01/15/2013 - #Syria - Al Zabadani - Heavy shelling on the city by Assad
#Syria From People of Zabadany regarding the UN Observers
We, the residents of the city of Zabadany, draw your attention to the fact that the international delegation of UN observers visited the city yesterday, Monday, April 23, and met with opposition activists. The meeting lasted 10 minutes.
Upon their arrival, only three of the monitors emerged from the UN vehicle: the head of the mission, an Indian; a Brazilian monitor; and a third, a Moroccan, Col. Ahmad Hamishi. The rest of the observers remained in the vehicle.
When we requested that Col. Hamishi receive the lists of detainees, some of whom had been detained for 8 months, and lists of local martyrs and their causes of death, he refused, explaining that it was not part of his mission.
After that, we asked him to take possession of our activists’ Google Earth satellite images of the map of Zabadany. The images show clearly where heavy military equipment is stationed in the city, and where tanks and artillery equipment are deployed; this equipment has a range of approximately 45 kilometers. Col. Hamishi refused to accept the images, providing no reason for his refusal.
When we informed him that we had risked our lives to meet him, and were ready to accompany him so that he could see with his own eyes the widespread military checkpoints, he refused, saying he did not have the time.
As he walked to his car to leave, after fewer than 10 minutes with us, one of our activists pointed to a house in which a wall had been destroyed during Assad forces’ bombing. Col. Hamishi informed us that he did not believe that the damage was the effect of shelling, and that his position was justified by the fact that the house had not completely burned down.
When the mother of a missing person approached to request that he return her son, he refused to listen to her, and informed her that he did not know Arabic.
After that, the UN observers’ delegation met with a regime delegation made up of Intelligence agents and shabiha. The regime representatives informed the UN observers that there was no military or tank deployment in the city - even though they would have had to pass through checkpoints to reach the area where the opposition activists were gathered.
It is important to note that the Syrian Intelligence agents listed the names of the activists who met with the UN delegation, and listed those activists as armed and dangerous criminals who must be prosecuted and executed.
Activists Report Shelling in #Syria’n City of Homs
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Published: April 14, 2012
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Activists said on Saturday that two neighborhoods in the Syrian city of Homs were shelled overnight, as the struggled to iron out the details about the rapid deployment of international observers.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were no immediate reports of casualties from the shelling in Homs. The report came after Syrians by the thousands marched through the streets of cities and towns across the country on Friday, testing the tenuous cease-fire.
There were scattered reports of deaths and arrests linked to the demonstrations, which had been dubbed “A Revolution for All Syrians” by local organizers nationwide.
Participants admitted to feeling somewhat tentative, sticking to back streets to avoid the security forces, snipers and tanks that were used to suppress the peaceful protest movement and that remained deployed around many central squares and major crossroads.
But the marches were big and exuberant enough to remind demonstrators of the mass rallies that started in March 2011 to demand the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.
“We remembered the old days when we would protest in large numbers, when the whole city would protest,” said Fares, an activist in Zabadani, near Damascus, reached via Skype.
In Zabadani, as in many places, residents described a heavy police presence around mosques — the weekly Friday Prayer sermons have provided the kickoff for mass demonstrations since the beginning. “We didn’t gather in one point, we kept moving,” Fares said, with a lookout posted near security headquarters to raise the alarm when patrol vehicles moved onto the streets. “We wanted to show the world that we are adhering to our demands.” He asked to be identified by only his first name to avoid government reprisals.
A video uploaded onto You Tube said to have been filmed in downtown Hama showed an extensive mob clapping their hands overhead in unison while chanting “Oh God, let our victory be fast!” Another from Homs was more pointed with the crowd yelling “We want your head, Bashar!” among other slogans. Women and children appeared in some videos — they had all but disappeared under the onslaught that has left at least 9,000 dead by the United Nations’ count.
’s official news media reported mass demonstrations across the country in support of Mr. Assad.
The security forces were aggressive in some places, passive in others, a patchwork difficult to gauge from afar, as were the demonstrations themselves. Multiple checkpoints around Damascus were used to prevent public transportation from entering the downtown area, and security vehicles with Kalashnikov barrels protruding from windows slowly circulated in many areas.
Security officers in one such vehicle shouted at a group of worshipers emerging from a mosque to hurry home. In the suburb of Maadamiah, as the funeral of a protester shot dead on Thursday began to turn into a mass protest, security forces blocked the route to the cemetery and shot toward protesters to disperse them, said Usama, an activist reached by telephone, who also used one name for safety reasons.
Activists around the country reported that some demonstrators had been tear-gassed and others had been beaten, and there were a few reports of renewed shelling. But the violence was far less than in recent months, when scores were reported killed daily under the pounding of heavy weaponry.
Both the lack of international news media representatives circulating across the country and the presence of security forces on the streets contradicted the six-point peace plan negotiated by Kofi Annan, the special envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported eight people killed after the demonstrations started. In addition, a lieutenant was killed and 24 other officers and a few civilians were wounded when a roadside bomb destroyed a bus in Aleppo, according to state-run news media. It also accused “armed terrorist groups” — its shorthand for all opposition — with the assassination of a local Baath Party official near the southern town of Dara’a and the shooting death of a brigadier general overnight near Damascus.
Given that all 15 members of the United Nations Security Council had endorsed Mr. Annan’s six-point plan, including the deployment of United Nations monitors, the resolution authorizing the mission had been expected to pass easily.
But , the Assad government’s most important defender, objected to an operative paragraph that would give the monitors a free hand in conducting their work, granting them abilities like unhindered access to any place in the country and the right to interview anyone without government interference, according to Security Council diplomats. They also disagreed with language about human rights.
Overall, the Russians proposed a shortened resolution that just placed the initial monitors on the ground. But other, mostly Western nations thought sending them without delineating specific authority was a mistake, one diplomat said.
Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador, told reporters outside the Security Council that the American-European version still needed a lot of work, but he remained hopeful about a rapid vote. Pending consultations with Moscow overnight, it was unclear how quickly the differences could be resolved. Negotiations going paragraph by paragraph started Friday afternoon and no vote was expected until at least Saturday, diplomats said.
An advance team of up to 30 observers, drawn from various United Nations or observer missions in the region, was due to be sent as soon as the Security Council approved it, said Ahmad Fawzi, Mr. Annan’s spokesman. The full mission would reach 250 observers he said, and as is common on such missions, Syria would have ultimate approval over the nationalities involved.
Mr. Fawzi described the cease-fire as “relatively respected.”
Valerie Amos, the top United Nations official on humanitarian aid, said at least one million people were in need of such help in Syria — the rapid provision of that is also part of the peace plan.
But foreign leaders continued to express profound doubts about how long it might hold. In Paris, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France told a television interviewer, “I do not believe in Bashar al-Assad’s sincerity, nor, unfortunately, in the cease-fire.”
Mr. Sarkozy, who is fighting for a second term in elections starting later this month, said the deployment of United Nations observers was important “so that at the very least we know what is happening,” and he urged the creation of humanitarian corridors to enable “those unfortunates who are being massacred by a dictator” to flee.
Hala Droubi contributed reporting from Beirut, Alan Cowell from London, and an employee from The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.
The Syrian Civil War: Photographs by Alessio Romenzi #Syria
View pictures here
The forces of President Bashar Assad have been relentless. They have continued to pound the predominantly Sunni enclave of Bab Amr in the city of Homs. They have struck at the rebellious town of Zabadani near the Lebanese border. Damascus is believed to be planting landmines near the Lebanese and Turkish borders even as the regime masses more troops nearby to deal with insurrectionists in the Idlib region in the northwest of the country. Meanwhile, in al-Qsair, a town south of Homs, government marksmen continued to take their toll. Says Alessio Romenzi, a photographer on assignment in the area for TIME: “The snipers do not sleep.”
Romenzi continues to document the work of the Free Syrian Army, a loose franchise of militias who are trying to coordinate their disparate campaigns against the Bashar government. Slowly, they are gathering weapons—though the increased demand for guns has kicked up the prices of Kalashnikovs. TIME’s Rania Abouzeid spent a day with FSA sympathizers trying to manufacture improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to use against Damascus’ forces. Other FSA cells have already started using their own strung together versions of IEDs. The targets may include military trucks which will then be used to block roads to impede government supply lines. But most of all, they hope the IEDs will stop Assad’s tanks, which have been used not only to blast rebel emplacements but also reportedly to crush the regime’s opponents—physically. More photographs from Syria by Alessio Romenzi can be seen here. Read more about the situation in Syria in the magazine: Syria’s Clashing Armies
No shortage of bravery among Syrian rebels, but supplies of hope are beginning to dwindle #Syria
Video report here
Posted by John Ray. 14 February, 2012
Middle East Correspondent John Ray has just returned from Syria where he found rebels trapped under an assault from government forces.
The valley in which Zabadani sits is one great natural beauty. But as a battle ground, it’s a death trap.
Its steep sides are surrounded by snow topped mountains, beneath which President Assad’s army pursues and far out numbers rebel fighters who have nowhere to run.
For a few heady weeks, the town was controlled by the Free Syrian Army, their mission they said to protect local people from the brutality of the regime.
Now forces loyal to the government are back; after many days of shelling that has claimed, locals told us, around thirty lives, they have re-occupied the town and are pushing out into the countryside.
We saw the rebels hiding in apple orchards and crouching behind boulders just below the snow line. They are lightly armed, few in number, and more than a little nervous.
There is no obvious escape route. They are trapped to their rear by the border with Lebanon that is controlled by Hezbollah, a Shia militant group funded and sympathetic to Bashar Al Assad.
It would be hard to smuggle weapons in. What routes that are open take in treacherous mountain paths. Walky-talky radios and some medical supplies seem to be most the rebels can hope for.
But even if their arsenal of AK47s could be augmented, the men we saw need training, direction and leadership.
There’s no shortage of bravery among the rebels. But supplies of hope are beginning to dwindle.
#Syria eases bombardment of Homs
Syrian security forces have eased their week-long bombardment of the central city of Homs and let a few families leave opposition districts while thousands of protesters crowded the streets overnight, activists say. Heavy shelling in Homs has killed hundreds in the last week as an 11-month uprising rages nationwide against the rule of the minority Alawite Shia president, Bashar al-Assad. “Around 15 families were allowed to leave from Baba Amr and Inshaat,” the opposition campaigner Mohammad al-Hassan told Reuters by telephone from Homs. He said security forces had allowed the Sunni Muslim families out during the lull, but apart from the mass protests people were not venturing out of their homes. “Heavy artillery has given way to sporadic anti-aircraft gunfire overnight, and rumours are being circulated by the regime that it is OK to go out in the streets today, but no one is doing that because no one believes them,” he said. Electricity and telephone lines were working in several districts of Homs after being cut off more than two weeks ago. YouTube footage showed a crowd of several thousand people rallying in the Deir Baalba district, where a loyalist forces’ roadblock was dismantled after it came under repeated attack by the rebel Free Syrian Army. Youths with their arms around each others’ shoulders danced and waved the green and white flags of the republic overthrown by Assad’s Ba’ath party in a 1963 coup. “God damn your soul, to hell with you Bashar. Our martyrs are going to heaven, Hafez and Bashar,” they chanted, referring to the president and his father. The lull came a day after a truce was struck between loyalist forces and rebels in the town of Zabadani, near Damascus, after a week of shelling by Assad’s troops. Opposition sources say no similar negotiations have taken place in Homs. Ministers from the Arab League, which suspended Syria in response to the crackdown, will meet in Cairo on Sunday to discuss forming a joint UN-Arab monitoring team in place of an Arab League observer mission that was suspended last month. The proposal is to be discussed in a meeting in Cairo by a “Syria Group” made up of seven member states led by Qatar, according to the officials. The group would make recommendations to an Arab League foreign ministers’ meeting scheduled for later on Sunday in the Egyptian capital. Last month, the League pulled out its observer mission to Syria after it came under heavy criticism for failing to stop the bloodshed engulfing the country. The Syrians would be unlikely to accept a new observer team. Assad’s regime has pursued a harsh crackdown against the uprising since it began 11 months ago. The UN estimates that 5,400 people have been killed since March, but that figure is from January, when the world body stopped counting because the chaos in Syria had made it all but impossible to check the figures. Hundreds are reported to have been killed since. The League officials said the Syria Group would also call on Syrian opposition groups to close ranks and unite under one umbrella, a move that they said would place more pressure on the Assad regime. The Syria Group meeting would be preceded by talks in Cairo by the foreign ministers of the Gulf Co-operation Council, a regional grouping that brings together Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain. The six nations, particularly Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have been campaigning for a tougher stand against Assad’s regime and may in their Cairo meeting offer formal recognition of Syria’s National Syrian Council, the largest of Syria’s opposition groups. Russia and China last weekend vetoed a western and Arab resolution at the UN that would have pressured Assad to step down. The draft resolution demands that Assad halt the crackdown and implement an Arab League peace plan that calls for him to hand over power to his vice-president and allow creation of a unity government to clear the way for elections. The veto prompted western and Arab countries to consider forming a coalition to help Syria’s opposition, though so far there is no sign they intend to give direct aid to the Free Syrian Army.
A wounded Syrian rebel in Homs. Photograph: AP
Break the Stalemate! A Blueprint For a Military Intervention in #Syria
Michael Weiss 09/02/12
This is a contribution to ‘What Should the United States Do About Syria?: A TNR Symposium.’ In the past several weeks, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other independent rebel brigades have made great strides: They have “liberated” key cities such as Zabadani, 20 miles outside of Damascus; set up checkpoints in restive areas throughout the country; and even begun to seize a few tanks and armored vehicles. For a network of ragtag militias, armed mainly with AK-47s and RPGs that defecting soldiers have given or sold them, the rebels have impressively taken the fight right up to Bashar al-Assad’s doorstep. But the rebels can only go so far. “If no one helps us, we can hit the regime painfully but we can’t topple it, not [when it has] jets and tanks,” Alaa al-Sheikh, the spokesman for the Khaled Bin Waleed Brigade in Rastan, told me. This is a fair precis of the current situation in the nearly year-long Syrian uprising, in which the Assad regime has killed 7,000 people and dispossessed and imprisoned tens of thousands more. The rebels are waging a guerrilla war of attrition designed to exhaust Assad’s army and security forces rather than defeat them: They hope that if and when external help comes, they can make quick work of whatever regime elements remain. In that way, it would be a mistake to describe the crisis in Syria simply as a humanitarian catastrophe. It is also a military stalemate—one that the West can decisively break in favor of anti-Assad forces by offering them military assistance. Going to war is a dangerous and risky business, and critics of Western intervention in Syria have understandably focused on three main hazards: the proliferation of jihadist groups, regional destabilization, and the rise of sectarianism (particularly between the Sunni majority and the Christian and Alawite minorities). But the worst fears of what might happen following an intervention have already come to pass and only threaten to grow worse with continued inaction. For example, the regional destabilization has already begun: There are currently around 10,000 Syrian refugees living in tents, in the dead of winter, on the Turkish side of the Syrian-Turkish border—the victims of a regime massacre perpetrated last June in Jisr al-Shughour, a rustic city in the northwest province of Idleb. Rumors of abuse and mistreatment in these refugee camps at the hands of Turkish authorities are rampant. Meanwhile, thousands more have fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Libya to escape subsequent Assadist atrocities, while Internally Displaced Persons within Syria now likely number in the hundreds of thousands. The sectarianism that people fear also already exists, thanks to a deliberate strategy of divide and rule which has been pursued by the regime since the start of the uprising. The Syrian security forces and their shabbiha (“ghosts”) mercenaries, which are overwhelmingly manned by Alawites, have been waging a brutal campaign of mass murder in the country, conducting the kind of homicidal house-to-house raids that Muammar Gaddafi only threatened to do in Libya. In some areas, Sunnis have been targeted not as demonstrators but as Sunnis. In the coastal city of Latakia, where Assad’s father is buried and where the regime’s loyalist hardcore may relocate if Damascus falls, protestors have been herded into detention facilities and sports stadiums, or stuffed into shipping containers for transfer via the Mediterranean to other prison sites. In August, the Syrian Navy bombarded the coastal port city of Latakia, displacing countless civilians as well as 5,000 Palestinians who went “missing” from a refugee camp—an event which sent UNRWA into a temporary panic. Furthermore, activists say that the regime has been arming predominantly Alawite villages for a future sectarian confrontation that might well rival the carnage of Rwanda. Amer al-Sadeq, a member of the Syrian Revolution General Union, told me last night that what transpired in Jisr al-Shughour amounted to a policy of ethnic cleansing: “After the massacre took place, we know that many Alawites from the neighboring village of Shtabraq came to occupy the homes of the Sunnis who had fled.” Amer says he fears that rebels’ response, which has so far been limited to attacking the Syrian Army and security forces, will eventually include reprisal incursions into pro-Assad Alawite villages. “If there is external intervention that allows the army defectors to have the upper hand very quickly, I believe this will be the safest scenario to protect the lives of all Syrian people from any unjustified killings.” Refraining from picking a side in the Syrian conflict is neither a morally, nor a strategically, palatable option. It’s past time that we consider how we implement an intervention on the side of the opposition, which also needs Western help in coalescing around a united strategy for toppling the Assad regime. In December, I published a blueprint to that effect: It included both a no-fly zone and the creation of a safe area in Jisr al-Shughour. Strategically, this is the most advantageous location on which to focus a military intervention. Sandwiched between two mountain ranges, and currently in rebel hands, the city is hard to get to by land and it’s close enough to Turkey that a corridor of aid, backed by an accompaniment of ground troops, would therefore be easy enough to establish. Moreover, anti-Assad sentiment is very high in this area for reasons explained above. A no-fly zone would be necessary to even the military odds. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the regime has in fact used its aircraft against both protestors and armed rebels. In Idleb province, for instance, it deployed helicopter gunships, according to eyewitnesses cited in the UN Human Rights Council’s September report on Syria. Grassroots activists and rebels I’ve spoken to more recently also say the regime is flying military planes at low-altitudes, mostly at night, to perform reconnaissance, transport personnel, and attack insurgent strongholds; these claims are substantiated by numerous videos from Homs and elsewhere that have been posted to YouTube. NATO, or a coalition of U.S., British and French forces, should take the lead in knocking out the regime’s air defense systems and preventing the Syrian Air Force from continuing to conduct its own aerial campaign. Turkey currently houses a NATO air base at Incirlik and an air station at Izmir. Moreover, the U.S. Sixth Fleet stationed in Naples maintains 175 of its own additional aircraft. This type of plan could decisively tip the scales in Syria. A fortified safe zone would both offer refuge to the besieged civilian population as well as provide a much-needed base of operations and communications hub for the Syrian opposition—in effect, carve out a Levantine Benghazi. As it stands, the opposition consists of various grassroots coordination committees, independent rebel brigades staffed mainly by armed civilians (“farmers and workers,” as CBS’ Clarissa Ward described one unit she encountered), and the more media-touted Free Syrian Army of military defectors, whose senior commanders are currently headquartered in Antakya, Turkey, making them incapable of planning or ordering operations on the ground in Syria. (Rebels use the FSA designation very loosely, though there is no top-down chain of command, as such; regional commanders make their own decisions vis-a-vis tactics and strategy.) Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council (SNC), which draws from both exiles and domestic activists, seeks international recognition as a government-in-exile, but it is currently based in Istanbul, with regional offices in Paris. Out of step with the Syrian “street,” plagued by controversy, and dominated by a disproportionately high number of Islamists in its senior echelons (thanks to Turkish government oversight), the SNC has so far failed to persuade Syria’s indispensable minority population—particularly the Kurds—that a post-Assad state will be an inclusive and fairly representative democracy. Part of the problem has been conducting negotiations overseas at various conferences and foreign ministries. But after 11 months of division and factionalism, can the opposition really afford to go without an in-country headquarters from which to close ranks and develop a coherent strategy? The psychological effect of intervention would also be immensely helpful. Rebels who maintain constant contact with members of the regular army insist there would be more defections from Assad’s rank-and-file but for the regime’s vows to punish soldiers’ families. Damascus doesn’t trust its own troops to let them witness the protest movement first-hand, which is why 75 percent of the army is confined to barracks. An estimated two-thirds of army reservists have failed to report for call-up duty, leaving a military of 550,000 with a fighting capability of just 300,000. Many army battalions, the rebels say, are waiting for an intervention to defect en masse. If we don’t act, we are leaving Syria’s fate to a more lethal coalition of the willing that is already intervening in Syria’s internal affairs: Iran and Hezbollah. According to one of Syria’s highest-level political defectors—Mahmoud Haj Hamad, the former head financial auditor at the Syrian Defense Ministry—the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah have dispatched thousands of “military consultants” into Syria to enlist as snipers with the regime’s military intelligence units. Hamad told the Times of London that a slush fund has been created to finance these imported mercenaries, and is regularly replenished by Iran. Rebels say they’ve caught and killed Hezbollah agents trying to remove weapons from storehouses in Zabadani. Hezbollah has also been attacking Syrian rebels in retaliation for the capture of seven Iranian nationals late last month. Tehran insists that these men are all “engineers” who were “kidnapped” on their way to work at a power plant; the FSA insists that five of them are in fact IRGC agents. There have also been reports of Iran smuggling weapons into Syria via civilian airplanes. Assad may be the dimmest of his father’s children but he knows how to wreck a country in spectacular fashion. Reprisal killings and social fragmentation will increase the longer he clings to power, and there’s an excellent chance that the current humanitarian crisis will escalate into a full-blown catastrophe. “Learn to predict a fire with unerring precision,” wrote Czeslaw Milosz. “Then burn the house down to fulfill the prediction.” Analysts who warn of the perils of intervention now risk inviting one in the future, and at much greater expense than they realize.
