The Los Angeles Times reports: On Tuesday, the United States Institute of Peace issued “The Day After” plan for a post-Assad Syria. The 133-page statement of goals and principles for a new Syria was six months in the making. It was produced by 45 Syrian opposition figures brought together by the State Department-funded institute’s Middle East experts and partners from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. It is long on institution-building wonk-speak and short on how the opposition is supposed to get to the post-Assad era. But analysts hailed it as a worthy undertaking even as government and rebel forces are mired in protracted battles to control key areas of Damascus and Aleppo.

No representatives of the Free Syrian Army fighting the regime were party to the post-Assad project, said Steven Heydemann, a senior advisor on Middle East initiatives who coordinated the talks among Syrian exiles, defectors and regime opponents who managed to travel abroad or participate via video linkup.

“The group very sensibly recognized there was no way to anticipate how the transition would happen,” instead focusing on identifying the challenges that would confront the next leadership whether Assad flees, negotiates an exit or is deposed in a palace coup, Heydemann said. However the Assad dynasty ends, he noted, Syrians will have to grapple with divisive questions on how to treat those accused of war crimes, deter revenge killings and get the economy and social services back in working order.

While the United States is holding firm to its policy of providing only nonlethal aid to the rebels, Heydemann said, Washington could play a more effective role in coordinating other outside support. He pointed to the mounting incidents of Islamic extremists waging strikes against the Assad regime for their own purposes and weaponry coming in from autocratic supporters like Qatar and Saudi Arabia as giving “a Wild West quality” to help for the underdog rebels.

“The United States is very concerned that support from outside for elements of the Syrian opposition not lead to strengthening of Al Qaeda or Islamic fundamentalist forces that becomes problematic in the postwar process,” said Charles Ries, a career diplomat heading Rand Corp.’s Center for Middle East Public Policy. “But our reluctance [to supply arms] has paradoxically caused the division of the Syrian opposition and has encouraged those Islamist elements to find their own sources of support and influence.”

The task eluding the United States and its allies is uniting the disparate opposition forces inside and outside Syria into a cohesive leadership that they can support and ratchet up the pressure on Assad, Ries said.

Bilal Y. Saab, a Syria expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, shares other analysts’ concerns that Islamic militants are filling the vacuum left by a hands-off U.S. policy toward the rebels. But it would be “ill-advised,” he said, for the United States to recognize a transitional government that isn’t broadly inclusive of the myriad ethnic, sectarian, religious and political factions in Syria.

The Associated Press reports: Turkey’s foreign minister said Wednesday he would press the United Nations Security Council to set up a safe haven inside Syria to protect thousands of people fleeing the violence there as his country is straining to shelter an increasing flow of refugees.

Turkey has long been floating the idea of a no-fly zone, or buffer zone, to protect displaced Syrians from attacks by President Bashar Assad’s forces, but the issue has become more pressing now the number of refugees in Turkey has exceeded 80,000 — an amount it says approaches its limits.

The refugee agency has said up to 200,000 refugees could eventually flee to Turkey.

“We expect the U.N. to step in and protect the refugees inside Syria, and if possible, to shelter them in camps there,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters before leaving for New York to attend Thursday’s high-level U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria.

Reuters reports: Syria’s refugee exodus is accelerating and up to 200,000 people could settle in Turkey alone if the conflict worsens, the United Nations warned on Tuesday, increasing pressure for creation of a buffer zone inside Syria.

Turkey has floated the idea of a “safe zone” to be set up for civilians under foreign protection as fighting has intensified in a 17-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

Up to 5,000 refugees a day have been crossing into Turkey over the past two weeks while the pace of refugees arriving at a camp in northern Jordan has doubled, heralding what could be a much bigger movement there, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Although there is no sign divided world powers are ready to back a buffer and no-fly zone, as rebels and aid organizations would like, U.N. Security Council foreign ministers are expected to discuss the idea at a meeting on Thursday.

While Turkey could in theory create a buffer zone itself, it has said it is reluctant to go it alone.

Already hosting more than 80,000 refugees, Turkey has warned it could run out of space if the number goes above 100,000.

AFP reports: On the edge of the Saif al-Dawla district of Aleppo, a commander argues with a rebel. He has ordered him to try to take out a regime tank, alone and with a single rocket-propelled grenade.

“Just one is enough — you can take out the whole army,” the commander tells the reluctant fighter.

The scene is one repeated across the frontlines of the battle between the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian regime, as the rag-tag rebel forces try to take on tanks, helicopter gunships and fighter jets with armoury that is desperately lacking.

Rebel commanders say the weapons they do have — Kalashnikovs, some RPGs, a handful of anti-aircraft guns — are old and expensive while the weapons they need to take on the might of an army are impossible to come by.

“I flew MIG war planes for 12 years, and we are fighting these planes with Kalashnikovs, and not even good Kalashnikovs,” says Alaa Saadeddin, a defected pilot.

“Anti-aircraft guns are the heaviest weapon we have,” he adds. “We don’t have ground-to-ground rockets, we don’t have Grads, we don’t have surface-to-air missiles.”

When Abu Maryam decided to set up his own rebel brigade, he approached the Liwa al-Tawhid, a rebel umbrella group, to ask about the possibility of getting weapons.

“Liwa al-Tawhid gave us two Kalashnikovs, but we had to find a way to buy the rest. We have 22 men and 12 guns, so we will go in groups. The first group will take the guns, when they come back, they will give the guns to the second group.”

And the weapons that are available don’t come cheap — a Kalashnikov goes for 150,000 Syrian pounds, nearly $2,400, bullets start at $2 each, and a grenade will set you back over $150, according to commanders.

Syria’s rebels laugh at stories of Libyan fighters who regularly unloaded their weapons into the air to celebrate a victory on the battlefront.

“If any rebel in any group fires a single bullet in any direction other than at the enemy, they will be kicked out of the group,” Saadeddin said.

Western nations have said they are providing non-lethal aid, in the form of money or communications equipment to the rebels, and the opposition Syrian National Council says countries including Saudi Arabia and Qatar have provided arms to fighters inside the country.

But the weapons in evidence on the ground look as old as rebels claim they are — beaten-up guns and dusty RPGs that are a world away from the shiny new equipment that was in circulation on the Libyan battlefield.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous writes: Emad Khareeta says he had no choice but to defect. The 23-year-old member of the Free Syrian Army stands outside his family home in a deserted section of town. Shards of concrete and glass litter the ground, the result of nearby shelling. The street is dark and quiet, Emad’s face only discernible in the glow of his cigarette. He tells his story slowly.

In April 2010, Emad was called up for his mandatory army service. When the revolution broke out in March 2011, he was deployed to various parts of the country—but it was his time in Homs, where he was sent on December 31, 2011, that compelled him to leave his unit. Sometimes called the ‘capital of the revolution,’ the restive city in western Syria had been under siege by the regime of Bashar al-Assad since May and was the site of some of its bloodiest crackdowns. Emad describes indiscriminate killing and widespread looting by fellow soldiers, as well as an incident that deeply affected him, when an unarmed truck driver shot in the arm and legs was left to bleed to death in front of him. Ordered to fire on protesters at demonstrations, he says he aimed away.

“I was ready to die after what I had seen and been through,” he says. “I don’t want to oppress anyone.” He eventually bribed an officer 20,000 Syrian pounds (approximately $300) for a three-day vacation leave. On January 26, Emad left and never returned, making his way back home to Zabadani.

Emad is just one of thousands of army defectors who are switching sides in a conflict that began as a nonviolent popular uprising but has since spiraled into an increasingly bitter and polarizing civil war, one that has become a theater for geopolitical interests.

The armed opposition to the Assad regime first began to take form in the late summer of 2011, following months of mass demonstrations that were overwhelmingly nonviolent. Facing repeated crackdowns and mass detentions by security forces, protesters began to arm themselves, many by purchasing smuggled weapons from border countries like Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. The revolt was further militarized by increasing numbers of army soldiers defecting to their local communities and bringing their weapons with them.

“They dragged us into arming ourselves,” says Malek al-Tinnawi, a 25-year-old FSA volunteer. He limps badly as he goes to retrieve a newly acquired assault rifle. Two months ago, he was shot through the ankle in clashes with the army. The local doctor inserted a metal rod in his leg to replace the shattered bone. “It’s a good one, isn’t it?” he smiles, brandishing the German-made H&K Model G3 rifle. “Not too used, almost like new.”

The rifle was brought to him on foot, through a mountainous smuggling route from Lebanon. Malek received it as a gift, along with two extra magazines and a chain of bullets, compliments of his fellow opposition fighters who gave it to him, he says, in acknowledgment of his role in being one of the first to demonstrate in Zabadani, and one of the first in the town to take up arms against the regime. Still, Malek says, he would have preferred for the revolution to have remained nonviolent. “When we were peaceful, we were stronger than when we had weapons,” he says, patting the gun in his lap.

“This revolt started out with very modest demands concerning the state of emergency, and it has been dealt with since then as a war of the security state against its people,” says Fawwaz Traboulsi, a Beirut-based historian and columnist. “What should be understood is that this militarization of the response to a vast popular movement ended up by militarizing the opposition.” [Continue reading…]

David Enders reports: Sattam Sheikhmous still farms wheat on what’s left of his grandfather’s land, shrunk from more than 32,000 acres to less than 5,000 by the Syrian government in 1966.

“They said it was a socialist policy, but we believe it was political,” said Sheikhmous, now in his 60s, referring to the government confiscation of land that began when Syria joined with Egypt, then ruled by Gamal Abdel Nasser, to form the United Arab Republic in 1958.

The land confiscation took place across the country. But in the predominantly Kurdish province of Hasaka, in Syria’s northeast corner, the resettlement of Arabs from another part of the country in the 1970s created ethnic tensions that could manifest themselves violently when the Syrian government fully relinquishes control of the area, now seen by many as only a matter of time.

“We have to ask them to give us our land back. If they don’t, we have to do whatever we need to do,” said Sheikhmous. “It’s not just our land, it’s Kurdish land. If they don’t leave peacefully, we will use weapons.”

With Syria convulsed by a civil war that shows no signs of ending soon, the country’s Kurdish region, fast against Turkey and Iraq, is surprisingly peaceful, thanks to a maneuver by the government of President Bashar Assad, who first granted the Kurds greater rights last year, then surrendered security to a Kurdish militia this summer. While anti-Assad demonstrations still take place here, there is none of the kind of fighting that has convulsed other parts of Syria.

But the history of relations between Syria’s Kurdish and Arab ethnic groups suggests that peace may be short-lived, especially if Assad falls and a successor government clashes with Kurds over long-held grievances. The confiscated Kurdish areas contain both rich agricultural land and oil, and neither will be easy for Kurds to take control of. [Continue reading…]