The Associated Press reports: Bashar Assad attended the swearing-in of his new defense minister Thursday, according to footage shown on Syrian state TV, the first sign of the president since an audacious rebel attack the day before struck at the heart of his regime and killed three senior officials.

Government forces struck back against rebels with attack helicopters and shelling in a fifth straight day of clashes in Damascus. The inability of the military to control the clashes in the capital against lightly armed rebel forces and the deadly bombing of a high-level security meeting a day earlier made Assad’s hold on power look increasingly tenuous.

The whereabouts of Assad, his wife and their three young children have been a mystery since the attack that killed his brother-in-law and his defense minister. Assad does not appear in public frequently, and his absence was notable following such a serious blow his inner circle.

The state TV announcement appeared aimed at sending the message that Assad is alive and well. It said Assad, dressed in a blue suit and tie, wished the new defense minister good luck but it did not say where the swearing-in took place.

Reuters reports: Mystery surrounded the whereabouts of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday, a day after a bomber killed and wounded his security chiefs and rebels closed in on the centre of Damascus, vowing to “liberate” the capital.

The Syrian leader made no public appearance and no statement after a bomber killed his powerful brother-in-law, his defense minister and a top general.

By the early hours of Thursday, residents had reported no let-up in the heaviest fighting to hit the capital in a 16-month revolt against Assad’s rule.

The fighting came within sight of the presidential palace, near the security headquarters where the bomber struck a crisis meeting of defense and security chiefs.

The New York Times reports: With the growing conviction that the Assad family’s 42-year grip on power in Syria is coming to an end, Obama administration officials worked on contingency plans Wednesday for a collapse of the Syrian government, focusing particularly on the chemical weapons that Syria is thought to possess and that President Bashir al-Assad could try to use on opposition forces and civilians.

Pentagon officials were in talks with Israeli defense officials about whether Israel might move to destroy Syrian weapons facilities, two administration official said. The administration is not advocating such an attack, the American officials said, because of the risk that it would give Mr. Assad an opportunity to rally support against Israeli interference.

President Obama’s national security adviser, Thomas Donilon, was in Israel over the weekend and discussed the Syrian crisis with officials there, a White House official said.

Mr. Obama called President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Wednesday and urged him again to allow Mr. Assad to be pushed from power. Russia, so far, has refused. A White House statement said that Mr. Putin and Mr. Obama “noted the growing violence in Syria and agreed on the need to support a political transition as soon as possible that achieves our shared goal of ending the violence and avoiding a further deterioration of the situation.”

The statement pointedly noted the “differences our governments have had on Syria,” but said the two leaders “agreed to have their teams continue to work toward a solution.”

American diplomatic and military officials said the bombing in Damascus on Wednesday that killed several of Mr. Assad’s closest advisers was a turning point in the conflict. “Assad is a spent force in terms of history,” Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, told reporters. “He will not be a part of Syria’s future.”

Alluding to Russia’s position, Mr. Carney said the argument that Mr. Assad’s ouster would result in more violence was refuted by the bombing, and that Mr. Assad’s continued rule “will result in greater violence,” not less.

The Washington Post reports from Yabrud: The flag of the revolution flies high above this prosperous town in southwestern Syria. Each week, thousands take to the streets to demonstrate peacefully. Rebels roam freely — but without weapons.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has lost control of Yabrud. But unlike Homs, Hama and countless other places where pro-Assad forces have unleashed furious assaults to keep their grip amid a 16-month-long rebellion, Yabrud appears to have been given up to the rebels. Here, at least for the time being, the revolution has been won. And it was won without a fight.

Aside from a brief foray into town in late December, the army has yet to attempt to occupy Yabrud. “They came here for a few days, but then they simply left. There was no significant battle,” said Abu Mohammed, an anti-government activist who asked that his full name not be used.

The result is an oasis of calm amid a conflict that the International Committee of the Red Cross formally declared a civil war on Sunday, one that has claimed at least 14,000 lives. It is a place that speaks to the limits of Assad’s power to control this nationwide rebellion, as well as the hopes of activists who believe the uprising can achieve its goals without dragging the country even deeper into strife.

Yabrud’s idyllic farms and bustling urban life stand in stark contrast to much of the rest of the country, where war has become a daily reality. Sixty miles to the north, the city of Homs has been the site of some of the fiercest fighting, leaving entire neighborhoods destroyed by tank and artillery fire. The Damascus suburb of Douma, 30 miles to the south, has become a flash point in the battle to control the capital.

In areas that fall under the rebels’ sway, the pattern of pro-Assad forces has been to storm the town, expel anti-government fighters and go door to door, taking revenge. But not in Yabrud — at least not yet.

“It is simple,” said a local rebel commander, a defected artillery lieutenant from the Syrian army. “The army is fighting in Homs and in Damascus. They do not have the strength to also fight in Yabrud.”

The rebels don’t want a fight here, either, and have gone to great lengths to avoid one.

Abu Mohammed, the activist, credits Yabrud’s calm to a more restrained approach to revolution than that displayed by other Syrian cities. When a pro-government militia known as the shabiha has periodically caused trouble in Yabrud, the response has been deliberately muted.

“They broke into many houses, my father’s house, stealing and breaking things. We did not react strongly,” he said. “We did not want to bring the war here.”

When a prominent Yabrud-based activist was arrested two months ago, the rebel Free Syrian Army, known as the FSA, responded by kidnapping a general’s son and quietly negotiated a prisoner exchange.

FSA forces do not openly carry weapons within Yabrud, only at the rebel checkpoints that ring the town. “We didn’t want to upset the people in the town, make them afraid,” Abu Mohammed said. “Life here in Yabrud is normal.”

Yabrud is a wealthy town. Most families have at least one member working abroad in the Persian Gulf, often as an engineer. Porsches and Mercedeses roll through the streets. Many citizens regularly travel to Damascus for school or business.

As a result, activists and rebel army members here are cautious. Many wear masks. Others ask that their faces not be shown in photographs. “We have had less destruction here because we have been more discreet,” Abu Mohammed said. “For instance, there is still a government police station here. All of our civil records are kept there. We don’t bother them, and they don’t bother us.”

But there is nothing discreet about the 40-foot revolutionary flag flying from a cellphone tower atop a hill above town, or the weekly demonstrations on Fridays that draw thousands. Intricate revolutionary artwork covers the courtyard walls of most public buildings, and a sculpture of the FSA emblem sits on a pedestal in the town center. [Continue reading…]

Simon Assaf speaking at Marxism 2012, hosted by the Socialist Workers Party in London earlier this month: Syria has been under emergency law since 1963 — three months before I was born… But Syrian society before that was extraordinarily vibrant: politically — you talk about the development of Arab nationalism, communist ideas, all these kinds of things, you’re looking to Syria — this is where it came from [in the Arab world]. Understand that Syria was so important for that and you begin to see this re-develop.

So this idea that without Bashar al Assad or without the West or without someone else, Syria will simply degenerate into a sectarian war because really, at the end of the day, the ordinary people of Syria and Lebanon, all they think about — they wake up in the morning, they have their eggs, eat their hummus, and then they go kill their neighbor.

It doesn’t actually work that way. Sectarianism is something that comes from the outside to divide us, and you really see the way in which they are also using sectarianism inside the revolution itself.

At the moment we are in an extraordinarily difficult situation. So in places like Homs, in Idlib, in Hama, and Dara and all these places are under extraordinary levels of bombardment.

Yesterday[, July 4, the Syrian army] retook one of the suburbs in Damascus. The daily toll of deaths is really quite horrific. A hundred, a hundred and fifty people dying every day. They are talking of about 65,000 people who are missing, presumed dead — who knows. There’s 200,000 people who are being held hostage by the regime, rounded up and so on, and an unknown number of soldiers who have been executed for refusing to fire on the demonstrations.

And so we are, if you like, in a very difficult situation. You can see the dangers that are now inside of Syria. The dangers are this: If the revolution does not succeed relatively soon then you can see that point at which outside forces begin to have bigger influence.

But at the moment the revolution feels like it is moving forward. So you think about what’s happening around Idlib, around the north, around Homs and all these areas, there is a huge rebel offensive. Town after town is now falling in front of them.

The state is retreating more and more into the urban areas which they are finding extraordinarily difficult to control.

I got a message from a friend of a friend in Damascus which said: Damascus is full of the Free Syrian Army. That is, young demonstrators who have now joined the armed rebels. All we need is a few more weapons and it will be over.

You really get that sense, and their was a tweet this morning [July 5] from one of the few journalists who is embedded with the rebels who said they had just driven from Homs to Damascus and not seen one soldier along the route.

And you really feel that if the end is going to come, it’s going to come extraordinarily quickly. And that’s what we hope is going to happen.

However, if this fails. If it goes longer then you can see the dangers, the real dangers emerging inside of it. The West, the outside forces will take more control and that sectarian frustration starting to develop. There is always the danger there and its always a danger that we have to be weary of…

This is a real revolution. It’s not as simple as Egypt — I don’t think Egypt is that simple to be honest with you anyway. It’s not as simple as Egypt or Tunisia, but it is a real revolution.

We as revolutionaries have a duty to engage with those inside the revolution to talk about the dangers of foreign intervention — why we don’t call for it — and all these kinds of things. But also to talk about a strategy of how to win the revolution.

You begin to see the development of strikes, popular strikes, mass demonstrations, mutinies and so on and actually see, this is the way forward. To do this, we have to go much much further than simply see it as replacing one group at the top with another group at the top, and actually unleashing the full potential of the revolution means unleashing a struggle beyond simply the change of the people at the top — a fundamental change inside of Syrian society as well.

EAWorldView: EA’s in-depth assessment of the Free Syrian Army, posted last Wednesday, assessed that the regime is now weak enough that it is vulnerable to a sudden takeover of the capital, for example through a series of surprise insurgent attacks. So is this the Battle for Damascus?

Probably not, at least not yet. What we are not seeing is heavy casualties on either side. We are not seeing large swings in control territory. We are not seeing extremely heavy firefights. This does not look like an epic battle to the finish.

What we are seeing are widespread skirmishes that have shut down most of the capital.The Guardian, asking the same question as us, has spoken to two activists. One man, a resident of Barzeh, says:

These clashes in the capital mark a new stage in the Syrian revolution. It is close now.

The regime has tried hard in the last year and half to make Damascus [isolated] from what’s going on outside – to make Damascus quiet. They succeeded in the past, but yesterday there was shelling here, and [today] there was shelling on al-Qaboon and shelling on the south. Suddenly Damascus is in the centre of the action.

Inside Barzeh there is no sign of government presence. I think they don’t dare to fight here. They are stuck in Midan and Qaboon. They are too busy to come here. They used to storm my neighbourhood three times a week

Another man, reportedly the head of the Revolution Leadership Council in Damascus, shares our assessment that, while important, these fights will not likely result in the fall of Damascus. But, he adds, the fighting could spread.

Donatella Rovera, Senior Crisis Response Adviser for Syria Amnesty International, discusses the situation on the ground in Syria.

According to a groundbreaking new scientific study released Tuesday by Harvard University, the U.S. population could very well have discovered a new and unprecedented level of not caring about Syria. “Our research indicates that Americans may have stumbled upon an extreme degree of ignorance and disregard for the plight of dying Syrians that we never before thought humanly possible,” said lead researcher Dr. Henry Mason, noting that recent images of the Syrian government openly killing citizens in the nation’s streets appeared to have no measurable effect on American psyches. “At some point—possibly after the mass murder of more than 100 men, women, and children in Houla, or when photos of mass graves began appearing across the Internet—the U.S. citizenry must have found previously untapped reserves of callousness, indifference, and self-absorption that were simply beyond the capacity of our research tools to quantify.” Mason confirmed that scientists expect apathy levels to rise sharply in further trial studies, primarily because 95 percent of Americans still don’t know the president of Syria’s name. (Onion)

BBC News reports: Armoured personnel carriers have been deployed in areas of Damascus, Syrian activists say, with clashes spreading on a second day of fighting.

The activists said troops backed by armoured vehicles had entered the Midan district to try to dislodge rebels.

Witnesses say this appears to be the biggest military deployment in the capital in the 16-month uprising.

Meanwhile, Russia said Western attempts to get Moscow to discuss sanctions contained “elements of blackmail”.

The two days of clashes appeared to be the heaviest fighting in Damascus in the uprising against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, activists said.

The BBC’s Jim Muir says it is not clear whether the battle for Damascus has begun, but the violence seems to be creeping ever closer to the heart of the capital and the centre of the government’s power.

The armoured troop carriers took up positions on the main roads in Midan, which is a mainly Sunni district.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said armour had not previously been deployed in Midan.

Its director, Rami Abdel Rahman, told Agence France-Presse: “Before, the security forces were deployed to suppress protests. Now, we have army troops engaged in combat.”

He added: “[It has] never been this intense.”

One resident, who lives in the south of the city, told the BBC’s Newshour there was a lot of tension, with people scared and nervous, and it was becoming difficult to travel.

He said: “It’s mainly in the southern parts of the city which are effectively besieged at the moment. There were very few people on the streets, just totally different from how the city is normally.

“The feeling, among people around me, is that it’s our turn now. We are really feeling this. That this is the final fight, building up to who wins control of the regime.”

C.J.Chivers reports: To escape the government he served until it gave him an order he could not obey, Capt. Akhmed Trad, a pilot in Syria’s air force, needed a plan: how to spirit himself over a border quickly, and leave no family behind.

In hurried meetings between the pilot and his parents, and indirect conversations over cellphones, evading what they worried were monitored calls, the Trad family set a time and place for everyone to meet, and fled.

Now safely in Turkey, where he is providing information to the rebels and helping them plan attacks, Captain Trad represents one of the great challenges to the government of President Bashar al-Assad and his military.

The Syrian government hails from the Alawite minority. But much of its administration and its military ability depend on Sunni bureaucrats, soldiers and officers like Captain Trad, whose alienation has been growing and whose defections risk increasing as Syria’s internal war takes on deepening sectarian tones.

Defected Sunni army officers have played a large role in the armed opposition since the war began last year, and they lead many of the field units of the Free Syrian Army, the umbrella antigovernment force. While the skills of defected air force pilots have less direct application for the rebels (who have no aircraft), the pilots’ decisions to join the uprising amount to both a moral and public relations victory for the rebels, and undermine the Assad military’s strength.

Captain Trad, interviewed with several family members in a village near this city by the Turkish-Syrian border, said he decided last year to defect, and he waited for his chance. When violence against Sunni citizens escalated this spring, he decided he could serve no more.

Captain Trad is a Mi-17 helicopter pilot; he said his aircraft was equipped to fire rockets. Pro-Assad forces were accused of ethnically motivated killings of Sunni Muslims in Houla, and as the primarily Sunni opposition forces were gaining strength, his commanders ordered his helicopter squadron to attack cities where the resistance was strong, including Idlib. This is where the Trads were born.

“We were told to bomb them, and for us, we did not accept it,” he said. “Bomb what? My town and my friends?” [Continue reading…]