The Los Angeles Times reports: As Syrian opposition leaders threw punches at one another early this month in a five-star Cairo hotel, rebel fighters in Idlib province spent hours trying to fight off tanks, armored vehicles and attack helicopters with little more than Kalashnikov rifles.

By nightfall, as the rebels fled shelling that reportedly killed dozens, conference members continued to fight over post-revolution plans.

The conference scuffle laid bare power struggles among Syrians seeking the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, despite a conflict that has moved ever closer to the Syrian leader. On Wednesday, three of his senior military officials were killed in a bombing that struck at the center of the regime’s power.

But even as some rebel fighters say they are pushing for a “final battle” — and some reports said the Syrian leader had fled to the coastal city of Latakia — others say victory is far off, especially with the opposition still struggling to agree on exactly how to oust Assad and who should lead the way.

Perhaps most significant for the future of the uprising is the growing animosity between the exiled dissidents who have monopolized the narrative of the revolution internationally and the activists who have risked their lives to remain in Syria.

For months, opposition leaders who were at the forefront of the uprising when it began have been trying to parlay their activism into more prominent roles on the political front and in groups such as the Syrian National Council, the leading opposition bloc.

But even as they have led the early protest movements, helped form armed militias and become local leaders, they have been overshadowed by exiles in Egypt and Turkey who, many activists say, are out of touch with the revolution and country they claim to speak for. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: As darkness descended over Damascus last Saturday, few of its 1.7 million residents could have had any inkling that a decisive battle to wrest the city from the grasp of President Bashar al-Assad was about to begin.

Insurgents gave the operation a name that reflected their hopes of a successful surprise attack on a city long regarded as an impregnable fortress for the Assad family: “Damascus Volcano and Syrian Earthquake”.

“There is no going back,” Colonel Qassem Saadeddine, a spokesman for the joint command of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), told Reuters after the fighting had broken out. “We have started the operation to liberate Damascus.”

The operation, still under way, has come closer to toppling Assad than anything else in the 16-month uprising against his rule. By nightfall on Friday, six days after it began, rebels had seized control of border crossings and were battling loyalist troops on the streets of Damascus.

The attempt to seize the lair of a man whose father was known as “The Lion of Damascus” had been long in the planning, Saadeddine said. It involved 2,500 fighters who had infiltrated the ancient city’s suburbs a week earlier, he said.

Insurgents were especially redeployed from other parts of the country for the task, another FSA officer said separately.

The rebels struck first in the city’s southern Hajar al-Aswad district, engaging in sustained battles with government troops who must have wondered what had hit them.

The following day, July 15, the scale of the rebels’ ambition became clear. That day, a Sunday, a powerful blast tore through a bus in Damascus carrying security forces personnel, wounding many, and fighting spread to three other city districts.

Residents sympathetic to the insurgents burned tires to distract government troops. Government armored vehicles poured into southern Damascus amid reports that the road to the airport had been closed.

Residents of one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities corroborated those accounts described the fighting as the fiercest to touch the capital yet since the uprising began in provincial towns 16 months ago.

Assad had – until then – largely succeeded in shielding his capital and its residents from the extreme violence that has convulsed the rest of the country while he battled to maintain his family’s 42-year grip on power.

Even as his tanks and artillery laid waste to parts of other cities, traffic in Damascus circulated, shops and markets kept open, and students continued to study.

But as black smoke rose above Damascus last Sunday and the clatter of machinegun fire rang out – interspersed with the sound of explosions – that illusion of normality was shattered. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has amassed up to $1.5bn (£950m) for his family and his close associates, according to analysts, despite moves in London, Switzerland and the US to freeze the assets of his regime.

Many of Assad’s assets are held in Russia, Hong Kong and a range of offshore tax havens to spread the risk of seizure, according to London-based business intelligence firm Alaco.

A myriad of companies and trusts are understood to have been deployed to disguise assets that ultimately belong to members of the Syrian regime.

Iain Willis, the head of research at Alaco, said the millions of pounds frozen in UK bank accounts make up just a fraction of the regime’s estimated global wealth.

In peacetime, the Assads and their close friends owned around 60% to 70% of the country’s assets, from land and factories to energy plants and licences to sell foreign goods. But Assad would find it difficult to liquidate such assets in the event of his regime’s collapse.

“In terms of realisable assets, it’s likely to be in the region of $1bn to $1.5bn (£636m to £950m),” said Willis. “This would be in line with Egypt’s Mubarak and the Marcoses of the Philippines.

“These are held, not just by Assad himself, but by extended family members, by second cousins, uncles, business partners and their advisers.

“Those funds are likely to be held in places like Russia, maybe Dubai, Lebanon, Morocco, even Hong Kong, but the assets themselves are likely to be worldwide.”

For those convinced that the United States and Israel are the driving force behind a regime-change project which is intent on toppling Bashar al Assad, no piece of evidence will seem more conclusive in supporting this theory than the existence of a project called “The day after: Supporting a democratic transition in Syria.” Look out for reports on this at Press TV and Russia Today — I have no doubt they are being drafted right now.

In a post for The Cable blog, Foreign Policy has the scoop: “Inside the secret effort to plan for a post-Assad Syria.” That’s the teaser on the home page, but the post itself replaces “secret” with “quiet”. If it really was secret we wouldn’t be reading about it, would we.

For the last six months, 40 senior representatives of various Syrian opposition groups have been meeting quietly in Germany under the tutelage of the U.S. Institute for Peace (USIP) to plan for how to set up a post-Assad Syrian government.

The project, which has not directly involved U.S. government officials but was partially funded by the State Department, is gaining increased relevance this month as the violence in Syria spirals out of control and hopes for a peaceful transition of power fade away. The leader of the project, USIP’s Steven Heydemann, an academic expert on Syria, has briefed administration officials on the plan, as well as foreign officials, including on the sidelines of the Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul last month.

The project is called “The day after: Supporting a democratic transition in Syria.” Heydemann spoke about the project in depth for the first time in an interview with The Cable. He described USIP’s efforts as “working in a support role with a large group of opposition groups to define a transition process for a post-Assad Syria.”

The opposition leaders involved in the USIP project have been meeting since January and providing updates on their work to the Arab League, the Friends of Syria group, the team of U.N. Special Envoy Kofi Annan, and the opposition Syrian National Council.

The focus of the group’s effort is to develop concrete plans for the immediate aftermath of a regime collapse, to mitigate the risks of bureaucratic, security, and economic chaos. The project has also identified a few things can be done in advance to prepare for a post-Assad Syria.

“We organized this project along systematic lines, including security-sector reform,” Heydemann said. “We have provided technical support for Syrian opposition participants in our project, and the Syrians have identified priorities for things that need to be implemented now.”

He emphasized that USIP’s involvement is primarily in a facilitation and coordination role. “The Syrians are very much in the lead on this,” he said.

In line with the claim that this is not a U.S.-directed project, Heydemann underlines the fact Obama administration officials have neither participated in nor observed any of the Berlin meetings. But to say “the Syrians” are in the lead begs the obvious question: which Syrians? How many, if any, have been directly engaged in the uprising?

Beyond the implications for the Syrian population and for the region, President Obama has a political interest during the presidential campaign in not being portrayed as a disengaged observer who stood by and simply watched Syria fall apart.

While foreign policy is still unlikely to feature strongly in the campaign, Mitt Romney is bound to make full use of the narrative that the Middle East has been reduced to anarchy under Obama’s watch.

One of the ironies of the anti-interventionist perspective is that it focuses on the dangers of the U.S. being too actively engaged in the Middle East at a moment when the administration is more afraid of those critics who say it is disengaged. For that reason, the administration actually wants to play up its level of engagement rather than mask it.

Thus we get the theatrics at the United Nations where supposedly the noble efforts of the U.S. and its allies are repeatedly being thwarted by Russia and China. Don’t expect anyone to openly acknowledge this, but Washington may secretly welcome these diplomatic shackles. If let loose, it would probably have a much harder time explaining why it is so reluctant to become more deeply involved in the crisis.

The idea that Syria is a pawn in a new Great Game, is an idea that shapes the perceptions of many observers, but what seems closer to the truth is that ultimately Syria will demonstrate how diminished the influence of the great powers has become.

Steven Heydemann’s Day After project no doubt represents the Obama administration’s desire to be able to mitigate the chaos that will likely ensue with the collapse of the Assad regime, but desires and capabilities are very different things.

Heydemann writes:

Competition to define a post-Assad transition will only accelerate as the fall of the regime grows nearer. Whether these efforts will pay off for the United States or for Russia, however, is uncertain. The scale of Russian support for the regime poses severe obstacles to Moscow’s future influence in a post-Assad Damascus, while the limits of U.S. support for the opposition will likely constrain Washington’s future influence, as well. Moreover, there are regional players in the game and they enjoy significant advantages. For the United States to maximize its leverage it would need to overcome its reluctance to support the armed opposition, yet this remains a large step further than Washington is willing to go. Not least, there are revolutionary forces on the ground, that have no intention of permitting Syria’s future to be dictated by outsiders, who, together with the external opposition, have little confidence in Kofi Annan and are appropriately cynical about efforts to force them into negotiations with elements of the Assad regime. In this critical period, the Syrian opposition remains a diffuse and elusive target in Washington’s efforts to manage the end game in Syria.

Devising a plan is very different from determining an outcome.

Christian Science Monitor reports: With his capital in open revolt and his regime shaken by the brazen assassination of several key advisers in a bomb attack, Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power has not looked less certain since the uprising against his rule began 17 months ago.

Even his whereabouts are being questioned, with various reports asserting that he and his family have fled Damascus for the relative safety of Latakia or Tartous, both port cities on the Mediterranean coast and an area where the Alawite sect – to which the Assad family belongs – predominates. State-run media continue to report that he is in the capital.

As fighting in Damascus entered a sixth day, panicked residents fled the city and headed toward the nearby border with Lebanon. Up to 30,000 Syrians were said to have entered Lebanon in the past 48 hours, stretching the capabilities of Syria’s tiny neighbor and overwhelming aid agencies. Most of those fleeing the violence in Damascus are well-heeled middle-class people driving their own cars. Some of them likely have properties in Lebanon or will be checking into hotels in Beirut.

The sense that Assad’s edifice of power is gradually crumbling has hastened speculation on his whereabouts after the devastating bomb attack two days ago that killed Assef Shawkat, Assad’s brother-in-law and regime strongman, and two other senior security officials.

A Syrian opposition activist who has lived in hiding in north Lebanon for the past year claims that he was informed by a senior Syrian Army officer that Assad and his wife and three children traveled to Tartous following the bomb attack. The officer is still serving in the Army but is secretly colluding with the opposition, the activist says.

Louis Proyect writes: One can’t help but feel that the pro-Assad left is in some kind of time-warp. They see Syria as it was in 1969, when it was on the leading edge of economic change in the Middle East—or so it would seem. You get the same thing with the Qaddafi or Mugabe fan club, mostly involving the same people. Of course, there are pro forma acknowledgements that such governments have adopted neoliberal measures, but you are left with the impression that if not for them, things would only get worse. In many ways, this is the same “lesser evil” politics that leads to supporting Obama over Romney, but transposed to the “anti-imperialist” realm. It is necessary to back Bashar al-Assad because his foes would be worse. The same line has been applied to Zimbabwe and Qaddafi’s Libya. Mostly, it is inspired by a kind of bastardized version of “Defend the USSR”, making no effort to really come to grips with the nature of the Syrian economy.

Part of the problem is the tendency for figures such as al-Assad senior and junior, Mugabe, and Qaddafi to use the term socialism in describing their governments. Baathist Socialism has ruled in Syria for over 50 years while Qaddafi’s “Green Socialism” was around for over 30. Mugabe, of course, had the authority of a successful Marxist guerrilla struggle behind him, even though his economic policies were not that different from what could be seen throughout the continent under the rubric of “African Socialism”.

What marked these experiments apart from Marx’s original vision was the utter lack of democracy. [Continue reading…]

Al Arabiya reports: Russian ambassador to France Aleksandr Orlov has said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is ready to step down but ‘in civilized manner,’ but the claims were dismissed by the Syrian state television as “baseless.”

Ambassador Orlov told French RFI radio that Assad, facing a surging uprising against his rule, signalled readiness to step down when he accepted a recent international declaration which foresaw a transition towards a more democratic Syria.

“At the Geneva conference, there was a final communiqué that foresees a transition towards a more democratic system,” Orlov said. “This final communiqué was accepted by Assad. Assad nominated his representative to lead the negotiations with the opposition for this transition. That means he accepted to leave, but in an orderly way.”

Syria’s Information Ministry quickly denied this, saying Orlov’s remarks were “completely devoid of truth.”

Orlov further said his personal opinion Assad would not be able to remain in power. “I think it will be difficult for him to stay after everything that has happened. But essentially, he has accepted that he will have to leave.”

Al Arabiya is also reporting that Russia will delay shipment of attack helicopters to Syria.

Maybe it’s just a temporary network glitch, but the fact that the state-run SANA website is currently (6.30AM US Eastern) unavailable provides yet another hint that the government is struggling to retain its grip on power. Likewise, the fact that Bashar al-Assad has not publicly uttered a word since three members of his inner circle lost their lives on Wednesday, casts further doubt on his ability to remain in power.

Today, Syrian state TV confirmed that intelligence chief Hisham Ikhtiar has died from wounds suffered in Wednesday’s bombing.

VOA reports: The United States says the United Nations Security Council has “utterly failed” after Russia and China vetoed a resolution threatening Syria with sanctions if it does not halt the violence.

Ambassador Susan Rice called the vetoes dangerous and deplorable. She said the Council’s failure to act is a recipe for more violence, terrorism, and a war that could engulf the entire region.

The resolution would have extended the U.N. monitoring mission in Syria. It also threatened sanctions against the Assad government if it did not stop using heavy weapons against rebels and civilians within 10 days. Additionally, the measure demanded that Mr. Assad implement envoy Kofi Annan’s plan for a peaceful political transition.

As the UNSC engaged in its deliberations today, those absorbed in this international show of earnestness might have paused to collectively and individually asked themselves a simple question: Is anyone in Syria holding their breath, awaiting the outcome of the vote?

I suspect that for most Syrians the words of “Omar” from the Revolution Leadership Council in Damascus resonate more clearly than anything Susan Rice or anyone else in New York might have to say.

The New York Times reports: Fighting seized neighborhoods encircling Damascus for a fifth straight day on Thursday, a day after President Bashar al-Assad’s key security aides were killed in a brazen bombing attack in the sharply escalating conflict.

The bombing, close to Mr. Assad’s own residence, called into question the ability of a government that depends on an insular group of loyalists to function effectively as it battles a strengthening opposition.

The outlook for a peaceful outcome in Syria darkened further on Thursday, when Russia and China vetoed a Britain-sponsored resolution at the United Nations Security Council that would have penalized Mr. Assad’s government with sanctions for the first time for failing to implement the six-point peace plan negotiated by Kofi Annan, the special Syria envoy. The double veto also called into question the viability of a 300-member United Nations mission sent to Syria to monitor the peace plan. Its mandate expires Friday.

Opposition activists reported battles between the Army and opposition forces in the southern district of Damascus and in the northern suburb of Qaboun, with residents who were not trapped by fighting fleeing many areas. In a second statement in two days, the Syrian military said on Thursday that the bombing had left it more determined to “clear the homeland of the armed terrorist groups” — the term it uses for the insurgents seeking Mr. Assad’s ouster.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said that the government assault had intensified, with more helicopters firing rockets that were igniting and destroying houses in Qaboun. It said that snipers were deployed around the exits of the neighborhood and that water and electricity had been cut off with numerous families trapped and no one able to excavate dead bodies from the rubble.

One activist reached in Damascus, using only the name Omar, said that the government had been asking residents of Tadamon and parts of Yarmouk, the capital’s southern neighborhoods, to leave their homes. That is usually a sign that government forces are on the verge of a violent attack.

Residents of Mezze and Kafr Sousseh, western neighborhoods even closer to the center of the city, fled unprompted because of the intensity of the shelling there, activists said.

The ability to control borders is probably the most fundamental symbolic expression of state power. At least one border crossing between Syria and Turkey is no longer under government control.

C.J. Chivers reports: The lethal attack on Wednesday on President Bashar al-Assad’s senior security chiefs aligned neatly with a tactical shift that had changed the direction of Syria’s long conflict: the opposition fighters’ swift and successful adoption of makeshift bombs.

Bombs have been in rebel use since violence intensified in Syria in late 2011. But since midspring, anti-Assad fighters have become bolder and sharply more effective with their use, and not only in what is apparently their hand in the assassinations in Damascus.

Improvised bombs have steadily become the most punishing weapon in the otherwise underequipped rebels’ arsenal, repeatedly destroying Syria’s main battle tanks, halting army convoys and inflicting heavy casualties on government ground operations in areas where armed resistance is strong, Western analysts and rebel field commanders and fighters said.

In this way, even as the anti-Assad fighters have appealed for international intervention and other forms of material and military support, local fighters have created their own informal buffer zones, pockets of the Syrian countryside that are now largely free of government ground troops.

“The bomb is not only essential, it is a main part of our success,” said a former Syrian Army artillery major, who called himself Abu Akhmed and leads a fighting group in Idlib, a northern Syrian province, in a meeting in a house in this Turkish city crowded with fighters.

“When you think of why we are improving and getting stronger, it is not because more weapons are coming in from outside,” he added. “The main reason is because we are becoming more organized, and because of our bombs.”

The bombs that Abu Akhmed described, known in Western military jargon as improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, have done more than kill Syrian soldiers and deny the Syrian Army access to Syrian terrain.

The weapon that has long been championed in the popular imagination and public discourse of underground fighters as a means to kill or drive off foreign occupiers — whether Russians in Chechnya or Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan — has been turned against a standing Arab army by its own people.

The shift happened subtly. Joseph Holliday, a former American Army intelligence officer who is now an analyst covering Syria for the Institute of the Study of War, in Washington, said the changes were not in the rate of attacks, but in a rapidly evolving prowess.

One factor behind the rebels’ success in bombing that this reporter does not touch up is intelligence. Unlike an insurgency fighting an occupying army, the rebels are probably receiving an unparalleled amount of intelligence from would-be defectors who are still embedded in the Syrian army.

This points to the most fundamental problem that any state faces in trying to crush a popular uprising: the state cannot seal itself off from the people. It cannot be composed throughout by unshakable government loyalists. Just as the state gets attacked from without it will also be undermined from within.

The Telegraph reports: Initial reports emanating from state media that a suicide attacker exploding a car bomb was responsible can now be discounted. The building’s exterior was undamaged and this assault was too well-aimed. The Free Syrian Army claims it was an inside job, that up to 10 bodyguards and aides to senior figures in the security apparatus had decided to defect. They were told to stay put and plant a bomb in the meeting room where the committee coordinating the regime’s response to the uprising met.

An Islamist subgroup – the Brigade of Islam – also claimed responsibility, but the two stories are not incompatible. There are Islamist groups both inside and co-operating with the FSA, and it would have taken a number of individuals with a number of talents to make it work. That would have included sophisticated bomb-making skills.

Anyone who has read a history of the Second World War will have been reminded of the Von Stauffenberg plot, when a disaffected army officer planted a bomb under a table during a meeting with Hitler. The Syrian opposition succeeded where elite German officers failed.

[S]enior rebel officials told The Daily Telegraph that bombs hidden in a flower arrangement and a chocolate box were remotely detonated by defectors working to bring down the regime from within.

Both the Free Syrian Army and a jihadi group calling itself Liwa al-Islam claimed responsibility, although they may have been acting in collaboration.

“There were two bombs,” Louay al-Mokdad, the FSA’s logistical coordinator said. “One was hidden in a packet of chocolates and one in a big flower pot that was in the middle of the table of the conference room.” He claimed that the operation was conducted by a group of FSA members in collaboration with drivers and bodyguards working for Mr Assad’s inner circle, a version repeated by other activists.

The two devices, one made of 25lb of TNT, and the other a smaller “C4” plastic explosive, were said to have been planted in the room days before the meeting by an opposition mole working for Gen Ikhtiyar. Mr Mokdad claimed that the meeting may have been led by Mr Assad or by his brother Maher, who has been the regime’s battlefield commander in the uprising. “I have just spoken with the driver who brought the explosive package,” he said. “He is trying to understand who led the meeting; whether it was Bashar or Maher.”

The Associated Press reports: Bashar Assad attended the swearing-in of his new defense minister Thursday, according to footage shown on Syrian state TV, the first sign of the president since an audacious rebel attack the day before struck at the heart of his regime and killed three senior officials.

Government forces struck back against rebels with attack helicopters and shelling in a fifth straight day of clashes in Damascus. The inability of the military to control the clashes in the capital against lightly armed rebel forces and the deadly bombing of a high-level security meeting a day earlier made Assad’s hold on power look increasingly tenuous.

The whereabouts of Assad, his wife and their three young children have been a mystery since the attack that killed his brother-in-law and his defense minister. Assad does not appear in public frequently, and his absence was notable following such a serious blow his inner circle.

The state TV announcement appeared aimed at sending the message that Assad is alive and well. It said Assad, dressed in a blue suit and tie, wished the new defense minister good luck but it did not say where the swearing-in took place.

Reuters reports: Mystery surrounded the whereabouts of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday, a day after a bomber killed and wounded his security chiefs and rebels closed in on the centre of Damascus, vowing to “liberate” the capital.

The Syrian leader made no public appearance and no statement after a bomber killed his powerful brother-in-law, his defense minister and a top general.

By the early hours of Thursday, residents had reported no let-up in the heaviest fighting to hit the capital in a 16-month revolt against Assad’s rule.

The fighting came within sight of the presidential palace, near the security headquarters where the bomber struck a crisis meeting of defense and security chiefs.