From Israel, Zvi Bar’el writes: “At the end of last week we received a reminder about the environment we’re living in. We heard Iran’s ruler talk about Israel’s destruction, we saw the Syrian army massacring its own people. Some leaders have no compunctions about harming their people or their neighbors,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the start of the cabinet meeting. True, it’s a lousy environment. Only one sentence is needed to complete the picture: “And there are governments that don’t mind continuing to occupy other nations for nearly 50 years.”

It isn’t just the environment that’s bad. It’s also that “the international community” – mainly Western countries – can’t claim a monopoly on international morality. A veto by just one of the UN Security Council’s five permanent members is enough for a murderous leader to continue killing his country’s citizens, and for those citizens to realize that the “international community” is nothing more than a noisy microphone.

In a single moment, Russia became the bad guy in the Syrian story. An evil empire. But what was rejected in the resolution? Nothing concrete that could stop the slaughter, no intention to impose sanctions, not even a hint at military intervention. What have the United States and the Europeans done to help Syria’s people? And what do they plan to do? Just what they’ve been doing so far.

It’s hard to swallow the Russian and Chinese veto of the resolution that merely intended to demand a stop to the violence. Even Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom was disappointed by the veto and Knesset members were appalled by Russia’s behavior.

It’s interesting that the Russian-Chinese veto is rousing such profound anger and loathing in a country that permanently relies on an American veto.

Reuters reports: Syrian forces bombarded opposition-held neighborhoods of the city of Homs with rocket and mortar fire on Thursday, activists said, as divided world powers struggled to find a way to end the violence.

The United Nations chief condemned the ferocity of the government assault on Homs, heart of a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad that broke out nearly a year ago and is getting bloodier by the day.

“I fear that the appalling brutality we are witnessing in Homs, with heavy weapons firing into civilian neighborhoods, is a grim harbinger of things to come,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters after briefing the Security Council.

Activists and residents report hundreds of people killed over the last week as Assad’s forces try stamp out opposition in Homs, and as dawn broke on Thursday, rocket and mortar fire rained down again on Baba Amro, Khalidiya and other districts. Armored reinforcements also poured into the eastern city.

Concern was growing over the plight of civilians and the United States said it was considering ways to get food and medicine to them – a move that would deepen international involvement in a conflict which has wide geopolitical dimensions and has caused division between foreign powers.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said before flying to Washington for talks on Syria that Turkey, which once saw Assad as an ally but now wants him out, could no longer stand by and watch. Turkey wanted to host an international meeting to agree ways to end the killing and provide aid, he said.

“It is not enough being an observer,” he told Reuters, though Russia and China have warned against “interference.”

Amnesty International today urged Russia and other countries with influence over Syria to make an urgent appeal to try to stop the military assault on Homs.

The organization said more than 200 people have been killed since Friday from shelling and sniper fire.

While Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was meeting Tuesday with President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Syrian security forces’ unrelenting bombardment of Homs continued and has since intensified. Amnesty International called on Russia to make it clear to the Syrian government, both publicly and in private, that the military assault on Homs must end immediately.

The organization also called on the Arab League to continue its diplomatic efforts on Syria.

“The situation in Homs is critical, and is turning into a major humanitarian crisis. Russia has blocked international efforts to stop the massive human rights violations in Syria, stating that they have a better plan for resolving the crisis,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary-General.

“Russia, and other countries with influence over Syria, must use whatever means they have to restrain the Syrian military in Homs and ensure it stops using heavy weaponry in residential areas.”

“The Syrian government seems to think that Saturday’s Security Council veto has given it the green light to crush resistance in Homs by any means – Russia needs to make clear, with a loud voice, that this is not the case.”

Since Friday residential areas in Homs – including al-Khaldieh, Bab ‘Amr, Bab al-Seba’ and al-Insha’aat – have been subjected to shelling by government forces and there have been heavy exchanges of fire with anti-government fighters in these areas.

The Syrian army has deployed tanks in certain areas. Armed groups in the city are reported to be using Kalashnikovs and RPGs in response.

Amnesty International has received the names of 246 people reported to have been killed in Homs, including at least 17 children. While some of those killed were armed men fighting against the government forces, the majority were reported to have been unarmed.

Hundreds more are reported to have been injured. Most people are being treated in makeshift field hospitals or at their homes.

Tony Karon writes: The reason that there’s no plausible end-game in Syria anytime soon — and that thousands more Syrians may be fated to die before the conflict is ended — is that the Assad regime is fighting a very different war to the one envisaged by many of its opponents. For Arab and Western powers, and many Syrians, President Bashar Assad is a doomed despot desperately holding on by force to the power he can never hope to exercise by democratic consent. But for Assad — and more importantly, for the minority Allawite community on which his regime is based — this is an existential struggle against an implacable sectarian foe. A majority of Syrians may be fighting for their rights and dignity; for the ruling minority it’s a battle to avoid the fate that befell Iraq’s Sunnis after the fall of their brutal benefactor, Saddam Hussein.

There’s no way of establishing its veracity, but one anecdote from the tormented city of Homs speaks volumes about how Syria’s power struggle is likely to play out: As regime forces continue to exact an horrific toll in their bombardment of Bab Amr and other opposition-controlled Sunni neighborhoods, residents in adjacent Allawite communities allege that the rebels are retaliating for regime attacks by firing mortars into Allawite neighborhoods. The Allawites of Homs, so the tale goes, are livid that the regime hasn’t more forcefully crushed the uprising, accusing President Assad of being too fearful of foreign intervention to smash the rebel forces with the ruthlessness his father would have mustered.

The story could be true, or it could simply be propaganda fare aimed at whipping up Allawite fears — either way, though, it resonates with the deep fear of sectarian retribution among the minority sect that constitutes the key pillar of the regime’s support. Whatever their views of Assad, many Allawites — a community in which, by some estimates, every family has at least one member in the security forces, and which dominates the key structure of power — are willing to fight to preserve the system of minority rule over which he has presided, first and foremost out of fear of the alternative.

At least two thirds of Syria’s population are Sunni Arabs, yet the country is ruled by an authoritarian regime dominated by Allawites — a syncretic offshoot of Shi’ism that comprises some 12% of the population. But the Assad regime presents itself as the guarantor of the interests not only of Allawites, but also Syria’s Christians (10%), Kurds (10%) and smaller communities of Druze, Yazidis, Ismailis and Circassians — against the specter of a vengeful sectarian Sunni Muslim Brotherhood. No surprise, then, that the regime has, through its own violent strategy, encouraged the rebellion against Assad’s rule onto the path of sectarian civil war. Call it Assad’s Milosevic option, in which the despot narrows the political alternatives, and forces minority groups to either support his regime or stay on the sidelines for fear of the alternative.

Those readers here who have been dismayed by the negative image of the Assad regime in the Western media may want to study the talking points that Bashir has been getting.

Hundreds of emails from Syrian President Bashar Assad’s office were leaked on Monday after an attack by the hacker group Anonymous. One of the email files, which Haaretz has obtained, was a document preparing Assad for his December 2011 interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters.

The attack took place overnight Sunday and the target was the mail server of the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs. Some 78 inboxes of Assad’s aides and advisers were hacked and the password that some used was “12345”. Among those whose email was exposed were the Minister of Presidential Affairs Mansour Fadlallah Azzam and Assad’s media adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban.

Assad’s TV interview with Walters was memorable for his repeated denials that Syrian citizens were being killed. “We don’t kill our people … no government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person,” Assad told Walters.

About 10 days before the interview, Sheherazad Jaafari – a press attache at the Syrian mission to the United Nations – sent a long email to former Al Jazeera journalist Luna Chebel, who now works in Assad’s bureau. She also sent the email to an aide of Shaaban’s. Jaafari, who was involved in arranging the interview with Walters, also happens to be the daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the UN, Dr. Bashar Jaafari.

Click here to read the leaked documents, part one
Click here to read the leaked documents, part two

Jaafari Jr. wrote: “The major points and dimensions that have been mentioned a lot in the American media are: The idea of violence has been one of the major subjects brought up in every article. They use the phrases ‘The Syrian government is killing its own people,’ ‘Tanks have been used in many cities,’ ‘Airplanes have been used to suppress the peaceful demonstrations,’ and ‘Security forces are criminals and bloody.'”

She advised: “It is hugely important and worth mentioning that ‘mistakes’ have been done in the beginning of the crises because we did not have a well-organized ‘police force.’ American psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear that there are ‘mistakes’ done and now we are ‘fixing it.’ It’s worth mentioning also what is happening now in Wall Street and the way the demonstrations are been suppressed by policemen, police dogs and beatings.”

Jaafari also recommended that Assad say: “Syria doesn’t have a policy to torture people, unlike the USA, where there are courses and schools that specialize in teaching policemen and officers how to torture.” She advised using Abu Ghraib in Iraq or execution via electric chair as more examples.

She added that that mentioning the talkbacks on articles in the American media are a useful tool, saying that “the Americans are asking their government to stop interfering in other countries’ business and sovereignty and to start taking care of American internal issues.”

“It is worth mentioning that when Obama asked H.E. to step down he himself have had a 70% decrease of his popularity in the States,” Jaafari wrote.

“It would be worth mentioning how your personality has been attacked and praised in the last decade according to the media. At one point H.E. was viewed as a hero and in other times H.E. was the ‘bad guy’. Americans love these kinds of things get convinced by it.”

Jaafari also stressed that Facebook and YouTube are important to “the American mindset” and advised to mention that “the fact that Facebook and YouTube are open now – especially during the crisis – is important.”

She also recommended mentioning that, “in the first month the international media was allowed in Syria. Both Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya’s offices were open but when they started to manipulate what is happening and ‘make up facts’, the Syrian government became more cautious about who will enter the country.”

Seumas Milne writes: There is no limit, it seems, to the blood price Arabs have to pay for their “spring”. After the carnage in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, Syria’s 11-month-old uprising grows ever more gruesome. Four days of bombardment of rebel-controlled districts in the Syrian city of Homs have yielded horrific images and reports from the embattled Bab al-Amr opposition stronghold: of mosques full of corpses, streets strewn with body parts, residential areas reduced to rubble.

Television footage broadcast in the Arab world is still more graphic, and the impact convulsive. Whatever the arguments about the number of dead on either side, the scale of human suffering is unmistakable – and comes after almost a year of continuous bloodletting, torture and sectarian revenge attacks.

So when Russia and China vetoed Saturday’s western-sponsored UN resolution condemning Bashar al-Assad’s regime, requiring his troops to return to barracks and backing an Arab League plan for him to be replaced, US and British leaders and their allies, echoed by the western media, felt able to denounce it as a “disgusting” and “shameful” act of betrayal of Syrians.

But that assumes externally imposed regime change, which is what the resolution entailed, would either work, have legitimacy or actually stop the killing. By decreeing a “political process” with a predetermined outcome, the withdrawal of the Syrian army from the streets with no parallel demand on armed rebel groups, and full implementation within 21 days – with a provision for “further measures” in the event of “non-compliance” – it also paved the way for foreign military intervention.

The Guardian reports: Scores of people have been killed in the fifth straight day of shelling in the besieged Syrian city of Homs, according to opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The continuing bombardments of the districts of Bayadah, Baba Amr, al-Khaldiyeh and Karm el-Zeytoun caused many deaths, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Omar Shaker, an activist in Baba Amr, said the district was under “very intense shelling” by tanks, mortars, artilleries and heavy machine guns. He said he had counted five bodies.

Other reports suggest 47 civilians died early on Wednesday in the government’s continuing attempts to subdue opposition areas. At least 150 people have died in the last two days, activists and oppostion sources have told Reuters.

One activist, Muhammad Hassan, said by satellite phone: “Electricity returned briefly and we were able to contact various neighbourhoods because activists there managed to recharge their phones. We counted 47 killed since midnight.” Hassan said the bombardment had intensified in Sunni Muslim neighbourhoods that have risen up against Assad.

Nicholas Noe writes: Almost one year after anti-government protests began in Syria, a disaster of enormous moral and strategic proportions is fast approaching. Full-scale civil war is now likely. And a multifront, conventional and possibly unconventional war ignited by events in the Levant is also increasingly plausible.

However, many in the West, in some Arab governments and even in the Syrian opposition still think a “controlled collapse” of Bashar al-Assad’s government is possible.

According to this view, increasing pressure from all around will, at some point, fracture the government and its supporters both at home and abroad. Any resulting death and destruction, as well as regional blowback, will be within acceptable limits.

Unfortunately, there are at least three problems that make a controlled collapse unlikely.

First, the Assad government, which still enjoys substantial support from the army, the elite and other segments of the population, may be able to prolong its bloody denouement, with help from outsiders. Russia, which sees Syria as an indispensable strategic asset, joined China on Saturday in vetoing a United Nations resolution against the Assad government.

Iran has staked its own vital interests on Mr. Assad’s regime, which is a crucial conduit for Tehran’s support for the militant Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah in their common struggle against Israel.

Second, the violence from any drawn-out collapse will most likely exceed the limits of moral or strategic acceptability for the West and its allies — not to mention the Syrian people. Sectarian conflicts that divide the Alawites and other minority communities from the majority Sunni population will accelerate, compounding tensions in neighboring Lebanon, where Sunni fighters are now staging attacks into Syria, and also in Iraq, where sectarian violence has sharply increased in recent weeks.

Third, the resulting movement of refugees will add yet another destabilizing element to a humanitarian crisis. After all, Syria already hosts millions of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees who are likely to experience further anguish and loss. [Continue reading…]