Al-Monitor reports: A funeral mass many not sound like a festive occasion, but it is one of the initiatives by charities and churches to alleviate the suffering of Syria’s Christian refugees in Lebanon this Christmas. “Many people had to flee before being able to bury their dead,” says Issam John Darwish, archbishop of the Melkite Catholic diocese of Zahle. The funeral will commemorate more than 300 people.

The diocese is also distributing heating fuel and food packages to the 400 families that have registered with Zahle’s more than 130 local churches. Christian charities such as Caritas are distributing clothes to Syrian refugees to mark the holidays, and World Vision has organized Christmas plays through which refugees are encouraged to find the holiday spirit.

But many refugees say they have little to celebrate. “I don’t feel like there are any holidays,” says 24-year-old Talej Hallak. She fled the bombs falling on Qusayr, just across the Syrian border in March. It’s the first time she is experiencing Christmas outside her country and without her relatives. Her father died “during the war,” as she refers to the 22-month-old conflict, images of which flicker on the TV screen behind her. And there will be no gifts for 5-year-old Ibrahim or 2½-year old Pamela either; the family is scraping by on what her husband, Khoder, makes as a painter. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Russian military advisers are manning some of Syria’s more sophisticated air defences – something that would complicate any future US-led intervention, the Guardian has learned.

The advisers have been deployed with new surface-to-air systems and upgrades of old systems, which Moscow has supplied to the Assad regime since the Syrian revolution broke out 21 months ago.

The depth and complexity of Syria’s anti-aircraft defences mean that any direct western campaign, in support of a no-fly zone or in the form of punitive air strikes against the leadership, would be costly, protracted and risky. The possibility of Russian military casualties in such a campaign could have unpredictable geopolitical consequences.

Meanwhile, near-daily atrocities have kept western governments under pressure to act. A Syrian government air strike on a town near the central city of Hama on Sunday killed dozens of civilians queueing for bread, according to human rights activists.

Amateur footage from Halfaya showed mangled human remains strewn along a street where people had been blown off scooters and out of cars. One video showed a boy with his feet blown off. Piles of corpses could be seen beneath rubble outside a two-storey building the cameraman described as a bakery. It was unclear how many bodies were in the smoking ruins.

Human Rights Watch has previously accused the regime of targeting bakeries. The group warned the Assad regime that such targeted bombing of civilians represented war crimes. However, in the face of a Russian veto at the UN security council, the international criminal court has not had a mandate to investigate the atrocities committed by either side. The UN has put the death toll at more than 40,000 as the war continues to escalate. [Continue reading…]

Adnan A. Zulfiqar writes: Sectarian conflict might dominate coverage of Syria today, but internal Sunni dynamics will define its tomorrow. Tensions between Alawis and Sunnis won’t be settled over night, but the demographics in Syria do not suggest a prolonged conflict similar to Iraq or Lebanon.

Unlike those countries, Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni (~75%) and Bashar al-Assad’s fate rests on their support. Over the last two years, the strategic alliance between Assad and the Sunni elite has eroded significantly. Assad’s former Syrian-Sunni allies are now some of his opponent’s most important financial contributors. Russia seemingly hedging its bets on Syria’s future, and the United States attempting to raise its profile on the issue bothindicate that post-Assad preparations are being made.

After almost two years since the rebellion began, over 44,000 have been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. According to press accounts and my personal observations during a recent trip to the Syrian/Turkey border as part of Truman Project’s Democracy and Human Rights Initiative, the rebels control much of Syria’s north, including most of the border with Turkey, significant portions of Aleppo, and are steadily making a push for Damascus, the final prize. Even Assad’s deputies have cynically taken to the airwaves to advocate for a political resolution, an unlikely proposition at this stage.

An impending power vacuum is inevitable so focus must shift to the competitors aiming to fill that space. The common consensus is that the opposition’s political and military factions are poised to battle for authority. In reality, this competition highlights a more fundamental confrontation: traditionalist Sunnism versus its more puritanical Salafi strain. The Syrian coalition understands this with their perspicacious selection of Mu’az al-Khatib to lead the opposition: the former head imam at Umayyad Masjid, the country’s most important religious site and the fourth holiest site in Islam. Al-Khatib, a Sunni traditionalist, can counter the growing appeal of Salafism. Rebel militias are dominated by an ideological spectrum of Salafi fighters, but are united by both the cause and their interpretive approach to Islam’s foundational texts. Despite Salafism never having mass appeal in Syrian society, there is potential for that to change. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: The foreign minister of Russia, which is among Syria’s most reliable allies, said Saturday that several countries were offering asylum to President Bashar al-Assad to get him to leave Syria, but that Moscow would not mediate on their behalf, according to Russian news services.

“Some countries in the region have turned to us and suggested, ‘Tell Assad we are ready to fix him up,’ ” the foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, told reporters who accompanied him on a flight home from the Russia-European Union summit meeting in Brussels, in comments carried by the Interfax and RIA Novosti news agencies. “And we answered, ‘What do we have to do with it? If you have such plans, approach him directly.’ ”

“If there are people wishing to give him some kind of guarantees, be our guest,” he said. “We will be the first to cross ourselves and say, ‘Thank God, the carnage is over.’ Whether this will end the carnage — that is far from obvious. It is not obvious at all.”

He also said that Syria’s government had brought together its chemical weapons from a large number of locations throughout the country to one or two central storage places to keep them out of rebel hands.

Mr. Lavrov’s comments follow recent signals from Russia that it sees the military balance shifting, though Moscow has not changed its strong opposition to international intervention in Syria. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: The identity of al-Nusra’s leadership is not clear. A shadowy figure known as Abu Muhammad al-Golani – whose nationality is not known – has been named by some as the head.

But an Islamist opposition campaigner who toured northern and central Syria a few days ago and met Nusra commanders said the group operates more like an umbrella organisation with little coordination between units in different regions.

“They are not a monolithic group. The nature of Nusra in Damascus is more tolerant than Idlib. They have a real popular base in Idlib, where most Nusra members are Syrians, as opposed to Aleppo and Damascus.”

He said it did not appear to be seeking to impose Taliban-style control. “Many rebels I have met say they joined al-Nusra because the group has weapons, mostly seized from raids, and that they will go back home after the revolt,” he added.

But many centrist opposition campaigners fear that al-Nusra will turn its guns on any non-Islamist order that could come if Assad was deposed. “The big question is how to contain Nusra in a post-Assad Syria,” said an opposition figure linked to jihadist groups, who did not want to be identified.

“Al-Nusra is the type of group that could declare the most pious cleric a heretic and kill him in the middle of a mosque just because he does not share its view,” he said.

Nusra members are estimated to number in the thousands and are particularly strong in the northern region of Aleppo and Idlib, where they have joined or carried out joint operations with Islamist groups such as Ahrar al-Sham and Liwa al-Tawhid unit.

In and around Damascus they are fewer in number but remain potent, and are only 20 kilometers (12 miles) at some points from the Golan Heights front with Israel.

Abu Munther, an engineer turned rebel who operates on the southern edge of Damascus and goes to Jordan to meet other rebels, said in Amman that al-Nusra numbered hundreds of people in Damascus, as opposed to thousands in the north.

But those numbers could grow. Al-Mujahideen brigade in the southern Tadamun neighborhood of Damascus declared its allegiance to al-Nusra after dissatisfaction with Arab-backed military groups headed by defector officers.

Another opposition figure, who did not want to be named, said international intelligence agencies were trying to curb Nusra’s influence in Damascus and the southern Hauran Plain, where they are near Israel and close to the Jordanian border.

“Western intelligence agencies are realising that the Nusra is the biggest threat in a post-Assad Syria and are devoting more resources to deal with the threat,” he said.

“For the first time al Qaeda is within striking distance of Israel,” he said. “Many are realising that the best that could be done for now is to contain them in north Syria – even if the area risks becoming an Islamist emirate of sorts – while trying to build a civic form of government in and around Damascus.”

Hassan Hassan writes: The noose is tightening around Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — and he’s beginning to realize it. After a week that saw the opposition’s National Coalition win widespread international recognition and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sign orders to dispatch Patriot missiles to the Turkey-Syria border, the regime in Damascus gave the first sign that it was looking for a way out.

On Dec. 17, the Lebanese paper al-Akhbar published an interview with Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa, where he said that neither the regime nor the rebels could win militarily and called for a “historic settlement” between the warring parties. Iran, Assad’s staunchest ally, also released a six-point plan that it said would promote national reconciliation.

There is reason to believe that the United States would look sympathetically on a negotiated transition. Washington faces a problem: It is looking to prevent extremists from filling the power vacuum in Syria — it designated the jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusrah as a terrorist organization last week — and a political settlement could be a step in that direction. But a deal cut in Damascus is no cure-all for Syria’s ills: Even if an agreement is reached, most rebels groups are not about to let the Syrian army roll back into their towns.

The sprawling eastern province of Deir Ezzor, a larger rural region bordering Iraq, provides a case study in how armed groups — even extremist ones — work to establish a foothold in an area. In the case of jihadists like Jabhat al-Nusra, it also provides some hints for how they could be forced out. Jabhat al-Nusra’s cadres currently coexist with local tribal leaders, who have taken up responsibility for maintaining law and order in the absence of the state. In the long run, however, there is no guarantee that these groups share the same ideology or long-term interests.

Even as fighting rages elsewhere in Syria, the war against Assad has already been won in much of Deir Ezzor, where I grew up. On Nov. 17, the regime’s forces were squeezed out of the district of Abu Kamal, near the Iraqi border, after the rebels successfully attacked Hamdan Air Base, the last bastion of the regime there. Rebels from various villages and towns then joined forces and overran an army base in the city of al-Mayadeen, seizing stockpiles of artillery. People are now going about the hard work of laying the groundwork for future governance.

Jabhat al-Nusra currently controls most of the vital sectors in Deir Ezzor, including oil, gas, sugar, and flour. Its source of funding is unclear, although I was told by residents that Gulf nationals with tribal links to the region support most of the fighting groups in the province. According to residents, the group’s local emirs are typically foreigners, while the majority of the rank-and-file are Syrians from the region. Many people are drawn to the group by virtue of its effectiveness in fighting the regime and delivering public services. [Continue reading…]