Syrian Freedom

31 Oct 2012 #Syria war puts anti-US alliance on the defensive

October 31, 2012 08:47 PMBy Bassem Mroue Associated Press FILE -- In this Thursday February 25, 2010 file photo, released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Hezbollah leader sheik Hassan Nasrallah, left, speaks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, center, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, upon their arrival for a dinner, in Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/SANA, File) FILE — In this Thursday February 25, 2010 file photo, released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Hezbollah leader sheik Hassan Nasrallah, left, speaks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, center, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right, upon their arrival for a dinner, in Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/SANA, File)

BEIRUT: When the Hamas rulers of Gaza recently gave a hero’s welcome to the ruler of Qatar, an arch foe of the Syrian regime, it sent a strong message reverberating across the capitals in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut.

The powerful, anti-American alliance of Iran, Syria and militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas, once dubbed the “Axis of Resistance,” is fraying.

Iran’s economy is showing signs of distress from nuclear sanctions, Syria’s president is fighting for his survival and Hezbollah in Lebanon is under fire by opponents who blame it for the assassination of an anti-Syrian intelligence official. Hamas - the Palestinian arm - has bolted.

“We’re seeing basically the resistance axis becoming much more vulnerable and under duress. So even if it survives, it’s really under tremendous pressure,” said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at the London School of Economics.

“The Hamas shift to the Saudi-Qatari-Turkish orbit represents a major nail in the coffin of the resistance axis,” he said. “Now you are talking about Iran and Syria and to a lesser extent Iraq and this undermines the social element because Hamas added the very important Sunni dimension.”

The axis is one of two powerful camps that divide the Middle East into spheres of competing influence. It faces off against the wealthy, powerful monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar allied loosely with most of the other Arab countries and neighboring Turkey, which like Iran is Muslim but not Arab.

The fault line is sharply sectarian - Iran and Hezbollah are Shiite and Assad’s regime is dominated by the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Hamas, which is Sunni, had been the exception before it strayed. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim-led Arab countries in the Gulf have been trying to stem the regional influence of Iran.

Also, the Sunni countries, along with Turkey, support the Sunni-dominated opposition waging the civil war against Assad’s rule in Syria.

The axis had been gaining power over the decade before the Syrian uprising began in March 2011 and formed a powerful front against Israel and the key U.S. allies in the Middle East such as the oil-rich Gulf states. Iran has long supported Hezbollah and Hamas as proxies in its battle against Israel. And Tehran also troubled the west with its dogged pursuit of uranium enrichment, a program the U.S. and its allies suspect is aimed at producing nuclear weapons but which Iran says is for peaceful purposes.

Syria has long boasted about being one of the few protectors of militant groups fighting Israel. It is the main transit point of weapons brought from Iran to Hezbollah and a collapse of Assad’s regime would make it difficult for arms to reach the militant group that has been exchanging threats with the Jewish state and fought a 2006 war with Israel.

The axis also spread its influence to Shiite majority Iraq, where the fall of Saddam Hussein and his Sunni-dominated regime gave way to a government controlled by Shiites.

Only few years ago, the coalition was becoming so powerful that King Abdullah of Jordan warned of a “Shiite crescent,” meaning countries from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.

A new boldness was seen in 2010 when Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah emerged from hiding for a rare public trip to Damascus, where he attended a meeting with his powerful regional allies, Assad and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The leaders smiled confidently and appeared relaxed in footage of their meetings, a show of force meant to deter and demonstrate the unshakable power of the “Axis of Resistance.”

The uprising against Assad that erupted 19 months ago, amid tumultuous changes sweeping the Arab world, shook a major pillar of the alliance.

“The fate of the alliance rests on the future of the Assad regime. If Assad goes, Iran and Hezbollah will suffer and find it much more difficult to plan, coordinate, and communicate,” said Bilal Saab, a Middle East expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

The brutal crackdown by Assad’s regime on the Sunni-dominated uprising was an embarrassment to Hamas, the main Palestinian arm of the coalition. Hamas leaders in exile, who had been based in Damascus since the late 1990s, left for Egypt, Qatar and other countries.

Hamas officials said privately that they could not be seen supporting a regime that was brutally suppressing a popular rebellion, particularly since most of those rising up against Assad are fellow Sunni Muslims.

This about-turn also caused new tensions with the Palestinian movement’s main financial backer, Iran. Tehran demanded that Hamas step up and support Assad publicly. Hamas refused to do so, but didn’t break ties entirely with Tehran, for lack of an alternative source of funds.

However, another benefactor may now be stepping forward.

Last week, the emir of Qatar, a vociferous critic of Assad, became the first foreign leader to visit the Gaza Strip. In a way, it formally sealed the break by Hamas from the “Axis of Resistance.”

The trip offering the internationally isolated Hamas leadership there an unprecedented stamp of approval and Qatar promised more than $400 million in development projects for the impoverished territory.

The Qatari leader’s generosity will likely give him some leverage over Hamas’ decision-making at a time of growing debate within the movement over whether to stay in the orbit of Iran and other radical groups or move closer to the more moderate Gulf Arab camp.

Syria’s president has painted the uprising against him as a universal attack designed to destroy the entire “Axis of Resistance.” Last month, Assad told Iran’s visiting foreign minister that the fight against his government “targets resistance as a whole, not only Syria.”

“There will have to be serious adjustments in the axis should Assad go and preparations in Tehran for the day after are, I assume, already underway,” Saab said.

Hezbollah, which supported revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Bahrain, backed Assad in the crackdown. That support turned much of the Middle East’s Sunni population against the group they once looked up to.

The group came under renewed pressure and criticism earlier this month when a car bomb in Beirut on Oct. 19 killed one of the country’s top intelligence officials, an anti-Syrian figure. Hezbollah’s opponents at home immediately pointed fingers at the group, calling for the resignation of the government Hezbollah now dominates.

Iran, the wealthiest and most powerful member of the alliance, has reportedly sent billions of dollars to Assad to help suppress the uprising, according to a recent report by Times of London. Tehran has given Hezbollah billions since the group was created in 1982.

But now Iran is struggling to cope with Western sanctions that have ravaged its economy. The sanctions aim at thwarting its nuclear program.

The distress was all too apparent in the freefall of Iran’s currency the rial, which lost more than a third of its value in a week. The decline is widely tied to the effects of sanctions.

Israel has threatened to carry out a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who heads the Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division, warned that Iran will target U.S. bases in the region in the event of war with Israel.

“The question is not whether it (the alliance) will survive or not. The question is will it have the capacity to act offensively,” said Gerges. It is on the defensive.”

31 Oct 2012 #US wants Syrian opposition shakeup to defeat Assad

Damir Sencar

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrives at Zagreb international airport, Croatia, Wednesday, Oct. 31, 2012. Clinton is currently touring northern Africa and southeast Europe. (AP Photo/Damir Sencar, Pool)

The Obama administration said Wednesday it would push for a major shakeup in Syria’s opposition leadership so that it better represents those dying on the front line, can rally wider support and resist attempts by extremists to hijack the revolution against the Assad regime.

Speaking to reporters in Croatia’s capital, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States was suggesting names and organizations that should feature prominently in any new rebel leadership that emerges from talks starting next week in Doha, the capital of Qatar.

She dismissed the Syrian National Council, a Paris-based group of regime opponents who have lived in exile for decades, saying its leadership days are over, but it could still play a role. The council was viewed with suspicion by rebels who stayed in Syria and fought the regime of President Bashar Assad.

“This cannot be an opposition represented by people who have many good attributes but have in many instances not been inside Syria for 20, 30 or 40 years,” Clinton said. “There has to be a representation of those who are on the front lines fighting and dying today to obtain their freedom. And there needs to be an opposition leadership structure that is dedicated to representing and protecting all Syrians.”

The shift in policy reflects as much the failure of the SNC to win widespread political legitimacy as the Obama administration’s desire to be seen playing a leading role in shaping an opposition capable of winning the support of frightened Syrian minority groups and replacing Assad.

Republican candidate Mitt Romney has criticized the Obama administration for spending too much time trying to win support for a Syrian political transition plan at the United Nations, where Russia and China have protected Assad from three damning resolutions. And he has called for stronger U.S. leadership in forging a cohesive body to lead Syria from decades of dictatorship.

The Obama administration insists it is already guiding such efforts, but Clinton’s words appeared to highlight that it was stepping up its leadership role. She said the talks next week were sponsored by the Arab League but stressed that she has been constantly strategizing with European and Arab partners on the best path forward.

“We have recommended names and organizations that we believe should be included in any leadership structure,” she said. “We’ve made it clear that the SNC can no longer be viewed as the visible leader of the opposition. They can be part of a larger opposition, but that opposition must include people from inside Syria and others who have a legitimate voice that needs to be heard. So our efforts are very focused on that.”

Clinton said it was no secret that many in Syria, especially minority groups, are fearful about the prospects of Assad’s government being replaced by the Sunni-led opposition. The reasoning is that for the good of the country, they must be assuaged.

“They have no love lost for the Assad regime but they worry, rightly so, about the future,” she said. “So there needs to be an opposition that speaks to every segment and every geographic part of Syria.”

She added: “We also need an opposition that will be on record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution. There are disturbing reports of extremists going into Syria and attempting to take over what has been a legitimate revolution against an oppressive regime for their own purposes.”

Clinton also expressed her regret, but lack of surprise, at the failure of a proposed four-day holiday cease-fire in Syria. Despite the government’s reported commitment, she said, it “did not suspend its use of advanced weaponry against the Syrian people for even one day.”

“The shelling of the suburbs in Damascus was as bad last weekend as at any time in the conflict,” Clinton said.

She said the U.S. would continue to support the diplomatic efforts led by U.N. peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to convince Moscow and Beijing to “change course and support a stronger U.N. action.” But she said the U.S. cannot wait in the meantime.

“Instead, our efforts and those of our partners in the EU and Arab League are focused on pressuring the regime,” Clinton said. A key plank is “helping the opposition unite behind a shared, effective strategy that can resist the regime’s violence and being able to provide for a political transition that can demonstrate more clearly than has been possible up until now what the future holds for the Syrian people once the regime is gone.

Associated Press

Jordan: US forces plan shield against #Syria

Associated Press A general view of hangars at a desert military training facility where U.S. forces _ and a handful of British allies _ are training Jordanian commandos in Russeifeh, Jordan, Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon)

10/11/12 By Jamal Halaby

RUSSEIFEH, Jordan: From the edge of a steep mountain overlooking a desert compound built into an old rock quarry, machine gunfire echoes just outside hangars where U.S. special operations forces are training Jordanian commandos.

The Americans, who arrived in the kingdom a few weeks ago at the request of the Jordanians, are helping them develop techniques to protect civilians in case of a chemical attack from neighboring Syria, according to Jordanian officials.

On the Syrian border farther north, British military officers recently assessed the dangers of rockets constantly falling on the kingdom and ways to shield the Jordanian population and Syrian refugees as President Bashar Assad widens his military offensive against rebel enclaves in the vicinity, according to Jordan-based Western diplomats.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II has repeatedly discussed plans for reinforcing security along the Syrian border and expressed concern over Syria’s chemical stockpiles in meetings with visiting Western allies, according to the two diplomats, who monitor Syria from their base.

They said it is believed that Abdullah has also been shopping around for an anti-missile defense system to shield his densely populated capital, Amman - home to nearly half of Jordan’s population.

There is also talk of contingency plans for a quick pre-emptive strike if Assad loses control over his stock of chemical weapons in the civil war. The fear is that those weapons might otherwise fall into the hands of al-Qaida or Lebanon’s Islamic militant group Hezbollah.

“There are dangers involved, and we have to ensure the safety of our country and the well-being of our citizens,” a senior government official said in the first public Jordanian confirmation of the presence of foreign military personnel here. “We are benefiting from the experience of our allies as we prepare for the worst scenarios.”

The presence of some 150 Americans at the King Abdullah II Special Operations Training Center northeast of the capital is a clear message to Assad that Jordan’s longtime Western allies stand ready to defend the country if it is dragged into the 19-month Syria conflict.

Assad’s regime, which is believed to have one of the world’s largest chemical weapons programs, has said it might use them against external threats but not against Syrians.

But the Jordanians worry that Assad may use his chemical weapons against his neighbors, or his countrymen, if he felt that his days in power were numbered.

In May, the U.S. held joint exercises with Jordan, nicknamed the “Eager Lion,” which focused on the ways to deal with a chemical weapons attack.

On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said at a NATO conference of defense ministers in Brussels that the U.S. has been working with Jordan to monitor chemical and biological weapons sites in Syria and was helping Jordan deal with refugees pouring over the border.

Although the senior government official insisted that the Americans were “advisers, not troops,” two senior U.S. defense officials said most were Army special operations forces. The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly about the mission.

The troops are operating out of a military center near Amman and have moved back and forth to the Syrian border. Their work involves gathering intelligence and planning joint Jordanian-U.S. military maneuvers, one U.S. official said.

The revelation of U.S. military personnel so close to the Syrian conflict suggests an escalation in the American involvement, even as the Obama administration pushes back on any suggestion of a direct intervention in Syria.

The Jordanian official insisted that the kingdom was “capable of shielding itself from Syrian attack,” but London-based Mideast analyst Rosemary Hollis disagreed.

“For Jordan, the more unstable Syria becomes, the deeper the crisis proceeds, the more likely Jordan will suffer from all kinds of spillover, but they are incapable of doing anything to intervene to try to turn the conflict in one direction rather than another unless they have the ballast, cover and involvement of serious international forces, which is the Americans,” Hollis said.

She also saw the American military presence as a step toward possible future military operations to secure Syria’s chemical stockpiles.

Torbjorn Soltvedt, a senior analyst with the Britain-based Maplecroft risk analysis group, said he saw the current situation as a “monitoring and training stage.”

“Given the degree to which Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles have been dispersed across the country, an operation to secure them would be extensive and require significant numbers of troops,” he said. “The Pentagon has estimated that an operation to secure Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles could require as much as 75,000 troops given the presence of several chemical agent manufacturing plants and many more storage sites throughout the country.”

Panetta said that while the U.S. believes the weapons are still secure, intelligence suggests the regime might have moved some to protect them.

Steven Bucci, an expert in chemical weapons at the Heritage Foundation, has told Congress there might be as many as 50 chemical weapons sites in Syria. He said in an interview Wednesday that Syria’s stockpile is potentially “like a gift from God” for militants since they don’t have the know-how to assemble such weapons, while some of Syria’s chemical agents are believed to have already been fitted into missile warheads.

At the desert facility, stretching 25 kilometers (16 miles) on the edge of this predominantly Palestinian suburb, Jordanian soldiers guard the walled compound, where Iraqi and Libyan special forces once received training. They refused to allow reporters in.

Jordanian officials were eager to downplay the U.S. role, concerned about the possibility of raising tensions with Syria and giving the kingdom’s largely conservative population the impression that they were allowing foreigners to use Jordan as a potential launching pad for a pre-emptive attack against another Arab country.

The senior government official and two others who discussed the American military role all spoke on condition of anonymity, citing possible diplomatic sensitivities with Syria. Assad is thought to have sleeper cells scattered across the kingdom and plotting attacks on Syrian opposition and Jordanian figures.

Information Minister Sameeh Maaytah, the only official who spoke on the record, said the U.S. presence was part of “routine training exercises.”

“Jordan and U.S. forces exchange visits regularly, and the presence of tens of their forces here is part of efforts to expand cooperation, exchange capabilities and protect regional stability,” he said in an interview. He declined to elaborate or comment on any link to the Syrian crisis.

Amman has long had bumpy relations with Damascus because of its alliance with the United States - Jordan’s largest donor of economic and military aid - and its 1994 peace treaty with Israel.

Jordan would like to see the Syrian regime toppled because of growing concern that Assad’s key ally, Iran, is trying to spark Shiite uprisings in Arab countries ruled by members of the rival Sunni sect. Assad’s ruling Alawite minority is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Abdullah was the first Arab leader to warn in 2004 of the sweep of Iran’s “Shiite crescent,” stretching from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq.

Jordanian officials have advocated a buffer zone inside the Syrian border to protect civilians fleeing bombardment. There is mounting speculation that Jordan would dispatch highly skilled special forces to secure such a zone when Assad’s regime falls to prevent chaos on its border.

In the past six weeks, more than 20 Syrian rockets have fallen on Jordanian villages near the border. At least two people were wounded, including a 4-year-old Jordanian girl.

The two Western diplomats said the Britons, about a half-dozen officers specialized in intelligence gathering and special operations techniques, visited Jordan a few times over the past three months. The diplomats insisted on anonymity, saying that public comment may hamper their information gathering on Syria.

The Jordanian army already has an extensive presence on the border and has been assisting waves of Syrian refugees, who are straining the country’s meager resources, mainly health care, water and utilities.

Jordan hosts some 200,000 Syrian refugees, more than any other neighboring country. Some come under constant firing from their army as they cross into the kingdom. Jordanian border guards have been wounded and a 6-year-old Syrian boy was killed in July.

Jordanian men also are moving the other way across the border, joining what intelligence officials have estimated to be about 2,000 foreigners fighting alongside Syrian rebels trying to topple Assad.

#Syria : Thank you USA …

#Syria turmoil puts Lebanon on brink of chaos

17/08/2012

Shi'ite masked gunmen from the Meqdad clan, gather at the Meqdad family's association headquarters in the southern suburbs in Beirut, August 15, 2012. (REUTERS/Khalil Hassan)

Shi’ite masked gunmen from the Meqdad clan, gather at the Meqdad family’s association headquarters in the southern suburbs in Beirut, August 15, 2012. (REUTERS/Khalil Hassan)

BEIRUT: Despite repeated Arab and international warnings over a fallout of the 17-month uprising in Syria spreading to Lebanon, the Syrian turmoil has spilled over into the politically divided country, threatening to plunge it into total chaos, analysts and political sources said Thursday.

“The spillover of the Syrian uprising has reached Lebanon,” Hilal Khashan, professor of political sciences at the American University of Beirut, told The Daily Star. “Lebanon is poised for heightened insecurity that falls short of a civil war, mainly as a result of the spillover of the Syrian unrest, into the country.”

Wednesday’s mass kidnappings of over two dozen Syrians, a Turkish national and a Saudi citizen by a local Lebanese clan in retaliation for the abduction of one of its kinsmen by Syrian rebels as well as the blocking of Beirut airport road and the Beirut-Damascus highway at the Masnaa border crossing with burning tires by rival protesters have revived memories of the chaos and anarchy that reigned during the 1975-90 Civil War when rival militias held sway at the expense of state authority.

During the Civil War years, lawlessness and insecurity prevailed, especially in the capital Beirut, where foreign citizens of various nationalities were kidnapped by militant groups.

In response to security threats, five Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon immediately after the Meqdad Shiite clan kidnapped more than 20 Syrians in Beirut and initially threatened to seize more Arab nationals in retaliation for the abduction of Hassan Meqdad by Syrian rebels.

The mass kidnappings of Syrians, directly linked to the turmoil in Syria, cast further doubts over Lebanon’s ability to weather the storm in its eastern neighbor Syria.

“What happened today is a clear indication that we are [on] the brink of major chaos in Lebanon,” a senior political source told The Daily Star Thursday.

“The storm in Syria has reached Lebanon now and there is no going back,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

However, Khashan said he did not believe that Lebanon was drifting into total chaos following the wave of kidnappings and the appearance of masked gunmen on TV.

“The kidnappings were a tension relief exercise. Hezbollah controlled the Shiites. There is no logical reason for them [Hezbollah] to allow the situation to go out of the control,” Khashan said. “Level headedness will prevail.”

“What happened yesterday was an expression of anger and frustration. The sight on TV of the Free Syrian Army displaying Hassan Meqdad, whom the FSA accused of being a Hezbollah member, with bruises on his face, angered many Hezbollah supporters. The kidnappings were [designed] to vent their spleen,” he added.

However, Future MP Ahmad Fatfat had a different opinion. “What happened was a total collapse of the state and a flagrant inability of the Army and security forces to do their job in repulsing any attack, even an internal attack, on Lebanese sovereignty,” Fatfat told the Voice of Lebanon radio station.

“The attack and kidnappings that took place in Beirut and a number of areas meant that the state was absent. This takes us to a civil war,” he added.

Khashan said that there was no regional or international decision to rekindle civil war in Lebanon. “Iran and Arab Gulf states do not want a civil war in Lebanon,” he said.

A similar view was echoed by political analyst Talal Atrissi.

“I don’t think Lebanon is facing the threat of a civil war following the wave of kidnappings,” Atrissi, an expert on Iran and Middle East affairs, told The Daily Star. “There is no internal, regional or international decision for the security situation to spin out of control. Priority is now for Syria. Therefore, no civil war in Lebanon,” he said. “Regional and international powers are still supporting Lebanon’s stability and security.”

Atrissi said the root cause of the current tension in Lebanon was the kidnapping by Syrian rebels of 11 Lebanese pilgrims in May and Meqdad last week.

“Before the spate of kidnappings, tension with Syria was confined to border incidents,” he said.

Politicians and analysts have long held the view that Lebanon’s security and stability are intertwined with Syria’s security and stability.

Violence in Syria has often spilled over into Lebanon, jolting the country’s already fragile security situation, with cross-border shootings, shelling by the Syrian army, tit-for-tat kidnappings and sectarian clashes. Several Lebanese have been killed and wounded by Syrian gunfire in a series of deadly incidents on the Lebanese-Syrian border in recent months.

But the latest spate of kidnappings has fueled fears that the unrest in Syria could further destabilize Lebanon, which has struggled for decades with wars, sectarian strife and a weak political system.

The split between the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance and the opposition March 14 coalition over the Syrian crisis has raised fears of the turmoil in Syria spilling over to Lebanon.

The U.S. has also expressed consternation. “Our concern in Lebanon, first and foremost, has been the spillover from the Syrian conflict and the fact that the sectarian tensions in Syria are potentially being replicated in Lebanon,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington.

The government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati has adopted a policy to dissociate Lebanon from the repercussions of the unrest in Syria.

Mikati condemned the kidnappings, but his government seemed largely powerless to act. “This brings us back to the days of the painful war, a page that Lebanese citizens have been trying to turn,” he said of the 1975-90 Civil War when Western hostages were seized by armed groups.

Implicitly admitting his government’s inability to act, Mikati called for the formation of an extraordinary government to cope with what he termed the “difficult and extraordinary” situation through which the country was passing.

“This is a battle for Lebanon’s survival. We have to protect Lebanon with all the strength we have.” Mikati told reporters before a Cabinet session at Beiteddine Palace. “We are living in the storm. Therefore, we have to close ranks to face problems and crises.”

Atrissi blamed the Mikati government for weakening state authority and preventing the Army from imposing law and order. “Political and sectarian interests inside the government are preventing the Army from imposing security and state authority,” he said.

Khashan, the AUB professor, said Lebanon is “a soft state.”

“Security has long been based on consensus. The state cannot impose security on the people. Security is achieved through negotiations and compromise,” he said. “The Lebanese state is not authoritative. Rather, it is a soft state.”

Khashan said that instability in Lebanon served the cause of both the Syrian regime and the rebel Free Syrian Army for different reasons and motives.

“The Syrian regime wants to destabilize Lebanon in order to export its problems to the region. Lebanon is the weakest link in the region,” Khashan said. “Likewise, the Free Syrian Army believes that instability in Lebanon will invite Western intervention in both Syria and Lebanon,” he added.

The Meqdad clan, which hails from east Lebanon’s Bekaa region, said Wednesday it kidnapped over 30 men it said were members or supporters of the FSA in retaliation for the abduction of one of its kinsmen.

Maher Meqdad, who said his family fields an armed wing, told The Daily Star Wednesday that his clan had taken matters into its own hands as the Lebanese government had taken no steps to free Hassan Meqdad.

“We will do it ourselves, and we have what you can call a regulated army to do the job,” he said. He added that his family was acting according to the “eye for an eye” principle, and no longer needs the government’s intervention.

15/08/2012 Washing away the blood in #Syria

With the acrid stench of disinfectant in the air, a woman, expressionless and intent on finishing this daily task as quickly as possible, sluices the last puddle of diluted blood off the hospital steps and onto the sidewalk.

For her this is routine. The pale faces of medical staff who for the past hour had been grimacing with intense concentration and inner frustration were close behind her.

“You cannot show our faces on television - you can’t reveal what we are doing here,” one doctor told me.

Two children under five years of age were dead and another - barely alive - had been sent to Turkey in a battered old car. Seven adults were seriously wounded. The hysteria of wailing relatives and children was now gone. The uncomfortable silence was deafening.

The stark reality echoing now in my mind as I write this a week later is that it was nothing unusual - it just happened to be caught on our camera.

Daily trauma

For months we have known about the medics wanting their work to be kept secret for fear they will be targeted in the same way that a rebel fighter could expect.

It had been one snapshot in the chain of daily trauma, the aftermath of what we all hear referred to as “indiscriminate shelling”. The shells from long-range artillery had landed on a village near al-Atarib this time.

A two-year-old boy was lying lifeless on one of two beds in the tiny, ill-equipped emergency room.

The doctors had moved on to another patient after at least ten minutes of CPR, the hand pumped respirator now at work elsewhere.

The toddler’s mother was being restrained in the other bed as a nurse applied bandages to her face. On the floor were injured men and women being checked over in some sort of triage process. And outside this claustrophobic mayhem on the reception room floor, another young child took his final breath.

I have no doubt that no one crammed into those 60 minutes of excruciating attempts to save lives could be described as a revolutionary. They were all civilians. And nobody wanted to talk about freedom or human rights.

There was just a question barked in my direction: “Where is the help that the outside world keeps promising?” Or words to that effect.

‘Guns, not medicine’

Earlier that day, the same question was put to me by a brigadier-general who defected five months ago from his post as head of intelligence for a region that included Aleppo city.

But the question was aimed in a different direction. He wanted more guns, bigger ones. And much more ammunition.

No mention of humanitarian assistance.

Was he a true revolutionary? Well, he says he is now. But a year ago, he was actively at work trying to crush the uprising.

Where do the civilians stand in all of this?

Certainly the majority of the masses who have fled Aleppo and many of those who remain there would not candidly have numbered themselves as actively supporting the uprising months ago.

Top of wish list

Guns, heavier weaponry, bullets, shells and rockets are at the top of the wish list for those fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Second comes medical personnel, field hospitals, medicine and equipment.

Some of the latter we know have been getting into Syria, mostly through the smuggling routes on Syria’s borders.

Primarily, those routes run through Turkey. It’s a trickle of support, not a surge, though.

My line of thought fast forwards to Istanbul, and coverage of Hillary Clinton’s Saturday visit that packed in separate talks with the Turkish foreign minister, the prime minister, the president, a selection of refugees, activists, prominent opposition members in exile and the Syrian National Council.

One headline to emerge from those meetings was that Turkey and the US had “agreed to accelerate preparations for the fall of the Syrian president”.

Meaning?

The setting up of a bilateral team to help the opposition while trying to work out which part of a splintered political spread of people could be onside. Or, better still, have some semblance of unity.

Also, providing aid to fleeing refugees and planning contingencies for worst-case scenarios that include a chemical weapons attack.

No-fly zone

Questions put at the obligatory joint news conference raised the idea of a no-fly zone - not for the first time.

It wasn’t ruled out by Clinton, who more than made up for any perceived differences with her NATO ally by repeated gushing thanks for Turkey’s costly operation to provide an undeclared safe haven for more than 55,000 registered refugees and the Free Syrian Army.

Plus an assurance that the US would stand by Turkey in its fight with the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, to ensure it would get no foothold in Northern Syria.

And there was, of course, the announcement of another $5.5 million in humanitarian aid.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, also said a no-fly zone was still on the table, despite the knowledge that Russia and China would be likely to veto any such move.

Clinton said it was going to require more in-depth analysis by the joint working group. It being an election year in the United States, it is unlikely that any unilateral action will be taken. ”Contingency”, “operational planning” and “co-ordination” were the buzz words on Sunday.

Before leaving Istanbul to the surreal feeling of London in Olympic euphoria, my mind went back to the hospital. Political reality is hard to describe to those bereaved or maimed by a war for which initially they had no vested interest.

Daily trauma

I called it a snapshot in a chain of daily trauma. It’s probably more aptly described as a perpetual horror story that, for now, has no end. And it’s playing out every day all over Syria, much of it unseen by media.

The images of the doctors’ pale faces and the children who died take an indelible place in a collage of memory from war zones I have worked in over the past three decades.

Usually, that recurring universal question, where is the help from outside, is eventually answered by meaningful humanitarian aid, with or without military intervention.

For Syria, it’s much more complicated.

And I’m pretty sure that when I return there again soon, I will still stumble to placate or calm the next questioner even more than the last time.

The UN is unable to make a move as long as Russian and Chinese objections continue to exist, and the states that want Assad out of power are engaged in talk of an endgame that doesn’t appear to have been worked out.

And the cleaner in the hospital will still be going through her daily routine of washing away the bloodshed.

Follow Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmon’s on Twitter @SimmJazeera.

A self-governing Kurdish entity in #Syria – a long-term reality?

August 11, 2012

The political developments within and outside Syria with respect to the Kurds underscores a new Kurdish political reality: a self-governing Kurdish entity is on the making in the north and north-eastern parts of Syria.

For the past 17 months, the Syrian government is struggling to dismantle the strong rebellion that has impaired its credibility to maintain law and order in the country.

Political analysts believe that the Syrian government would not last long and give in whole or parts of the country to the belligerent opposition groups. The opposition groups are already claiming to be in control of parts of Aleppo, the largest Syrian city, and large areas of the countryside in the north.

Kurds are very much part of the burgeoning political developments. Taking the advantage of the power vacuum in the north and north-eastern parts of the country, created by the continuous and fierce fighting between the government troops and opposition fighters, Kurds have asserted power and control in those areas. It is reported that Kurdish political parties and armed forces are currently administering several north and north-eastern border districts, including Afrin, Kobane, Cindires, Derka Hemko and Girke Lege. It is further reported that Kurdistan flag is raised over official government buildings. These political developments are consolidating a self-governing Kurdish entity in the Kurdish majority populated areas of Syria.

These political gains however remain unstable. It is not determined how these developments proceed in the long run. There are several internal and external obstructions that may change the course of the developments.

The internal impediments are primarily created by the Syrian government and/or belligerent opposition groups. These sources however do not pose any serious threat at the moment. The Syrian government is crumbling progressively. Many high ranking government officials and military officers are increasingly defecting. The military’s control over the country has weakened due to the fierce internal fighting. The State’s security apparatus has become inexistent in the periphery of the country where many of the Kurdish towns are located. The prospective fall of the government at the core,www.ekurd.net the Damascus, would therefore effectuate entire removal of government’s remaining forces from the Kurdish areas. Most of these areas, apart from Qamishli, are already abandoned or forced to abandon by the Kurdish armed forces.

The primary internal threat to any Kurdish entity is therefore the future Syrian government which would most probably be the Syrian belligerent opposition groups headed by the Syrian National Council (SNC) and dominated by the radical Sunni Islamists. However, any such considerable threat is dependent on the level of power they may consolidate in the future Syrian political establishment.

Currently, there are reports that the Kurdish armed forces have refused the Syrian opposition groups entering the Kurdish areas. There is no doubt they will keep doing so and confront them militarily should they attempt entering the Kurdish areas. Furthermore, as the Kurdish parties’ sphere of influence widens in the Kurdish areas, the inhabiting people are experiencing a level of freedom they were deprived of for decades. In this circumstance, they will not be ready to give away their freedoms without fierce resistance.

Therefore, any attempt to realign the Syrian sovereignty over the Kurdish areas may only be realised through reconciling the Kurdish aspirations. The Syrian Kurdish parties are pushing for establishing a federal democratic government in the Syrian Kurdistan in the post-Assad era. The Foreign Affairs Office of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) has called for support and protection in establishing a self-governing Kurdish region in the Syrian Kurdistan. The SNC leader, Abdulbaset Sieda, himself a Kurd, in his recent visit to Erbil, Kurdistan Regions capital, assured the Syrian Kurds that their rights and identity will be protected under the new Syrian constitution.

In addition to above internal complications, there are also some external impediments that stem primarily from the regional States. At the forefront is Turkey. The Turkish government has shown serious discomfort with the emerging Kurdish entity forfear of a domino effect on its restive Kurdish inhabitant. The Turkish government is apparently concerned with the PKK infiltration into the Syrian Kurdistan through the PYD and consequently opening up another front for its fight against Turkey. It has already bolstered its military build-up along the border signalling a cross border military intervention if PKK presence is continued.

The Turkish government has also accelerated its diplomatic reaction. The Turkish Foreign Minister recently visited the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The visit was to pressure the Kurdistan Region to retreat from giving any political and military support to the Syrian Kurds.

However, the burgeoning political developments indicate that Turkey has limited influence to debilitate the new emerging Kurdish entity. The Turkish government knows considerably well that any military move into Syria will result in serious internal, regional and international reaction. Syria and Iran have already warned Turkey from any such dangerous move. The US has also signalled its disapproval. The US has further stated that the Syrian people (including the Kurds) are in charge of their future political direction. The Kurdistan Region has also tacitly rejected any Turkish intervention by stating that Syrian people need to decide their future.

The PKK has also changed its fighting tactics for the first time in its 28 years of armed struggle in light of the current political developments in the Syrian Kurdistan. PKK leader Murat Karayilan recently announced that PKK strongholds being beyond the Turkish borders remains talk of past and that from now on the guerrilla forces will position themselves in permanent strongholds within the Turkish territory. He stated that the traditional ‘hit and run’ tactic will give way to a new tactic of‘ attack from many directions, take position in strongholds and protect the area’. According to Karayilan, his guerrillas have already implemented this new tactic in Hakari, Cizreand Zagros regions in Turkey by taking positions in bulwarks located 35 kilometres inside the Turkish border.

It is interesting to note that these areas are located in close proximity to the PYD controlled Kurdish districts in Syria. This indicates that PKK is making strategic moves to protect the emerging political entity in Syrian Kurdistan by establishing strongholds within Turkish borders closer to the Syrian Kurdish areas.

These political developments indicate that the Kurds are up for creating yet another semi-autonomous Kurdish region. The US and European Union have not actively opposed this emerging political development. The regional States are not a position to act unilaterally or collectively to derail this new political entity. What is hoped for is that the political transition takes place without destruction and loss of human life.

Hiwa Zandi, Masters of Laws Student, University of Queensland, Australia. A regular contributing writer for Ekurd.net

#Syria accuses U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of overseeing rebel battles

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, the Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Jaafari, accused Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of running military operation centers in Turkey to support the rebels. (Al Arabiya)

11/08/2012

Syria has accused Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar of running military operation centers in Turkey to support the rebels by overseeing battles in Syria’s 17-month conflict.

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council released on Friday, Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Jaafari also again blamed Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia of “harboring, funding and arming the armed terrorist groups.”

“Turkey has established within its territory military operations centers that are run by the intelligence services of Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar,” Jaafari wrote in the letter dated Aug. 2.

“Those centers are being used to oversee battles that are being waged by the terrorists against Syrian citizens in Aleppo and other Syrian cities and the massacres the terrorists are perpetrating after entering Syria in large numbers,” he said.

U.S. President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing measures to help the rebels and U.S. officials say Washington is collaborating with a secret command center operated by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to help direct vital military and communications support to rebels.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have killed more than 15,000 people since a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters began in March 2011, some Western leaders say. Damascus says rebels have killed several thousand of its security forces.

Aleppo, which is Syria’s largest city and economic hub, has been battered for days by government artillery, but rebels promised on Friday they will hit back after losing ground as residents fled during a lull in fighting.

“Those shedding tears over what is occurring in Aleppo and demanding that the Security Council should be convened are the very same parties that caused the tragedy through their support of terrorism and arming of terrorist groups,” Jaafari said.

He said the United States, France, Britain and Turkey were leading a campaign “to alter the balance in the region and force its countries to comply with the hegemonic policies and bend to the will of those Western states.”

Jaafari called on the U.N. Security Council to pressure those countries to stop supporting, arming and funding the rebels and facilitating their operations.

U.S. Accuses Hezbollah of Aiding #Syria’s Crackdown

Phil Moore/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A rebel fired toward government snipers in Aleppo on Friday. The White House has accused Hezbollah of helping Iran train Syrian forces against the opposition.

10/08/2012

The United States accused the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on Friday of deep involvement in the Syrian government’s violent campaign to crush the uprising there, asserting that Hezbollah has trained and advised government forces inside Syria and has helped to expel opposition fighters from areas within the country.

The American accusations, which were contained in coordinated announcements by the Treasury and State Departments announcing new sanctions against Syria, also accused Hezbollah of assisting operatives of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Quds Force in training Syrian forces inside Syria. A Treasury statement said the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, had overseen those activities, which it called part of the Syria government’s “increasingly ruthless efforts to fight against the opposition.”

The accusations, which went beyond previous American charges about Hezbollah support for Syria’s government, seemed intended to counter critics of the Obama administration who say that the White House is not doing enough to support the Syrian opposition now that diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict are paralyzed.

Some Hezbollah experts expressed considerable skepticism, however, saying that the accusations should be approached with caution unless more evidence was presented.

The accusations were also part of an effort to further draw attention to the Hezbollah-Iran alliance, which American and Israeli intelligence officials have sought to portray as a subversive collaboration that has not only destabilized the Middle East but has been implicated in terrorist violence elsewhere, including a deadly bus bombing of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last month.

In a related announcement, the State Department said the United States had blacklisted Sytrol, a state-owned Syrian oil company, accusing it of bartering gasoline with Iran in violation of American sanctions over the disputed Iranian nuclear program. The announcement said the United States “remains deeply concerned about the close ties shared by the Iranian and Syrian regimes and is committed to using every tool available to prevent regional destabilization.”

The accusations were made a few days after Iran’s top national security official, Saeed Jalili, visited Syria and assured its embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, that Iran, Syria and Hezbollah were an unbreakable axis of resistance to Israel and its Western allies, reinforcing Syria’s evolving role as the arena of a proxy war pitting Iran and its friends against the West.

American officials would not provide evidence for the new accusations against Hezbollah and avoided specifying whether its operatives were engaged in combat inside Syria, as some anti-Assad fighters have asserted. But the accusations appeared to open a new avenue of American pressure on Syria’s government and to be a way to embarrass Mr. Nasrallah, a powerful figure whose unwavering public support for Mr. Assad has created political strains in his home base of Lebanon.

Many Lebanese support the uprising against Mr. Assad and his ruling Alawite minority, and thousands of Syrian refugees from Mr. Assad’s crackdown have fled to Lebanon.

“Hezbollah is actively providing support to the Assad regime as it carries out its bloody campaign against the Syrian people,” David. S. Cohen, the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told reporters in a telephone conference call. He said the designation of Hezbollah in a Treasury Department sanction makes “clear to parties around the world — both domestically and internationally — the true nature of Hezbollah’s activities.”

The State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, Daniel Benjamin, who also participated in the call, said, “Hezbollah’s actions in Syria underscore its fears of a Syria without the Assad regime and the impact that this would have on the group’s capabilities and its strength over the long term.”

Despite repeated questioning, neither official would provide details to support the accusations, or specific evidence of how they had reached their conclusions. “This is not a matter of idle speculation or press reports,” Mr. Benjamin said. “This is based on a great deal of information-gathering that we have done and we’ve synthesized and we’ve put it together in an authoritative document, and we believe that it will be taken seriously by many around the world.”

An American official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah was using “its specialized skill set and understanding of insurgencies” to aid Syria. “The group’s deep familiarity with the Syrian landscape makes it a nimble and effective military partner,” the official said. “Even though at current levels its assistance probably won’t change the outcome of the conflict, it’s prolonging the fight and contributing to the deaths of innocent civilians.”

Both Hezbollah and Iran have repeatedly denied that they have aided Mr. Assad’s military. They have supported his contention that the uprising against him is led by terrorist groups armed by Sunni Arab monarchies, Israel and the United States.

Nonetheless, Mr. Nasrallah has made no secret of his support for Mr. Assad, extolling his leadership after the assassination of top presidential aides in a Damascus bombing carried out by insurgents last month. “These martyr leaders were comrades in arms in the conflict with the Israeli enemy,” he said.

Hezbollah has long been classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel. But Hezbollah also is an important political party and a welfare organization in Lebanon, with a long history of helping the country’s Shiite Muslim and Palestinian populations.

Matthew Levitt, director of the program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that while broad accusations of Hezbollah involvement in the Syrian conflict were not new, the Treasury statement ratcheted up the pressure because the United States government was stating them as fact and adding that Mr. Nasrallah was personally overseeing the assistance. He said the statement appeared to be an attempt to embarrass Hezbollah and Iran politically, rather than to exact a practical toll through sanctions.

“The sanction effect of this is minimal,” he said. “This is a name-and-shame exposé type of an action.”

Other scholars of Middle East politics questioned the accuracy of the accusations against Hezbollah, saying it probably is giving Mr. Assad only limited military help. They note that while Hezbollah has a strategic interest in protecting Mr. Assad, it is also a savvy political operator that may need to hedge its bets if Mr. Assad is deposed and replaced by a Sunni-led government. They also said Hezbollah’s power in Lebanon depended partly on maintaining a Lebanese nationalist image rather than a sectarian Shiite one.

“There’s not a lot of meat in it,” Augustus Richard Norton, a professor of international relations at Boston University, said of the Treasury sanction. “My reading — and I’m sure this isn’t a popular reading in Washington in some quarters — is that Hezbollah has been taking a very low-key approach to the Syrian crisis precisely because they have such high domestic stakes in Lebanon.”

Others said they needed to see more facts behind the American charges. Yezid Sayigh, a scholar of Arab militaries and a senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said the accusations may be based on “an extremely specific and narrow form of assistance, while giving the impression that Hezbollah is involved in giving a much wider range of assistance.”

In Syria, the focus of the conflict continued on Friday to be the siege of Aleppo, the largest city, where insurgents have been battling government forces backed by jets, helicopters, artillery and tanks, and have retreated from some neighborhoods. Rebel commanders have complained in recent days of ammunition shortages, and some have criticized Western countries for not moving more aggressively to help them.

Britain, however, seemed to move a step closer to aid the rebel side. Foreign Secretary William Hague said the British government would establish official contacts with insurgents inside Syria and expand its nonlethal aid to groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army.

U.S. adds Hezbollah to #Syria sanctions list

This TV frame grab shows Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. (The Daily Star/TV grab)

This TV frame grab shows Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah. (The Daily Star/TV rab)

10/08/2012

WASHINGTON: The United States denounced Hezbollah for backing Bashar Assad on Friday, and added it to a list of organizations under sanctions for their ties to the Syrian regime.

“This action highlights Hezbollah’s activities within Syria and its integral role in the continued violence the Assad regime is inflicting on the Syrian population,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement.

Washington already classes Hezbollah a “terrorist organization” and it is under U.S. sanctions, but Friday’s move explicitly ties the group to the violence underway in Syria, where Assad is attempting to put down a revolt.

“Hezbollah’s extensive support to the Syrian government’s violent suppression of the Syrian people exposes the true nature of this terrorist organization and its destabilizing presence in the region,” said David Cohen, the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

“Long after the Assad regime is gone, the people of Syria and the entire global community will remember that Hezbollah, and its patron Iran, contributed to the regime’s murder of countless innocent Syrians.”

Hezbollah was added to a blacklist associated with an executive order signed by U.S. President Barack Obama in August last year which targeted the government of Syria and its supporters.

Those sanctions were designed increase pressure on Damascus as Washington called for the first time for Assad to step down over his military assault on rebelling Syrians opposed to his rule.

But 17 months after the start of the uprising the Syrian leader remains in power, and more than 20,000 people have been killed.

French president under attack over leadership on #Syria

Thibault Camus/AP - French President Francois Hollande delivers a speech at the beginning of a social conference with unions and employers in Paris, France on July 9, 2012. Hollande is under attack from political opponents over his perceived lack of leadership on Syria.

10/08/2012

PARIS — President Francois Hollande has come under a withering political attack from his conservative opponents over what they charge is lack of French leadership in dealing with the Syrian civil war.

The political offensive is roughly similar to the accusations of inaction leveled against President Obama by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in the United States. But in France the election campaign has long been over: Hollande, a Socialist, defeated former president Nicolas Sarkozy and assumed the presidency more than three months ago.

Nevertheless, Sarkozy and his followers have drawn comparisons between Hollande, who has said France would intervene only under a U.N. Security Council mandate, and Sarkozy, who waged an energetic diplomatic campaign last year to persuade the United States, Britain and other French allies to intervene militarily in Libya.

The charges have gained particular resonance because Hollande is on vacation in a luxurious government mansion on the Riviera, providing an opening for charges that he is sun-tanning while Syria burns. Many other French families are on vacation as well, creating a dearth of news in which the opposition campaign looms large.

Sarkozy himself started the campaign on Tuesday. Breaking a post-election silence, he issued a communiqué saying he had talked on the telephone with Abdel Basset Sayda, head of the main Syrian opposition group, and that they had together found “great similarities” between the Syrian insurrection and the Libyan revolt that led to the killing of Moammar Gaddafi in October 2011 and the installation of a new government.

The clear implication was that Hollande should be taking the lead in organizing a Western response to the Syrian conflict just as Sarkozy took the lead in pulling together the successful NATO military intervention in Libya. Sarkozy’s prominent leadership during the Libya crisis was widely applauded in France, which is traditionally eager to show its influence on the international stage.

Widely interpreted in that light, Sarkozy’s declaration was the signal for a hail of accusations from Sarkozy’s followers.

“Francois Hollande must immediately interrupt his vacation so France can take charge of the swift international reaction called for by Nicolas Sarkozy and Abdel Basset Sayda,” former education minister Frederic Lefebvre said in a statement.

Nadine Morano, an unwavering Sarkozy supporter, added: “Hollande is on vacation and Sarkozy as well, but as always he is active in showing interest in the Syrian issue, as in 2008 for Georgia.”

In August 2008, Sarkozy broke off his holiday to wage a personal diplomatic offensive designed to halt the war between Russia and neighboring Georgia. After traveling to the area, he won a cease-fire and withdrawal agreement, which was only partly respected but which ended the fighting.

Jean-Francois Cope, secretary general of Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Movement coalition, joined the chorus Friday in an interview with Le Figaro newspaper. “I am very concerned by the inertia of French diplomacy,” he declared. “Its leader, Francois Hollande, is present everywhere at his vacation spot, but is totally absent on the international scene.”

Hollande has not responded to his critics. But his foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, expressed surprise that the former president would violate protocol and criticize his successor on a delicate foreign policy problem.

“One would expect something else from a former president,” he said, accusing Sarkozy of seeking to stir up an argument for political ends.

In fact, Sarkozy’s policy on Syria while he was still in office was nearly the same as Hollande’s. Both leaders have sought unsuccessfully to persuade Russia and China to endorse a Security Council mandate for greater international intervention to halt the bloodshed. But both have expressed unwillingness to act militarily without such a mandate.

Algerian diplomat tipped as UN envoy to #Syria

Lakhdar Brahimi has served as a UN special envoy in Iraq after the US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein [Reuters]

10/08/2012

Diplomats have said Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign affairs minister, is a strong candidate to replace Kofi Annan as the United Nations’ peace envoy to Syria.

Brahimi’s possible appointment could be announced as early as next week, but the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said late on Thursday that there could be last-minute changes if a key government has concerns about the choice.

The former Algerian foreign affairs minister has a long history as a diplomatic troubleshooter, and will if appointed face tough challenges in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is using his security forces to try to crush a 17-month-old uprising.

Brahimi, 78, has served as a UN special envoy in a series of challenging circumstances, including in Iraq after the US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, and in Afghanistan both before and after the end of Taliban rule. He was posted in South Africa as it emerged from the apartheid era.

Syria, however, may present an unusually vexing assignment, in part because international action to try to end the violence has been stymied by the disagreements between the five veto-holding permanent members of the UN Security Council.

While the security council united in April to approve the deployment of 300 monitors to Syria to observe a failed ceasefire as part of Annan’s peace plan, Russia and China vetoed three other resolutions that criticized Syria and threatened sanctions against Damascus.

‘Finger-pointing’

Annan, a former UN secretary-general and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said last week he would step down as the special envoy because he was unable to do his job with the UN Security Council hopelessly deadlocked over Syria.

In announcing his resignation, Annan explicitly blamed “finger-pointing and name-calling” at the Security Council for his decision to quit, but suggested his successor may have better luck.

In accepting Annan’s resignation, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon thanked him for having taken on “this most difficult and potentially thankless of assignments”.

A spokesman for Ban, who is expected to formally name Annan’s successor, was not immediately available for comment.

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.”

#Syria border standoff a new front in Iraq-Kurdish rift

08/08/2012

KALE, Iraq (Reuters) - Beneath the green, white and red Kurdistan flag, Kurdish Peshmerga troops keep watch from hastily built earthen barricades on soldiers of the Iraqi national army dug in less than a kilometre away along a desolate stretch of road.

The standoff, for a moment last week so close to confrontation, is the most dramatic illustration of a growing rift between Baghdad and the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan. Frictions over oil revenues are exacerbated now by conflicting views of the Syrian rebellion and by territorial disputes that pose questions about the unity of Iraq.

Over a few days last week, Baghdad and Kurdish officials separately rushed troops to the Syrian frontier, ostensibly to secure it against unrest in the neighbouring country; but the mobilization brought Iraqi Arab and Kurdish soldiers face to face along their own disputed internal border.

Washington intervened and a potential clash was avoided. But the standoff opened a new front in Baghdad’s already dangerously fragile relations with the Kurds in their push for more autonomy from central government.

“We don’t want to fight, we are both Iraqis, but if war comes, we won’t run,” said Peshmerga Ismael Murad Khady, sitting under a straw awning to ward off the sun, the battered stock of a BKC machine gun pointing not towards some foreign border but at fellow countrymen manning the Iraqi army post.

Just visible are Iraqi army trenches and tents beyond the empty stretch of road that is now a de facto no-man’s land in this small frontline. Nearby, local cars kick up dust as they take sidetracks to skirt the two posts.

Behind the Peshmerga, a title that means literally ‘those who lay down their lives’, a battery of Kurdish 122-mm howitzers directs its barrels towards the Iraqi line. They are part of the heavier armour reinforcements Kurdistan and Iraq drafted into the disputed area just a kilometre from the Syrian border.

Always a potential flashpoint, tensions between Baghdad and Kurdistan escalated after U.S. troops left in December, removing a buffer between the Iraqi Arab dominated central government and ethnic Kurds who have run their own autonomous area since 1991.

Iraq’s national army units and Peshmerga have faced off before, only to pull back before clashes as both regions tested each other’s nerves, lacking however any interest in confrontation.

Iraq’s Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki, a Shi’ite muslim, and Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani have sparred more aggressively since America’s withdrawal, as Kurdistan chaffs against central government control.

At the heart of their dispute are contested territories claimed by Iraqi Arabs and Kurds and crude reserves now attracting majors like Exxon and Chevron to Kurdistan, upsetting Baghdad, which says it controls rights to develop oil.

Though autonomous, Kurdistan still relies on Baghdad for its share of the national oil revenues.

Kurdistan is growing increasingly closer to neighbour Turkey as it talks about ways to export its own oil and not rely on Baghdad. Maliki’s government accuses Kurdistan of violating the law by signing deals with oil majors.

The rebellion against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has only widened the rift between Baghdad and Erbil.

They find themselves in opposing corners of a regional struggle. Iraq with Syrian ally Iran is resisting calls for Assad to go. Kurdistan is in talks with the Syrian Kurdish opposition and closer to Turkey, a sponsor of Assad foes.

“In addition to the local dimension to this, there is the Syrian one,” said Joost Hiltermann at International Crisis Group. “Control over the border and what crosses it, is therefore of great importance.”

RIVALS AND NEIGHBOURS

Those rivalries were clear when Iraqi troops began deploying to Syria’s borders to help control refugees and spillover, and Peshmerga soldiers refused them permission to move into what they considered a Kurdish part of their disputed areas.

After calls from Washington, Kurdish government sources say, both sides agreed on Sunday to cooperate to avoid a flareup and to withdraw troops once Syria’s crisis ends.

But the reinforcements remain in place.

It was not the first time top U.S. officials have stepped into Iraq’s political fray.

Last year, Peshmerga sent 10,000 fighters to the disputed oil city of Kirkuk, officially to protect citizens there. Their presence sparked a massive U.S. effort to calm tensions.

It took a month before the Peshmerga pulled its fighters back. Analysts said the move was in part a Kurdish test of Maliki’s resolve once the American troops had gone.

Kurdish officials say Peshmerga have long controlled the area near the Syrian border in disputed parts of Ninawa province and saw no need for Iraqi army deployment. Iraqi national border police are already working there.

Some Kurdish officials see Baghdad’s military push along the border as part of an attempted landgrab.

“This force came without coordination or agreement, so the Peshmerga decided to stop them,” said Jabbar Yawar, head of Peshmerga forces.

Baghdad countered that Iraq’s army should be in charge of the country’s borders, especially because of the turmoil in Syria, and accused Kurdish authorities of obstructing the military.

Troops were deployed just as Kurdistan announced oil deals with France’s Total and Russia’s Gazprom, the latest majors to ignore Baghdad’s warnings they risked losing contracts with central government if they agreed to develop Kurdish fields.

“The bigger issue is that this exposed how relations between the two are very difficult,” one diplomat said. “The situation in Syria has triggered long-standing differences.”

In a goodwill measure, Kurdistan on Tuesday said it restarted 100,000 barrels per day (bpd) in oil exports a bid to end a payment dispute with the central government after halting the shipments in April.

SYRIAN QUESTION

For Baghdad, the Syrian question is a sensitive one. Iraqi Shi’ite leaders worry a messy collapse of Syria will lead to the rise of a Sunni regime and incite Sunni provinces along the border who feel Maliki is edging them from power.

Baghdad rejects Sunni Arab Gulf calls for Assad to go.

Barzani’s government, in contrast, has hosted Syrian Kurdish opposition activists, actively pushing them to join forces to form a united front to prepare for any post-Assad regime.

Kurdish officials are not shy to admit a long-term goal of a fully independent Kurdistan, and they see a chance for Syrian Kurds to win some autonomy after years of oppression.

Regional power Turkey is increasingly being pulled into the fray, cultivating Iraqi Kurdistan but at the same time very wary of fuelling broader Kurdish separatism in its own southeast.

Ankara wants Kurdistan to help guarantee Syria’s Kurdish areas will not become a haven for Kurdish PKK rebels who are fighting the Ankara government for more autonomy in the southeast of Turkey.

Ankara’s relations with Baghdad have deteriorated sharply.

A visit by Turkey’s foreign minister to Kirkuk, whose control is disputed between Iraqi-Arabs and Kurds, last week prompted Baghdad to accuse Ankara of meddling. Turkish and Iraqi officials have exchanged sharp words in public.

The political posturing between Baghdad and Arbil is not lost on their new frontline in north Iraq, where Peshmerga troops fortify their trenches, run through drills and wait out an end to the impasse.

“We are just here to defend ourselves,” said Peshmerga General Sarbaz Mamund. “They wait for orders from their political leaders, and so do we. But this area is Kurdish, just ask the people here.”

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Raheem Salman in Baghdad; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Human rights at war in #Syria

Human rights organisations must start coping with reality: The victors write the laws and hold the trials.

Human rights organisations should not be so quick to put rebel militias to the same standard as a standing army [AFP]

08/08/2012

Cambridge, UK - Human rights organisations pride themselves on being impartial, on not taking sides in the conflicts they report on.

On July 31 in Aleppo, when Syrian rebels summarily executed the head of a pro-regime Shabiha militia, Ali Zeineddin al-Berri - and some of his men - there was a chorus of condemnation from Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International and the UN.

“What it looks like is execution of detainees and if that is the case, that would be a war crime,” said a senior legal advisor for HRW.

To be sure, these same organisations have assiduously investigated the atrocities of the Assad regime.

But what are we to make of the idea that the violence of the regime and that of the rebels should be measured against the same standard? Does it make sense to be impartial about a war?

Al-Berri was a regime thug who allegedly killed 15 Syrian rebels during a recent truce. Some of the worst massacres of the conflict have been carried out by Shabiha militia. Killing al-Berri may have been simple revenge; or it may have been a calculated message to encourage militiamen to stay home.

Maybe the killing was a mistake. It might convince regime dead-enders that they have no choice but to go down fighting. It certainly generated negative media coverage among the rebels’ supporters in the West.

But for the human rights community, assessing al-Berri’s killing is a legal not a strategic matter. Note the language used by HRW’s lawyer: the Syrian rebels had unlawfully killed a “detainee”.

The Syrian rebels are a collection of different groups, with no clear political direction or command structure. They are fighting a desperate war against a regime that will bomb and massacre its own people to stay in power, and which would prefer to see Syria destroyed than surrender.

The Syrian rebels actually doing the fighting mostly lack training, organisation, and leadership. Needless to say, they have not prioritised hiring lawyers, writing legal codes, and setting up a judiciary. It is unlikely the Syrian opposition has a consistent or enforceable “policy” on “detainees”, whatever statements its campaign spokesmen outside Syria may make.

Yet HRW talks as if the rebels were just like a state. It seeks to hold them to the same standards with respect to discriminating between combatants and civilians, treatment of prisoners and so on.

What bias in human rights talk is revealed in this attempt at impartiality?

Firstly, the laws of war were written by states. There is a systematic bias favouring the official, uniformed armed forces of states. From the point of view of the state, a rebel is at best an “unlawful combatant” or a criminal, at worst a traitor or even a barbarian.

According to the Geneva Conventions, the definition of a legal combatant is one who carries weapons openly and ideally wears a uniform or distinguishing mark.

When rebels are strong and in control of territory, they can carry weapons openly. To do so in other situations is to surrender one of their few advantages. Had the Free Syrian Army carried weapons openly and worn uniforms when they infiltrated into Damascus and Aleppo, the regime would already be victorious.

From the point of view of these great standards of civilisation - the Geneva Conventions - a Syrian soldier fighting rebels bearing arms is perfectly legal. But the rebels who kill regime officials in their homes are war criminals.

How far would the rebellion against Assad have gotten if every rebel had to identify himself by openly carrying arms, engaging only in “fair fights” with the Syrian Armed Forces?

The problems with human rights talk go deeper.

NATO deploys lawyers en masse and its air forces are meticulous and expert in their targeting. But it could not satisfy HRW in the Libyan campaign. In May, HRW released a report asking NATO to account for 72 “civilian” casualties caused by air strikes. (Even if HRW is entirely correct, 72 dead civilians is a remarkably low price to pay for NATO’s contribution to unseating Gaddafi.)

The definition of a civilian may seem straightforward. In fact, it is a very difficult matter, even in wars between states. Are arms workers civilians? Are soldiers not on duty civilians? Are unwilling conscripts civilians or soldiers? The Geneva Conventions evade the matter. They essentially say that a civilian is anyone who is not a legal combatant, that is, someone who is not carrying arms openly.

In war, the question of carrying weapons openly is a tactical issue and camouflage is a principal military art. Under sustained air attack, Gaddafi’s military did not seek to advertise its “distinguishing marks” as the uniformed armed force of a sovereign state. After the first few days, for example, Libyan commanders did not use military radios or military vehicles. To do so was to invite death from the air from their enemies. After the war, HRW investigators found no evidence of military equipment at bombed out buildings that NATO said were Libyan command and control facilities. They naively assumed in such cases that civilians had been killed.

HRW now demand NATO investigate and account for these deaths. The idea here is that, ideally speaking, every death in war can be clearly adjudicated in legal terms. But given the ambiguity in the core distinction between civilian and combatant how could this ever be so?

The fantasy that matters of right and wrong in war are subject to legal determination creates a bogus position of moral superiority. It is a position occupied by those who believe human rights talk elevates them above the politics of war. They presume an imaginary world in which all war crimes will be investigated and punished, irrespective of who committed them.

Consider in this vein UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s remark that “Aleppo… is the epicentre of a vicious battle between the Syrian government and those who wish to replace it. The acts of brutality that are being reported may constitute crimes against humanity or war crimes. Such acts must be investigated and the perpetrators held to account.”

By reference to the notion of war crimes, Ban Ki-moon creates a moral equivalence between the murderous regime of Assad and those who are fighting against the odds to defeat him. Whatever the failings of the rebels, and they are many, there is no such equivalence for any right thinking person.

Ban Ki-moon’s comment also implies there will be some grand trial where good and bad, right and wrong, legal and illegal all will be decided.

In the real world, we know that the powerful write the laws and the victors hold the trials.

While HRW and Amnesty issue reports, and UN officials make grand statements, no US or UK official will ever be tried for war crimes in Iraq or for the on-going torture and imprisonment of terrorist suspects.

Human rights talk is a way of evading having to take sides in war and of pretending to be above war. But the only reason we have the UN and the human rights community is because of the victory of the Allies in World War II and of the West in the Cold War.

Perhaps it is time for human rights organisations to dispense with the lawyers and start studying politics and the paradoxes of war.

Tarak Barkawi is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics, New School for Social Research.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.