Category Archives: Syria

Key Syria opposition group refuses Geneva peace talks

AFP reports: A key group within the Syrian opposition National Coalition said Sunday it would not attend proposed peace talks in Geneva and would quit the Coalition if it participated.

The decision deals a potential blow to international efforts to convene a peace conference in Geneva, which was first proposed for June but has been pushed back multiple times.

The Syrian Red Crescent meanwhile said it had evacuated around 1,500 people from a suburb of the capital Damascus that has been under a regime siege for months.

The president of Syrian National Council, the biggest member of the opposition Coalition, told AFP on Sunday that it was impossible to carry out negotiations given the suffering of people on the ground.

“The Syrian National Council, which is the biggest bloc in the Coalition, has taken the firm decision… not to go to Geneva, under the present circumstances (on the ground),” George Sabra told AFP.

“This means that we will not stay in the Coalition if it goes” to the peace talks, he added. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s commuting rebels

The New York Times reports: The Syrian rebel leader was sitting comfortably on a cushion at his home here recently, his wife and children filling the rooms with conversation and laughter. Then one day he shaved off his beard and slipped back into Syria, where he leads a rebel brigade.

“I cried,” said his mother-in-law, Wesal al-Aweer. “I pleaded with him not to leave.”

“We were used to having him around the house,” said his wife, Montaha Zoubi, 34, “so now we feel there is an emptiness in the house.”

A hardware store owner in Syria before the civil war, Hussein Zoubi, 40, took up arms against the government almost two years ago. Since then, like thousands of Syrian men in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, he has been leading the life of a commuter rebel, a fighter inside Syria and a family man across the border.

Men have long gone to war after packing off their families to safer places. But the war’s proximity here along the Syrian-Jordanian border has collapsed the distances. The vast majority of the refugees are women and children, who have sought safety here, while the men slip in and out of Syria.

Unlike the battle-hardened Islamist combatants who have made rapid gains inside Syria in recent months, these are ordinary men — small-business owners, plumbers, carpenters — caught up in the war. They fight for weeks at a time and keep in constant touch electronically, but then return to see their families, nurse wounds and take care of businesses that may have suffered in their absence. [Continue reading…]

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Air raids and clashes near Syrian chemical weapons site

Reuters reports: Syrian air force warplanes bombarded rebel-held targets close to a major chemical weapons facility on Friday in fighting that highlights the perils facing an international mission to eliminate President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical arsenal.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, is due to visit 20 sites across Syria to verify the destruction of 1,000 tons of chemical agents and precursors.

The mission in the midst of a civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people is an unprecedented challenge for the OPCW, whose members came under fire near Damascus in August.

The OPCW experts have visited three undisclosed sites in their first week of operation and say that Syrian authorities have been cooperating. But they will face great challenges reaching locations in rebel-held or disputed territory.

The air raids struck the town of Safira, on the edge of a sprawling military complex believed to hold chemical weapons production facilities, after overnight clashes between rebel fighters and Assad forces in a nearby village, activists said.

The army has fought hard to retain control of the Safira military complex and is now trying to recapture the town from rebel brigades including the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front and Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

Unless they succeed in pushing those fighters back, any attempt by the OPCW experts to visit Safira would be risky.[Continue reading…]

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Bashar al-Assad steered 2013 Nobel Peace Prize selection

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2013 is to be awarded to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) for its extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons.

During World War One, chemical weapons were used to a considerable degree. The Geneva Convention of 1925 prohibited the use, but not the production or storage, of chemical weapons. During World War Two, chemical means were employed in Hitler’s mass exterminations. Chemical weapons have subsequently been put to use on numerous occasions by both states and terrorists. In 1992-93 a convention was drawn up prohibiting also the production and storage of such weapons. It came into force in 1997. Since then the OPCW has, through inspections, destruction and by other means, sought the implementation of the convention. 189 states have acceded to the convention to date.

The conventions and the work of the OPCW have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law. Recent events in Syria, where chemical weapons have again been put to use, have underlined the need to enhance the efforts to do away with such weapons. Some states are still not members of the OPCW. Certain states have not observed the deadline, which was April 2012, for destroying their chemical weapons. This applies especially to the USA and Russia.

Disarmament figures prominently in Alfred Nobel’s will. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has through numerous prizes underlined the need to do away with nuclear weapons. By means of the present award to the OPCW, the Committee is seeking to contribute to the elimination of chemical weapons.

The committee offers no credit to Bashar al-Assad.

But suppose John Kerry had not unwittingly initiated the process leading towards Syria giving up its chemical weapons stockpile, and suppose Russia had not seized on the political opportunity the the U.S. provided for removing the threat of military action, and suppose the Syrian government had not quickly recognized that it would be strengthening its own grip on power by giving up CW. Would the OPCW have just received the Peace Prize? Almost certainly not.

The crucial decision in the process leading to that choice was made by Assad.

Just as George W Bush once honored another war criminal, Ariel Sharon, as a “man of peace,” it surely won’t be long before Nobel laureate Barack Obama offers the same praise to Syria’s president.

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Executions, indiscriminate shootings, and hostage taking by Islamist factions outside Latakia, Syria

The New York Times reports: Before dawn on Aug. 4, Raed Shakouhi, an olive and walnut farmer in a government-held hilltop village near the Syrian coast, just across a valley from rebel territory, was woken by gunshots and cries of “God is great.”

Mr. Shakouhi, 42, hid among nearby trees with his wife and four young children. The next day, he emerged to find his uncle shot dead, his family’s possessions stolen or destroyed, and the streets littered with bloodstains and the carcasses of farm animals, he recalled last month in an interview in the state-run shelter where he now lives. Many of his neighbors here in Latakia and in the surrounding villages, mostly members of Syria’s minority Alawite sect, fared even worse.

In a coordinated attack, numerous rebel groups fought off a small garrison of government troops and swept into the villages, killing 190 people, according to a Human Rights Watch report to be released on Friday. At least 67 of the dead appeared to have been shot or stabbed while unarmed or fleeing, including 48 women and 11 children, the report said. More than 200 civilians are still being held hostage.

“This is the first time that we have documented opposition forces actually systematically targeting civilians,” said Lama Fakih, the group’s deputy director in Beirut, Lebanon, who last month visited five of the villages, which the government had recaptured by Aug. 19. She also reviewed medical records and interviewed 19 witnesses as well as doctors, military officials and opposition members for the 113-page report.

“We have up to now not documented anything approaching this scale of abuse” by opposition fighters, Ms. Fakih said, adding that the number and methodical nature of the killings constituted a “crime against humanity.”

There have been reports of smaller-scale atrocities by rebel forces, including the videotaped execution of seven Syrian Army soldiers last year. Human Rights Watch has documented some of those attacks, as well as what it calls “egregious war crimes and crimes against humanity” by government forces, including the killing of nearly 250 people in the mostly Sunni towns of Banias and Bayda in May, and a widespread policy of detaining and torturing opposition activists. [Continue reading…]

Joanna Paraszczuk writes: While HRW document in detail the killings and hostage-takings that took place, the report fails to determine definitively which particular groups or factions within these groups were responsible for killing civilians.

Specifically, the report fails to distinguish between attacks carried out by ISIS/ Jaish and the offensive carried out by Free Syrian Army brigades, instead using the blanket term “armed opposition groups” to refer to those responsible for the killings. The report conflates the FSA’s “Operation to Liberate the Coast” with the offensives by Islamist factions — even though the Islamist factions operated independently rather than in conjunction with the FSA.

The HRW report takes information and eyewitness testimony from local residents in the villages to document the circumstances of civilian deaths. However, the report is problematic because it relies heavily on information from a regime Military Intelligence officer, as well as regime military personnel, the police, National Defense Force members, and regime media outlets.

In contrast, HRW do not appear to have obtained responses or information from the Supreme Military Council to ascertain the movement of FSA brigades in relation to the Islamist groups accused of perpetrating the mass killings of civilians. [Continue reading…]

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Syrian Electronic Army attacks linked to Obama’s mentions of Syria

Mashable reports: The frequency of attacks that the infamous Syrian Electronic Army carries out may correlate with the number of President Obama’s public statements about Syria and its civil war.

Researchers at Recorded Future, a firm that analyzes publicly available data to assess and predict cyberattacks, call the link a “remarkable correlation.”

To put it simply, the more Obama talks about Syria, the more the Syrian hackers strike American media targets. It’s a full-blown propaganda war.

In fact, when Obama discussed military action in retaliation against the alleged chemical attack in Damascus, the SEA ramped up its campaign against American media, hitting the New York Times, Twitter and others.

After the United States and Russia agreed on a diplomatic solution to the crisis, which requires Syria to destroy its chemical arsenal, the SEA backed off and remained relatively quiet. [Continue reading…]

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The Assad smokescreen

In an interview with Der Spiegel this week, Bashar al-Assad was questioned about the August 21 chemical weapons attack outside Damascus:

SPIEGEL: President Obama said after the investigation into this crime by the United Nations that there was “no doubt” that your regime used chemical weapons on Aug. 21 in an attack that killed more than 1,000 people.

Assad: Once again, I dare Obama to give a single piece of evidence, a single shred. The only thing he has is lies.

SPIEGEL: But the conclusions of the UN inspectors …

Assad: What conclusions? When the inspectors came to Syria, we asked them to continue the investigation. We are hoping for an explanation of who is responsible for this act.

SPIEGEL: Based on the trajectory of the rockets, it is possible to calculate where they were fired from — namely the positions of your Fourth Division.

Assad: That doesn’t prove anything, because the terrorists could be anywhere. You can find them in Damascus now. They could even launch a missile from near my house.

SPIEGEL: But your opponents are not capable of firing weapons containing Sarin. That requires military equipment, training and precision.

Assad: Who said that they are not capable? In the 1990s, terrorists used Sarin gas in an attack in Tokyo. They call it “kitchen gas” because it can be made anywhere.

SPIEGEL: But you really can’t compare these two Sarin attacks — they aren’t comparable. This was a military action.

Assad: No one can say with certainty that rockets were used — we do not have any evidence. The only thing certain is that Sarin was released. Perhaps that happened when one of our rockets struck one of the terrorists’ positions? Or perhaps they made an error while they were handling it and something happened.

“… some of the fighters handled the weapons improperly and set off the explosions” — remember that line?

It comes from the infamous Mint Press report that has since been disowned by Dale Gavlak, but whose name still appears in the byline.

So, here we have the Syrian president on the one hand asserting that there isn’t a “single piece of evidence” implicating his regime in the chemical attack, while on the other hand churning rumors about the attack first promulgated by a small website in Minnesota.

The Syrian state still retains significant power, yet apparently when it comes to the challenge of gathering evidence about the August attack it’s only tool of investigation is the internet.

Some observers might counter that in this case, since the location of the attack remains under rebel control, the regime can do no more than cite media reports, but this method of deflecting accusations by citing contrary claims from the media, long predates the revolution.

Back in 2007, after it was revealed in the Western media that on September 6, Israel had launched an attack on what was claimed to be a nuclear reactor under construction in the Deir ez-Zor region, the Syrian Vice-President Faruq Al Shara refuted the claim by asserting that the Arab Center for the Studies of Arid zones and Dry lands had in fact been the target. AFP quoted him:

“The images prove that the target that was attacked by air force jets in Syria was an academic research centre for the study of arid soil,” Shara told a news conference in Damascus.

“The last report appeared in European, American, and also a few Arab media outlets, and it noted that the attack was carried out at a research centre in Deir Ezzor.

“When I saw the photograph, it became evident that we were talking about the Desert Lands Research Center, a center that belongs to the Arab League. This is the picture, you can see it, and it proves that everything that was said about this attack was wrong.”

When the center itself denied that it had been attacked, Assad — in an interview with the BBC — claimed that the target had been an unused military building.

But if the Syrian government genuinely had nothing to hide, it had no need to rely on second-hand evidence or unsubstantiated claims — it could have swiftly invited international media to visit the site of the Israeli attack and also brought in UN inspectors to confirm that a nuclear reactor had not been under construction. After all, the IAEA strongly objected to Israel’s unilateral action, arguing that Israeli and U.S. concerns should have triggered IAEA inspections while the facility was still intact.

But instead of jumping on an opportunity to show the world that Syria had been the victim of unprovoked aggression, Assad sent in bulldozers to bury the evidence.

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‘Sex jihad’ and other lies: Assad’s elaborate disinformation campaign

Der Spiegel reports: Syrian President Assad’s regime is waging a PR campaign to spread stories that discredit its rivals and distract from its own crimes. Aided by gullible networks and foreign media, it has included tales of rebels engaging in “sex jihad” and massacring Christians.

Sex sells. And al-Qaida is eager to grab attention. But the combination of the two — sex jihad — is simply irresistible. Scores of young women are reportedly offering themselves to jihadists, according to one of the latest horror news stories coming out of Syria. A sheik from Saudi Arabia has allegedly issued a fatwa that allows teenage girls to provide relief to sexually frustrated fighters.

In late September, 16-year-old Rawan Qadah appeared on Syrian TV and gave a detailed account of how she had to sexually satisfy a radical insurgent. After the Tunisian interior minister stated that young women from his country were traveling to Syria for sex jihad — and having sex with 20, 30 and even up to 100 rebels — the story started to make headlines in Germany, as well. In Germany, the websites of the mass circulation Bild newspaper and Focus magazine have titillated readers with articles about this supposed “bizarre practice.”

In the wake of the poison gas massacre on Aug. 21, the regime in Damascus has launched a major PR offensive. Beyond the official line of propaganda, though, there is a second campaign: a secret and elaborately staged effort to sow doubt and confusion — and divert attention away from the Syrian government’s own crimes. Like many of these bogus news stories, the sex jihad tales aim to convince supporters at home and critics abroad of the rebels’ monstrous depravity.

No other leader in the region — not Saddam Hussein in Iraq, nor Moammar Gadhafi in Libya — has relied as heavily on propaganda as Assad. His PR teams and state media are churning out a steady stream of partially or completely fabricated new stories about acts of terror against Christians, al-Qaeda’s rise to power and the imminent destabilization of the entire region. These stories are circulated by Russian and Iranian broadcasters, as well as Christian networks, and are eventually picked up by Western media. [Continue reading…]

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Syria’s most important rebels are Islamists, and we have to work with them anyway

Shadi Hamid writes: The announcement of a new Islamist “alliance” in Syria—bringing together the largest and most influential rebel factions—is only the latest sign of a failed Western strategy. Several of these groups, including Liwa al-Islam and Liwa al-Tawhid, were previously linked to the Western-backed “moderate” Supreme Military Council (SMC). The implications are significant not just for Syria’s fractious opposition but for American strategy more broadly. As Charles Lister writes, this “effectively depletes…the SMC,” which, at least until recently, embodied Western hopes for a more palatable, more unified rebel force.

For more than two years, the U.S. and its allies have embarked on a quixotic effort to mold the political and military opposition, an effort that has only grown less effective over time. Repeatedly, the rebels were promised greater support and more arms, but it was usually a case of too little too late, if at all. After the U.S.-Russia deal on chemical weapons, Syria’s rebels had even less reason to count on Western support. They were demoralized after military strikes seemed imminent only to be scrapped at the last minute. As one rebel commander put it, “we should have known better than to believe them.” Sheikh Omar Othman, a leader in Liwa al-Tawhid, one of the constituent groups of the new “Islamic alliance,” said, “we were depending on this.”

But “this” never came and the sense of betrayal that was always there took further hold. With his seemingly eager compliance on chemical weapons, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was looking more like a partner than an enemy, prompting John Kerry, in yet another classic Kinsley gaffe, to give “credit” to the dictator. Perhaps Assad didn’t “need to go” after all.

For some time, members of both the military and political opposition had wondered whether the United States was really on their side. It was Foreign Policy‘s Daniel Drezner who, in June, put the pieces together and popularized the idea that a bloody stalemate in Syria wasn’t evidence of the administration’s failure but its success. It sounded awfully cynical at the time, but the Obama administration did, in fact, fear an outright rebel victory. And, more recently, American officials have made the unstated rather explicit, telling the Washington Post that the CIA’s efforts to train Syrian rebels were meant to be limited and ineffectual. The goal, the Post reported, was “to provide enough support to help ensure that politically moderate, U.S.-supported militias don’t lose but not enough for them to win.” [Continue reading…]

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Chomsky on Syria

Truth Out: [I]t seems as though news about Syria has effectively vanished from the mainstream media since the agreement was reached to confiscate Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal. Can you comment on this silence? Does it reflect Western apathy vis-à-vis foreign conflicts, which are mostly viewed through sanitized television news programs?

Noam Chomsky: In the United States, and to a certain extent in Canada, there’s very little interest in what happens outside their borders. The United States is a very insular society. Most people know very little about the outside world and don’t care that much. They’re concerned with their own affairs. People don’t have knowledge and understanding about the outside world, or about history. It’s limited, and there are a lot of reasons for this, but it’s a fact. So when something isn’t constantly drummed-up by the media, they just don’t know about it.

Syria is bad enough, it’s a pretty terrible atrocity. But there are much worse ones in the world. So for example, the worst atrocities in the past decade have been in the Congo, the Eastern Congo, where maybe 5 million people have been killed. Horrible atrocities, and we’re [the United States] involved, not directly but indirectly. The main mineral in your cellphone, coltan [a black metallic ore], comes from the Eastern Congo. Multinational corporations are there exploiting the very rich mineral resources of the region. A lot of them are backing militias which are fighting one other to gain control of the resources or a piece of the resources. The government of Rwanda, which is a US client, is intervening massively, and Uganda to an extent. It’s almost an international war in Africa. Well, how many people know about this? It is the worst atrocity underway. But it’s barely in the media, and people just don’t know about it. And that’s quite generally true.

What happened in Syria was, President Obama had made a statement announcing what he called his “red line”: You can’t use chemical weapons, you can do anything else but [use] chemical weapons. Credible reports came through that Syria had used chemical weapons. Whether it’s true actually is still open to question, but it’s very probably true. At that point, what was at stake was what is called credibility. So if you read the political actors, political leadership, foreign policy commentary, they constantly point out accurately that US credibility was at stake, and we have to maintain US credibility. So therefore something had to be done to show you can’t violate our orders. So a bombing was planned, which would probably make the situation worse, but would at least establish US credibility.

And so what is “credibility”? It’s a very familiar notion. It’s basically the notion that is central to the Mafia. So suppose say the Godfather produces some kind of edict and says you’re going to have to pay protection money. Well, he has to back up that statement. It doesn’t matter whether he needs the money or not. If some small storekeeper somewhere decides he’s not going to pay the money, the Godfather doesn’t let him get away with it. The money doesn’t mean anything to him, but he sends in his goons to beat him to a pulp. You have to establish credibility, otherwise conformity to your orders will tend to erode. International affairs runs in much the same way. The United States is the Godfather when it establishes edicts. Others had better live up to them, or else. We have to demonstrate that. So that’s what the bombing of Syria was to have demonstrated.

Obama was reaching a point where he might not have been able to carry it off. There was very little international support, even England wouldn’t support it, which is amazing. He was losing support internally, and was compelled to send the vote to Congress, and it looked as if he was going to be defeated, which would have been a very serious blow to his presidency, to his authority. Luckily for Obama, the Russians came along and rescued him with this proposal [to confiscate Assad’s chemical weapons] which he quickly accepted – it was a way out of the embarrassment of facing likely defeat. They still have the option of bombing if they want to. And incidentally, to add one comment about this, you’ll notice that this would be a very good moment to institute a call for imposing the Chemical Weapons Convention on the Middle East. The actual Chemical Weapons Convention. Not the version that Obama presented in his address to the nation and that media commentators repeat. What he said is that the convention bars the use of chemical weapons. He knows better. And so do the commentators. The Chemical Weapons Convention calls for banning the production, storage and use of chemical weapons, not just the use. So why omit production and storage? Reason: Israel produces and stores chemical weapons. So therefore the US will prevent the Chemical Weapons Convention from being imposed on the Middle East. But it’s necessary to evade this by misrepresenting the convention, and I think maybe 100 percent of the media, or close to it, go along. But that’s a critical issue. Actually, Syria’s chemical weapons were developed largely as a deterrent to Israeli nuclear weapons. Also, not mentioned. [Continue reading…]

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Banksy and Syria: The rebels who hide and the rebels who fight

No war has ever been captured on film more extensively than the war in Syria. Yet these images of war — mostly delivered by YouTube — seem to have done little to heighten awareness and trigger empathy among those who witness this war on the screen of a computer. On the contrary, the more we see, the less we feel; the image has become the analgesic.

Enter Banksy — the pseudonymous graffiti artist currently performing in New York City. He epitomizes the contradictions in the spirit of rebellion in the internet age — a craving to be seen, wrapped in a fear of being known.

The man whose public life began in the early 90s must by now be approaching middle age and yet he clings to his adolescent persona, convinced apparently that if his real name were to be known and his real face seen, the Banksy bubble would burst; the unmasked rebel would rebel be no more.

That Banksy would release a YouTube video mocking rebels in Syria probably says much more about the ways in which he finds his own rebel identity threatened than it says about the men fighting against the Assad regime.

That in two days, Banksy’s video would have been viewed more than four million times while an award-winning documentary film about Syria, Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution, directed by Matthew VanDyke, has only been viewed 61,000 times, shows how readily the internet caters to our insatiable appetite for mindless entertainment. In this era, the internet delivering YouTube, Twitter, endless apps and GIFs, is the opium of the people.

In VanDyke’s film, Omar Hattab (Mowya), standing next to a cat notes with irony that most Americans show more interest in cats than Syrians.

“I am sure that the animals have rights in America more than the people here. They don’t care about us… Maybe you filming three of four cats and putting it on YouTube — maybe one million will watch the video in one hour.”

It turns out that Syria animated by a Disney character is just as popular.

Syria is not short of satirists, as the residents of Kafranbel continue to demonstrate.

Banksy’s latest stunt is just that: a stunt which calls for attention yet speaks of little more than the universal desire to be noticed. It is a shout to be heard made by someone who has nothing to say — not a sharp piece of political commentary.

In Syria, teenagers have been thrust into adulthood by war, while in the West pseudo-rebels performing their acts of digital defiance turn out to be adults who lack the courage to leave their adolescence behind.

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Facing less risk from chemical weapons, Syrians now threatened with starvation

Time reports: With the threat of using chemical weapons now off the table, the Syrian regime has apparently turned to even more punitive actions to force rebellious citizens into submission: blockade-induced starvation. For months now the government of President Bashar Assad has encircled the rebel-aligned suburbs south and east of the capital Damascus, cutting off road access, telephone connections, water and electricity. But in the wake of the Aug. 21 chemical-weapon attack on the area, which rebels and the West blame on the regime, the government tightened the blockade even further, increasing fears that mass starvation might lead to even more deaths than the estimated 400 to 1,400 victims of the chemical attacks. Already six have died from malnutrition, according to activists, and as winter approaches, conditions are likely to worsen. One rebel brigade has dedicated its forces to breaking the siege in Moadhamiya, a town about 10 km from Damascus that has been under siege for more than six months.

“The situation is bad in Moadhamiya; it’s a real disaster,” Oraba Idriss, commander of the 1,200-strong Maghaweer Brigade tells TIME via Skype. “People lack for everything. They didn’t even have bread to eat until we were able to bring them some wheat and flour.” According to the Moadhamiya Media Center, an activist group that works with Idriss, six people have died of starvation in the past month, including four children. Another dozen children are in medical clinics, suffering from acute malnutrition. One video, released by the media center and posted on YouTube and Twitter, shows the emaciated body of an 18-month-old girl they claim succumbed to starvation on Sept. 23. Whatever power there is comes from generators running off limited supplies of fuel that are smuggled in. Transporting something as simple as flour or fuel across enemy lines requires days of strategic planning and a large degree of luck. “Every mission to Moadhamiya is like a suicide mission for us,” says Idriss. “We have to go around tens of checkpoints, and if they discover us, death is inevitable.” In the past month he has lost four men. Still, he says, the sacrifice is worthwhile. “Hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians are starving in Damascus, and if we don’t risk our lives for them, they will simply die.”

The use of siege warfare is not new in Syria: water lines to the city of Hama have been cut on and off for more than a year now, and in the north rebel forces have used the tactic in attempts to capture government military bases. Even where the government has allowed humanitarian access to provide food, it has refused to allow the transport of medical supplies, lest they be used to heal wounded fighters, say aid agencies. But nowhere has the blockade been as complete as it is in Moadhamiya, one of the first towns around Damascus to rise up peacefully against the regime. Government forces have completely surrounded the area, say local activists. “What the regime is doing is mass punishment for all the people who chanted once for the downfall of the regime,” says Idriss. [Continue reading…]

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Debunking the radicalization narrative in Syria

Bashar al-Assad has played an instrumental role in the deaths of over 100,000 Syrians and in making close to a third of the country’s population homeless, but despite this and despite his lack of charisma, in many Western eyes he seems to retain a stubborn charm.

In his well-tailored suits, the fair-skinned, green-eyed Syrian leader, has a regal manner polished by British culture. He is, in a word, far too respectable to be effectively tarnished by the caricatures of a tyrant and butcher.

Thus the ease with which he is afforded the status of a statesman — a role after all which derives as much from style as anything else.

How easy it is for the West to project dignity on a man for no better reason than his willingness to wear a necktie and a suit. Add to that Assad’s fluent English and it sometimes seems that he might be able to get away with anything.

And then there is the fact that he has paid close attention to the ease with which the American mindset can be manipulated and it’s no wonder that his regime has been so willing to abandon chemical weapons.

It retains the unfettered use of a much more effective weapon which it deploys with minimal effort, since that weapon is nothing more than a word — a word that can render the average American brain-dead from a range of 10,000 miles. The word of course is terrorism.

From day one, Assad has insisted his opponents are terrorists. At first it was a claim dismissed as cynical propaganda and yet as the months have passed and the scale of destruction become massive, the terrorism meme has spread in the war-weary West. Here, any narrative will be given consideration if it leads to this conclusion: don’t venture there.

In this context, Scott Lucas offers a reality check on the latest developments in Syria.

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Kerry praises Assad while Assad continues bombing Syria

Remember the refrain that used to come from all quarters of the Obama administration? Assad must go!

This was Secretary of State John Kerry speaking in London on February 25:

Less than two months after chemical attacks outside Damascus killed hundreds of Syrians, not only have U.S. officials stopped insisting Assad must go, but today Kerry praised the Syrian president. Kerry praised Assad even as his air force continued its daily bombing of Syrian cities. Of course none of those bombs were armed with chemical warheads.

Kerry is “very pleased” at progress in the chemical weapons disarmament plan which he called “a terrific example of global cooperation.” He added, “I think it is also credit to the Assad regime for complying rapidly as they are supposed to.”

Even among those observers who remain skeptical about the Assad regime’s responsibility for the August 21 chemical attacks, there should nevertheless be little debate about who has benefited, diplomatically, politically, and strategically: Bashar al-Assad.

The following videos of air attacks on several cities were uploaded to YouTube today and appeared on the Facebook page of the Local Coordination Committees of Syria.

Barrel bombs dropped on Kafr-Zeita, Hama:

An air strike on Dael, Daraa

An air strike on Hrak, Daraa

An air strike on Tafas, Daraa

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: Syrian government forces have reopened a key road leading to the embattled northern city of Aleppo after heavy fighting with rebels that left casualties on both sides, state media and activists said Monday.

The state news agency and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said regime troops wrested control of the road Sunday night. It had been closed since rebels captured villages along the road in August.

President Bashar Assad’s regime built the desert road to bypass contested areas after rebels took the town of Maaret al-Numan late last year, cutting the main highway between the capital, Damascus, and Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

“This road was a matter of life or death to the regime,” said Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman. He added that government troops now can send supplies to the north although the road remains “very dangerous.”

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A model town of what the Syrian revolution could be

The Telegraph reports: When the men of al-Qaeda came to the mountain town of Yabroud they wasted no time in making their ambitions clear.

Two foreign jihadists, their explosive belts clearly visible over their black uniforms, entered the mosque where Muslim residents were observing Friday prayers. The congregation watched, horrified, as the men stormed to the palpate and ordered the imam to leave.

They would be giving the sermons now, the al-Qaeda operatives explained; as has happened in many other towns and villages in Syria, the worshippers were to live under their “black flag”. Yabroud, they said, should be part of a wider Islamic caliphate.

As the words sunk in, the frightened hush that had fallen on the crowd in the mosque gave way to anger. Dissenting voices shouted at the suicide bombers. They were quickly joined by others, until, in a crescendo of furious yells, the worshippers faced down their occupiers. The al-Qaeda men, wild eyed and angry, were forced to retreat, the implied threat of the suicide vests never acted upon.

Though the incident happened in September, it remained the main the talk of the town when last week The Telegraph visited Yabroud, north of Damascus.

“Al-Qaeda came here to control us,” said Dia’a, 32, a male resident who had been in mosque that day. “We told them that we have our own people to preach to us. We told them we didn’t need them; we know what Islam is.”

In the two years since it fell out of the grip of President Bashar al-Assad, Yabroud has avoided the fate that has crippled so many other parts of rebel held Syria. Its residents have kept out foreign jihadists and avoided succumbing to warlords and mafia gangs. They have refused to allow the community to be torn apart by sectarianism or by a primordial scramble for money and power.

This moderate Sunni and Christian town, with its neat rows of houses and tidy tree-lined streets, has remained exemplary of the ideals of the peace activists who began the civil uprising against a dictatorship in 2011. It is a place where civilians, not armed fighters, have taken control of the town’s future, and brought a working alternative to Assad’s government. Yabroud is the model town of what the Syrian revolution could be. [Continue reading…]

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International monitors begin to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons equipment

The Washington Post reports: Personnel overseen by a team of international monitors took blowtorches and high-speed saws to Syria’s chemical weapons equipment Sunday, the first step on the road to dismantling what is believed to be one of the world’s largest arsenals of the weapons of mass destruction.

The destruction of mixing equipment, missile warheads and aerial bombs was carried out by a team of Syrians under supervision from experts from the Netherlands-based Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the United Nations said in a statement.

The mission, which received the backing of a U.N. Security Council resolution last week, faces a daunting task, dealing with a tight timetable with the added logistical and security challenges of working in the midst of a raging civil war. The 20-member advance team has been quick to get to work since arriving in Damascus on Tuesday.

The pressing schedule sees the elimination of Syria’s ability to produce chemical weapons by the beginning of November, before the complete destruction of its stockpiles within nine months.

Work to dismantle delivery and production equipment is relatively straightforward, according to experts, using simple tools, or even vehicles to run over and crush items. It is the later phases — disposing of highly corrosive precursor chemicals and filled warheads — that will pose the biggest challenge. Some precursors are expected to be transported out of the country to be destroyed. [Continue reading…]

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How Obama’s effort to get re-elected may have prolonged the war in Syria

Michael Hirsh reports: Despite Secretary of State John Kerry’s frenetic efforts, preparations for the “Geneva II” peace conference on Syria’s civil war are already foundering. The rebel movement has become increasingly radicalized against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and more fractured. A newly confident Assad, meanwhile, has somewhat relegitimized himself as a signatory to a new chemical-weapons ban negotiated by the United States and Russia under U.N. auspices, which his government is tasked with implementing over the next year. Defying global opprobrium over his use of sarin gas, Assad has also positioned himself in a series of high-profile TV interviews as a preferable alternative to Islamist rebels who want to create a fundamentalist state.

All of which should prompt a reexamination of the first Geneva conference in the summer of 2012, on which Kerry’s new push for peace is based. According to some officials involved, perhaps the greatest tragedy of Syria is that, some 80,000 lives ago, President Obama might have had within his grasp a workable plan to end the violence, one that is far less possible now. But amid the politics of the 2012 presidential election—when GOP nominee Mitt Romney regularly accused Obama of being “soft”—the administration did little to make it work and simply took a hard line against Assad, angering the special U.N. Syria envoy, Kofi Annan, and prompting the former U.N. secretary-general to quit, according to several officials involved.

Former members of Annan’s negotiating team say that after then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on June 30, 2012, jointly signed a communique drafted by Annan, which called for a political “transition” in Syria, there was as much momentum for a deal then as Kerry achieved a year later on chemical weapons. Afterward, Annan flew from Geneva to Moscow and gained what he believed to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s consent to begin to quietly push Assad out. But suddenly both the U.S. and Britain issued public calls for Assad’s ouster, and Annan felt blindsided. Immediately afterward, against his advice, then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice offered up a “Chapter 7” resolution opening the door to force against Assad, which Annan felt was premature.

Annan resigned a month later. At the time, the soft-spoken Ghanaian diplomat was cagey about his reasons, appearing to blame all sides. “I did not receive all the support that the cause deserved,” Annan told reporters in Geneva. He also criticized what he called “finger-pointing and name-calling in the Security Council.” But former senior aides and U.N. officials say in private that Annan blamed the Obama administration in large part. “The U.S. couldn’t even stand by an agreement that the secretary of State had signed in Geneva,” said one former close Annan aide who would discuss the talks only on condition of anonymity. “He quit in frustration. I think it was clear that the White House was very worried about seeming to do a deal with the Russians and being soft on Putin during the campaign.” One of the biggest Republican criticisms of Obama at the time was that he had, in an embarrassing “open mike” moment, promised Moscow more “flexibility” on missile defense after the election. [Continue reading…]

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By accident or design, ISIS is helping Assad

James Traub writes: I’ve spent much of the last week in Antakya, an ancient city, known to Byzantine Christians as Antioch, which now serves as a bivouac for Syrian rebel fighters and a jumping-off point for journalists and humanitarian actors working in Syria, which lies 20 miles to the west. One subject preoccupies everyone in the Turkish town: not the brutality of the regime in Damascus, but the nihilistic violence of the foreign jihadi group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Firas Tammim, a native of the Syrian city of Latakia who now brings medical supplies and other goods to the region, said to me, “I don’t want to say Assad is better, but at least he didn’t arrest or kill people because they were smoking.” Tammim showed me a picture on his phone of a crowd of villagers, including children, witnessing an ISIS beheading of an alleged infidel. “Think what this does to these children,” he said. Over time, Tammim said, Syrians are becoming inured to what they once would have found unspeakable.

ISIS appears to have up to 8,000 soldiers in Syria, a tiny number compared with the 100,000 or so rebel fighters. But the group’s medieval ideology, as well as its pathological obsession with enforcing Islamist rectitude in the towns and cities its soldiers have infiltrated, has made it a source of terror. One evening I was sitting at an outdoor cafe where a grizzled man was steadily smoking a hookah and shooting jets of tobacco smoke through his nostrils. He called himself Abu Abdul, and he was a fighter with a brigade affiliated with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the “moderate” forces backed by the West. We talked about the jihadists. Then he said something else. “He asks that you not mention the name of his brigade,” my interpreter said. “Everyone is scared of ISIS.”

President Bashar al-Assad has received two enormous gifts in recent months. The first is the Russian-brokered deal to remove Syria’s chemical weapons, which distracted attention from his relentless campaign to kill and terrorize his enemies and also compelled Western governments to work with him as the country’s legitimate ruler. The second is ISIS, which has also deflected attention away from the war between the regime and the rebels and has vindicated as nothing else could Assad’s persistent claim that he is confronting, not political opponents, but “terrorists,” as his foreign minister, Walid al-Muallem, recently claimed at the United Nations.

For this reason, it has become a fixed conviction in Antakya that ISIS functions as a secret arm of the regime. This sounds like an all-too-understandable conspiracy theory, yet even Western diplomats I’ve spoken to consider it plausible, if scarcely proved. In the summer of 2012, Assad released from prison a number of jihadists who had fought with al Qaeda in Iraq and who are thought to have helped formed ISIS. Reporters, activists, and fighters also note that while regime artillery has flattened the FSA’s headquarters in Aleppo, the ISIS camp next door was left untouched until the jihadi group left; the same is true in the fiercely contested eastern city of Raqqa. ISIS, for its part, has done very little to liberate regime-held areas, but has seized control of both Raqqa and the border town of Azaz from FSA forces. [Continue reading…]

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