Serene Assir writes: [A]ccording to Syrian Islamists in Tripoli, the uprising has nothing to do with sectarianism. Sheikh Zoheir Abazi arrived in Tripoli from Deraa, the cradle of the Syrian uprising, six months ago. He speaks proudly of his city’s struggle against Assad’s regime, and of the way in which protests in many areas of Syria saw Sunnis, Alawis, Christians, and Druze calling for dignity and freedom together.

“People who say that the revolution is Islamist are wrong. People who say the revolution is turning sectarian are also mistaken,” he said in an interview, adding, “It is a revolution against oppression, backed by values and principles of freedom and humaneness that all people can sympathize with, regardless of their beliefs.”

That is why, Abazi believed, the uprising was so quick to spread across many parts of Syria. The reason why the regime remained in power 11 months into the uprising, he added, was because of the brutal repression it has employed to try and quell dissent.

Abazi also ascribed the rise of sect-based Islamism to the regime’s violent suppression of protests. “It is the regime, led by Ali Baba and his 40 thieves, that invented the mirage of radical Islamism. From the start of the uprising, it accused protesters of being al-Qaeda terrorists,” he said.

“But it isn’t true. Unlike the Lebanese, the Syrians are not a sectarian people,” he added.

But the Syrian uprising’s increased Islamization, fueled by US pawns Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is fast becoming a fait accompli. For lack of better friends in Lebanon, ongoing violence in Syria has also pushed activists like Abazi into forging unlikely alliances with people whose motivations are more sectarian than revolutionary.

Among the latter is Sheikh Zakaria al-Masri, the voice behind weekly calls for post-Friday prayer protests. He is the president of Lebanon’s Islamic Sahwa (Awakening) Council. Al-Masri regularly calls on people attending Friday prayers at the Hamza mosque in Tripoli’s Qebbe district, to take part in protests that kick off as soon as prayers are over.

Al-Masri derives his legitimacy from the pulpit, and focuses on prayer-goers and their faith – less so their politics – to get people onto Tripoli’s streets. A statement issued by the Sahwa Council referred to Assad’s secular Baath Party as “atheist.” It also said the Syrian regime follows Russia and China’s “socialist” and “communist” leads.

The uprising, the statement added, came about when “God Almighty removed from the people their fear.” The people “then decided to start demanding their freedom of belief” through demonstrations sustained over the past 11 months. As such, to the Lebanese Sahwa Council, the Syrian uprising is Islamic in character. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Syrian troops advanced Wednesday on a key rebel-held area in the central city of Homs, where three Western journalists are among 100,000 residents trapped by a government assault that has raged for weeks. The forces appeared to be starting a ground operation to retake the area that has become a symbol of the uprising to oust President Bashar Assad.

Government forces have been heavily shelling Homs, and particularly the rebel-controlled Baba Amr neighborhood, for more than three weeks with tanks, artillery and rockets. The announcement by a Syrian official of the new troop advance indicated a ground assault was beginning to recapture Baba Amr, home to about 100,000 people.

A Syrian official vowed Baba Amr would be “cleaned” within hours. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Homs, Syria’s third-largest city with a population of about 1 million, has become the major center of both anti-government resistance and reprisal, fueled in part by increasingly bold army defectors who want to bring down Assad’s autocratic regime by force. The U.N. warned Tuesday that Syria’s conflict looks increasingly like a civil war.

Four Western journalists — two of them wounded — had been trapped in Baba Amr since last week, when two other foreign reporters were killed there by a government attack. On Tuesday, Syrian rebels smuggled out Paul Conroy, one of the four journalists, and whisked him safely across the border into Lebanon. Activists said 13 Syrians involved in the rescue operation were killed during it.

Activists said regime forces discovered a nearly 1.5 mile-long tunnel that was used by activists to smuggle people, food and medicine into Baba Amr. The activists said it was not clear whether the regime would blow it up.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said electricity has been cut on the rebel-held Homs neighborhoods of Bayadah and Khaldiyeh and the military redeployed some forces in what could be preparation for an attack on those areas as well.

Abdel Bari Atwan writes: Two weeks ago I met the Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu and we talked about the efficacy of the high-powered Friends of Syria gatherings – the latest of which took place in Tunis last weekend – in finding a solution to the present crisis, compared with that of the Friends of Libya. Davutoglu pointed out that the Friends of Libya had been established after the Nato-led military intervention against Gaddafi. Was Davutoglu implying that there would be a similar intervention in Syria? He declined to answer.

The truth is that there is no consensus because nobody knows what to do about Syria – particularly given the outcome of Nato’s intervention in Libya. The options now are much the same as they were then; the difference is that these days we are more “clear-eyed” about the possible consequences, as Hillary Clinton put it following the Tunis meeting. The accumulated risks associated with each option for intervention – military, political, diplomatic – become more evident as time goes by, and lessen the momentum to act.

Should the international community arm the opposition, as Qatar and Saudi Arabia propose? The problem here is that there is no single, identifiable, unified opposition to negotiate with, let alone arm. The rush to adopt the Libyan Transitional Council as the legitimate opposition to Gaddafi has not resulted in a stable post-revolutionary government, and the Syrian National Council is already split on key issues.

There are several militias apart from the Free Syrian Army: should one or all be armed? Post‑Gaddafi Libya is in disarray with rival heavily-armed militias vying for power. In addition, only a recently emerged splinter group from the Syrian National Council supports arming the resistance – the remainder would not endorse such a move.

Arming the opposition increases the risk of sectarian conflict leading to all-out civil war. Syria is a demographic tinderbox comprising, among others, Kurds, Druze, Christians, Alawites and Arab Sunnis. However, a new leadership drawn from the Sunni majority and antipathetic to Iran would be more useful to the Gulf states and the west than the current (Shia) Alawite regime with its friends in Tehran, Baghdad and Hezbollah.

While I do not doubt that Qatar is acting out of abhorrence for the daily massacres committed by the Assad regime, the emirate has not forgotten Syria’s refusal – under instructions from Moscow – to allow it to build a gas pipeline through its territory to supply Europe.

Alia Brahimi and George Joffe write: [T]he growing chorus of international condemnation against Assad is counteracted by anxieties, in western and Arab capitals alike, over what a post-Assad Syria would look like. Additionally, in the worsening conflict in Syria, great power politics are mapping dangerously onto regional power struggles, which are in turn underpinned by sectarian ones. What, then, does this unstable dynamic mean for those states surrounding Syria that are directly affected by its domestic repression?

Those most immediately affected are, perhaps, its allies – Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon and curiously, Iraq. At one level, these alliances are sectarian in nature since they bring together Shia in Iran and Hezbollah, as well as the Shia-dominated Maliki government in Iraq, with the admittedly heterodox, but Shia Alawi regime in Damascus. In reality, however, the sinews of the alliances reflect shared political and diplomatic objectives, especially for Iran. Syria and Iran were first united by the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) through their shared detestation of the Saddam Hussain regime.

Hezbollah, as an Iranian client and a Syrian dependant, was an automatic partner, even though it has lost popular support in Lebanon and the wider Sunni Middle East because of its continued support for Syria over the past year. That, in turn, incidentally, has sparked pro- and anti-Syrian clashes along the two countries’ common border recently. The Lebanese government, however, is desperate to keep out of the conflict inside Syria itself for, should the conflict spill over, the threat of renewed civil war would loom terrifyingly large.

Iraqi diplomatic support reflects the influence of Iran inside Iraq, particularly over the Shia majority, as well as ties between the Iraqi premier and Syria where he spent much of his exile as al-Dawa’s representative in the 1980s and 1990s. It does not yet appear to have included material support to the Assad regime as well. One adverse consequence of this is that elements amongst the Iraqi Sunni population, some of them extremist and linked to al-Qaeda which has openly endorsed the opposition to the Assad regime, now actively support the Syrian opposition.

The real key, of course, is the Syrian-Iranian alliance – the core of the Jordanian King Abdullah’s “Shia arc of extremism”. The importance of this alliance between states is crucial to Iran’s project of challenge to moderate Sunni Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, particularly in the Gulf.

Certainly, that power struggle has recently intensified, owing to the military departure of the US from Iraq and the shifting political and ideological sands of the Arab Spring. The “new regional cold war”, as Rami Khoury labels it, aligns in both politics and perceptions with a broader and more historical Sunni/Shia tension. In the words of one Saudi official, “Iran is a direct and imminent threat not only to the [Saudi] kingdom, but to Sunnis across the region.” [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Abu Ali fled his life as a Shiite cleric and student in Homs, the besieged Syrian city at the center of an increasingly bloody uprising, but it was not the government he feared.

It was the rebels, who he said killed three of his cousins in December and dumped a body in the family garbage bin.

“I can’t be in Homs because I will get killed there,” he said from this religious city in Iraq where he has taken refuge. “Not just me, but all Shiites.”

Like his fellow Shiites in Iraq, Abu Ali, who used his nickname to protect his family back in Syria, said he regards the Syrian rebels as terrorists, not freedom fighters, underscoring one of the complexities of a bloody civil conflict that has persisted as diplomatic efforts have failed. In spite of President Bashar al-Assad’s willingness to unleash a professional military on a civilian population, with lethal results, Mr. Assad retains some support at home and abroad from allies, including religious and ethnic minorities who for decades relied on the police state for protection from sectarian aggression.

“What the government is doing is trying to protect the people,” Abu Ali said, echoing the Assad government’s propaganda. “They are targeting terrorist groups in the area.”

The insurrection in Syria, led by the country’s Sunni majority in opposition to a government dominated by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiism, is increasingly unpredictable and dangerous because it is aggravating sectarian tensions beyond its borders in a region already shaken by religious and ethnic divisions.

For many in the region, the fight in Syria is less about liberating a people under dictatorship than it is about power and self-interest. Syria is drawing in sectarian forces from its neighbors, and threatening to spill its conflict into a wider conflagration. There have already been sparks in neighboring Lebanon, where Sunnis and Alawites have skirmished.

And here in Iraq, where Shiites are a majority, the events across the border have put the nation on edge while hardening a sectarian schism. As Abu Ali discovered, Iraq’s Shiites are now lined up on the side of a Baathist dictatorship in Syria, less than a decade after the American invasion of Iraq toppled the rule of Saddam Hussein and his own Baath Party, which for decades had repressed and brutalized the Shiites.

“This is difficult,” said Sheik Ali Nujafi, the son of one of Najaf’s top clerics and his chief spokesman, of the Shiite support for Mr. Assad. “But what is worse is what would come next.”

The paradox, of Shiites supporting a Baathist dictator next door, has laid bare a tenet of the old power structure that for so long helped preserve the Middle East’s strongmen. Minorities often remained loyal and pliant and in exchange were given room to carve out communities, even if they were more broadly discriminated against.

As dictators have fallen in neighboring countries, religious and ethnic identities and alliances have only hardened, while notions of citizenship remain slow to take hold. The fighting in Syria has exacerbated that, as Shiites worry that a takeover of Syria by its Sunni majority would herald not only a new sectarian war but actually the apocalypse.

People here say that is not hyperbole, but a perception based in faith. Some Shiites here see the burgeoning civil war in Syria as the ominous start to the fulfillment of a Shiite prophecy that presages the end of time. According to Shiite lore, Sufyani — a devil-like, apocryphal figure in Islam — gathers an army in Syria and after conquering that land turns his wrath on Iraq’s Shiites.

Jonathan Schanzer writes: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah scolded Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week for failing to coordinate with Arab states before vetoing a United Nations resolution demanding that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down. Emboldened by the lack of international action, Assad’s forces are now slaughtering civilians in the streets at an even greater rate. Referring to the bloodshed, the king ominously warned Medvedev that Saudi Arabia “will never abandon its religious and moral obligations towards what’s happening.”

The last time the Saudis decided they had a moral obligation to scuttle Russian policies, they gave birth to a generation of jihadi fighters in Afghanistan who are still wreaking havoc three decades later.

According to news reports confirmed by a member of the Syrian opposition, Riyadh currently sends weapons on an ad hoc basis to the Syrian opposition by way of Sunni tribal allies in Iraq and Lebanon. But in light of recent developments, more weapons are almost certainly on their way. After his delegation withdrew in frustration from last week’s Friends of Syria meeting in Tunisia, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said that humanitarian aid to Syria was “not enough” and that arming the Syrian rebels was an “excellent idea.” Soon afterward, an unnamed official commented in the state-controlled Saudi press that Riyadh sought to provide the Syrian opposition with the “means to achieve stability and peace and to allow it the right to choose its own representatives.” Meanwhile, Saudi clerics are now openly calling for jihad in Syria and scorning those who wait for Western intervention. One prominent unsanctioned cleric, Aidh al-Qarni, openly calls for Assad’s death.

Other Sunni Gulf states, principally Qatar, may be contributing weapons. On Monday, Feb. 27, Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said, “We should do whatever necessary to help [the Syrian opposition], including giving them weapons to defend themselves.” The positions of other regional actors are less clear. But whether or not they supply weapons to the Free Syrian Army — the armed opposition composed of defectors and local militia — all these Sunni states now want the Assad regime to crumble because it is an ally and proxy of their sworn Shiite enemy, Iran, which destabilizes the region with terrorism and nuclear threats. [Continue reading…]

Peter Harling and Sarah Birke write: Syrians are approaching the one-year anniversary of what has become the most tragic, far-reaching and uncertain episode of the Arab uprisings. Since protesters first took to the streets in towns and villages across the country in March 2011, they have paid an exorbitant price in a domestic crisis that has become intertwined with a strategic struggle over the future of Syria.

The regime of Bashar al-Asad has fought its citizens in an unsuccessful attempt to put down any serious challenge to its four-decade rule, leaving several thousand dead. Many more languish in jail. The regime has polarized the population, rallying its supporters by decrying the protesters as saboteurs, Islamists and part of a foreign conspiracy. In order to shore up its own ranks, it has played on the fears of the ‘Alawi minority from which the ruling family hails, lending the conflict sectarian overtones. All these measures have pushed a growing number of young men on the street — and a small but steady stream of army defectors — to put up an armed response, while impelling large sections of the opposition to seek financial, political and military help from abroad. Loyalist units have taken considerable casualties from the armed rebels, and the regime has hit back with disproportionate force.

Events have aided the regime in its attempt to dismiss the protest movement and further tip the balance from nominal reform to escalating repression, fueling a vicious cycle that has turned sporadic clashes into a nascent civil war. In a sense, the regime may already have won: By pushing frustrated protesters to take up arms and the international community to offer them support, it is succeeding in disfiguring what it saw as the greatest threat to its rule, namely the grassroots and mostly peaceful protest movement that demanded profound change. In another sense, the regime may already have lost: By treating too broad a cross-section of the Syrian people as the enemy, and giving foreign adversaries justification to act, it seems to have forged against itself a coalition too big to defeat. At a minimum, Bashar al-Asad has reversed his father’s legacy: Through tenacious diplomacy over three decades (from his takeover in 1970 to his death in 2000), Hafiz al-Asad made Syria, formerly a prize in the regional strategic game, a player in its own right. In less than a year, Bashar’s obduracy will have done the opposite, turning actor into arena.

At the start of February, the regime stepped up its assault by using heavy weapons against rebellious neighborhoods of Homs, the third-largest city in Syria and the most religiously mixed one to become a hub of the uprising. The escalation was bolstered by Russia and China, which on February 4 blocked the Arab League-inspired, Western-backed attempts to pass a resolution at the UN Security Council condemning the violence and suggesting a plan for a negotiated solution by which Asad would hand over power to a deputy, who would form a unity government ahead of elections. The assumption in Moscow, which fears instability and views the struggle in Syria as a contest with the West, is that the regime will succeed in defeating both the ongoing protest movement and the emerging insurgency. In so doing, runs Russian reasoning, Syria’s regime will reassert its control over the country and compel at least significant parts of the opposition to negotiate on its own terms — preferably in Moscow.

This outcome seems unlikely. Behind all the bloody, one-off battles lies a picture of this country of 23 million slipping out of the regime’s control. Over a period of 11 months, the regime has altogether failed to cow protesters through its mixture of violent intimidation and offers of paltry reforms.

Time and time again, the regime has proved its promises to reform, already grudging and tardy, to be largely empty as well. The lifting of emergency law in April 2011, for example, did not stop the shooting or arbitrary detention of protesters. Pulling in the leash on the security services, whose harassment of citizens fed the anger of the uprising, is off the table, for fear that it would weaken the regime’s hold on the country. Any measure that could jeopardize the ruling clique’s unaccountable reign is equally out of the question. What can be changed is what matters least. The Baath Party’s role will certainly decrease, but Syria is a one-party state no longer: It is a state of a few families and multiple security services, who have long used resistance to US imperialism and Israeli occupation as a substitute for clear political vision. [Continue reading…]

Hamed Aleaziz reports: A 718-page digital document obtained by Mother Jones contains names, phone numbers, neighborhoods, and alleged activities of thousands of dissidents apparently targeted by the Syrian government. Three experts asked separately by Mother Jones to examine the document — essentially a massive spreadsheet, whose contents are in Arabic — say they believe that it is authentic. As Bashar al-Assad’s military continues a deadly crackdown on dissent inside the country, the list appears to confirm in explicit detail the scale of the regime’s domestic surveillance and its methodical efforts to destroy widespread opposition.

The document does not contain any identifying government markings. But the experts consulted agree that its organization and content — which they say is striking in scope — are characteristic of lists used by intelligence services in the Middle East. A link to the document, which surfaced in mid-January in discussions about Syria on Twitter, was provided to Mother Jones by a self-described hactivist who tweets frequently in Arabic and English and whose identity is unclear. A redacted sample of the document is below; Mother Jones is not publishing the full document or revealing the names of individuals in it because we cannot definitively confirm its authenticity nor predict how the document might be used if more widely disseminated.

But the experts who examined the document say it shows what many observers have strongly suspected: In addition to relentless bombing of cities such as Homs and Hama, the Assad regime is tracking down thousands of its own people for interrogation, coercion, or far worse. Joshua Landis, a scholar on Syria who has consulted for the State Department and other US government agencies, said he thinks the document merges the records of several Syrian intelligence agencies in order to better coordinate the crackdown. “This is what a secret service does,” he said. Actions allegedly taken by individuals in the document—such as setting up a roadblock near Homs or issuing instructions about how to attack a Syrian military outpost—are “the kind of thing that people get whacked for all the time, or at least tortured for.” [Continue reading…]

Hugh Macleod, Annasofie Flamand, and an anonymous GlobalPost journalist in Damascus report on the constitutional referendum held in Syria yesterday.

At one polling station in a state-run clinic in Damascus’ Midan district, a neighborhood of traditional Sunni Damascene families and a center for protests in the capital, the transparent ballot box was still almost empty by late afternoon.

At others, the box was at least opaque and, for the first time in Syria, private voting booths were available, though many of those who did vote did so openly at the desk.

Of the roughly 40 ballots cast in Midan’s polling center, said one of the government employees running it, most had come from employees of the health facility itself.

“All public workers must vote, otherwise they could be penalized by the secret service,” said Muhammad Faour of the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, describing the result of the referendum as a “foregone conclusion.”

Two buses filled with Kalashnikov-wielding security men stood watch over Midan’s Al Hassan Mosque, a focus for anti-regime protests. No one in Midan could tell a reporter where the poll was being held.

In Homs and Hama, two of Syria’s largest cities, in the far east of Deir Ezzour, in the northwest province of Idleb and in the far south of Daraa, no election took place. Residents cowered, hungry and cold, as mortars and rockets pounded their homes.

Avaaz, the rights group, reported some 2,000 Syrians attempted to flee Homs’ suburbs as the bombardment, now in its fourth week, escalated. Around 100 people were killed over the weekend by Assad’s forces.

Despite the onslaught, residents of Idlib found time to film a satirical video showing a donkey with a voting paper stuffed in its back, being led to a makeshift ballot box. “This is Syrian democracy,” announced one of the video’s creators.

Syria’s state-run media SANA showed a bustling polling center where Assad cast his vote. He was accompanied by his wife Asma, quashing rumors that the woman Vogue once branded “the desert rose” for her progressive stances, had fled Damascus for a family home in London, appalled at the killing of thousands of Syrians by her husband’s regime since March.

Alastair Crooke, former EU mediator on the Middle East, was quoted as applauding a vote which “shows clearly that the majority of the Syrians want to reach reform under the current leadership.”

Brian Whitaker writes: From Monday no one will be tortured in Syria. The state will guarantee personal freedom for its citizens and preserve their dignity and security. People’s homes will be inviolable. Everyone will have the right to express opinions freely and openly, and the state will guarantee the freedom and independence of the press.

At least, that is what is supposed to happen if President Assad gets a yes vote today in his referendum on the new constitution. It’s meant to show Syrians – and the rest of the world – that Assad, in the midst of turmoil, is steadily and calmly pressing ahead with “reforms”.

Hardly anyone is convinced, though. The contrast with what is happening on the ground – and internationally – lends an air of unreality to the new constitution and its accompanying referendum. As the multinational Friends of Syria group gathered in Tunis on Friday to discuss ways of toppling the regime, the regime itself was blithely preparing to announce that for the convenience of voters the number of polling stations in Syria would be increased from 13,835 to 14,185.

But if Assad is whistling into the wind, so too are the Friends of Syria. They are divided over what to do – mainly because there is no course of action, apart from further isolation of the Assad regime, that doesn’t carry a serious risk of making matters worse.

At the meeting in Tunis on Friday, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton had little to offer beyond $10m in humanitarian aid for Syrians and the words: “We cannot let them down.” She also predicted an internal coup. That would conveniently relieve the Americans of their what-to-do-about-Assad dilemma – though, as we have seen in Egypt, it wouldn’t necessarily bring deliverance to Syrians.

For Britain, the foreign secretary, William Hague, has vowed to keep “tightening the diplomatic and economic stranglehold on the regime” while more or less ruling out military action. It may not seem much – especially to those under rocket fire in Homs – but it might do a bit of good and, more important, it’s unlikely to do much harm.

What we should fear most is not western military intervention, since it isn’t in prospect, but eastern intervention. There is something surreal about a group of “friends” promoting change in Syria that includes so many autocrats and, as one of its leading lights, the country most notorious for resisting progress: Saudi Arabia. [Continue reading…]

Joshua Landis writes: The Asads stand atop the last minoritarian regime in the Levant and thus seem destined to fall in this age of popular revolt. When they do, the postcolonial era will draw to a final close. Following World War II, minorities took control in every Levant state, thanks to colonial divide-and-rule tactics and the fragmented national community that bedeviled the states of the region. It is estimated that, due to their over-recruitment by the French Mandate authorities, Alawis already by the mid-1950s constituted some 65 percent of all noncommissioned officers in the Syrian military. Within a decade, they took control of the military leadership and, with it, Syria itself.

Unique among the Levant states was Palestine, where the Jewish minority was able to transform itself into the majority at the expense of Palestine’s Muslims. Neither the Christians of Lebanon nor the Sunnis of Iraq were so lucky or ambitious. Nevertheless, both clung to power at the price of dragging their countries into lengthy civil wars. The Lebanese war lasted 15 years; the Iraqi struggle between Shiites and Sunnis, while shorter, has yet to be entirely resolved. The Alawis of Syria seem determined to repeat this violent plunge to the bottom. It is hard to determine whether this is due to the rapaciousness of a corrupt elite, to the bleak prospects that the Alawi community faces in a post-Asad Syria, or to the weak faith that many in the region place in democracy and power-sharing formulas. Whatever the reason, Syria’s transition away from minority rule is likely to be lengthy and violent. Even though the Alawis make up a mere 12 percent of the total population, the regime continues to count on support from other minorities who fear Islamists coming to power and from important segments of the Sunni population who fear civil war.

The Asads have been planning for this day of popular insurrection all their lives. Hafiz al-Asad did not make the mistake of Hosni Mubarak, allowing his sons to go into private business, while leaving the military in the hands of others, who ultimately turned against him. The Asads were less trusting, and for good reason. Syria’s urban Sunnis looked at the Alawis as interloping aliens when they first took power — muwafidiin, as they were called. It was not long before the Muslim Brotherhood took up arms against them, labeling them as non-Muslim and non-Arab (shuubiyun) — only to be crushed brutally after the notorious Hama uprising in 1982. The use of excessive force was then a clear sign of the regime’s determination and sectarian nature; the forces sent to retake Hama were largely Alawi.

The Asads tutored their children in the arts of war so they could take command of the military and police their population. They marshaled in-laws, cousins and coreligionists into the upper ranks of the security forces. Despite the rhetoric of Arab nationalism, the Asads were keenly aware that only the traditional loyalties of family, clan and sect could cement their rule. In essence, they upheld the notion that it takes a village to rule Syria, a formula that successfully brought an end to political instability. For over two decades following independence, Syria had been known as the banana republic of the Middle East because of its frequent coups and changes of government. Under the Asads, loyalty quickly became the ultimate qualification for advancement into the upper ranks of the security forces. They packed sensitive posts with loyal Alawis and Baathists. Some analysts estimated that as many 80 percent of Syria’s officer corps is Alawi. This is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but it underscores the sectarian safety measures the regime has taken. The main strike forces, such as the Republican Guard led by Bashar’s brother, are overwhelmingly Alawi. Many of the divisions made up of enlisted Sunnis have not been deployed to quell the uprising. Instead, the regime has built up special forces and irregulars, often called shabiha, which are heavily Alawi or Sunnis of known loyalty. Policing loyalty in order to coup-proof the regime has been a paramount concern. Alawis were placed in strategic ministries other than defense. The foreign ministry is a case in point. Recently a Syrian ambassador who has sought refuge in Turkey told Hurriyet, “There are 360 diplomats within the Syrian Foreign Ministry. Of these, 60 percent are Nusayri [Alawi].” He added, “The number of Sunni diplomats does not exceed 10 percent.” Even if these numbers are an exaggeration, there is little doubt that the regime has been careful to staff the upper ranks of important ministries with loyalists and coreligionists. This attention to staffing is a key reason that major defections have not occurred in the top ranks of government and why we have yet to see a repeat of the Libya example, where whole sections of the country fell out of central control and turned to the rebel cause within weeks of the uprising’s debut. Ironically, the minoritarian character of the regime makes it more durable than its republican counterparts in North Africa, where the population is largely homogeneous.

The sectarian nature of the regime may protect it from major desertions when economic difficulties make paying for the far-flung patronage networks impossible. Patronage serves as essential glue, binding the interests of disparate social groups to the regime. Just as important, patronage frustrates the emergence of corporate groups that might compete with the government.The regime has skillfully doled out jobs and benefits to fragment the opposition and buy off opponents.

For this reason, opposition leaders hope that sanctions will promote the collapse of the regime. They reason that, once government money runs out, widespread defections will take place, a coup by top-ranking Alawi officers may occur, or a Tahrir Square moment will overwhelm security forces in the major cities. Such hopes have not been fulfilled in 10 months of growing violence and protest. There is little reason to think they will be in the coming months. Despite increasing defections among the military’s rank and file, the elite units, special forces and intelligence agencies may have little choice but to rally around the Asad regime, given their bleak prospects in a post-Asad Syria. Heavily Alawite elite units with sizable numbers of loyal Sunnis will likely see no alternative.

The broader Alawi community is also likely to remain loyal to the regime, even as the economy deteriorates. Almost all Alawi families have a least one member in the security forces as well as additional members working in civilian ministries, such as education or agriculture. Most fear collective punishment for the sins of the Baathist era. Not only do they assume that they will suffer from wide-scale purges once the opposition wins; many also suspect that they will face prison or worse. Opposition leaders have tried to calm Alawi anxieties provoked by hotheaded sheikhs. The most notorious is Adnan Arur, who threatened, “We shall mince [the Alawis] in meat grinders and feed them to the dogs.” The head of the Muslim Brotherhood has assured ordinary Alawis that they will be protected. Those guilty of crimes will face proper courts and be tried according to the law. Such assurances only go so far in calming Alawi anxieties. Many do not expect an orderly transition of power, just as many remain convinced that a spirit of revenge may guide the opposition, which has been so badly abused.

In short, because the Syrian military remains able and willing to stand by the president, whether out of loyalty, self-interest or fear, the regime is likely to endure for some time. [Continue reading…]

Syrian citizen journalist Danny Abdul Dayem explains to the Daily Telegraph the reasons why he felt compelled to begin posting reports about what was happening in his hometown of Homs.

Reuters reports: The Syrian military took its bombardment of the rebel-held Baba Amro district of Homs into a fourth week on Saturday as the Red Cross tried to evacuate more distressed civilians from the city.

At least 28 people were killed in Syria on Saturday, including nine in Homs, Syria’s third city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The state news agency SANA reported the funerals of 18 members of the security forces killed by “armed terrorist groups” in Homs, Deraa, Idlib and the Damascus countryside.

Deploring the outcome of an international “Friends of Syria” conference, opposition activists said the world had abandoned them to be killed by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

“They (foreign leaders) are still giving opportunities to this man who is killing us and has already killed thousands of people,” said Nadir Husseini, an activist in Baba Amro.

In the last installment of his interview with Al Jazeera, Nir Rosen says: The regime can survive for a long time, even if it steadily loses control of territory within the country. It is very unlikely that there will be any large-scale international military intervention. In Washington, there is a great deal of frustration. Zionists and advocates of the muscular use of US power, including several Republicans, are calling for Obama to arm the opposition. Even the neoconservatives are climbing out from under their rocks to call for a US military intervention. Fox News has seized on this cause too.

Contrary to conspiracy theories, until now the Obama administration has not made the policy decision to aid the opposition on the ground, as far as I know, let alone provide it with weapons. US and European officials who would like to intervene in Syria complain that there is no “silver bullet” or easy option for them. They don’t even know who to support inside Syria. The exiled opposition, such as the Syrian National Council, are too busy fighting among themselves and too disconnected from events on the ground, so the outside powers do not even have a convenient local collaborator or proxy to deal with. They also complain that the SNC has completely failed to reach out to minorities, especially Alawites. They agree that opponents of the regime will have to pry Alawite community from the administration. The Alawite pillar must be removed, they say. The United States, like the United Kingdom, reportedly has envoys among the Syrian opposition. It is only a question of time, in my opinion, before the SNC is officially recognised by them as the main interlocutor, but they are pressuring the SNC to get its act together first.

One more factor militating against US support for a hasty collapse of the regime is the fear over Syria’s vast chemical weapons arsenal as well as its tens of thousands of portable anti-aircraft missiles and anti-armour missiles. The US will as always be sensitive to Israeli concerns on this proliferation issue as well. It’s always better to have a postal address where to retaliate if you want deterrence to work. While foreign intervention of one kind or another is probably inevitable (regardless of whether it is desirable), those countries who would be most likely to intervene are ill-prepared.

Turkey has certainly become more influential in the region, but the United States foreign service probably has more Arabists in its embassy in Cairo than in the entire Turkish foreign policy establishment. The Turks are not yet prepared for their new role in the region, lacking experts and Arabic speakers, which limits their ability to intervene. On their own, Jordan or Turkey cannot give enough support to the opposition to make a difference, and an international coalition appears difficult to cobble together without the opposition being strengthened.

Israeli intelligence does not deserve the reputation it has. Its academia and foreign policy establishment lack real experts, given their Zionist bias, an inability to conduct field work and a tendency to view the Arab world through Orientalist or military prisms. The days when the Israelis could field Arab Jews who were fluent in the language and could pass as locals are long over. Israeli intelligence has suffered a string of humiliations in Lebanon in recent years. Likewise, US intelligence has recently been humiliated in Lebanon – and given its poor performance in Iraq and Afghanistan, it should not intimidate the Syrian regime. So, for the various countries who will want to play a role, there is no easy entry point. [Continue reading…]

See also, the earlier segments of Rosen’s interview: “Daily life in Syria,” “Syrian sectarianism,” “Syria’s protest movement,” and “Syria’s armed opposition.”

Tariq Ali’s emphatic assertion that the Assad family must be pushed out of power — and that the pushing should come from Russia and China — probably didn’t sit too well with the operators of Russia Today. This interview appears to have never been uploaded to their YouTube channel. (Just in case it also disappears from their website, here’s a copy of the interview someone else put on YouTube.)

Jillian C. York and Trevor Timm write: Yesterday morning, journalist Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times of London was killed, along with French photographer Rémi Ochlik, in the besieged city of Homs, Syria, where more than 400 people have been reported dead in recent weeks.

Disturbingly, the Telegraph, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and the AP all reported that Colvin and Ochlik were likely deliberately killed by the Syrian army and their location may have been tracked down through their satellite phones.

On Monday night, Colvin appeared on CNN, telling Anderson Cooper that “the Syrian army is shelling a city of cold, starving civilians.” Responding to Syrian president Bashar Al Assad’s statement that he was not targeting civilians in the barrage of rocketfire raining on Homs, Colvin accused the regime of “murder” and said: “There are no military targets here…It’s a complete and utter lie that they are only going after terrorists.” A few hours later, she was dead.

The Telegraph quoted Jean-Pierre Perrin, a journalist for the Paris-based Liberation newspaper who was with Colvin in Homs last week, as saying: “The Syrian army issued orders to ‘kill any journalist that set foot on Syrian soil’” and that the Syrian authorities were likely watching the CNN broadcast. The Telegraph then described how “[r]eporters working in Homs, which has been under siege since February 4, had become concerned in recent days that Syrian forces had ‘locked on’ to their satellite phone signals and attacked the buildings from which they were coming” (emphasis ours).

How could this happen?

At this point, we don’t know how Colvin and Ochlik were located, but based on the various reports, it is possible that they were located using surveillance technology that tracked their satellite phones. [Continue reading…]