BBC News reports: Just a few months ago, Thwaiba Kanafani was leading a normal life with her husband, six-year-old son and three-year-old daughter in Canada.

An engineer by training, she had been working in the oil industry.

But now she has left all that behind.

When we met up in the city of Adana in southern Turkey, she had just fled across the border from the Syrian city of Aleppo after a mission with rebel forces that went wrong.

Two male colleagues who were acting as her minders, were killed.

At the end of June she joined the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and was given a particularly dangerous role to fulfil.

As a woman she has able to move more easily around the streets of Aleppo than the men.

“Lots of women are working with me and we do a lot of spying work,” she says.

“We usually check the locations of regime people [military forces] and check where would be the best points to locate the Free Syrian Army.

“We also spy on high-ranking people in the government so we can help the FSA arrest and capture them.”

In the midst of all this, she speaks on the phone with her family every day to reassure them she is fine.

“I wonder why I am not afraid of being shot through the head,” she says pointing to her forehead.

“But sometimes when you face death, you lose your fear.”

Thwaiba Kanafani is one of a growing number of Syrians without any previous military experience who have joined the rebels.

There is a special training programme based in Turkey at secret camps run by the Turkish military, she says.

“The Turkish people are really helping us. Lots of people are getting training in those camps.”

“The training is really professional. You can only sleep four hours a day.

“You have to climb mountains, you get weapons training. It’s hard work.”

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are also reported to be providing assistance for what has been described as a secret nerve centre for military aid and communications for the Syrian rebels.

This is reported to have been set up in Adana.

None of these countries has confirmed the existence of the base.

The Times adds: A video put on the internet last month shows Mrs Kalafani, a petite figure in camouflage and carrying a belt of machine-gun bullets, delivering a clarion call to Syria’s revolutionaries. “I am engineer Thwaiba Kanafani, a lady from Syria,” she shouts, with 30 or more armed men around her. “I came from Canada to answer the call of my country.”

Her arrival has not been universally welcomed. Neither does she have kind words for all her allies. Dressed in Western clothes when we meet, Mrs Kanafani has little praise for some of the figures, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, jockeying for power within the revolution.

“I was watching the revolution. We felt very bad. The Syrian political opposition had no strategy. They were totally useless,” she says. “We need structure . . . that is what I was working on.” But she says she is being thwarted. “When we launched a steering committee the Muslim Brotherhood were, like, they had to own it. They are destroying the revolution to control it later on.”

Mrs Kanafani, the daughter of a middle-class Syrian family in Hama, says she was always an independent spirit. She has powerful memories of President Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, his notorious police state and its repression of the Brotherhood.

In 1995, she left Syria as a civil engineer and in 2002 moved to Canada. She has two children, Omar, 6, and Ghazal, 3. Her husband is less than enthused by her departure, she admits.

Now she is one of a small number of women deployed undercover in Syria for the rebels. “My role is to navigate, to see where the Syrian army is located, to help capture high-ranking people,” she says. Last week she was involved in a mission in Aleppo to identify the whereabouts of a senior figure from the Shabiha militia. “There was a lot of killing, which I hate,” she says, “but also a lot of victories for the FSA.”

She insists Syria is not, as some fear, doomed to a sectarian bloodbath between a Sunni majority and the Alawite sect of the ruling elite. “We are not here to kill Alawi people. We love them as brothers and sisters. There are Sunnis in the [regime] army. The FSA kills them. This is not sectarian. When we capture soldiers, we investigate them. If they are innocent of killing anyone, we release them.”

And if not? “If they are guilty, they are executed,” she says evenly. “We don’t have prisons to watch them.”

Her presence has aroused mixed feelings. Some Syrians praise her courage, others question her motives. “For me it is good to have a woman with no hijab representing the revolution,” says a comrade. “I respect her, but this is not a children’s game.”

Reuters reports: Abu Bakr, a Syrian rebel commander on the outskirts of Aleppo, is a devoted Islamist determined to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. But the radical allies that have joined the rebels in recent months alarm even him.

“Let me be clear. I am an Islamist, my fighters are Islamists. But there is more than one type of Islamist,” he told Reuters. “These men coming fought in insurgencies like Iraq. They are too extreme, they want to blow up any symbol of the state, even schools.”

Seventeen months into the uprising against Assad, Syria’s rebels are grateful for the support of Islamist fighters from around the region. They bring weapons, money, expertise and determination to the fight.

But some worry that when the battle against Assad is over they may discover their allies – including fighters from the Gulf, Libya, Eastern Europe or as far as the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area – have different aims than most Syrians.

“Our goal is to make a new future, not destroy everything,” Abu Bakr said, sighing as he rattled his prayer beads. “As bloody as it is now, this stage is simple. We all have the same cause: topple the regime. When Bashar falls, we may find a new battlefront against our former allies.”

Abu Bakr and his comrades say they envision Syria as a conservative version of Turkey’s moderate Islamist rule, not an autocratic theocracy. They are unnerved by a recent kidnapping of foreign journalists and attacks on state infrastructure.

Western powers have warily watched the signs of an increasing presence of foreign Sunni Islamist fighters in Syria.

They fear a repeat of the mass sectarian slaughter that followed the American invasion of Iraq. Sunni Islamist suicide bombers affiliated with al Qaeda there are still targeting security forces and Shi’ites in large-scale bomb attacks.

Some fighters who have come to Syria are idealists who believe in jihad, or holy war, for oppressed Muslims, and would probably return home in a post-Assad era. But others are al Qaeda-linked fighters who may want a base in Syria.

Their numbers are still low, but enough to worry countries fearing Iraq-style bloodshed in Syria, a country straddling the lines of most ethnic and regional conflicts in the Middle East.

This is a rough translation of ‘La crise syrienne déchire la gauche arabe,’ by Nicolas Dot-Pouillard, an article written in French and appearing in August’s Le Monde Diplomatique. Thanks to Sophie at Les Politiques.

In August 2011, the Lebanese leftist nationalist daily, Al-Akhbar, went through its first crisis since its inception. Its deputy editor, Khaled Saghieh, left the paper he helped found, while denouncing the newspaper’s lack of support for the popular uprising in Syria which began in March 2011. Al-Akhbar has never concealed its political proximity with Hezbollah, one of Bashar Al-Assad’s key regional allies, nor that it favored dialogue between the Syrian government and opposition rather than the outright collapse of the regime. At the same time, the newspaper made room for the voices of several members of the Syrian opposition, including Kaïleh Salamah, a Marxist intellectual, Syro-Palestinian, arrested in late April 2012 by the security services. In June, dissent appeared in the online English edition of the newspaper, with an article Amal Saad-Ghorayeb. Explicitly supporting the Assad regime, the Lebanese columnist attacked the proponents of the “third way” — those who denounce the Syrian authoritarian regime while warning against any foreign intervention, including one modeled on Libya. The same month, another contributor to Al-Akhbar English, Max Blumenthal, announced his departure in an article criticizing others at the newspaper who had become “Al-Assad’s apologists.”

The divisions inside Al-Akhbar are symptomatic of debates that both strategically and intellectually, divide the left in the Arab world. Some continue to support the Syrian regime in the name of the struggle against Israel and “resistance to imperialism.” Others are placed firmly alongside the insurgency in the name of “revolutionary” logic and the defence of “democratic rights”. Finally, there are those who support a middle ground, expressing from a distance solidarity with the demonstrators’ demand for freedom, rejecting “foreign interference”, while also advocate a form of “national reconciliation”. Sensibilities vary widely — some staunchly Marxist or communist, with others in the orbit of a certain nationalist left, some radical, and others more moderate. In reaction to the Syrian crisis, the Arab left has become a fractured mosaic.

Anti-imperialism as the analytical framework

Of course, there are few in the Arab left who fully support Assad and few are calling for a continuation of the existing system in Syria. But neither are the majority of leftists unconditional supporters of the popular revolt. Such support tends to be found at the far left of the political spectrum, among Trotskyists, the Socialist Forum in Lebanon, revolutionary socialists in Egypt, Maoists, and the Democratic Way in Morocco. Such groups have relations with some factions of the Syrian opposition, such as the Revolutionary Left of Gayath Naisse. They have participated, since the Spring 2011, with selective mobilizations at Syrian embassies and consulates in their respective countries.

Some intellectuals on the left, such as the Lebanese historian Fawwaz Traboulsi, also support the logic of insurgency. They demand the fall of the regime and oppose dialogue. While promoting the need for peaceful popular protest, they do not deny the right of rebels to take up arms. At the extreme left, supporters of the revolution nevertheless disavow the Syrian National Council’s alliance with states such as Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. They firmly denounce this because it could undermine the independence of the popular movement in Syria.

Denouncing the regime and calling for its downfall, some among the radical left remain wary of support provided by the Gulf monarchies to the Syrian revolution, even while affirming the anti-Assad rhetoric coming from that part of the ‘international community’ led by the U.S.. However, their anti-imperialist reflex does not take precedence over their support for the insurgency. Priority is given to the internal situation in Syria: the logic of a people’s uprising against their rulers comes first, as was the case in Tunisia and Egypt.

As for those who constitute the majority of the Arab left, they have maintained a cautious distance from the Syrian revolt. They denounced first the militarization of the uprising, which would only benefit the radical Islamist groups and foreign fighters flowing into Syria. They emphasize the confessionalisation of the conflict, placing progressives, Christian and Alawite minorities in opposition to a Sunni majority radicalized by repression, and see the threat of a protracted civil war. Finally, they worry about the regional and global balance of power — Iran and Syria against the Gulf monarchies, Russia and China against the United States. In the large regional and international war game that places Syria in the front line between several state actors, the Arab left is inclined to sustain its long-standing alliances with Iran and Syria, Russia and China.

Thus, when on April 4, 2012, a newly-formed union of nationalists and leftists in Jordan, a coalition of six political parties, from communists to Arab nationalists, organized a meeting in Amman for the ninth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it was less the memory of the fall of Saddam Hussein than the Syrian crisis which took center stage. “Foreign intervention” in Syria was strongly denounced with some speakers making the parallel between the March 2003 military operation against Iraq and support by major Western powers for the CNS and the armed opposition.

In Tunisia, in a statement dated May 17, 2012, the powerful trade union of General Union of Tunisian Workers (UGTT) — in which part of the executive comes from the far left — while reiterating its support for the democratic demands of the Syrian people, warned against a “conspiracy” fomented by the U.S., “colonial and Arab reactionaries.” Two months earlier, the Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party (Poct) called, along with Arab nationalist groups, in a demonstration to denounce the holding in Tunis a conference of Friends of Syria, uniting around the CNS nearly sixty international delegations.

The Lebanese Communist Party, meanwhile, has adopted very careful positioning. While publishing in its press, articles by Syrian opposition members such as Michel Kilo (who is not in the CNS), it has nevertheless refrained from participating in some events that were held for a year in front of the Syrian embassy in Beirut. Moreover, it finds itself under fire from some critics in the far left in Lebanon, since part of the leadership of the party remains close to Qadri Jamil, head of the Popular Will Party in Syria and a member of the “legal” opposition. Jamil joined the new government of Riyad Hijab, appointed by Assad in June 2012, as vice premier for economic affairs.

It is usually a reformist logic that finds favor in some quarters of the Arab left: a solution to the conflict in Syria must be political, not military. The final communiqué of the Arab Nationalist Conference, which gathered last June in Hammamet, Tunisia, with some two hundred members drawn from the Arab nationalist left and to a lesser extent, Islamists, reflected this position. The document was intended to be as consensual as possible. While recognizing the right of the Syrian people “to freedom, democracy and peaceful transfer of power”, it condemns “violence from whatever source,” referring both to the regime and the opposition army, calling on both to be part of a process of dialogue, based on the plan to restore peace in March 2012 proposed by the envoy of the United Nations (UN) Kofi Annan.

If, for part of the Arab radical left, the revolutionary perspective must head the agenda in Syria, another fraction, substantially larger, has rejected this view. They do not want a sudden fall of the regime. For them, the heart of the contradiction lies in a cold war that dare not speak its name. Their greater fear is of a post-Assad Syria simultaneously reconciled with the United States and allied with the Gulf states, more than their fear of the survival of the regime.

In addition, Syria remains a kind of Janus in the eyes of Arab leftists. Few would deny its authoritarian and repressive nature, but even today the defensive discourse of the regime subjected to international sanctions, echoes one of the deepest ideological underpinnings of the Arab Left: the paradigm of the Third Worldist and anti-imperalism. For some, this feeling is tempered by their commitment to the popular character of the revolt, in others it is first multiplied by the increasing internationalization of the conflict.

Moreover, the Islamist dynamic of the Arab Spring in which forces from the Muslim Brotherhood have arrived at the gates of power in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, has undoubtedly caused, in part of the left, a backlash: the Arab revolts are now feared as they may lead to Islamist hegemony across the region.

While the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan, and the Tunisia Ennahda movement have supported the Syrian opposition, the position of a large part of the Arab left on Syria reflects its own confrontation with the forces of political Islam. Thus parties usually committed to ‘revolution’ and ‘progressism’, and for some, to ‘Marxism’, paradoxically now prefer a negotiated and gradual transition in Syria, because they fear the outcome of this revolution.

The Washington Post reports: As the Arab world’s bloodiest revolt continues to maim, kill and ravage lives on an ever-escalating scale, anti-American sentiments are hardening among those struggling to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, in ways that could have profound consequences for the country and the region in a post-Assad era.

America, once regarded by the Syrian opposition as a natural friend in its struggle for greater freedoms against a regime long at odds with the West, increasingly is being viewed with suspicion and resentment for its failure to offer little more than verbal encouragement to the revolutionaries.

In the nearly 17 months since Syrians joined the clamor for change that swept the Middle East last year, Tunisians, Egyptians and Libyans have voted in elections, chosen new leaders and embarked, however messily, on democratic transitions.

Syria, by contrast, is hurtling ever deeper into an all-out conflict with no end in sight, “and all we get is words,” said Yasser Abu Ali, a spokesman for one of the Free Syrian Army battalions in the town of al-Bab, which lies 30 miles northeast of Aleppo.

The rebels say they don’t want direct military intervention in the form of troops on the ground. But they have repeatedly appealed for a no-fly zone similar to the effort that helped Libyan rebels topple Moammar Gaddafi last year and for supplies of heavy weapons to counter the regime’s vastly superior firepower, say rebels and opposition figures.

When the regime falls, as the rebel battalion spokesman assumes it eventually will, Syrians will not forget that their pleas for help went unanswered, he said.

“America will pay a price for this,” he said. “America is going to lose the friendship of Syrians, and no one will trust them anymore. Already we don’t trust them at all.”

It is not entirely accurate that the United States is doing nothing to help the Syrian opposition, nor is it clear what more it usefully could or should be doing, analysts say. A debate is raging within the Obama administration over whether it is prudent to step up support for the rebels now that the effort to promote a diplomatic solution through the United Nations has failed.

President Obama has already authorized the provision of non­lethal aid to the opposition, including communications and satellite equipment. The State Department has been reaching out to Assad opponents inside Syria with a view to identifying potential allies and recipients of assistance.

Syrian opposition figures say they have received some financial help to buy arms from U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. NATO member Turkey is also facilitating rebel movements across its 550-mile border with Syria, including, some Syrians say, the transfer of arms.

But the assistance has been small-scale, intermittent, and dwarfed by the demands of an expanding battlefield that now covers all corners of the country and has escalated to include the use of air power by the government. If some of the weaponry deployed against Assad’s forces has been provided with outside help, most rebel commanders seem unaware of its provenance. [Continue reading…]

At Syria Comment, Ehsani, a Syrian-American banker, writes: Like nearly 25 million other Syrians, one cannot help but feel stunned and exasperated by the events engulfing our country. How did we get here? How can a country long associated with “stability” suddenly unravel and enter what seems to most like a black hole?

Things could not look more differently back in November 2000. Barely few months into his Presidency, the 34 year-old new leader declared the closing of the Mezze prison and the release of hundreds of political prisoners. Those hoping for the birth of a new Syria felt vindicated. Surely, the past thirty years of the heavy handedness of the much feared Moukhabarat agencies would soon give way to a new atmosphere of political, legal and economic reform.

Michele Kilo, Burhan Ghalioun, Riad Seif, Aref Dalila, Anwar al-Bunni, Kamal al-Labwani , Mamoun al-Homsi, Omar Amiralay, Suhair al-Atassi, Hussein al-Awdat, Antoun al-Makdisi, Fawaz Tillo, Habib Salih, Haitham al-Maleh and Radwan Ziadeh certainly all thought so as they made up the major figures of what later became known as the “Damascus Spring”.

Groups of like-minded people were suddenly meeting in private houses and discussing political matters and social questions. Such locations were soon referred to as “mundatat” or “salons”. Naturally, political demands soon grew into what was later referred to as the “Manifesto of the 99”. The principal demand consisted of the cancellation of the state of emergency and abolition of martial law and special courts; the release of all political prisoners; the return without fear of prosecution of political exiles; and the right to form political parties and civil organization. To these was often added the more precisely political demand that Article 8 of the Syrian constitution be repealed. The movement never called for regime change nor challenged the legitimacy of Bashar al-Assad’s succession to the presidency.

Participants of The Damascus Spring were ahead of their time. The Arab world was yet to experience a spring of any kind. It is worth noting that the salons debated not only Article 8 but many political and social questions from the position of women to the nature of education methods and the Arab Israeli conflict.

How long did reforms last?

By February 2001, the security heads had seen enough. The young President must have been warned of the slippery slope nature that his promised reforms were likely to morph into.

A sudden change of heart caused such Political forums to be forcibly closed. Seif, Riad al-Turk, Mamoun Al-Homsi, Aref Dalila, and others were arrested and charged with “attempting to change the constitution by illegal means” and “inciting racial and sectarian strife” and were sentenced by the Damascus Criminal Court to five years in jail. The other eight activists including Walid al-Bunni, Kamal al-Labwani, and Fawwaz Tello were referred to the Supreme State Security Court which issued prison sentences between two to 10 years.

Only one salon, the Jamal al-Atassi National Dialogue Forum, was still permitted to function. The Atassi forum was finally also shut down in 2005 after a member had read a statement from the banned Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. The final red line was crossed. [Continue reading…]

Noam Sheizaf writes: Dr. Avner Cohen, the unofficial historian of the Israeli nuclear program, noticed today that a paragraph that appeared in the Hebrew print edition of a Haaretz op-ed by Sefi Rachlevski revealed for the first time a few details of a little-known incident from 1998.

While arguing against “the gamble” of going to war with Iran, Rachlevski writes:

In 1998, Saddam Hussein, weakened by the American no-flight zone, made one hollow threat. In response, [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu ordered to consider the arming of Jericho missiles. An order that wasn’t issued even during the [1973] Yom Kippur War, under a fear of destruction. Three people went to Netanyahu: Ariel Sharon, [former chief of staff and minister] Rafael Eitan, and [Chief of Staff] Amnon Lipkin-Shahak. They told him to relax, take a pill, and forget about it. Some things even a prime minister shouldn’t do. Will [Ehud] Barak be one of the three this time around? I don’t know.

The Washington Post reports: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a rare appearance with the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on Tuesday in video footage broadcast on state television.

Assad has made one appearance since the assassination of four top security officials on July 18. In video footage broadcast the following day, he was shown swearing in a new defense minister.

Saeed Jalili, a top security official in Iran and the country’s lead nuclear negotiator, visited Damascus on Tuesday to discuss the fate of 48 Iranians captured by rebels just outside the capital on Saturday, as well as the ongoing crisis in Syria.

“Kidnapping innocent people is not acceptable anywhere in the world,” Jalili said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. He said Iran would do what it could to “secure release of the 48 innocent pilgrims kidnapped in Syria.”

He also said the only way to resolve the unrest in the country would be to find a “Syrian solution.”

The Iranian government claims that the captives were Shiite pilgrims on their way to Sayida Zeinab, a Muslim shrine south of Damascus that is popular with Shiites. But rebels assert that the Iranians belong to their country’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps and were on a mission to help the Assad government battle Syria’s persistent 17-month-long uprising.

Jalili’s visit came a day after Syria’s prime minister defected to Jordan, becoming the most senior official to quit Assad’s embattled government, according to rebels who claim they helped him escape.

The reported defection of Prime Minister Riyad al-Hijab buoyed the rebels, who saw it as a clear sign that top officials are abandoning Assad as he attempts

A statement attributed to Hijab and read on the al-Jazeera Arabic news channel Monday said he had resigned to protest his government’s harsh tactics in confronting the opposition.

“I am announcing that I am defecting from this regime, which is a murderous and terrorist regime,” the statement said. “I join the ranks of this dignified revolution.”

Real power in Syria is wielded by Assad’s inner circle of friends, family and the powerful chiefs of his security forces. But the defection of the head of Assad’s government nonetheless sent a strong signal that his support is rapidly unraveling even within the ranks of those assumed to still be loyal.

Hijab, a former agriculture minister and a member of the ruling Baath Party, is a Sunni Muslim from the eastern town of Deir al-Zour, which has been in open revolt against the government for more than a year.

The byline on the NBC News report below says Andrea Mitchell and Catherine Chomiak. I’ll assume Chomiak wrote it and Mitchell provided a veteran reporter’s oversight. “Now take care, we don’t want this to sound too much like Iraq. Make sure no one gets the idea that the US is planning an invasion and occupation.” I’m imagining Mitchell offered a tip like this, and that’s why, deep into the report a reference to the opposition comes out as “occupation.”

Besides planning for a major influx of additional refugees into neighboring states — a real likelihood that demands to be addressed by adequate planning and funding — the rest of this planning for a post-Assad Syria sounds like Washingtonian wishful thinking. An array of fine ideas and total lack of any practical means through which the U.S. might play an instrumental role in seeing they could be implemented. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as though I’m suggesting that it would be good if the U.S. actually had such power, but this looks like an Obama-esque PR exercise — the application of one of the lessons-learned from Iraq: the necessity for a post-regime collapse plan. But it skips over that little detail: the U.S. has no presence inside Syria and thus very little ability to control what happens after the fall of Assad even if this time there is a plan. It’s the bureaucrat’s security blanket: have strong documentation and then when others ask, what went wrong?, you can say: But we did have a very good plan.

Perhaps the phrase that most accurately captures the substance of this effort came when a State Dept spokesman said: “that’s certainly where our feelings are.”

The U.S. knows what it wants Syria to end up looking like and it’s going to pray in earnest that this might happen.

But what more tangible and immediate outcome might there be from this last-minute planning? The creation of a website in English and Arabic? The drafting of a “Syria roadmap”? I’m sure that will prove indispensable.

At the same time, have no doubt that anti-imperialist conspiracy theorists will be jumping all over this: the imperial blueprint for a NATO-controlled Syria. Hot stuff!

The State Department and the Pentagon are jointly working on plans for a post-President Bashar al-Assad Syria, NBC News has learned.

They hope to avoid the kind of implosion they believe occurred because of a lack of planning for post-Saddam Iraq.

The Bush administration’s decision to disband Iraqi security forces, made shortly after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, was a catalyst for the bloody civil war that followed.

Critics said that decision, made by senior Pentagon officials and announced by the head of the U.S. occupation authority at the time, Paul Bremer, set loose tens of thousands of armed, disaffected young men.

The U.S. is indicating to the Syrian army that it does not want it to dissolve and those not directly involved in atrocities could be part of a successor regime.

State Department Spokesman Patrick Ventrell said at a daily press briefing Monday:

“What we’re focused on and our concern is that as the opposition comes together with the remaining elements of the regime that don’t have blood on their hands, that they create an inclusive Syria where the rights of all Syrians are respected. And so that’s our focus and that’s what we’re directly communicating to the opposition, and that’s certainly where our feelings are.”

U.S. officials also hope that civil servants and other Assad holdovers will work with an interim government to avoid the kind of vacuum that led to widespread civil disorder, looting, and ultimately to civil war in Iraq.

Officials believe it is only a matter of time before Assad is gone, one way or another — although they can’t predict when.

Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, a veteran in Middle East affairs, is in charge of the planning.

An activist takes a photo of buildings damaged by what activists say is shelling by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in Talbeiseh, near Homs, on Monday.

He is assisted by U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who had returned to Washington after diplomatic operations in Damascus were suspended in February.

Last week, Ford talked with Syria opposition leaders in Cairo.

Burns’ schedule includes two White House meetings Tuesday, likely indicating more inter-agency planning on the Syria crisis.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, traveling in South Africa on Monday, announced a day earlier that she will add a stop in Turkey to her overseas trip for meetings with Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan on the Syria crisis.

Part of the U.S. planning includes Pentagon contingency plans for NATO and Syria’s neighbors to help provide transportation, food and medical supplies to a potential flood of refugees — well beyond the current numbers — in case there is a total collapse of the Syrian regime.

A key component of the post-Assad plan: pressing the occupation [sic] not to inflict reprisals against Assad loyalists after he goes.

“When we talk to the opposition we’re very clear … revenge or reprisals are totally unacceptable,” Ventrell said Monday.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reports:

President Bashar al-Assad on Monday issued Decree No 294 on dismissing Prime Minister Riyad Hijab from his post.

The President issued Decree No. 295 on designating Eng. Omar Galawanji as a caretaker premier.

Each time there is a major defection and a new crack opens in the crumbling Assad regime, we witness the same chirade: the defector flees, then gets fired. The sad thing is that as farcical as this might look from outside Syria, Assad is probably correct in believing that a segment of the population believe the lies they continue being fed.

BBC News reports: Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab has defected from President Bashar al-Assad’s government to join “the revolution”, his spokesman says.

Mr Hijab was appointed less than two months ago and his departure is the highest-profile defection since the uprising began in March 2011.

His family is reported to have fled Syria with him.

Riad Hijab is a Sunni Muslim from the Deir al-Zour area of eastern Syria which has been caught up in the revolt.

His spokesman Mohammed el-Etri told al-Jazeera TV that he was in a safe location.

“I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution,” ran the statement read by his spokesman.

Mr Hijab is the first cabinet minister to defect. The BBC’s Dale Gavlak in Jordan says the development underscores the cracks in the regime which are reaching beyond military ranks.

Unconfirmed reports suggested that two other cabinet ministers had also deserted and there were claims that a third, Finance Minister Mohammad Jalilati, had been arrested while trying to flee.

But Syrian state TV said he was still in his office working as usual, and it broadcast what it said was a phone interview with Mr Jalilati categorically denying reports that he had been detained.

I imagine a phone interview was all he could give. There’d be no point having him appear on TV reading a statement while a revolver’s pointed at his head.

Reuters adds: A senior Syrian intelligence officer has defected to Jordan, Al Arabiya television reported on Sunday.

It said Colonel Yarub Shara was head of the Damascus branch of Political Security, an intelligence organization responsible for monitoring and suppressing dissent.

McClatchy reports: For the Hafeiz family in Ramallah, the violence raging in Syria is just a computer click away.

The youngest members of the family, who are descended from Palestinian refugees who fled central Israel in 1967, are divided between Jordan, Syria and the West Bank. They’ve always relied on email and Skype to keep in touch, but since violence broke out in Syria more than a year ago, the computer has become a lifeline.

“I have their email passwords and they have mine. It’s a way of checking up on each other – the ones who can still use computers, at least,” said Sami Hafeiz, a 22-year-old student in Ramallah. “They are very active online.”

He showed McClatchy Newspapers some of the recent conversations he’d held with his cousins.

“You see here, they are worried about food, and medicine for our uncle. They write here about trying to get out, but it is impossible,” he said, scrolling through the older messages. “Some of them have now joined the fighting, others have not.”

The fate of some 500,000 Palestinian refugees currently living in Syria has recently become more perilous, as the violence that has raged in Syria for more than a year finally reached the doorstep of some of that country’s largest Palestinian refugee camps.

Last month, the Yarmouk refugee camp just south of Damascus became a focus of fighting after forces loyal to President Bashar Assad used live ammunition to disperse a demonstration, killing dozens; on Thursday, mortar rounds struck near the camp, killing 20 people, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the international agency with responsibility for providing services to millions of Palestinian refugees throughout the Middle East. The U.N. agency said it did not know how many of the casualties were Palestinian, however.

“There were Palestinians killed in the fighting before, but this is when they realized that Assad was not going to spare them,” Hafeiz said.

The advocacy group Human Rights Watch has noted that Palestinians have increasingly picked up arms and joined the rebel Free Syrian Army. Exact numbers are unknown, but in recent months lists of casualties published by anti-Assad groups include dozens of Palestinians. Col. Kassem Saadeddine, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, told a Lebanese newspaper that “Palestinians are fighting alongside us, and they are well trained.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters adds: An aid convoy left the West Bank city of Ramallah on Sunday carrying food and medicine in a symbol of support for Palestinian refugees caught up in the crisis in Syria.

“Today the first convoy will leave from here, from the West Bank, from Palestinian soil towards Syria,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said at a press event marking the event.

An official donations drive netted around $650,000 worth of food and medical aid from Palestinian companies, businessmen, and individuals during the charitable month of Ramadan.

A one percent cut of salaries from the Palestinian Authority’s cash-strapped public sector went toward the convoy.

BBC Radio Wales: The news from Syria gets bleaker by the day. More than a hundred thousand have already fled as refugees, the killing continues, and Kofi Annan resigns as UN peace envoy, declaring the diplomatic task impossible in the present situation.

Syria has a rich mosaic of spiritual traditions, including some of the earliest of all Christian churches: but for how much longer? What future is there for religious minorities if the regime falls? And to what extent is religion a factor in this conflict?

Roy Jenkins is joined by four people with personal experience of Syria: Dr Harry Hagopian, international lawyer and consultant, and former Assistant General Secretary of the Middle East Council of Churches; the Rev Nadim Nassar, the only Syrian priest in the Church of England, and director of the Awareness Foundation, an educational charity founded in response to religious conflict around the world; British/Syrian journalist Robin Yassin-Kassab, author of The Road From Damascus and co-editor of the quarterly magazine The Critical Muslim; the Rev Christopher Gilham, a Congregational minister in Pembrokeshire who has made many visits to Syria over the years, and retains strong links with the country.

This broadcast lasts 30 minutes:

Rami G. Khouri writes: Amid the many scenarios for Syria are two widely discussed possibilities: that President Bashar Assad will respond to his imminent collapse by retreating with his Alawite compatriots to an Alawite mini-state in the northwestern coastal area of Syria; and that Syria will fragment into a series of smaller entities based on ethnicity and religion – Kurdish, Druze, Alawite, Sunni, Christian and so on.

I suspect that both of these dire expectations are wrong, though each carries within it a hint of what is possible, not only for Syria but also for much of the Arab world. In between the centralized police and welfare state and a collapse into fragmented ethnic statelets may be a more feasible and appropriate third way, one that is based on strong decentralization of regional power and identity within a looser national superstructure.

This might be an appropriate governance model for much of the Arab world, whose own citizens have never had the opportunity to shape their countries’ borders, values or policies. I am assuming that many of the Arab world’s troubles reflect a critical lack of legitimacy and natural cohesion, which has allowed so many states to fall into the hands of individuals and families that passed on rule, or intended to do so, as a personal inheritance, regardless of the will of the citizenry (Hafez Assad, Saddam Hussein, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Moammar Gadhafi, Omar Hassan Bashir, a dozen or so Lebanese families, not to mention the hereditary principle in a handful of monarchies).

Chronic autocracy in the Middle East has led to many other deficiencies and distortions that have defined our countries for generations. These include exaggerated militarism, economic frailty, recurring political violence, profound national vulnerability, corruption, lack of citizen participation in public life, and mass pauperization in the non-oil-producing states.

Syria is a perfect example of all that ails the modern Arab world, and it is no surprise that now is its turn to offer us pictures of tanks and jet fighters bombing civilian quarters of ancient cities, as the central government’s authority over the land shrinks.

In Syria and elsewhere, the past century of Arab statehood has been a tale of state birth and formation in the early decades, rapid socio-economic development in the middle of the last century, then the start of a downward cycle in the 1970s that included oil-fuelled massive distortions, consolidation of security-dominated and family-dominated leaderships for life, and wars and civil strife, which involved domestic forces, regional states and foreign powers alike.

The violent end of the Assad regime in Syria will give the citizens of that country the opportunity to configure their country’s institutions of governance according to their own values, identities and priorities, as Tunisians, Egyptians, Yemenis and Libyans have started to do. This process of national self-determination usually occurs when states are born, not a century later, though this is one of the peculiarities of modern Arab history, with its colonial heritage and the stultifying impacts of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the oil boom and the Cold War. [Continue reading…]

Colum Lynch writes: The resignation of Kofi Annan as the U.N.-Arab League joint envoy to Syria on Aug. 2 effectively marks the end of U.N.-led diplomatic efforts to persuade President Bashar al-Assad to leave office peacefully, setting the stage for a new and deadlier phase of the Syrian crisis and heightening pressure on the United States and its allies to now step up military support for an armed opposition movement that they don’t know well or entirely trust. But it also raises questions as to what extent the United States ever believed the peace process would succeed and whether it misplayed its hand in attempting to convince Syria’s longstanding Russian ally to back a cessation of violence and Assad’s removal from power. In explaining his refusal to approve a Chapter VII resolution threatening sanctions against Syria and opening the door to additional unspecified measures, President Vladimir Putin told Annan in a closed-door meeting in Moscow: “We have been bitten by the West before, and we won’t let it happen again,” according to an account by a diplomat present at the meeting.

From the earliest stages of the Syrian uprising, the Obama administration harbored reservations about the wisdom of confronting Russia at the U.N., anticipating that Moscow would block any meaningful action to pressure Assad. But with little stomach for intervening militarily in Syria, the administration ultimately backed a European- and Arab-led drive to pursue Assad’s negotiated departure through the United Nations while publicly denouncing Russia for protecting a dictator. Some observers charge, however, that the U.N. strategy ultimately provided diplomatic cover for an administration in Washington that feared getting embroiled in another Middle Eastern war.

“Washington’s primary goal has been to avoid getting dragged into a military operation in Syria,” said Richard Gowan, an analyst at New York University’s Center for International Cooperation. “And to some extent the high-profile diplomatic clashes with the Russians let the Americans look tough and active but without them actually having to invest militarily. In a sense, the angry diplomacy of the Security Council has been an alibi for military inaction in Syria.”

Indeed, the Obama administration has been widely criticized for proceeding too cautiously in its response to the Arab Spring, and even today it continues to resist calls to arm the opposition, limiting its support to humanitarian assistance, communications equipment, and intelligence, much of it channeled through Jordanian and Turkish agents. Earlier this year, President Barack Obama signed a “finding” authorizing the CIA to provide indirect military support for the rebels, but the administration has refused to provide lethal assistance, according to news reports this week.

It has been almost a year since Obama first called on Assad to “step aside,” proclaiming “the future of Syria must be determined by its people.” But his strategy for dislodging the Syrian leader — which hinged in large part on a U.N. diplomatic effort to push Assad out voluntarily — finally ran aground in the Security Council last month, leaving Assad clinging to power and raising the prospect that Syria’s fate will be settled on the battlefield. How did we get to this point?

The story begins not in Syria, where protests broke out in earnest in March 2011, but in Benghazi, Libya, where the late Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi, was poised to deliver a decisive blow to the insurgency, raising fear among Arab and Western governments that thousands of civilians could be slaughtered in the process. “We are coming tonight,” Qaddafi warned on state television as his forces prepared for their final assault. Buoyed by a call for action from Libya’s own diplomats, the United States and its European and Arab allies drove through a resolution that granted NATO sweeping powers to protect civilians from imminent threat of violence. Confronted with support from the Arab League and the African Union, China and Russia grudgingly allowed the resolution to pass, casting abstentions along with Brazil, Germany, and India. But Russia and other critics reacted angrily after NATO and a handful of Arab countries entered the conflict on behalf of the rebels, targeting the Qaddafi family’s homes from the air, while providing intelligence – and, in some cases — arms to the insurgents. Even South Africa, which had voted in favor of the resolution, complained that NATO had overreached.

The dispute would poison the atmosphere in the Security Council just at a time when it was seeking to forge an agreed response to the violence in Syria. Libya “did create some bad blood” which has spilled over into the deliberations on Syria, Russia’s U.N. envoy Vitaly Churkin told me back in January. “The worst way to achieve [your] goal in the Security Council is to mislead and manipulate…. We are going to have a tougher look at all of the sort of draft resolutions we are considering in the Security Council because we have to take now into account the scope of misinterpretation.” [Continue reading…]

The idea that Russia was misled and manipulated into allowing a NATO intervention in Libya which, had they foreseen the manner of its implementation, they would have opposed, is a narrative that has been widely accepted. The Russians were tricked but they are not going to let that happen again. This is a line that has been swallowed whole by most of the opponents of the intervention in Libya.

The problem is, if the Russians truly were misled, then why didn’t they vote in favor of UN Resolution 1973? In fact, they were unwilling to support the resolution and merely refrained from exercising their veto power. The fact that they and China abstained suggests that their primary concern was to avoid the diplomatic repercussions of being seen in the eyes of the world as having allowed Gaddafi to conduct an unrestrained assault on Benghazi.

Then as now, Russia is no different from any other country in pursuing what it sees as its own interests. The idea that Russia has become the champion of sovereignty and serves as a healthy restraint on US manipulation of the UN should be treated with just as much skepticism as America’s claim that it is a champion of democracy.

International Business Times reports: Human Rights Watch has confirmed for the first time claims that the Syrian government has used cluster bombs against its civillian population during the 17-month conflict.

“We have been able to verify the use of cluster bombs,” Nadim Houry, regional Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch, told the International Business Times in Beirut, Lebanon.

The verification comes before the third meeting of states parties to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, to be held in Oslo, Norway, on September 11.

Houry added that there was no evidence of cluster bomb use in the ongoing major clashes in Syria’s biggest city and commercial hub, Aleppo.

Martin Chulov reports from Aleppo: The pitched battle for Syria’s oldest city was edging ever closer to its ancient heart on Saturday, with skirmishes flaring near world-renowned landmarks and once impregnable pillars of state control.

Monuments and security buildings stand cheek-by-jowl in Aleppo, a city of huge importance to the Syrian uprising, where a grand, 1,000-year-old citadel stands not far from a much-feared interrogation dungeon. Yesterday jets were bombing the centre of the city, barely a mile away from the citadel.

Rebel groups claim that, after two weeks of bitter fighting, the city of almost 2.5 million people and linchpin of regime authority is almost within their reach.

However, as rebel reinforcements continued to pour in from elsewhere in the country ahead of an expected push early this week, regime troops were also bolstering defences in areas they continue to hold, primarily in the west and centre of the city.

The rebel force of about 6,000 fighters is being countered by a regime force thought to comprise at least double that number as well as large numbers of the loyalist Shabiha militia, many of whom come from Aleppo and have sworn to defend the city.

Rebel forces have advanced from the north-east and were on Saturday trying to dislodge loyalists who were fighting them on the approaches to the Maysaloon district. Capturing this would open access roads to the city centre, where the fighting flared on Saturday.

It would also, potentially, open a way for rebels, who maintain a foothold in the south-west of the city, to link up with the new arrivals. [Continue reading…]

The Economist reports: For all the talk of an early endgame being played out in Syria in the aftermath of the bombing that killed four of Bashar Assad’s key security enforcers, Western governments and their intelligence services are not betting on the regime’s imminent collapse. The battle under way for Syria’s second city, Aleppo, may end with Mr Assad’s forces holding the centre and other key points while the rebels are forced back to the fringes, where they may nibble away for months. If Aleppo falls, the regime will probably go down fast. But that may not happen soon.

Mr Assad’s own fate—either death or flight—may, however, be sealed. The destruction he has wrought on his people has surely disqualified him from any settlement. As things stand, Western intelligence services think he is more likely to be ousted by a palace coup than by the kind of military collapse that engulfed Muammar Qaddafi. Indeed, the idea of replacing Mr Assad with somebody from within the regime is circulating in intelligence circles, and may even hold some attraction for the Russians, hitherto Mr Assad’s staunchest foreign backers. The UN and the Arab League seem, for the moment, to be making little or no diplomatic running.

Neither the Syrian armed forces nor the rebels seem able to inflict a decisive defeat on the other. Both are capable of taking ground but not holding it. The rebels have the advantage outside the main population centres and may now control more than half the area where most Syrians live, in villages and small towns, mainly in the western third of the country. But they have been pushed back by Mr Assad’s forces whenever they try to seize one of the country’s main cities, such as Homs, Hama and parts of Damascus. The rebels have become wilier at retreating tactically (as they have done from Damascus) rather than fighting to a futile death. If Mr Assad’s men reimpose their grip on Aleppo, the rebels are likely to retreat before they are wiped out, for all their current grandiose predictions of imminent victory. [Continue reading…]