil war at its doorstep.

Other U.S. officials said a goal of the Istanbul trip is to ensure that Clinton sees a more diverse array of opposition figures than the longtime expatriates she has met. Although U.S. officials did not provide names or significant detail about the possible participants, some are likely to be activists who recently fled Syria or who travel in and out.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the list of participants is not set, and they cautioned that identifying some of some activists publicly would put them in greater danger.

The United States holds no uniform view of Assad’s staying power, with estimates ranging to many months if he retains enough loyalty in his armed forces. Rebel retreat from part of Aleppo under heavy air assault over the past few days shows that the Assad regime is still in control, military and other officials said Friday. Syrian forces have pushed rebels back from a strategic district of the country’s commercial hub, although skirmishes continue in the city.

But Clinton’s stepped-up engagement this week is a recognition that the end is coming, and perhaps much sooner. The pace of defections and the growing military ability of the rebels hasten the need for planning to head off a chaotic collapse of basic government services and to prevent a security vacuum in Syria once Assad goes, officials said.

That is what Clinton meant when she appealed earlier this week for thoughtful consideration of the “day after” the fall. She said she “couldn’t possibly predict” when that day will come.

The rebels also say they do no want direct military intervention in the form of troops on the ground. But they have repeatedly appealed for a no-fly zone similar to the effort that helped Libyan rebels topple Moammar Gaddafi last year and for supplies of heavy weapons to counter Assad’s vastly superior firepower.

The Washington Post reported this week that as the Arab world’s bloodiest revolt continues, anti-American sentiments are hardening among those struggling to overthrow Assad.

Once regarded by the Syrian opposition as a natural friend in its struggle for greater freedoms against a regime long at odds with the West, the United States is now often being viewed with resentment for offering little more than verbal encouragement to the revolutionaries.

“All we get is words,” said Yasser Abu Ali, a spokesman for one of the rebel Free Syrian Army battalions in the town of al-Bab, 30 miles northeast of Aleppo.

The violence already carries signs of sectarian conflict between Syria’s majority Sunni Muslim community and Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

“There will be no winner in Syria,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement read by a U.N. representative Thursday. “Now, we face the grim possibility of long-term civil war destroying Syria’s rich tapestry of interwoven communities.”

Victory closer, divisions deepen in #Syria opposition

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Three separate Syrian opposition groups have floated proposals for a transitional government in the past week, a sign that differences among the many factions opposing President Bashar al-Assad are deepening even as victory seems closer.

With fighting reaching Damascus and Aleppo in the past month, Western countries are increasingly anxious to see the disparate groups agree on a credible plan for a transitional government should Assad fall.

The head of the Syrian National Council (SNC), a long-established opposition umbrella group, said talks would be held within weeks to form a transitional government.

The next day the Free Syria Army, a loosely coordinated group of insurgents fighting Assad’s forces, floated a separate proposal that called for the establishment of a higher defense council bringing together military and civilian figures.

And the day after that, a group of exiled Syrian activists who left the SNC announced a new opposition alliance that also aimed to form a transitional government.

It is neither news nor a surprise that Syria’s opposition is divided. Assad’s opponents include Islamists and secularists, Kurds and Arabs, Sunni Muslims and members of religious minorities, defected army officers and the political activists they once hunted, exiles abroad and fighters on the ground.

The Istanbul-based SNC in particular has come under fire for being out of touch with the fighting in Syria itself. Colonel Riad al-Asaad, nominal head of the Free Syria Army, said it was made up of opportunists who want “to ride over our revolution and trade with the blood of our martyrs”.

Haitham al-Maleh, a former judge, broke away from the SNC to launch the “Council for the Syrian Revolution”.

“I don’t differ with the Syrian National Council over their vision, but over their tactics. I’m different in that I’m working on the ground, and they’re just theorizing,” he told Reuters.

Burhan Ghalioun, the SNC’s former leader, said news of the SNC’s plans to form a transitional government had created “a competitive dynamic” among those who want a role.

“I think we will be able to overcome this competition … I think Haitham’s move was a wrong one and it must be fixed with minimum fuss and without giving it importance,” he told Reuters.

Most alarming for the West, the rebels fighting inside Syria include al Qaeda-style Islamist fighters with a strong sectarian, Sunni Muslim agenda. Secularist opposition figures and members of religious minorities are also worried.

“Several opposition groups have adopted an increasingly fundamentalist discourse and demeanor, a trajectory that mirrors the conflict’s gradually deadlier and more confessional turn (and) popular loss of faith in the West,” the International Crisis Group said in a report.

Western countries fear that sectarian killings could make it difficult to halt the fighting even if Assad falls, and could unleash the sort of mass slaughter that erupted in Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled.

Among other issues dividing the opposition is the role of senior defectors like Brigadier General Manaf Tlas, a former member of Assad’s inner circle who fled Syria and has since been hosted by anti-Assad governments in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Many opposition activists say Tlas is tainted by his long service under Assad and worry that he will be foisted on them as a future leader. Ghalioun said he sees a military role for Tlas and other defecting officers to retake control of the army and re-establish security in the country. Maleh was dismissive.

“I do not think that Manaf Tlas has a role in the coming time as a leader. He should have announced his defection when he left Syria and said ‘I’m joining the Free Syrian Army and I will fight alongside them,’” Maleh said.

However, some experts say the opposition’s fractiousness has a positive side, showing pluralism emerging after decades of repression under the Assad family’s Baathist rule.

“This is a political society emerging after almost nothing. So the diversity is normal and healthy,” said Nadim Shehadi, Middle East expert at London’s Chatham House think tank.

“This argument about the incoherence of the opposition and the fact the opposition doesn’t constitute an alternative to the regime was used before as an excuse to do nothing,” he said.

“We have to help the opposition to come up with a transition plan and with an alternative.”

(Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Peter Graff)

Report: Syrian Astronaut Flees to Turkey #Syria

05/07/2012

Syria’s first man in space has fled to Turkey and joined opposition forces fighting President Bashar Assad’s regime, the latest in a string of high-ranking defections from the conflict-stricken country, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported Sunday.

Mohammad Ahmad Faris, 61, crossed into Turkey after reaching the headquarters of the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo, meeting with rebel commanders there and declaring his solidarity with the umbrella group of rebel fighters, the Anadolu agency reported.

“We are with you with our lives and blood,” Anadolu quoted Faris as telling members of the Free Syrian Army.

The agency said Faris crossed into Turkey on Sunday, but Mahmut Osman, an Istanbul-based member of the Syrian opposition group — the Syrian National Council — said he had arrived in Turkey on Saturday and would hold a news conference in Istanbul in the coming days. He would not disclose Faris’ current whereabouts.

Anadolu reported that it was Faris’ fourth attempt to defect, after three previous efforts had failed. It gave no details on his escape and provided no source for the report.

Faris joins a string of high-profile figures, including senior army officers, who have abandoned Assad’s regime since the uprising began in March 2011. Last month, Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, an Assad confidant and longtime friend, became the first member of his inner circle to defect in a move hailed as a triumph by the opposition. In July, a member of Syria’s parliament also fled denouncing the violence by Assad’s regime.

Faris, an air force pilot, was part of the three-man crew of a Soviet space mission in 1987 and Syria’s first man in space, Anadolu reported.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, is close to the Turkish border and is where the rebels have their rear bases. Armed government troops have been steadily shelling rebel-controlled parts of the city.

Turkey has some 45,000 refugees in camps along the 911-kilometer (566-mile) border and is also a staging ground for the Free Syrian Army rebels.

Analysis: #Syria options dwindling

Analysis: Syria options dwindling

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius listen during a meeting of the “Friends of the Syrian People” at the MFA Conference Center July 6, 2012 in Paris, France.

By Elise Labott

When the Friends of Syria group began meeting this year, first in Tunis and again in Istanbul, there was a sense of possibility. Perhaps the group would endorse military action against Syria. Maybe they would recognize the Syrian National Council as the legitimate opposition group.

Six months in, the allure has worn off. At their third meeting in Paris, there were no expectations any decisions would be made, except for who would host the next meeting.

Calls were made for tougher sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, even though most countries which had any business with Syria have already imposed tough measures to no avail.

The group did endorse a transition plan hatched last week in Geneva. The document endorses a Syrian-led transition as part of the peace plan designed by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan. The fact that the plan, which provides for an interim government, has no relation to the current reality on the ground or that it had no input from either the Syrian regime or the opposition - the two parties which would have to implement it - didn’t seem to be nearly as important as the fact that Russia and China went along with it.

In lieu of an agenda, there was plenty of blame in Paris to heap on Russia and China. Offering her harshest rebuke of Moscow and Beijing to date, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on each leader present at the meeting to demand that Syria “get off the sidelines.”

“I don’t believe Russia and China believe they are paying any price at all, nothing at all for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime,” Clinton said.

The longer the conflict drags on, the tougher Clinton’s rhetoric on Russia becomes.

By placing the blame squarely on Russia and China, Clinton and others are able to delude themselves that diplomatic efforts can end the conflict with the main goal of getting Assad out. But in their heart of hearts they know even the most detailed roadmap of a post-Assad Syria has no hope of changing the military balance on the ground enough so that the Syrian military, Assad’s inner circle, and Moscow see Assad as a sinking ship and abandon him.

Diplomats in New York are already at work on a new U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the Annan plan and imposing sanctions on the regime if it fails to implement it. The resolution would be under Chapter 7, which has the implied threat of military action.

But this, too, is a mirage. Privately, U.S. and other western officials recognize they are spinning their wheels. They know there is no chance the Assad regime would implement the Annan plan without a credible military threat and they also know that the appetite for international military action is, well, nonexistent.

Since the conflict in Syria began, the international community has had many excuses for inaction: the lack of a credible opposition, Russian intransigence and the fear of further militarizing the conflict. The need to give Annan’s peace plan time to work was just the latest justification.

Riad Seif, a prominent businessman and former member of parliament who recently left Syria and is now a member of the opposition, gave voice to what many Syrians are feeling about the futility of the “Friends of Syria” exercise when he asked the group to make its friendship actually mean something.

“After so many conferences, we fail to see how we have so many friends and people are dying every day,” he told the group during a fiery address. “Help us put an end to this massacre.”

Fresh hope for an end to #Syria’s pain

It’s not often that an international conference produces a pleasant surprise. But the 103 nations that attended a conference of Friends of the Syrian People in Paris yesterday did so.

The difference started with French President Francois Hollande’s inaugural address — where he described the crisis in Syria as “a threat to international security and peace.”

In diplomatic parlance, that’s a coded demand for the issue to be considered under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter — which allows for military intervention.

Hollande, in short, means to stop the Friends of the Syrian People from continuing to dance around the issue, as they did at previous gatherings in Tunis and Istanbul.

Hollande: French prez hints at military intervention.

To be sure, that doesn’t mean that the nations represented in Paris are ready to act in Syria as many did in Libya. But the acknowledgment of military intervention as an option is in itself important.

The conference also ended ambiguity over the role that the despot Bashar al-Assad might take in any transition to a new Syrian regime.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s “road map” would give Assad a veto on who is included in a transition government. But the Paris conference showed a growing consensus that Assad must be scripted out of any negotiated settlement. Even if he’s to be temporarily replaced by one of his deputies, Assad would have to step aside before a deal is sealed.

Russia and China, two of Assad’s last remaining supporters, declined their invitations to Paris. The third, Iran, wasn’t even invited. All three appear to be having doubts about the wisdom of supporting an unpopular leader who may also be doomed.

Russian and Chinese spokesmen now claim that neither Moscow nor Beijing is “committed to Assad as such.” As for Tehran, the mullahs seem to be preparing to ditch Assad before they host a summit of the nonaligned nations this fall.

Many nonaligned leaders, including new Egyptian President Muhammad Mursi, have indicated they’ll boycott the summit if Iran doesn’t alter its pro-Assad stance. If Tehran continues to back Assad, it could end up with high-level representation from only two Arab states, Sudan and Lebanon, at its summit.

Russia now seems a classic opportunist; it’s looking for ways to prevent the United States and its allies from scoring a point by helping remove Assad from power. But Moscow also knows that courting Assad risks antagonizing a majority of the 22 Arab states.

So the Kremlin is desperately looking for a way to portray itself on the side of change in Syria without actually producing the kind of change that Western powers wish for.

Much work remains. But don’t be surprised if Russia takes the lead in selling the idea of a “dignified departure” to Assad. In Yemen, a similar deal was sold to President Ali Abdullah Salih by his principal protector, Saudi Arabia.

What is needed urgently is an end to the bloodshed. And that can’t be achieved while Assad has a central role.

Meanwhile, the first high-level defection from Assad’s inner circle has increased the possibility of “change within the regime.” Brig.-Gen. Manaf Tlas, 43, is a former commander in the Presidential Guard and one of Assad’s closest personal friends. His father, Gen. Mustafa Tlas, was a founder of the Ba’athist regime and served as chief of staff and then defense minister for more than two decades under Bashar’s father, Hafiz al-Assad.

The younger Tlas flew to Paris yesterday; he claims he decided to break with the regime after Assad’s younger brother, Maher, also a brigadier-general, ordered a massacre in the central Syrian town of Rastan — the seat of the Tlas, a leading Sunni clan.

Tlas’ defection ends the myth of solidarity among the despot’s “inner circle. In Damascus, people are already wondering who will be next.

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.

UK doubles aid to #Syria opposition groups

By James Robbins Diplomatic correspondent

The UK is to double its non-military aid to opponents of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, Foreign Secretary William Hague has said.

William Hague said the aid would help to provide training for activists and citizen journalists

He said the extra £500,000 will help groups both inside and outside Syria.

Mr Hague used his annual Mansion House speech in the City of London to urge President Assad to accept he has no hope of political survival.

The United Nations says more than 9,000 people have been killed during a year-long Syrian revolt.

The foreign secretary is working to boost Syria’s opposition at a moment when new diplomacy offers hope - however uncertain - that President Assad may be pushed into change.

Mr Hague told his audience, including dozens of foreign ambassadors in London, that the UK will give opposition groups extra help worth £500,000.

It will include more training for activists and citizen journalists to help them get their stories out of Syria, and possibly secure phones to make the co-ordination of protest safer.

Civil society groups will also be given more assistance gathering evidence of atrocities for possible future trials.

Mr Hague warned the regime its reliance on violence was not only morally indefensible, it was futile.

‘Economic disarray’

He said: “President Assad and his allies may look at the rubble of Homs, the abandoned streets of Idlib and Syria’s overflowing prisons and they may entertain hopes of political survival.

“But they cannot avoid ever greater numbers of Syrians wanting a better future, and rejecting the bloodshed, insecurity and economic disarray their leaders have brought upon them.”

Mr Hague said he expected the Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul on Sunday to adopt new measures to increase pressure on the regime and boost Kofi Annan’s diplomatic mission.

The foreign secretary did acknowledge President Assad’s apparent willingness to accept Mr Annan’s UN plan, but he said the regime needed to convince a sceptical world and a wounded Syrian people.

On Thursday, Arab states meeting in Baghdad called for the immediate implementation of the plan, which would see a UN-monitored end to fighting, troops pulled out of opposition areas and access for humanitarian services.

At the same meeting, Iraq’s PM Nouri al-Maliki warned that arming either side in Syria would lead to a “proxy war”.

Syria’s opposition leaders are so far refusing to contemplate any negotiations which could leave President Assad in power and he is warning that his participation in a UN peace plan may depend on foreign governments ending all support for his opponents, whom he calls terrorists.

Clashes erupt in #Syria, activists say, as leaders meet in Saudi Arabia for talks

By the CNN Wire Staff
March 30, 2012 — Updated 0950 GMT (1750 HKT)

(CNN) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrives in Saudi Arabia on Friday for talks aimed at addressing the bloodshed in Syria as opposition activists report new raids and clashes in various neighborhoods.

Clinton will meet various Gulf officials, including Saudi’s King Abdullah, to discuss bilateral and regional issues. Talks will include continued efforts to end the bloody crackdown against anti- government protesters in Syria.

She will then travel to Istanbul on Saturday and Sunday to attend the second meeting of the Friends of the Syrian People.

The new clashes overshadowed hopes for implementing a peace plan brokered by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan as part of an initiative that activists and diplomats say the regime has not implemented.

Security forces shelled and stormed various cities Friday in Homs province, opposition activists said. At least five people died, including two each in Homs and Idlib, the opposition Local Coordination Committees in Syria said.

And at least 15 mortars targeted Homs city neighborhoods including Bab Tudmor and Safsafa, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Clashes between military defectors and security forces erupted in Hama, Deir Ezzor and the Damascus Countryside province, the Local Coordination Committees in Syria said.

The United Nations estimates that the Syrian conflict has killed more than 9,000 people since a government crackdown on protesters began last March. Opposition activists put the toll at more than 10,000.

CNN cannot independently confirm reports from inside Syria because the government severely restricts access by international journalists.

Syria routinely blames armed terrorist groups for violence in the country, while most reports from inside the nation suggest the government is slaughtering civilians in an attempt to wipe out dissidents.

In a letter on state media, President Bashar al-Assad expressed hope that Annan will deal with the crisis, saying Syria is willing to conduct a national dialogue with groups seeking stability.

He urged Annan to focus on drying up sources supporting terrorism against Syria, especially by countries that have pledged to finance and arm “terrorist groups.”

“In return for a formal commitment by Syria for the success of Annan’s mission, it is necessary for him to obtain commitments from other parties to stop all terrorist acts, disarm gunmen and to end their terrorist acts, kidnapping, killing innocents and sabotaging infrastructure,” SANA reported, quoting al-Assad.

Annan, a former U.N. secretary-general, is the joint special envoy for the Arab League and the United Nations. His peace plan calls for an end to the violence by the government and opposition, timely humanitarian aid, speeding the release of “arbitrarily detained” people, ensuring freedom of movement for journalists and respecting peaceful demonstrations and freedom of association.

Annan intends to join the U.N. Security Council in a private meeting Monday in which he will brief members on his plan.

Meanwhile, at the weekend meeting with Clinton, Turkey plans to renew a call for international help to deal with the soaring numbers of Syrians fleeing violence to Turkey’s southern provinces.

CNN’s Amir Ahmed, Joe Sterling, Tracy Douiery, Richard Roth and Gavino Garay contributed to this report.

Armed intervention into #Syria ‘last resort,’ US envoy to Turkey says

ISTANBUL - Doğan News Agency (DHA)

A military intervention against Syria is the “least desired option” for both Turkey and the United States in the battle to end the Arab republic’s violence, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Francis Ricciardone said today.

Ricciardone made the comments during a discussion with members of the press at a conference at Koç University in Istanbul today.

“Turkey and United States believe that a military intervention would be a last resort, a least desirable option to reach a solution in Syria,” he said.

The matter should be resolved through diplomatic means and according to international law, Ricciardone said.

“The situation we are in has no easy answers, it won’t magically disappear,” the ambassador said. “We are working together toward a solution.”

March/29/2012

Ahead of Istanbul meeting, allies look reluctantly at intervention in #Syria

By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, March 26, 1:50 AM

ISTANBUL — A year of sanctions, diplomacy and harsh rhetoric failed to stop Syria’s bloody crackdown and oust President Bashar Assad. With frustration running high, Turkey and other countries that have staked moral credibility on ending the violence are increasingly looking at intervention on Syrian soil, a strategy they have so far avoided for lack of international consensus and fears it could widen the conflict.

Diplomacy has not yet run its course, but more treacherous options, including aid to Syrian rebels, are likely to come up at a meeting of dozens of countries that oppose Assad, including the United States and its European and Arab partners, in Istanbul on April 1.

One prominent option floated by Turkey is a “buffer zone” on the Turkish-Syrian border, which could amount to a foreign military occupation, intent on regime change even if the aim is humanitarian in name. The risks of such an endeavor in a combustible region are evident in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon decades ago and Syria’s own military presence in Lebanon until 2005.

Yet, comparisons with international hesitation over the Balkans bloodshed in the 1990s make it ever harder to engage in seemingly endless, and fruitless, diplomacy.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed Syria with U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday at a nuclear security conference in South Korea, and said it was not possible to tolerate events there. Earlier, Erdogan was asked by reporters on his plane whether a safe zone inside Syria was on the agenda.

“Studies are under way,” Erdogan said. “It would depend on developments. The ‘right to protection’ may be put into use, according to international rules. We are trying to find a solution by engaging Russia, China and Iran.”

Erdogan predicted that “everything could change” if those countries withdraw their support for Syria, and he accused Assad of reviving ties with and “protecting” rebels of the PKK, a Turkish Kurd group at war with the Turkish state. Turkey already hosts some 17,000 Syrian refugees, and casting the Syrian crisis in terms of Turkey’s national security strengthens the case for intervention.

U.N. and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan was discussing Syria on Sunday in Russia, which vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at pressuring Assad but has shown increasing impatience with him. His next stop is Beijing, which also blocked U.N. action.

Annan’s plan, endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, includes a cease-fire by Syrian forces, a daily two-hour halt to fighting to evacuate the injured and provide aid, and inclusive talks about a political solution.

But, there are still questions about how such an agreement would be overseen and enforced. An Arab League monitoring effort in Syria failed, labeled a farce by some who participated. The likelihood that a Syrian regime that has shelled cities would talk in good faith to the people it targeted is remote, and outgunned Syrian rebels say the time is long past for any negotiation.

The United Nations says more than 8,000 people have died. Many were civilian protesters.

Assad bucked the trend of relatively quick transitions to new governments in regional uprisings. Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, where a NATO bombing campaign helped oust Moammar Gadhafi, did not bear the same geopolitical tensions as the Syrian case. The conflict there comes as Israel considers a plan to bomb the nuclear facilities of Iran, a regional power and close ally of Assad, and further destabilization in Syria could set off lasting unrest.

Turkey and the United States, in an election year, “are reluctant to make more forceful moves because of the long-term costs of policing the sectarian violence that will surely happen following the collapse of the Assad regime,” said Arda Batu, professor of international relations at Yeditepe University in Istanbul and editor-in-chief of the Kalem Journal, a website about regional affairs

The countries meeting in Istanbul hope to help the Syrian opposition coalesce into a more coherent movement that can show all Syrians, not only the majority Sunni Muslims, that they would have a place in a post-Assad future.

The “Friends of Syria” group of more than 60 countries made little headway at its maiden meeting in Tunisia in February, and countries are already talking about creating a subgroup to discuss military options more urgently. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are some of the strongest advocates of this approach.

One idea sees Arab countries and Turkey — with the U.S., ideally, but possibly without — establishing a buffer zone along the Syrian-Turkish border that would serve as a humanitarian corridor and staging ground for the rebel Free Syrian Army. On the Syrian side of the border, it would entail army defectors and other guerrillas wresting control of land and holding it, which they have been unable to do.

Earlier this month, CIA chief David Petraeus met Erdogan in Ankara. Turkish media said the prime minister warned that deepening instability in Syria would provide a “living space” for militant organizations active in the region, including the PKK.

On Saturday, Turkey’s Yeni Safak newspaper, which is considered close to the government, said 500 military personnel have inspected areas close to the border for a safe zone that could stretch 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) inside Syria, and would end their “studies” before the meeting in Istanbul.

The newspaper did not provide sources, but the report contributed to a sense that the safe zone idea is slowly gaining traction despite the pitfalls.

“If the U.S. is not involved, there is no way Turkey would get involved in it,” said Osman Bahadir Dincer, a Syria expert at the International Strategic Research Organisation, a center in Ankara, the Turkish capital. However, he predicted “some kind of an intervention in the form of a buffer zone or a safe zone” within one or two months.

Dincer said a decision to arm the Free Syrian Army was unlikely at the Istanbul meeting amid questions over the composition of the ragtag militias, and divisions between fighters in Syria and the Syrian National Council, the opposition group based outside the country.

“The opposition is too fragmented, there is confusion as to which group represents who, or what they represent,” he said.

The U.S. and other key allies, however, are considering providing Syrian rebels with communications help, medical aid and other “non-lethal” assistance. Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, said in South Korea on Sunday that communications assistance could be critical to the opposition’s efforts.

If any military intervention is to gain the international legitimacy that was accorded the Libya mission, it will need the U.N.’s stamp of approval. That requires the acquiescence of veto-wielding Security Council members Russia and China, an unlikely possibility that could only occur if they are included in the process and feel similarly betrayed by the Assad regime.

Without the U.N., the U.S. would be stretched to justify military involvement. It could help NATO ally Turkey in the event of a Syrian attack across the border, or make a U-turn on a doctrine of caution about intervention that Obama has insisted on since he was a presidential candidate.

“Of course, it is not possible to remain a spectator, to wait and not to intervene,” Erdogan said in South Korea, with Obama at his side. “It is our humanitarian and conscientious responsibility. We are engaged in efforts toward doing whatever is necessary within the framework of international law. We are happy to see that our views on this overlap.”

Rift develops in Syrian opposition group #Syria

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN | Sun Feb 26, 2012 7:24pm EST

(Reuters) - Prominent members of the main Syrian National Council formed a splinter organisation on Sunday, exposing the most serious rift among President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents since a popular uprising against his repressive rule erupted in March.

At least 20 secular and Islamist members of the 270-strong council, which was set up in Istanbul last year, announced the formation of the Syrian Patriotic Group.

The new group is headed by Haitham al-Maleh, a lawyer and former judge who has resisted dynastic family rule by Assad and his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, since its inception in 1970.

He is joined by Kamal al-Labwani, an opposition leader who was jailed for six years and released in December; human rights lawyer Catherine al-Talli; Fawaz al-Tello, an opposition operative with links to Free Syrian Army rebels and Walid al-Bunni, who was among the most outspoken figures on the council responsible for foreign policy.

“Syria has experienced long and difficult months since the Syrian National Council was formed without it achieving satisfactory results or being able to activate its executive offices or adopt the demands of the rebels inside Syria,” a statement by the Syrian Patriotic Group said.

“The previous mode of operation has been useless. We decided to form a patriotic action group to back the national effort to bring down the regime with all available resistance means including supporting the Free Syrian Army,” the statement, which was sent to Reuters, said.

The statement was issued in Tunis, where members of the Syrian National Council, including those who have effectively split, attended the 50-nation “Friends of Syria” conference last week to try to push Assad to end the military crackdown.

The Syrian National Council has been under mounting pressure from within Syria for not overtly backing armed resistance against Assad, which is being led by the Free Syrian Army.

Assad, from Syria’s Alawite minority, has sent tanks across the country to crush the uprising. The sustained attack on the central city of Homs has pushed the council toward calling more forcefully for international intervention.

The council is headed by Burhan Ghalioun, a respected secular professor who has been advocating democracy in Syria since the 1970s. His term as president has been renewed on a monthly basis with key support from Muslim Brotherhood members of the Council.

Several ‘neo-Islamists’, who are seen as somewhat more liberal than the Brotherhood, have joined the Syrian Patriotic Group, including Imadeldin Rashid, a preacher who was jailed early in the uprising.

(Editing by Michael Roddy)