A rabbit rests next to weapons in a Free Syrian Army bus [Reuters]
Free Syrian Army sniper aims his weapon at his position [Reuters]
A meal break behind a car {Reuters]
29/08/12
Screenshot: James Ball - A screen capture shows the hacked Amnesty Interntional blog Livewire, which was altered to give the appearance that the organization opposes support for Syrian rebel goups.
By ,
Supporters of the Syrian government hacked the Web site of Amnesty International, posting items that falsely accused the rebels of a string of atrocities.
The sophisticated cyberattack, which occurred Monday, was similar to the targeting this month of blogs operated by Reuters news service.
In Amnesty’s case, the primary target of the hacking appeared to be the group’s Livewire blog, which offers first-person perspectives and commentary from Amnesty researchers and fieldworkers.
According to Amnesty officials, social-media users began posting false items accusing the Syrian rebels of committing massacres that had been linked to government forces.
One fake blog post claimed rebel groups were responsible for a massacre in the town of Houla in May that killed 108 people, including 49 children. Amnesty’s actual position, shared by Western governments, is that Syrian government forces and militias were responsible for the killings.
The blog post concluded: “It is clear the Al Qaeda affiliated rebels are not going to stop their crimes. And with no accountability and a steady supply of weapons, why should they given they have come this far under NATO protection?
“Russia must immediately use its influence to end this violence and support the UN Security Council to end NATO’s reign of terror upon Syria and refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court. Amnesty supporters have not forgotten the people of Syria and will continue to demand accountability for these horrific crimes against humanity.”
The post, headlined “Amnesty Calls on UN to stop the US, Qatar and Turkey funding and arming Syria Rebels,” also portrayed the group as condemning NATO and the governments of Turkey and Qatar for supplying rebel forces in Syria. The blog post included some accurate information, including that Amnesty had just produced a report based on firsthand fieldwork in the country.
Amnesty struggled through Monday evening to delete the posts from its site. According to a spokesman for the group, entries removed by technical-staff members would rapidly reappear on the site over the course of several hours.
A spokesman from Amnesty International in London said the system on which the blog ran did not contain sensitive data on activists or others. By Tuesday morning, the blog was back to its usual appearance.
“Amnesty International has been very blunt in the reporting that we’ve done and the eyewitness accounts that we’ve collected in Syria,” said Sanjeev Bery, Amnesty International USA’s advocacy director for the Middle East and North Africa. “It’s entirely possible that, given that we’ve been so forthright in criticizing the Syrian government for its crimes against humanity, that could conceivably make us the target of some kind of campaign.”
Bery said Amnesty’s position on the civil war in Syria has been clear.
“We are deeply concerned both about the continuing crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Syrian government through its forces as well as concerned by war crimes that have been committed both by the Syrian government armed forces and by some opposition forces,” he said.
Pro-Syrian-government Web sites and Twitter users continued to cite and promulgate the false information after it was taken down, claiming the post had originated from individuals within Amnesty “who no longer can handle the lies and outright propaganda of media outlets.”
There is no way to establish whether the Twitter accounts, which were mostly anonymous, were linked to the cyberattack, but pro-Syrian hackers have targeted the social network’s users before.
Reuters’s blog network was targeted on three occasions, with inserted stories portraying the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in positive ways. Some entries said the rebels were retreating, and one post on Aug. 17 falsely claimed that Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister was dead.
The attack on the news service is believed to have taken advantage of vulnerabilities in blogging software. Reuters blogs remained off-line more than 10 days after the most recent attack.
Several Reuters Twitter accounts were also compromised, and spoof accounts using the Reuters branding were also created. One, @ReutersME, posted messages suggesting rebel forces in Aleppo were on the brink of defeat, including: “Syrian army source anonymously states that Aleppo battle is like ‘shooting fish in a barrel’, says victory is near,” and “FSA source reveals that 2200 of their fighters were killed in Aleppo, demanding extra support from the ‘free world’.”
No one has claimed responsibility for either attack. The best-known pro-Assad hacking group calls itself the Syrian Electronic Army.
BEIRUT |
(Reuters) - Veteran fighters of last year’s civil war in Libya have come to the front-line in Syria, helping to train and organize rebels under conditions far more dire than those in the battle against Muammar Gaddafi, a Libyan-Irish fighter has told Reuters.
Hussam Najjar hails from Dublin, has a Libyan father and Irish mother and goes by the name of Sam. A trained sniper, he was part of the rebel unit that stormed Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli a year ago, led by Mahdi al-Harati, a powerful militia chief from Libya’s western mountains.
Harati now leads a unit in Syria, made up mainly of Syrians but also including some foreign fighters, including 20 senior members of his own Libyan rebel unit. He asked Najjar to join him from Dublin a few months ago, Najjar said.
The Libyans aiding the Syrian rebels include specialists in communications, logistics, humanitarian issues and heavy weapons, he said. They operate training bases, teaching fitness and battlefield tactics.
Najjar said he was surprised to find how poorly armed and disorganized the Syrian rebels were, describing Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority as far more repressed and downtrodden under Assad than Libyans were under Gaddafi.
“I was shocked. There is nothing you are told that can prepare you for what you see. The state of the Sunni Muslims there - their state of mind, their fate - all of those things have been slowly corroded over time by the regime.”
“I nearly cried for them when I saw the weapons. The guns are absolutely useless. We are being sold leftovers from the Iraqi war, leftovers from this and that,” he said. “Luckily these are things that we can do for them: we know how to fix weapons, how to maintain them, find problems and fix them.”
In the months since he arrived, the rebel arsenal had become “five times more powerful”, he said. Fighters had obtained large caliber anti-aircraft guns and sniper rifles.
Disorganization is a serious problem. Unlike the Libyan fighters, who enjoyed the protection of a NATO-imposed no-fly zone and were able to set up full-scale training camps, the rebels in Syria are never out of reach of Assad’s air power.
“In Libya, with the no-fly zone, we were able to build up say 1,400 to 1,500 men in one place and have platoons and brigades. Here we have men scattered here, there and everywhere.”
LACK OF UNITY
Although many rebel units fight under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, their commands are localized and poorly coordinated, Najjar said.
“One of the biggest factors delaying the revolution is the lack of unity among the rebels,” he said. “Unfortunately, it is only when their back is up against the wall that they start to realize they should (unite).”
Syria’s uprising has evolved into an all-out civil war with sectarian overtones, pitting the mainly Sunni rebels against security forces dominated by Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam. Assad is backed by Shi’ite-led Iran and opposed by most Arab states, which are ruled by Sunnis.
“This is not just about the fall of Assad. This is about the Sunni Muslims of Syria taking back their country and pushing out the minority that have been oppressing them for generations now,” Najjar said.
The presence of foreign fighters is a sensitive issue for Syria’s rebels. Assad’s government has taken to referring to the rebels as “Gulf-Turkish forces”, accusing the Sunni-led Arab Gulf states and Turkey of arming, funding and leading them.
Harati’s unit is known as the Umma Brigade, referring to the global community of Muslims. Najjar said thousands more Sunni fighters from the Arab world were gathering in neighboring countries prepared to join the cause.
Harati is reluctant to enlist them because he does not want his cause tarnished by the perception that foreign Islamists are linked to al Qaeda, Najjar said, but he said that many of the foreigners were making their way to Syria on their own.
The Umma Brigade’s Facebook page shows a picture of Najjar aiming his rifle in what looks like an open field. In another he is posing with Harati and rebels. A YouTube video shows Harati leading an attack on a checkpoint in Maarat al-Numan in Syria.
Najjar said militancy would spread across the region as long as the West does not do more to hasten the downfall of Assad.
“The Western governments are bringing this upon themselves. The longer they leave this door open for this torture and this massacre to carry on, the more young men will drop what they have in this life and search for the afterlife,” Najjar said.
“If the West and other countries do not move fast it will no longer be just guys like me - normal everyday guys that might do anything from have a cigarette to go out on the town - it will be the real extreme guys who will take it to another level.”
(Reuters) - Syrian rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad need the protection of foreign-guarded no-fly zones and safe havens near the borders with Jordan and Turkey, a Syrian opposition leader said on Sunday.
Battles raged on in the northern city of Aleppo, where tanks, artillery and snipers attacked rebels in the Saif al-Dawla district next to the devastated area of Salaheddine.
Abdelbasset Sida, head of the Syrian National Council, said the United States had realized that the absence of a no-fly zone to counter Assad’s air superiority hindered rebel movements.
He was speaking a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her country and Turkey would study a range of possible measures to help Assad’s foes, including a no-fly zone, although she indicated no decisions were necessarily imminent.
“It is one thing to talk about all kinds of potential actions, but you cannot make reasoned decisions without doing intense analysis and operational planning,” she said after meeting Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Istanbul.
Though any intervention appears to be a distant prospect, her remarks were nevertheless the closest Washington has come to suggesting direct military action in Syria.
“There are areas that are being liberated,” Sida told Reuters by telephone from Istanbul. “But the problem is the aircraft, in addition to the artillery bombardment, causing killing, destruction.”
He said the establishment of secure areas on the borders with Jordan and Turkey “was an essential thing that would confirm to the regime that its power is diminishing bit by bit”.
A no-fly zone imposed by NATO and Arab allies helped Libyan rebels overthrow Muammar Gaddafi last year. The West has shown little appetite for repeating any Libya-style action in Syria, and Russia and China strongly oppose any such intervention.
TANKS ADVANCE
Insurgents have expanded territory they hold near the Turkish border in the last few weeks since the Syrian army gathered its forces for an offensive to regain control of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city and economic hub.
Rebels who seized swathes of the city three weeks ago have been fighting to hold their ground against troops backed by warplanes, helicopter gunships, tanks and artillery.
One rebel commander named Yasir Osman, 35, told Reuters tanks had advanced into Salaheddine, despite attempts to fend them off by 150 fighters he said were short of ammunition.
“Yesterday we encircled the Salaheddine petrol station, which the army has been using as a base and we killed its commander and took a lot of ammunition and weapons. This ammunition is what we are using fight today,” he said.
Osman said army tanks had thrust past a roundabout in Salaheddine visited by a Reuters team on Saturday after accompanying rebels on a mazy route through holes punched in apartment walls to create a passage safe from army snipers.
After emerging at the roundabout, sniper fire started up, then a tank could be heard rumbling in the next street. “Tank, tank, tank,” one man yelled.
Quickly, a rebel shifted a rocket-propelled grenade over his shoulder and squatted on the rubble-strewn ground to fire, but minutes later, a tank shell exploded against a nearby building.
Rebels fired another RPG, answered with a rain of mortar bombs filling the sky with smoke and shrapnel. “They’re going to send more mortars. Hide in the doorway,” one rebel screamed.
The uneven battle showed the disparity in firepower between Assad’s forces and their outgunned opponents.
ASSAD SWEARS IN NEW PREMIER
Aleppo and the capital Damascus, where troops snuffed out a rebel offensive last month, are vital to Assad’s struggle for the survival of a ruling system his family and members of his minority Alawite clan have dominated for four decades.
Assad has suffered some painful, but not yet fatal, setbacks away from the battlefield, losing four of his closest aides in a bomb explosion on July 18 and suffering the embarrassment of seeing his prime minister defect and flee to Jordan last week.
Syrian state television showed Assad swearing in Wael al-Halki on Saturday to replace Riyad Hijab, who had only spent two months in the job. Halki is a Sunni Muslim from the southern province of Deraa where the uprising began 17 months ago.
The deputy police commander in the central province of Homs was the latest to join a steady trickle of desertions, said an official in the opposition Higher Revolution Council group.
“Brigadier General Ibrahim al-Jabawi has crossed into Jordan,” the official told Reuters from Amman.
Ali Abbas, a journalist for the state news agency SANA, was killed on Saturday night by what the agency called “an armed terrorist group”, referring to anti-Assad rebels.
At least 11 people were killed the same day when the military mounted an armored attack to try to dislodge rebels from al-Tel, a northern suburb of Damascus, activists said.
More than 160 Syrians, including 116 civilians, were killed across the country on Saturday, the London-based opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
The Arab League said it had postponed a meeting of Arab foreign ministers scheduled for Sunday to discuss the Syria crisis and to select a replacement for Kofi Annan, the United Nations-Arab League envoy, and would set a new date.
Deputy Arab League chief Ahmed Ben Helli told Reuters the meeting was delayed because of a minor operation undergone by Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are the leading regional supporters of the Syrian opposition. Assad’s main backers are Iran and Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah movement.
09/08/12
TEL RIFAAT |
(Reuters) - The sandy color of the Syrian air force jet was visible as it circled overhead. Then a screaming nosedive and the orange flames of firing rockets on the farming village of Tel Rifaat.
This Reuters journalist saw the jet make at least a dozen rounds of the village of a few thousand people, 35km (20 miles) north of Aleppo city, firing missiles and mounted machine guns.
Villagers panicked - some tried to escape on motorbikes while other crammed belongings and bread into three-wheeled vans. They were unsure of where was safe to go.
Loud explosions rang out and black smoke billowed from an olive grove. A 12-wheeler truck was engulfed in flames.
Six children and a crying woman fled their tiny home. One woman held the Koran above her head, kissing it, and another banged her head in her hands.
Men came out of their homes to stare at the sky and throw their arms up in despair.
Abu Hassan, a rebel fighter from the Liwa al Fatah brigade, said the jets were targeting rebel bases in the area. “Four of our bases have been hit so far in and around Tel Rifaat,” he said. Three rebels fighters fruitlessly fired an old anti-aircraft gun and a rifle at the speeding plane.
Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad face guerrilla fighters hiding in farm houses, not a traditional army, and war has been brought to small villages like Tel Rifaat across the country.
Although the pilots seemed to know where the rebel bases were, their fire was often indiscriminate.
Cows ran and jumped as explosions hit fields, and panicked families took cover under olive trees. They looked almost as if they were out for a picnic, as they hid under the canopy of branches.
ANADAN, Syria |
(Reuters) - In this town near Aleppo, “Freedom Square” has been renamed “Destruction Square” by a young Syrian activist who once sang to protesters gathered for peaceful pro-democracy rallies.
The square in Anadan, along with the rest of what resembles a ghost town, bears the scars from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of military force to crush an opposition movement that has spawned an armed insurgency against his rule.
The 20-year-old anti-Assad singer, Hamza Ali Bin Ahmed, says thousands of protesters often packed the square. The microphone he used now lies in pieces, like many of the nearby buildings.
“They silenced us by shelling us,” said Bin Ahmed, wearing a blue T-shirt and sports shoes. Only an occasional passing car or motorcycle broke the eerie quiet in the once-bustling town.
Some 30,000 people, or most of the population, have fled Anadan because of shelling and helicopter strikes, opposition sources said. Many headed towards the border with Turkey, some crossing over to join nearly 50,000 refugees already there.
Anadan appears to have come under very heavy artillery bombardment, according to satellite images released this week by London-based human rights group Amnesty International.
It said the images, obtained from commercial satellites over the July 23-Aug 1 period, showed more than 600 craters, probably from artillery shelling, dotting Aleppo’s surrounding areas. The craters were represented with yellow dots in the images.
One snapshot, from July 31, showed craters next to what looked like a residential housing complex in Anadan, it said.
Aleppo, a few km (miles) from Anadan and Syria’s largest city, has become a frontline in the struggle between Assad’s forces and insurgents. Amnesty said both sides could be held criminally responsible for failing to protect civilians.
“As far as Assad is concerned, Anadan is a legitimate target,” said Omar Hashoum, a rebel brandishing an AK-47 rifle as he stood by a green-domed mosque damaged by bombardment.
“ASSAD FOREVER”
Nearby, an unexploded mortar round lay on a street littered with spent bullet casings.
“Inside the town there is only the Free Syrian Army but it cannot guard against tank and artillery shelling or from air bombardment,” said Hashoum as an air force jet flew overhead.
Assad’s troops have overrun Anadan several times in recent weeks, but with bigger battles to fight in Aleppo they were nowhere to be seen when a Reuters team visited the town - a sign of the difficulty the overstretched Syrian military may be facing in keeping full control over restive areas.
Loyalist forces had left their mark on one wall, with the scrawled message “Assad forever or we will burn the country”.
Abu Salameh, who identified himself as a rebel commander, said many of Anadan’s fighters had joined the battle in Aleppo, helping provide supplies and take wounded fighters to Turkey.
“Anadan is the fountain of resistance,” said Ismail Nassif, another insurgent. “We started in the hundreds, and then the whole of the province joined,” he said.
Like many fighters, Nassif was a demonstrator who said he had taken up arms only after Assad used force on protesters.
“The revolution has changed a lot of people here,” said Abdullah al-Arab, another rebel. “There were a lot of people who were spitting on us during early demonstrations but who are now with us and are joining the armed resistance.”
Yet Bin Ahmed, the singer, recalls the days of peaceful protest fondly. “I will always regard myself as a singer of the revolution. God willing, I will get to sing again.”
On Sunday, it was a hijacked Reuters twitter feed trying to create the impression of a rebel collapse in Aleppo. On Monday, it was another account purporting to be a Russian diplomat announcing the death in Damascus of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
As the situation on the ground becomes ever more bloody, both sides in Syria are also waging what seems to be an intensifying conflict in cyberspace, often attempting to use misinformation and rumor to tilt the war in reality.
On Friday, Reuters was forced to temporarily shut down its system for posting blogs on www.Reuters.com after the appearance of a series of unauthorized, and inaccurate, reports citing opposition military reverses in Syria.
On Sunday, the company took similar action to suspend the @ReutersTech twitter account after it appeared to have been seized, renamed and used to send a series of false tweets apparently designed to undermine the rebel Free Syrian Army. Both incidents remain under investigation.
The attacks were not the first time a major media or other organization had been targeted apparently by supporters of Assad. Some - including the defacement of a Harvard University website last year to post a picture of Assad in military uniform — have been claimed by the “Syrian Electronic Army”.
But Assad’s government too have had their own embarrassments in cyberspace. Hacker group Anonymous claimed credit for stealing thousands of internal Syrian government e-mails including personal communications between Assad and his wife. The entire tranche was later published online by Wikileaks.
“It’s not surprising that Syria has attempted to develop a cyber warfare capability. It’s in line with their chemical and biological warfare program and their aspirations as a regional power,” said John Bassett, former senior official at British signals intelligence agency GCHQ and now a senior fellow at London’s Royal United Services Institute.
“But the regime’s technical capabilities look pretty basic, and the opposition hacking of the personal emails of Assad and his wife earlier this year show the regime’s cyber defenses have serious weaknesses.”
The opposition too, many suspect, have been doing what they can do to spread rumors about their opponents. On Monday afternoon, a twitter account purporting to be that of a senior Russian official said Assad had been killed in Damascus, prompting a flurry of speculation and telephone calls by agencies such as Reuters before the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed the news was fake.
04/08/12
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
Reuters News temporarily suspended its opinion blog on Friday after an anonymous hacker broke in and wrote false information about Syria.
“Reuters.com was a target of a hack on Friday,” Thomson Reuters said in a statement. “Our blogging platform was compromised and fabricated blog posts were falsely attributed to several Reuters journalists.”
The false posts included what was presented as an interview with Riad al-Asaad, the head of the Free Syrian Army. In the fake interview, the leader was believed to have said that his forces were pulling back from the northern province of Aleppo after clashes with the Syrian army, according to Thomson Reuters.
Thomson Reuters denied that the interview had taken place and said that the item had been removed.
The company did not provide any information about who or what group carried out the hacking. The opinion section of Reuters came back online late Friday afternoon. Reuters posted an article about the hacking on its Web site.
30/07/12
(Reuters) - The rebel banner of independence waves over the scorched streets and gutted cars that litter the urban battlegrounds of Aleppo, scars of a struggle in Syria’s second largest city that fighters believe they are destined to win within weeks.
The scruffy, rifle-wielding youths are undeterred by the fate of equally bold, but ultimately crushed campaigns by rebels in the capital Damascus or in Homs, the bloody epicenter of the 16-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.
Careening through streets ripped up by army tanks on their motorbikes and flatbed trucks, young rebels with camouflage pants and Kalashnikovs patrol their newly acquired territory, which stretches from the outskirts of Aleppo in the northeast and sweeps around the city down to the southwestern corner.
“We always knew the regime’s grave would be Aleppo. Damascus is the capital, but here we have a fourth of the country’s population and the entire force of its economy. Bashar’s forces will be buried here,” said Mohammed, a young fighter, fingering the bullets in his tattered brown ammunition vest.
The government has also predicted victory in the fight to control Syria’s main commercial city. For days, the government has massed its forces for a major onslaught that has yet to come. Rebels say it is proof the government doesn’t have the ability to storm their territory.
The truth could lie somewhere in between: A state of limbo in Syria’s economic centre, paralyzed by artillery fire and an insurgency that has made its home in the narrow, ramshackle alleyways on the poor outskirts of the ancient city.
“WE CAN TAKE THE CITY”
Mohammed and a group of fighters take refuge from the stifling heat in a dark safe house hidden down a crumbling Aleppo alleyway. They pore over a map of the city spread over the floor, tracing the neighborhoods controlled by rebels.
“We have made a semicircle around the city, and we can push in to the centre. Up in the north, the Kurdish groups are running two neighborhoods in the northern central part of the city. We don’t work together, but we don’t fight,” said a fighter called Bara.
“I really believe that within ten days or more, we have a chance to take the city.”
But across town, the smoking wreckage of the Salaheddine district in the south tells a different story. Bodies lay in the streets on Sunday as the army pounded fighters with artillery and mortars and helicopter gunships fired from above.
“We don’t know if they are going to try to finish the area off or if they are distracting us, and then come shell us again here in the east of town,” said Ahmed, a chain smoking activist, cigarettes as he debated with fighters insisting victory was near.
Salaheddine is the main artery out of the city and onto the highway that leads south to Damascus. State troops seem to have concentrated all their forces on wresting it from the rebels.
If the army, which retains overwhelming military superiority with helicopter gunships, rockets, artillery and tanks, cannot secure Salaheddine enough to get tanks on the ground, it would have to bring tanks into the city by going all the way around the province and entering from the other side, because minor roads on the city outskirts are mined by the rebels.
Both sides are trying to avoid using manpower. The army bombards from afar with its tanks or its helicopters hovering overhead. Rebels set up homemade bombs to blow up the tanks when they try to roll in.
On the eastern side of the city, the wounded pour in daily to Dar al-Shifa, a private hospital turned into a rebel clinic. Poorly equipped medics pick out shrapnel from young men’s legs.
“Some days we get around 30, 40 people, not including the bodies,” says a young medic at the clinic. “A few days ago we got in 30 injured and maybe 20 corpses but half of those bodies were ripped to pieces. We can’t figure out who they are.”
Abdulsamea al-Ahmad is a medical assistant but has had to run the hospital since rebels took the area.
“The doctors refuse to come. They are too afraid the regime will come back and they will be arrested. But I can’t leave, I can’t leave people to suffer. God willing, we will all keep up our sacrifices until victory is finally secured.”
TENSE STREETS
Outside the hospital, the fighters are confident as they strut through the streets and nod at passers-by. some smile and wave. Most stare at the ground and quickly walk by. Few are given an opportunity to speak privately with journalists.
In the neighborhoods they hold, rebels have confidently scrawled the word “liberated” on the walls, but there are signs of the anxieties lurking below. One fighter flies into a rage when he sees two boys climbing on a demolished tank.
“You dogs! Are you spies? What are you doing? Get out of here,” he shouts, shaking his rifle, as they back away slowly.
Some gunmen, wearing white and black Islamic headbands, stop traffic at junctions, guarded by men with heavy machineguns squatting nearby. Above them flutters a makeshift green, white and black independence flag, red stars drawn across the middle with marker pen.
“The situation is really great, because we finally managed to liberate all of al-Bab city nearby. The fighters are moving on and we are now concentrating all our efforts on central Aleppo,” said Khalid al-Shamsi, a short, chubby rebel commander with a Kalashnikov over each shoulder.
“Reinforcements and supplies are on the way towards us from al-Bab and other areas.”
Shamsi’s Khattab battalion is part of the Tawhid brigade that controls broad commercial avenues just outside Aleppo’s ancient citadel and historic vaulted souks.
The rebels, who have vowed to “liberate Aleppo”, detained scores of Syrian officers, soldiers and pro-government militiamen last week in Idlib province in the city of Aleppo.
“Now the fighters can come into the centre from all over. The more Assad brings in reinforcements, the more we will. We will not withdraw from Aleppo, we will fight with our very last drop of blood,” shouted the commander.
“God is great!” respond his fighters gathering around him.
Markets are open, and vendors lay out their vegetables and fruits on wooden tables under umbrellas near the highway. But only a few women in dark coats and veils linger to shop during the fasting holy month of Ramadan.
Most residents can be found in the bread lines. Crowds of sweating men and women queue around the block, waiting for nearly three hours for three packets of subsidized bread.
“God knows what is coming to us. They keep saying the situation is getting better, that we are heading towards victory, but I’m afraid things will get uglier and uglier,” said one resident, speaking discreetly when fighters escorting Reuters journalists were not looking.
The government seems to expect it will be back. Water and electricity run normally. It allows supplies of flour for subsidized bread to enter rebel areas as normal.
NO GRAND STRATEGY
Fighters insist they have a right to be confident where their comrades have failed.
“In Homs, the city was too carved up by army sites. In Damascus, the guys couldn’t protect their own backs. The countryside was still occupied. Here, we spent months fighting to free the countryside around us. We have plenty of support and supply routes,” said another fighter called Bara, who joined fighters hiding out to inspect the Aleppo map.
“I admit it was no grand strategy but random chance that we saw we’d liberated almost all of the countryside and we could reinforce ourselves, maybe as well as the regime can,” he said.
Even if the rebels estimation is right, the cost of “liberation” is clear: Buildings have been ripped open by artillery shells and mortar bombs. Concrete, shattered glass and piles of trash spill into the streets.
Stepping out into the oppressive summer heat, the fighter Mohammed says the destruction is a fair price for freedom. Even if the government fights it way back into his area again, the rebels say they will claim victory as long as they can survive.
“They can destroy our town, we will keep fighting if they flatten it all,” he said. “Didn’t the Germans destroy parts of Britain in World War II? But the British still won in the end. And believe me, we will never stop.”
Overhead, a helicopter gunship buzzes above a rebel checkpoint a few miles away. It circles above slowly before unleashing a barrage of gunfire.
“There is nothing we can do against their air power,” Mohammed says. “But still, even if they storm Salaheddine, all they will have done is secured their own reinforcements. They won’t have won. The street wars will begin again.”
Residents seem to be bracing for that eventuality. Fighters estimate about 80 percent of residents in the outer districts of eastern Aleppo have fled. And still, dozens of trucks loaded with children and mattresses raced down the road, shouting out their destination to fighters who waved them on.
“God protect you,” the rebels call out to them.
As night falls, the army bombardment erupts again. Blasts of artillery break the evening silence, and the sounds of the gathering storm creep closer.
Sat, 28 Jul 2012 20:55 GMT
ABU DHABI, July 29 (Reuters) - The head of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the main umbrella group for opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, said the SNC’s foreign allies would be responsible for bloodshed in the city of Aleppo if they did not act quickly to prevent it.
“Our friends and allies will bear responsibility for what is happening in Aleppo if they do not move soon,” Abdelbasset Sida, visiting the United Arab Emirates for talks with officials, told a news conference early on Sunday.
Asked how the SNC’s allies could help, Sida said they would have to act outside the United Nations Security Council because initiatives within the council could be vetoed. Russia has blocked efforts to threaten Assad with U.N. sanctions.
“Any action has to be from outside the Security Council through an Arab League initiative and through a resolution passed by the General Assembly,” he said.
On Saturday, Syrian military helicopters pounded a rebel-held district of Aleppo and armoured units positioned themselves for an attack on Syria’s biggest city, opposition sources said.
27/07/12
DOHA/DUBAI (Reuters) - Turkey has set up a secret base with allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar to direct vital military and communications aid to Syria’s rebels from a city near the border, Gulf sources have told Reuters.
News of the clandestine Middle East-run “nerve centre” working to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad underlines the extent to which Western powers - who played a key role in unseating Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - have avoided military involvement so far in Syria.
“It’s the Turks who are militarily controlling it. Turkey is the main co-ordinator/facilitator. Think of a triangle, with Turkey at the top and Saudi Arabia and Qatar at the bottom,” said a Doha-based source.
“The Americans are very hands-off on this. U.S. intel(ligence) are working through middlemen. Middlemen are controlling access to weapons and routes.”
The centre in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 100 km (60 miles) from the Syrian border, was set up after Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud visited Turkey and requested it, a source in the Gulf said. The Turks liked the idea of having the base in Adana so that they could supervise its operations, he added.
A Saudi foreign ministry official was not immediately available to comment on the operation.
Adana is home to Incirlik, a large Turkish/U.S. air force base which Washington has used in the past for reconnaissance and military logistics operations. It was not clear from the sources whether the anti-Syrian “nerve centre” was located inside Incirlik base or in the city of Adana.
Qatar, the tiny gas-rich Gulf state which played a leading part in supplying weapons to Libyan rebels, has a key role in directing operations at the Adana base, the sources said. Qatari military intelligence and state security officials are involved.
“Three governments are supplying weapons: Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” said a Doha-based source.
Ankara has officially denied supplying weapons.
“All weaponry is Russian. The obvious reason is that these guys (the Syrian rebels) are trained to use Russian weapons, also because the Americans don’t want their hands on it. All weapons are from the black market. The other way they get weapons is to steal them from the Syrian army. They raid weapons stores.”
The source added: “The Turks have been desperate to improve their weak surveillance, and have been begging Washington for drones and surveillance.” The pleas appear to have failed. “So they have hired some private guys come do the job.”
President Barack Obama has so far preferred to use diplomatic means to try to oust Assad, although Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signalled this week that Washington plans to step up help to the rebels.
Reuters has established that Obama’s aides have drafted a resolution which would authorise greater covert assistance to the rebels but still stop short of arming them.
The White House’s wariness is shared by other Western powers. It reflects concerns about what might follow Assad in Syria and about the substantial presence of anti-Western Islamists and jihadi fighters among the rebels.
The presence of the secret Middle East-run “nerve centre” may explain how the Syrian rebels, a rag-tag assortment of ill-armed and poorly organised groups, have pulled off major strikes such as the devastating bomb attack on July 18 which killed at least four key Assad aides including the defence minister.
A Turkish diplomat in the region insisted however that his country played no part in the Damascus bombing.
“That’s out of the question,” he said. “The Syrian minister of information blamed Turkey and other countries for the killing. Turkey doesn’t do such things. We are not a terrorist country. Turkey condemns such attacks.”
However, two former senior U.S. security officials said that Turkey has been playing an increasing role in sheltering and training Syrian rebels who have crossed into its territory.
One of the former officials, who is also an adviser to a government in the region, told Reuters that 20 former Syrian generals are now based in Turkey, from where they are helping shape the rebel forces. Israel believes up to 20,000 Syrian troops may now have defected to the opposition.
Former officials said there is reason to believe the Turks stepped up their support for anti-Assad forces after Syria shot down a Turkish plane which had made several passes over border areas.
Sources in Qatar said the Gulf state is providing training and supplies to the Syrian rebels.
“The Qataris mobilized their special forces team two weeks ago. Their remit is to train and help logistically, not to fight,” said a Doha-based source with ties to the FSA.
Qatar’s military intelligence directorate, Foreign Ministry and State Security Bureau are involved, said the source.
WESTERN CAUTION
The United States, Israel, France and Britain - traditionally key players in the Middle East - have avoided getting involved so far, largely because they see little chance of a “good outcome” in Syria.
“Israel is not really in the business of trying to ‘shape’ the outcome of the revolt,”, a diplomat in the region said. “The consensus is that you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. The risk of identifying with any side is too great”.
A former U.S. official who advises a government in the region and other current and former U.S. and European security officials say that there has been little to zero direct assistance or training from the U.S. or its European allies.
The former official also said that few sophisticated weapons such as shoulder-fired bazookas for destroying tanks or surface-to-air missiles have reached the anti-Assad forces.
While some Gulf officials and conservative American politicians have privately suggested that a supply of surface-to-air missiles would help anti-Assad forces bring the conflict to a close, officials familiar with U.S. policy say they are anxious to keep such weapons out of the hands of Syrian rebels. They fear such weapons could make their way to pro-jihad militants who could use them against Western aircraft.
AFTER ASSAD
The CIA and the Israelis’ main concern so far has been that elements of al-Qaeda may attempt to infiltrate the rebels and acquire some of Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons.
Sima Shine, a former chief Mossad analyst who now serves as an adviser to the Israeli government, told Reuters: “It’s a nightmare for the international community, and chiefly the Americans - weapons of mass-destruction falling into the hands of terrorists. In parallel to its foreign contacts, Israel is taking this especially seriously. After all, we are here, and the Americans are over there.”
She envisaged two circumstances under which Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamist group, could obtain some of the chemical weapons stockpile.
“Assad goes and anarchy ensues, during which Hezbollah gets its hands on the weapons. There is a significant Hezbollah presence in Syria and they are well-ensconced in the military and other national agencies. So they are close enough to make a grab for it.
“Another possibility is that Assad, knowing that he is on his way out, will authorised a handover to Hezbollah, as a message to the world about the price of encouraging his ouster.”
However, British and U.S. officials believe there is little or no sign of Assad being toppled imminently.
The situation, one senior European official said, is still likely to veer back and forth, like a tug-of-war between pro- and anti-Assad forces.
There is no indication, the official added, that Assad himself has any intention of doing anything but fighting on until the bitter end.
(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in London and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; writing by Richard Woods; editing by Michael Stott and Ralph Boulton)
A Syrian deputy oil minister says he is resigning to join the revolt against the government.
Abdo Hussameddin, 58, announced his defection in a video posted on YouTube.
He is the highest level political figure to abandon the government of President Bashar al-Assad since the uprising erupted a year ago.
Earlier, after a visit to the city of Homs, the UN humanitarian chief said some areas had been “devastated” in the offensive by Syrian government troops.
Valerie Amos said the bombed-out Baba Amr district, which was heavily shelled by before being retaken from rebels by government troops, felt like it had been closed down entirely.
“The devastation there is significant, that part of Homs is completely destroyed and I am concerned to know what has happened to the people who live in that part of the city,” Baroness Amos told Reuters news agency.
Activists say troops committed massacres after they went in to the district, but Damascus blames the rebels for many deaths.
On Thursday, a network of Syrian activists, the Local Co-ordination Committees, said 44 people were killed in what it called a “new massacre” by security forces in the Jobar district of Homs.
It said the deaths were among 56 latest fatalities in the crackdown across Syria.
International media organisations are heavily restricted in Syria, making it impossible to verify the claims of either side.
The UN says more than 7,500 people have died as a result of the violence in Syria over the past 12 months.
‘Driven by barbarism’
Abdo Hussameddin, who is one of two deputy oil ministers, posted his video on YouTube late on Wednesday.
Wearing a jacket, collar and tie, and sitting in a high-backed armchair, he read out a four-minute denunciation of the regime he said he had served in one capacity or another for the past 33 years.
“I, Abdo Hussameddin, deputy oil and mineral wealth minister in Syria, announce my defection from the regime, resignation from my position and withdrawal from the Baath Party,” he said.
“I am joining the revolution of the people who reject injustice and the brutal campaign of the regime.”
Mr Hussameddin, who had served as deputy oil minister since August 2009, added: “I tell the regime, which claims to own the country, you have nothing but the footprint of the tank driven by your barbarism to kill innocent people.”
He said he was stepping aside although he knew that his house would be burnt and his family persecuted by the regime.
An activist who shot the video and posted it on YouTube told AFP news agency in Beirut that the opposition had helped to arrange the resignation.
The Syrian government has not publicly commented on Mr Hussameddin’s announcement.
Observers say public defections have been rare among civilian officials of the Syrian state, which is controlled by President Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
However, there have been high-profile defections from the military, including Gen Mustapha al-Sheikh who fled to Turkey earlier this year. Also thousands of chiefly Sunni soldiers and conscripts are reported to have deserted since the start of the uprising.
A spokeswoman from the opposition National Transitional Council of Syria said she believed many more cabinet members and their deputies were prepared to defect.
The BBC’s Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon says the deputy minister’s resignation would appear to signal growing strains within the regime, as the violence intensifies, and the economy comes under increasing stress because of sanctions.
‘No to force’
In further diplomatic efforts to halt the violence, special envoy Kofi Annan is due to meet representatives of both sides in Damascus at the weekend.
Speaking after talks in Cairo on Thursday, Mr Annan, joint envoy for the UN and Arab League, rejected military intervention in Syria.
“I hope no-one is thinking very seriously of using force in this situation. I believe further militarisation will make the situation worse,” he said after meeting Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi.
Separately, Beijing announced on Thursday that its envoy had talks in Syria this week with representatives of the government and the opposition.
China’s foreign ministry said envoy Li Huaxin met Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and his deputy during a two-day visit.
Observers say Mr Li’s visit is Beijing’s latest attempt to counter charges by Western and Arab leaders that by vetoing two previous UN resolutions, China and Russia have aided the growing violence by Syrian government forces.
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