Syrian Freedom

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.”

Assad Says Public Support Assures He Will Continue to Lead #Syria

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

Published: July 9, 2012

BEIRUT, Lebanon – President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said in an interview on German television that public support for his rule meant he would remain in office, and maintained that victims among government supporters including the military outnumbered those among civilians.

The interview came in tandem with a visit by Kofi Annan, the special envoy on Syria for the United Nations and the Arab League, to Damascus for talks on Monday about rescuing his six-point peace plan from oblivion. He was to fly on to Iran afterward.

In Damascus, Mr. Annan told reporters that he had reached an agreement with Mr. Assad on an approach to end the violence, but he did not provide any details.

There were reports of scattered violence around Syria on Monday, with particularly heavy government shelling directed at Ariha in northern Idlib province and a number of victims, opposition activists said. The government and armed opposition have been vying for control of territory in the province for months.

Mr. Assad said in the interview with the German television network ARD broadcast on Sunday that he continued to support the Annan peace plan. Among other points it calls for a cease-fire, a political transition and humanitarian aid — all aspects that Mr. Assad’s critics said he had ignored since accepting the plan in March.

The Syrian leader rarely grants interviews, but as in previous such encounters, he blamed the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar for supporting the “terrorists” he accused of fomenting the violence in Syria.

“As long as you offer any kind of support to terrorists, you are partner” said Mr. Assad, speaking in English. “Whether you send them armament or money or public support, political support in the United Nations, anywhere.”

Although Western and Arab governments have repeatedly said that Mr. Assad must go, and even Syria’s main foreign supporter, Russia, has said it is not tied to his rule, the Syrian leader said he did not believe his remaining as president was an impediment to peace.

“The United States is against me, the West is against me, many regional powers and countries and the people against me, so, how could I stay in this position?” he said. “The answer is, I still have a public support.”

The Syrian leader suggested that the number of people killed among his supporters was far greater than his opponents. He counted the more than 100 victims of the Houla massacre in May among his supporters, accusing anti-government “gang” members of donning army uniforms to make it look like a government attack.

“The majority are people who support the government and large part of the others are innocent people who have been killed by different groups in Syria,” he said. “If you talk about the supporters of the government – the victims from the security and the army – are more than the civilians.”

A report last week by Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, estimated the number of victims up to 17,000. The official Syrian government news agency, SANA, publishes a daily toll of soldiers, but the last total released by the government was around 3,000.

Mr. Assad conceded that some of the civilian deaths might have been carried out by government forces but said those were under investigation and some members of the security forces had been jailed. There has been no public announcement of any results.

The first such case he announced last spring would be investigated was his relative, Atef Najib, the head of the intelligence services in the southern city of Deraa. They were accused of torturing to death a 12-year-old boy, Hamza Khatib.

As usual, Mr. Assad blamed the violence on a mixture of Al Qaeda forces and other extremists, including “outlaws who escaped the police for years, mainly smuggling drugs from Europe to the Gulf area.”

Dialogue with the opposition, even those in exile, was possible as long as they had not broken any laws in attacking Syria or calling for external interference. Both the government and the opposition claim the violence has to stop before dialogue can start, effectively freezing any efforts to forge a political solution.

Mr. Assad stressed that his first priority was security and said he did not fear the fate of other leaders in the region like President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt or Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, rejecting any comparison.

“But to be scared, you have to compare,” he said. “Do we have something in common? It’s a completely different situation. What’s happening in Egypt is different from what is happening in Syria. The historical context is different, the social fabric is different and our policy was always different. So, what is in common? You cannot compare.”

Save Homs with Humanitarian Airdrops by Drones #Syria

The Baath regime in Syria killed another 60 persons on Tuesday. About 30 were killed by troops in restive Idlib province. The Syrian military also continued to pound Homs on Tuesday, using heavy artillery against the civilian district of Baba Amr and and killing another 30 there. The assault also set the stage for a humanitarian catastrophe as residents run out of water, food and medicine.

The Red Cross is calling for a daily brief ceasefire so that it can deliver humanitarian aid. The Baath regime is highly unlikely to grant the request. The Red Cross cannot send a convoy in without government permission because of the danger that it will be targeted.

The Baath army has had difficulty advancing into Baba Amr because it is being defended by well armed defectors from the Syrian army who are putting up the kind of fight in Homs that the Libyan youth revolutionaries put up in Misrata when that was besieged by the forces of Col. Muammar Qaddafi last spring and summer.

For regime military forces to call a ceasefire would, while in accordance with the laws of war when substantial civilian deaths are imminent, nevertheless allow the Syrian defectors to regroup. That development would make it even harder for government forces to advance after the ceasefire had ended. One suspects, as well, that the Baath military officers would shed no tears over civilians starving in the rebellious city of Homs.

The heartbreaking images that came out of Homs via the intrepid Arwa Damon of CNN and today via Marie Colvin have spurred calls for the Syrian resistance to be armed.

[Oh no! Marie Colvin has been kiilled in the shelling of Homs! She was one of the greats.]

Senator John McCain has urged that some third party, not the US, send arms. The Obama administration was initially cool to this idea, especially since US and Iraqi intelligence says that foreign Sunni radicals (“al-Qaeda”) based in Mosul in Iraq have now departed in some numbers for Syria. These guerrillas are likely responsible for the suicide bombing in Aleppo and the assassination there today of a government official.

But on Tuesday administration officials changed their tune and began allowing for the possibility of arming the Syrian Free Army defectors.

Regular readers know that I think sending a lot of arms into Syria is a very bad idea.

But given the humanitarian crisis in the besieged cities and towns, the international community’s responsibility to protect does require some action. I’d like to see airdrops of water, food and medicine on Homs and other encircled urban areas if the government won’t pause the fighting or allow a humanitarian corridor. The problem is that the Syrian regime has a lot of anti-aircraft batteries, and might well shoot down the planes being used for the drop. That development in turn might lead to hostilities, which would be very undesirable, and which Russia and China are pledged to block.

Well, I hate those US drones when used for purposes of warfare. But here is a Gandhian use for them. Let us defy the Syrian regime’s misuse of its sovereignty to murder its own citizens by using drones for supply airdrops. The US military was thinking already in 2009 of using drones to resupply troops in Afghanistan, and surely they have made progress since then. They could be launched from Incirlik Air Force base in Turkey, and I think Turkey might agree to this limited form of intervention. If the Syrian military shot down any humanitarian drones, no one would interpret that as an act of war requiring retaliation. So the tactic does not carry with it any danger of escalation into hostilities.

Readers in the military would know better how plausible this plan might be.

The USG Open Source Center translated the following interview in al-Sharq al-Awsat with a member of the Homs resistance (many Syrians pronounce it Hims):

“Report on Syrian Regime Forces Continued Bombardment, Siege of Hims
Report by Yusuf Diyab in Beirut: Hims Is Shelled by Rocket Launchers, and Its People Were Fasting Yesterday To Pray for Victory. An Activist to Al-Sharq al-Awsat: The Number of Victims Among the Free Army Is slight Compared With the Civilian Victims
Al-Sharq al-Awsat Online
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Document Type: OSC Translated Text…

The city of Hims Continues to be on top of the scene of the

Syrian events due to the tightening of the military siege on it from all directions, the targeting of its suburbs and areas with violent bombardment by rocket launchers and mortar shells and the rising number of victims.

Abu-Ali Hasan, an activist in the Hims Coordination Committee, said that “the humanitarian situation in the city is very tragic but the morale of the people is high in spite of the difficult circumstances in which they are living at this stage.” He told Al-Sharq al-Awsat: “In spite of the siege, destruction, and tragedies, the people refuse describing their city as a stricken one because it is a city of dignity, sacrifice, and pride and the people are no longer wagering on the Syrian National Council, the Arab League, or the whole world but they are wagering on their sons, the revolutionaries who are the members of the Free Army, and all the people of Hims are fasting today (yesterday) to pray for victory for Almighty God.”

He said that “all the areas of Hims today (yesterday) are facing violent bombardment by rockets and mortar fire from the Air Defense College south of Hims and from the Military Academy in the area of Al-Wa’ar, west of the city,” pointing out that “what is disturbing the Free Army is the long range bombardment that targets the houses and kills innocent children and civilians, while the number of the Free Army’s martyrs is tiny compared with the civilian martyrs.”

Answering a question on what is said about the preparations of the Syrian Army to storm Baba Amr and wipe out the armed manifestations there, he said that “the army of (Syrian President Bashar) al-Asad is more coward than to dare to storm Baba Amr or any area in Hims.” He added: “They can enter a square for minutes, but they quickly withdraw in face of the strikes by the soldiers of the Free Army who go out of their defenses.”

On how do the revolutionaries in Hims get weapons and ammunition in spite of the tight siege imposed on the city, he said that “we get weapons from some traders or the dissident soldiers or from the spoils of war that the Free Army gets as a results of its operations against the regular army.”

He pointed out that “the revolutionaries in Hims are not satisfied with the performance of the National Council, which has not offered anything to the city in spite of the massacres and the destruction the city is facing and in spite of the ordeal the people are experiencing.”

He added: “We have received information, which we are going to verify, that says that prominent figures in the National Council do not want to topple the regime but want to share power with it. If this information is correct, then we will withdraw our confidence in it and will call for its collapse and to form a new national council that include ranking officers of the Free Army and civilian figures, such as Haytham al-Malih, Bassam Ji’arah, Muhyi-al-Din al-Lazqani, and Shaykh Adnan al-Ar’ur, and many other honorable figures.”

Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council yesterday called for “providing secure passages under international protection to deliver the humanitarian, relief, and medical aid,” considering that “any delay would mean a humanitarian tragedy whose consequences are awful.”

A spokesman for the National Council told Al-Sharq al-Awsat: “The Council has contacted European diplomats and the International Committee of the Red Cross to send urgent assistance to Baba Amr and all stricken areas in Syria, which are on continuous increase to include all the Syrian governorates and cities, and the response of the International Committee of the Red Cross was that it is impossible to go to areas other than those that the Syrian Army allows the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to enter to prevent the targeting of the convoys.”

(Description of Source: London Al-Sharq al-Awsat Online in Arabic — Website of influential London-based pan-Arab Saudi daily; editorial line reflects Saudi official stance….) “

Former ‘Club of Tyrants’ Turns Against #Syria

When Syrian President Hafez al-Assad crushed a revolt in 1982, killing at least 10,000 people, the Arab League failed to act. A generation later, amid another government crackdown, the group has turned on his son, Bashar.

Arab League foreign ministers plan to meet tomorrow at the group’s Cairo headquarters to discuss imposing sanctions on Syria. The league had set a Nov. 19 deadline for the government to comply with an Arab peace plan.

The Arab Spring uprisings have unnerved and threatened regimes throughout the region, shaking up status quo institutions such as the Arab League. The league’s suspension of a founding member, Syria, was the boldest action by the 21- nation club since its condemnation of Muammar Qaddafi’s crackdown paved the way for the United Nations resolution in March authorizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign.

“It’s a measure of the extent to which things have gone wrong,” Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, said in an interview. “These guys were friends. I think they are extremely disappointed, and at some point there was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Images of government attacks on unarmed protesters and of torture-scarred bodies in cities like Homs, Syria’s third largest, are being viewed in homes across the region. Whether motivated by outrage, by concern for self preservation or by both, Arab kings and prime ministers aren’t turning a blind eye, as had been the case in the past.

Arab Public Opinion

The league’s actions “demonstrate that, as a result of the Arab Spring, governments have to be more responsive and that doing nothing is no longer an option,” said Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

A survey of opinion in five Arab countries found the public lined up most nine-to-one behind the Syrian rebels, according to Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, who directed the October polling in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

The same poll suggests that the Arab public would prefer a regional leaders to act, with 46 percent of respondents saying foreign intervention in Libya was “the wrong thing to do.”

The Arab League was created in 1945, the same year as the United Nations, as the decline of colonial powers after World War II and creation of the state of Israel fanned the rise of Arab nationalism.

‘Club of Tyrants’

Yet in its 66-year history, a body that sought to bring Arab nations closer became known as a “club of tyrants,” according to Danin. It was hopelessly divided when dealing with one of is own, such as in 1990, when just 12 out of 20 members condemned Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

There are also shades of realpolitik at play, with Arab nations having different practical motivations for taking action on Syria. Qatar is establishing itself as a foreign-policy titan punching above its size. Saudi Arabia benefits from isolating Shiite Muslim Iran — Syria is its main Arab ally and conduit to arming the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon — and wants to distract attention from human-rights abuses in the neighboring Bahrain, a Sunni ally.

“There are maneuvers within the league,” said Scott Lucas, a Middle East expert at the University of Birmingham in England and founder of website EA Worldview. From the Saudi standpoint: “If everyone focuses on Syria, then Bahrain is forgotten.”

Bahrain is among League members that may be vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy. It voted to suspend Syria and Libya yet has drawn criticism itself from human rights groups for its crackdown on the mainly Shiite protesters earlier this year.

‘Crimes Against Humanity’

While acting against Libya may have been relatively easy for the League, given Qaddafi had few fans among member states after an alleged 2004 assassination plot against Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Assad is another story.

At least 3,500 people have died in Syria and thousand arrested since protests started mid-March, and Human Rights Watch on Nov. 11 accused the regime of “crimes against humanity,” including torture and unlawful killings, in Homs.

The “ineptitude” of the United Nations has also prompted the Arab League to step up, according to Shaikh, a former special assistant to the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

‘Significant Step’

Russia, which sells arms to Syria, and China, which buys its oil, delivered a rare double veto not seen since 2008 to block a Oct. 4 UN Security Council resolution that called for Assad to halt the crackdown. With the UN’s most powerful body paralyzed, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the Arab League has taken “a very significant step” in threatening to impose sanctions for the first time.

“We, as the United States, have imposed very strong sanctions on the Syrian regime as have plenty of other states, now the Arab League is about to follow suit,” she told reporters in New York on Nov. 18.

The U.S. sanctions target top officials; Syria’s largest mobile phone operator, Syriatel; and the Commercial Bank of Syria. The European Union has blacklisted 74 people including senior military and intelligence officials and EU companies are forbidden from doing business with 19 firms and groups.

“It was absolutely clear that the Europeans and the U.S. were going to be unable to do more,” Shaikh said. “They needed the Arabs to take ownership.”

Old Rules

That means questioning the league’s traditional foundation of non-intervention in the domestic conduct of members.

Article VIII of the group’s charter states that members “shall respect the systems of government established in the other member-states and regard them as exclusive concerns of those states” and that each “shall pledge to abstain from any action calculated to change established systems of government.”

“It didn’t act on the massacres in Syria in the 1980s, or Algeria in the 1990s,” said Omar Ashour, a lecturer in the politics of the modern Arab world at the University of Exeter in the U.K. “Sometimes, there wasn’t even a statement to condemn these acts.”

Still, the Arab League is under new leadership. Nabil El- Arabi, who took as Secretary-General of the Arab League from Amre Moussa in July, has described the league as “impotent” and has called on reform.

Creating a formal mechanism to compel members’ to comply with its resolutions may also have to be considered, including economic sanctions which haven’t been imposed before.

The revolt against Assad’s rule has begun to squeeze the economy. Turkey, a neighbor and key trade partner, says it will “strongly support” whatever the Arab League decides and yesterday Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan followed King Abdullah of Jordan in saying Assad should step down.

— Editors: Terry Atlas, Steven Komarow

To contact the reporters on this story: Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net; Flavia Krause-Jackson at the United Nations at fjackson@bloomberg.net

Turkish prime minister likens #Syria’s Assad to Gadhafi, Hitler

ISTANBUL - In his most blatant criticism yet of Syria’s political repression, the prime minister of Turkey said on Tuesday for the first time that President Bashar Assad of Syria should resign, raising the pressure on Assad from a country that Syria had once counted as its friendliest neighbor and economic partner.

The criticism by the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was not totally unexpected, given Erdogan’s increasing exasperation with Assad’s intransigence over the political uprising against him, now in its eighth month.

But Erdogan’s comments were notable for his explicit language.

He likened Assad to the self-delusional dictators of history who have met violent ends, most recently Moammar Gadhafi of Libya.

“Just remove yourself from that seat before shedding more blood, before torturing more and for the welfare of your country, as well as the region,” Erdogan said of Assad in a televised statement at his party meeting in Ankara.

“It is not heroism to fight against your own people,” Erdogan said. “If you want to see someone, who has fought against his own people, look at Nazi Germany, Hitler, Mussolini, Ceausescu of Romania. If you do not learn your lesson from them, look at the Libyan leader, who pointed his gun against his own people and, only 32 days ago, got killed in a way that none of us desired, after using the same phrases that you use.”

Erdogan’s criticism of the Syrian government came as Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, began a three-day visit to Britain, which also has been outspoken in seeking to isolate Assad.

Violent reactions

On Monday, Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, hosted a delegation of Syrian opposition leaders.

Thousands of Syrians have sought refuge across the border in Turkey, which also permits sanctuary to an insurgent group of former Syrian soldiers.

Erdogan said Turkey had no interest in meddling in Syria, but “while a nation — especially one that is our kin and relative — is being tormented, we have absolutely no intention to turn a blind eye, to turn our backs against Syria with a 910 kilometers-long borderline.”

Turkey’s longest border is with Syria, to the south, where residents on both sides are often members of larger families, sharing a common culture and language.

Turkey’s anger at Assad’s government and support for the Syrian opposition has prompted violent reactions in Syria.

This month, pro-Assad demonstrators in Syria attacked Turkish diplomatic missions in Damascus, Aleppo and Latakia, burning Turkish flags and shattering windows.

On Monday, unidentified gunmen in Syria, described by some witnesses as wearing the uniforms of Syrian soldiers, attacked a convoy of buses carrying Turkish pilgrims home from Mecca, and two of the pilgrims were wounded.

Erdogan had declined to comment on the shooting on Monday, pending an investigation. But on Tuesday, he expressed anger, calling on Syrian authorities to arrest the assailants.

“It’s a country’s pride and honor to protect foreign citizens, guests in the country, moreover pilgrim passengers only in transit,” the prime minister said.

Patrick Cockburn: Compared to #Syria, the fall of Libya was a piece of cake

President Bashar al-Assad’s enemies are closing in for the kill. The Arab League is suspending Syria, and Turkey, once a close ally, is leading the pack in seeking to displace the government that has ruled for 40 years. Arab leaders are talking to West European states about deploying the same mix of political, military and economic sanctions against Syria that was used in Libya.

This final assault is already producing convulsions across the Middle East and beyond, because the outcome of the struggle will have an explosive impact on the entire region. By comparison, the overthrow of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was a marginal event. Complex though these developments are, the media’s coverage has been misleadingly simple-minded and one-dimensional, giving the impression that all we are witnessing is a heroic uprising by the Syrian masses against a brutal Baathist police state.

This is certainly one aspect of the crisis. Brutal repression is continuous. Death squads roam the streets. Foreign journalists, banned from Syria and reliant on information from the opposition, report this. But manipulation of the media by the opposition is also made easy by the lack of information from the country. Opposition claims, such as one last week that an air force intelligence centre near Damascus had been stormed, are credulously accepted and published, although other accounts suggest that all that happened was that the building was hit by rocket-propelled grenades that scorched its paintwork.

The line-up of the Syrian government’s opponents should make it clear to anybody that there is more at stake here than Arab and international concern for human rights. The lead is being taken by Saudi Arabia – its repressive regime one of the few absolute monarchies left on the planet. In March, it sent 1,500 troops into Bahrain to crush protests very similar to those in Syria. Unstinting support was given by the Saudis to the Bahraini authorities as they tortured distinguished hospital consultants whose only crime was to treat injured protesters. Is it really conceivable that Saudi Arabia should be primarily motivated by humanitarian concerns?

A more convincing motive for international involvement is the decades-old but escalating struggle against Iran by the US, its Nato allies, Israel and the Sunni states of the Middle East. But the last few years have shown the limits of effective action against Iran, short of war, which, for all the bluster from Washington and Tel Aviv, they are wary of fighting. But Syria is a different matter. “If you can’t beat Iran, the second best option is to break Syria,” says the Iraqi political scientist Ghassan Attiyah, who points out the absurdity of Saudi Arabia presenting itself as a defender of human and democratic rights in the Middle East.

The US has been carefully keeping in the background, although one senior Arab official says that Damascus had sent emissaries to talk to the Americans to see if Washington would ease up on the campaign against it. The US price was that Syria must break with Iran, but the Syrians were dubious about what exactly they would get in return for giving up their sole ally. “We are being asked to jump into a swimming pool with no water in it,” they said.

The struggle for Syria is the latest arena for the sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shia. Its modern origins lie in the Iranian revolution of 1979, deepened during the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, and reached new depths of hatred in Iraq during the Shia-Sunni civil war in 2005-07.

In 2005, Iraq became the first Arab state since the Fatimids in Egypt in the 12th century to have a predominantly Shia government. In Lebanon, the Shia political-military Hezbollah movement became the leading political player and withstood an Israeli military assault in 2006. In post-Taliban Afghanistan, the Hazara, a Shia ethnic group which was once oppressed as virtual serfs, grew in political and economic strength.

The Arab Spring at first seemed to work in favour of the Shia and Iran by deposing some of their most notable opponents, such as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. The 70 per cent Shia majority in Bahrain demanded democratic rights in February and March, only to be brutally repressed. Those tortured say their torturers continually demanded they confess to links to Iran. Underlining the sectarian nature of the repression, the Bahraini authorities demolished Shia mosques and desecrated the graves of Shia holy men.

The gathering alliance against the Assad government is both anti-Iranian and anti-Shia. It is based on the correct assumption that the fall of the present regime will be a blow to both. The Alawites, the heteredox Shia sect to which 12 per cent of Syrians belong, dominate the ruling elite. A senior Middle East diplomat says: “The Alawites have decided they must do or die with Assad.” The Christians and Druze likewise do not expect much mercy from a triumphant Sunni regime, while Hezbollah will be weakened in Lebanon and Syria’s 30-year alliance with Iran will end. Not surprisingly, the Iranians see the assault on Syria primarily as an anti-Shia and anti-Iranian counter-revolution wearing a human rights mask.

How will Iran and Iraq, the two most important Shia states, respond to the growing likelihood of the fall of the government in Damascus? The Iranians will do all they can to prop it up, but already suspect this may not be enough. Consequently, they will respond to the loss of their Syrian ally by increasing their influence in Iraq. “They will do everything to hold Iraq as their last line of defence,” Dr Attiyah says, “but the country will become a battleground.”

Baghdad has its own reasons for fearing the outcome of the crisis in Syria. The Sunni minority in Iraq, politically marginalised by the Shia and Kurds, will be strengthened if a Sunni regime takes over next door in Damascus. The withdrawal of the last US troops at the end of the year means that Washington has less reason to defend the Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. The Iraqi leader should be under no illusion about the hostility of his Sunni neighbours.

The fall of the government in Syria will not be confined to one country, as happened in Libya. It will throw the whole Middle East into turmoil. Turkish leaders say privately they have been given a free hand by the US and Britain to do what they want. But the Saudis have no wish to see Turkey become the champions of the Muslim world. The battle for Syria is already producing fresh rivalries and the seeds of future conflicts.

Crackdown continues near Turkish border

Syrian troops yesterday stormed a central town and a north-western region in search of opponents of the government as pressure on Damascus intensified to end an eight-month crisis that has left thousands of people dead.

The attacks on the town of Shezar near the Turkish bordercame a day after Syria agreed in principle to allow Arab observers into the country to oversee a peace plan proposed by the 22-member Arab League. Syria wants changes to the league’s observer mission to preserve its “sovereignty”.