McClatchy reports: Wael Nasrallah has organized more than 100 demonstrations in the past 20 months. On Friday, he led another one in Qalat al Mudiq, a city of about 30,000 in central Syria.

Even with civil war engulfing the country, the peaceful demonstrations that kicked off the rebellion against the government of President Bashar Assad so long ago continue, at least in this part of Syria. Often, the target is no longer the Assad regime but the rebels who now rule in many areas.

“It is still necessary because we have demands,” said the 35-year-old Nasrallah, who’s a truck driver by trade. “Today we mentioned two things: We want the revolutionaries to organize electricity service and to organize the distribution of bread.”

In other parts of the country, demonstrators also have called on the rebels to provide security, something Nasrallah and others say isn’t an issue here, and for the international community to provide weapons to the rebels.

In a country where people were generally terrified to speak freely before the rebellion began, the demonstrations are an important advance, activists say, and one people are loath to lose. People now can discuss what the future holds and generally appear unafraid to criticize the rebels themselves. The rebellion has empowered conservative Islamist groups who’ve done much of the frontline fighting and call openly for a state based on Islamic law, but the demonstration here Friday encompassed a wide range of the opposition’s members, from the conservative to the secular. [Continue reading…]

Demonstrators in Damascus today:

The New York Times reports: The American effort to stem the flow of Iranian arms to Syria has faltered because of Iraq’s reluctance to inspect aircraft carrying the weapons through its airspace, American officials say.

The shipments have persisted at a critical time for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, who has come under increasing military pressure from rebel fighters. The air corridor over Iraq has emerged as a main supply route for weapons, including rockets, antitank missiles, rocket-propelled grenade and mortars.

Iran has an enormous stake in Syria, which is its staunchest Arab ally and has also provided a channel for Iran’s support to the Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah.

To the disappointment of the Obama administration, American efforts to persuade the Iraqis to randomly inspect the flights have been largely unsuccessful.

Adding to American concerns, Western intelligence officials say they are picking up new signs of activity at sites in Syria that are used to store chemical weapons. The officials are uncertain whether Syrian forces might be preparing to use the weapons in a last-ditch effort to save the government, or simply sending a warning to the West about the implications of providing more help to the Syrian rebels.

“It’s in some ways similar to what they’ve done before,” a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. “But they’re doing some things that suggest they intend to use the weapons. It’s not just moving stuff around. These are different kind of activities.”

The official said, however, that the Syrians had not carried out the most blatant steps toward using the chemical weapons, such as preparing them to be fired by artillery batteries or loaded in bombs to be dropped from warplanes. [Continue reading…]

David Ignatius writes: Syrian opposition leaders report an alarming growth within their ranks of fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, an extremist group linked to al-Qaeda.

The Jabhat group now has somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters, according to officials of an non-governmental organization that represents the more moderate wing of the Free Syrian Army (FSA). They say that the al-Qaeda affiliate now accounts for 7.5 percent to 9 percent of the Free Syrian Army’s total fighters, up sharply from an estimated 3 percent three months ago and 1 percent at the beginning of the year.

The extremist group is growing in part because it has been the most aggressive and successful arm of the rebel force. “From the reports we get from the doctors, most of the injured and dead FSA are Jabhat al-Nusra, due to their courage and [the fact they are] always at the front line,” said a message sent today to the State Department by the moderate Free Syrian Army representatives, warning of the extremists’ rise.

These estimates are very rough, given the scattered and disorganized nature of the opposition. But they are based on detailed reporting from the field by the members’ military councils, which are the closest thing to an organized command structure among the rebels. [Continue reading…]

GlobalPost reports: With coffins stacking up at the airport in Syria’s Alawite heartland, and funerals now a daily routine for its mountain villagers, support is fraying among the community on which the Syrian regime depends.

“Day by day the military operations are getting harder and harder,” said Abu Haider, 40, a member of the Syrian security forces, near Qerdaha, the home village of President Bashar al-Assad.

“The Alawites will fight to the end to defend President Bashar but are paying a big price. Most of our men are serving in the army or security forces,” he told GlobalPost.

Ali, a 28-year-old Alawite living in Lattakia, the regional capital, said Alawite villages he recently visited had been nearly emptied of men after the regime enforced conscription for any member of the Alawite sect aged between 18 and 50.

Alawites are the minority off-shoot of Shiite Islam to which the president’s family belongs. The conflict in Syria has increasingly become a sectarian war between the Alawites and the Sunni majority rebels.

“Every day there are 50 to 60 wooden coffins brought through Lattakia’s Bassel al-Assad Airport. There are funerals in most villages every day,” he said. “The regime’s media used to cover the martyrs’ funerals but in the last few months they stopped broadcasting news of dead soldiers.”

And with good reason: More than 40,000 people have now been killed in the 20-month uprising, according to human rights groups. And in recent months, the numbers of soldiers and security men dying has reached, or at times surpassed, the rebel death toll.

Civilians continue to pay a high price with about 20,000 killed, including more than 3,000 children. But at least 10,000 of Assad’s men have also been killed.

With ever more coffins flown home from a war now being fought in almost every province, the Alawites — whose support the regime relies on most — are beginning to question their sacrifice. [Continue reading…]

AFP reports: The Syrian army shelled the outskirts of Damascus Saturday in a drive to establish a secure perimeter around the capital, including the key airport road that has come under sustained rebel attack.

The 27-kilometre (17-mile) highway remained perilous a day after troops said they had reopened the key link to the outside world in heavy fighting that followed repeated deadly fire on a bus carrying airport staff and at least two attacks on UN convoys, a watchdog said.

The fighting sparked mounting expressions of concern from UN officials.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the conflict had reached “appalling heights of brutality”. UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Syria was in danger of becoming a “failed state” if a political settlement was not reached soon.

The army shelled both the southwestern outskirts of the capital and the town of Douma in the northeastern suburbs, human rights monitors and opposition activists said.

Douma forms part of the so-called Eastern Ghouta region where troops have gone on the offensive to secure the airport highway.

Analysts say President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has been trying to establish a secure perimeter around Damascus at all costs in a bid to be in a position to negotiate a solution to the 20-month conflict.

Glenn Robinson writes: The first year and a half in the current round of Syria’s long civil war took as many lives as the three-week orgy of violence in the city of Hama that ended the last round in 1982. In both cases, some 25,000 to 30,000 people were killed, and in both cases, the root issues and the competing sides have been the same: a minoritybased regime, allied with other minorities along with privileged elements from the majority population, ruling over a poor and often dysfunctional state that does not tolerate dissenters.

The last round in the Syrian civil war began after the regime of Hafez al-Assad in 1976 intervened in Lebanon’s civil war. While that intervention had broad regional and international support, it was far more controversial at home. For Syrian forces to come to the aid of Lebanon’s Christians — who were on the verge of defeat at the hands of Muslim forces — was seen by pious Sunni Muslims in Syria as proof positive of the heretical nature of the Assad regime, a regime dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Islamic Shiism.

The resulting low-intensity civil war, instigated by the Muslim Brotherhood and fueled by forces that had given rise to the rapid growth of Islamist politics throughout the Middle East in the 1970s, continued in Syria for six years. Assassinations, attacks on Alawite military cadets, the mass murder of Muslim Brotherhood prisoners, and ultimately a crippling commercial strike brought the Assad government to the brink of collapse.

To ensure the survival of his regime, Hafez al-Assad cut a political deal with his bitter rivals, the Sunni bourgeoisie, heirs of the notable class that had dominated Syrian politics for centuries. This alliance between Alawite military power and Sunni (and Christian) economic muscle gave Assad the political cover he needed to launch an assault on Hama, the stronghold of Muslim Brotherhood power in Syria. By leveling much of the city with a relentless artillery barrage, Assad drove the Muslim Brotherhood underground, thereby winning the first round of Syria’s long civil war. [Continue reading…]

(H/t Joshua Landis)