”Our mistake was to ever believe there could be peaceful change in this country,” he said. ”We wasted time and sacrificed many lives trying to be peaceful. We should have just gone straight to an armed uprising.”
”By taking such extreme steps against the moderate opposition the regime is pushing all of its opponents to join the armed rebellion; the regime is making it clear there is no place for the peaceful activists,” said a Syrian political analyst.”
”The cases of Mazen Darwish, Kifah Ali Deeb and Rami Hinawi show very plainly the regime is not fighting militant Islamists but is actually at war with any advocates of real reform in this country, even those who insist on peaceful methods.”
”There are no more peaceful demonstrations, there’s no point, we’re not able to move a single metre before the security forces and army start shooting at us,” he says.”
“Liberal, secular, often well educated members of the opposition saytheir influence over the uprising has been undermined, both through widespread use of indiscriminate violence by the authorities and mass arrests of peaceful dissidents, taking them out of circulation and leaving the field open to more radical groups.”
Here in a nutshell is the description how a brutal dictator transformed peaceful protesters, who only wanted some freedom, to fighters.
In ALL of this, the Assad regime was helped by Russia, Iran, China and Hezbollah. With training, advisors and guidance, troops, snipers, material, spare parts, maintenance, weapons, ammunition, intelligence, money, political backing on ALL levels etc.
In ALL of this, the Assad regime was ALSO helped by USA, EU, UN, Turkey, and The Arab League who did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during 12 months but talked and had meetings. And then they only sent “observers” who dutifully observed the slaughter and massacres taking place, day in day out .
And ALL the TIME the death toll of civilians keep rising, First it was a 1000, then 5000, then 10 000, then 15 000, then 20 000, and now 23 000.
Massacre after Massacre.
Torture, Slaughter, Summarily Executions and Rape.
A systematic assault on human dignity and civilian lives and freedom on a colossal scale.
Day in Day out.
And the TOTAL destruction of block after block, neighbourhood after neighbourhood in countless cities and villages. Using, aside from bombs and howitzers, tanks, rockets etc., the Russian 240mm F-864 high explosive mortar bomb to “fight” against these unarmed civilians.
The world’s largest high explosive mortar bomb designed to “demolish fortifications and fieldworks” according to a Russian arms merchandizing catalogue.It weighs 130 kilograms and contains 31.93 kilograms of TNT as an explosive charge.
This weapon system is notable for its capability to conduct a “plunging attack,” in which the munition is fired at a high angle and comes down nearly perpendicular to penetrate a building or fortification.
This is the same weapon that Russia used to destroy Grozny in 1994-96. And now they have passed on these “skills” to the Syrians.
By the way, the use of such weapons in dense urban environments is a war crime.
Here is just one small example from Friday August 10 of Cities and Towns under shelling and destruction by the Assad regime. And the list is not complete:
An other example from yesterday August 15 when the “brave and courageous” pilots of Assads Air Force bombed a residential area in Azaz and obliterated a whole block:
The report here including video:
Syria: Fighter Jet Bombing Kills Over 40 Civilians
“(Azaz) – A Syrian government fighter jet bombed a residential neighborhood, killing more than 40 civilians and wounding at least 100 others in the town of Azaz, including many women and children, Human Rights Watch said today after visiting the town. In the attack on August 15, 2012, at least two bombs destroyed an entire block of houses in the al-Hara al-Kablie neighborhood of Azaz, in Syria’s northern Aleppo province.
Human Rights Watch investigated the site of the bombing two hours after the attack and interviewed witnesses, victims, medical personnel, and relatives of those killed.
“This horrific attack killed and wounded scores of civilians and destroyed a whole residential block,” said Anna Neistat, acting emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. “Yet again, Syrian government forces attacked with callous disregard for civilian life.”
What is left of the al-Hara al-Kablie neighborhood of Azaz after the bombing – NOTHING!
An another brave effort by Assads Air Force – They bombed the hospital in Aleppo
(Aleppo) – Syrian government fighter planes fired rockets that struck the main emergency hospital in an opposition-controlled area of Aleppo on August 14, 2012, wounding two civilians and causing significant damage, Human Rights Watch said today after visiting the damaged hospital.
A rocket attack by government aircraft on the hospital two days earlier, on August 12, apparently killed four civilians and wounded three, Human Rights Watch said.
“Fighter jet attacks on a hospital twice in three days indicate that this was no accident,” said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “By firing rockets at a clearly marked hospital, the government shows blatant disregard for civilian lives.”
Dar al Shifaa Hospital in Aleppo after the attack
And by the way, these airplanes are provide by Russia, the pilots trained by Russia, the ammunition supplied by Russia, spare parts and maintenance done by Russia, air control and directions done by Russia, intelligence supplied by Russia etc.
Russian ammunition boxes used by the Assad army in Aleppo
They are SOOO HELPFUL these Russians wouldn’t you say?
And ALL of these politicians, governments, international organisations did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during these 18 months but observed and talked and had meetings.
I say only one thing: You should be REALLY BE PROUD of yourselves and the children of Syria will remember you. Each one of you.
”DAMASCUS // No great soul-searching accompanied his transformation from peaceful demonstrator to rebel with the Free Syrian Army; it is a path many of his friends had already taken.
Arrested for protesting in the Damascus suburb of Dummar, Mohammed, 23, spent two months in an overcrowded military intelligence detention cell, and was released without charge to find demonstrations had been superseded by armed conflict.
”I wasn’t thinking about taking up a weapon and fighting the regime when I left prison,” he says.
”I went straight out to protest and saw the other opposition people in Dummar were now carrying rifles and I realised I had to do the same.”
Since the start of the Syrian uprising, Mohammed had been part of the Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists organising peaceful demonstrations and tracking civilian deaths.
While the LCCs are still operating and peaceful demonstrations do still take place, Mohammed and other rebels in Damascus say circumstances have rendered the unarmed protests irrelevant.
”There are no more peaceful demonstrations, there’s no point, we’re not able to move a single metre before the security forces and army start shooting at us,” he says.
(The hospital in Qusier, Homs. destroyed by Assad forces. The sign reads – Smoking is Forbidden in The Patients Room)
Not all of those involved in the grassroots opposition movement agree, but a broad range of activists concede that those advocating peaceful revolt have been squeezed out by the demands of war.
Liberal, secular, often well educated members of the opposition saytheir influence over the uprising has been undermined, both through widespread use of indiscriminate violence by the authorities and mass arrests of peaceful dissidents, taking them out of circulation and leaving the field open to more radical groups.
On Sunday two prominent grassroots activists, Kifah Ali Deeb and Rami Hinawi, were detained by a Popular Committee – a pro-government armed militia – in their home neighbourhood of Sahnaya, south of Damascus.
Ms Deeb, an artist and author of children’s books, sits on the governing board of the opposition National Coordination Committees, a political bloc that has called for non-violent democratic change in Syria.
The NCC has been at odds with other opposition factions, including the exiled Syrian National Council, which has called for foreign military intervention to aid rebels.
Ms Deeb, 30, is a member of the Alawite sect, which forms the nucleus of Bashar Al Assad’s regime and dominates ultra-loyalist branches of the security forces and military.
Mr Hinawi, 33, who has long campaigned peacefully for democratic reforms alongside Ms Deeb, is a Druze.
Both are believed to be in the hands of air force intelligence, the most feared branch of the Syrian security forces, although, as with other detentions, no information has been released by the authorities in connection with the detentions.
Sectarian politics are complex in Syria but one of the key arguments made by supporters of Mr Al Assad is that his regime is all that protects Christian, Druze, Alawite and other minority groups from annihilation at the hands of the Sunni majority.
That has brought even sharper focus on members of those minorities who stand with the opposition, rather than the authorities.
(Ramadan in Aleppo)
Another influential advocate of a peaceful uprising in Syria, Mazen Darwish, also an Alawite, has been held by air force security for six months.
Although a civilian, he is facing prosecution in a military court usually reserved for army officers. There is no chance of appeal and no defence lawyer, proceedings are secret and the military judge can choose to issue a death sentence.
The human rights lawyer Anwar Al Bunni, a regular fixture at the Damascus courts of justice, said Mr Darwish and thousands of others facing special military courts had been thrown into a black hole, outside of Syria’s regular – and highly flawed – legal system.
”They have had all of their basic rights taken from them, we know nothing about their situation, all the files are kept secret. We are not even allowed to know the names of all of those facing military trials,” he said.
It emerged that Mr Darwish is facing a military court only when a judge summoned him to appear as a witness in another case, and air force security said they would not permit him to do so because he was being held for military trial.
Syrian officials do not talk about court cases but the authorities have long insisted they act in accordance with national laws and have dismissed evidence of widespread torture of detainees that has been compiled by the United Nations and rights monitors.
The use of draconian measures against advocates of non-violence has only accelerated the slide into an increasingly brutal conflict, one that rights monitors say has already killed upwards of 20,000 people, a majority of them civilians.
”By taking such extreme steps against the moderate opposition the regime is pushing all of its opponents to join the armed rebellion; the regime is making it clear there is no place for the peaceful activists,” said a Syrian political analyst.
”The cases of Mazen Darwish, Kifah Ali Deeb and Rami Hinawi show very plainly the regime is not fighting militant Islamists but is actually at war with any advocates of real reform in this country, even those who insist on peaceful methods.”
In Dummar, Mohammed admits he has little idea of how to wage war as a guerrilla, never having been in the army or taught how to fire a weapon.
A shortage of arms and ammunition among rebels in Damascus means he is used as a runner to convey messages between fighters when they are in action.
Nevertheless, he believes that is a more productive way of trying to overthrow the Syrian regime than stinging street protests.
”Our mistake was to ever believe there could be peaceful change in this country,” he said. ”We wasted time and sacrificed many lives trying to be peaceful. We should have just gone straight to an armed uprising.”
Hezbollah Mercenaries fighting for Assad in front of the Citadel in Aleppo
LEAKED VIDEO – Inside a helicopter gunship over Syria used to bomb and kill civilians in cities
(These videos where taken by Assad troops themselves to show how “good” they are at killing civilians, as trophies, to prove their loyalty etc. etc.)
Just a quick comment of the accelerated slaughter going on in Syria. And Russia’s continued role as the main weapons, ammunition, economic, personal, training, intelligence, diplomatic etc provider and support for Assad.
Here is what captain Konstantin Sivkov, a former strategist for the Russian General Staff between 1995 and 2007, now the first vice-president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, Doctor of Military Sciences, concluded after a “visit” in May and talks with the Assad’s gang:
“Sivkov was surprised, he says, with how “gentle” Assad has been in crushing the revolution. “Believe me, some of our guys have told Bashar to adopt much harsher methods, carpet bombing, total destruction,” Sivkov told TIME after returning to Moscow. “If that approach was chosen in Syria, there would be no rebels left after one week, and everyone would be happy.”
Yeah, that’s the Russian way – Total destruction and Carpet bombings of civilians. After all, they have a long experience in Afghanistan, Chechnya etc. And they taught their Syrian pupils well.
Here are just some pictures of the according to Russia “to gentle” Assad treatment of civilians in cities.
In this case from Homs, a major industrial center, and with a population of at least 652,609 people according to the 2004 census:
This is the guy who also told Izvestiya on March 22 this year regarding project 949A, were Antei nuclear-powered submarines will be completed and modernized and armed with new cruise missiles with range up to 1,500 km.
“In particular, the newspaper cites Capt 1 rank (retired) Konstantin Sivkov, vice president of Geopolitics Academy saying that Antei-class subs would be equipped with Caliber missiles in order to destroy missile defense assets deployed in Europe.”
That is in plain language EU. Who have done everything possible not to “irritate” Russia and have bent over backwards every time Russia raises its eyebrow.
And this is what he said on March 25 2010 “World War III Has Already Begun”
“A resource-poor countries and people, but rich in modern technology and weapons will also want their share. From this perspective, Russia has become the primary objective of aggression.”
“The only limiting factor at this moment is Russia’s nuclear arsenal. According to the experts they predicted that the West will attempt to remove the Russian nuclear shield. “
Yeah, these as always helpful and peaceful Russians.
This is the country, and the persons, that the Obama administration had a “reset” with and has given de facto veto power of the US foreign policy.
It is now nearly one month since I finished my 11 parts series of background on what is going on in Syria (Syria and Vladimir Putin: The Butcher of Homs Part 1-11). So I thought it would be appropriate to give an update of what has happened or not happened since then. And here are some more updates.
We have come to the end of this follow up after my first series about what is going on in Syria. I could easily write 250 pages of observations but I am going to spare you that. Instead, I am just going to write about three things: the perception of the opposition in Syria, the Shabiha and the armed opposition.
First the perception of the opposition in Syria.
It has always amassed me that the “do nothing crowd”, (i.e. The Obama administration, NATO, EU, Turkey, Arab league etc), are actually the same ones that are ACTIVELYpromoting and supporting the muslim fundamentalist i.e. SNC/The Muslim Brotherhood.
One of the excuses from the west (Obama administration, NATO, EU) has always been that they don’t want to give support to extreme/fundamentalist muslims. Which is quite “funny” if it weren’t so hypocritical because that is what you EXACTLY did in Libya. You armed, trained and fought with al-Qaida and other fundamentalist groups.
So the brutal fact, which so many don’t want to admit, is that most of the opposition are normal people how just want do defend themselves from the attacks of the Assad regime. And they also want a change for the better regarding basic freedoms and liberties.
I would say that these are very reasonable demands wouldn’t you say?
So instead of supporting this secular, civil opposition the Obama administration, NATO and EU is ACTIVELY supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, which literally hates these countries and what their societies stands for.
And if the Muslim Brotherhood came to power, with the help of the money and support of the west, their policy would be ANTI USA, ANTI EU, ANTI NATO and of course destroy Israel.
Seems like a VERY smart policy wouldn’t you say?
And our tax money goes to this madness!
And in the meantime the civilian population in Syria, including the secular, civil opposition, is getting slaughtered and massacred.
The big difference as I wrote in my original series is that after over 45 years of brutal dictatorship the FEAR IS GONE. If you don’t understand that you don’t understand very much of what is going on now.
Here is one of the very, very few opinion polls of what the opposition really thinks:
“There are increasing calls for international intervention inSyriaafter this weekend’s massacre in Houla, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces murdered more than 100 civilians. Obstacles to intervention remain, however, especially concern that the opposition to Assad’s regime is dominated by religious fundamentalists. Until recently, for example, the Syrian National Council, a group of exiled opponents of the regime, was led by Burhan Ghalioun, whose unwillingness to counter the Muslim Brotherhood was widely viewed in the West as a troubling sign of Islamist influence.
But a confidential survey of opposition activists living inSyriareveals that Islamists are only a minority among them. Domestic opponents of Assad, the survey indicates, look toTurkeyas a model for Syrian governance — and even widely admire theUnited States.
Pechter Polls, which conducts opinion surveys in tough spots in theMiddle East,AfricaandAsia, completed the Syria opposition poll in December 2011. Respondents were contacted over a secure Skype connection by someone they could trust — all native Syrians — who asked them to fill out a short questionnaire anonymously in Arabic. Interviewers were selected from different social and political groups to ensure that respondents reflected a rough cross-section of overall opposition attitudes. To ensure confidentiality, the online survey could be accessed only through a series of proxy servers, bypassing the regime-controlled Internet.
Given the survey’s unusual security requirements, respondents were selected by a referral (or ”controlled snowball”) technique, rather than in a purely random fashion. To be as representative as possible, the survey employed five different starting points for independent referral chains, all operating from different locations. The resulting sample consisted of 186 individuals inSyriaidentified as either opposition activists themselves (two-thirds of the total) or in contact with the opposition.
What do these ”inside” opposition supporters believe? Only about one-third expressed a favorable opinion of the Muslim Brotherhood. Almost half voiced a negative view, and the remainder were neutral.On this question, no significant differences emerged across regions.
Most of the survey’s questions asked, ”On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 means the most negative and 7 the most positive, how would you rate your opinion of X?” Answers of 1 to 3 were considered negative, 4 as neutral, and 5 to 7 as positive.
While many respondents supported religious values in public life, only a small fraction strongly favored Shariah law, clerical influence in government, or heavy emphasis on Islamic education. A large majority (73%) said it was ”important for the new Syrian government to protect the rights of Christians.” Only 20% said that religious leaders have a great influence on their political views.
This broad rejection of Islamic fundamentalism was also reflected in the respondents’ views on government. The poll asked each respondent what country he or she would ”like to see Syria emulate politically,” and which countries the respondent ”would like to see Syria emulate economically.” The poll listed 12 countries, each with a scale of 1 to 7. Just 5% had even a mildly positive view of Saudi Arabia as a political model. In contrast,82% gave Turkey a favorable rating as both a political and economic model (including over 40% extremely favorable). The U.S. earned 69% favorable ratings as a political model, with France, Germany and Britain close behind. Tunisia rated only 37% and Egypt 22%.
Iran was rated lowest of any country included in the survey, including Russia and China: Not even 2% of respondents had positive views of Iran as a political model. Fully 90% expressed an unfavorable view of Hezbollah, including 78% with the most negative possible attitude.
One of the surprises in the results is the scope of the opposition’s network inside Damascus, despite their difficulties in demonstrating publicly. One-third of the respondents, whether activists or sympathizers, said they live in the Syrian capital. (To protect their privacy, the survey did not ask for more precise identification.)
This ”inside” opposition is well-educated, with just over half identifying as college graduates. The ratio of male to female respondents was approximately 3 to 1, and 86% were Sunni Arab.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, they were ambivalent about Syrian Kurdish demands for ”political decentralization” (like autonomy). Views of ”Kurdish parties” were evenly divided among negative, neutral and positive. (Such feelings are evidently mutual: In the six months since the survey was completed, Syrian Kurdish organizations have increasingly decided to go their own way, separate from the other opposition groups.)
Based on a statistical analysis of the survey, most secularists among the respondents prefer weak central government, presumably as a way to safeguard their personal freedoms. On the other hand, the one-third of respondents who support the Muslim Brotherhood also tend to have a favorable view of Hamas, despite the latter movement’s previous association with the Assad regime.
The survey demonstrates that the core of the Syrian opposition inside the country is not made up of the Muslim Brotherhood or other fundamentalist forces, and certainly not of al Qaeda or other jihadi organizations. To be sure, a revolution started by secularists could pave the way for Islamists to win elections, as has occurred in Egypt. But the Syrian opposition is solidly favorable to the U.S. and overwhelmingly negative toward both Hezbollah and Iran.”
David Pollock is the Kaufman fellow at The Washington Institute and a consultant to Pechter Polls.
The Shabiha, the murderous thugs that do most of the massacres
Assad’s Pact With the Devil
Syrian Regime Using Hired Killers to Cling to Power
“The regime of Syrian ruler Bashar Assad has enlisted gangs of murderous thugs known as ‘Shabiha.’ No assignment is too brutal or bloody for these men who are free to kill, plunder and rape. Assad knows that outright victory over the opposition is his only remaining chance to stay in power.”
“Europe, the United States and perhaps even Kofi Annan are slowly realizing that there will be no compromise with Syrian President Bashar Assad, because there can be no compromise with Assad. Now that more than 10,000 people have died and tens of thousands have been tortured, the phase in which protesters were still staging peaceful demonstrations, and in which negotiations, transitional governments and compromises were possible is irrevocably over.
When the regime was still able to negotiate its own exit, it didn’t want to. Now it no longer has that option, because any sign of weakness would lead to its overthrow.
This realization hasn’t been triggered by the fact that the regime is massacring civilians to save itself. Similar bloodbaths have already taken place in the past. In April of last year, more than 60 people disappeared without a trace in Homs, after government troops had mowed down a group of peaceful protesters. In January, several families in a southeastern Homs neighborhood were massacred in a way that resembled the Houla killings. And when the Bab Amr neighborhood was captured by regime troops several weeks later, after having been almost destroyed by artillery fire, witnesses said that there were mass executions of those who hadn’t fled.
What was different this time was that on Saturday morning, only hours after the killing frenzy, a team of UN observers managed to reach Houla, where they saw and counted the bodies, heard what the survivors had to say and saw the tracks the tanks had made. ”The evidence is clear — it is not murky,” said German UN Ambassador Peter Wittig. ”There is a clear government footprint in those killings.” Whereas earlier massacres were only documented in reports by the Syrian opposition and video recordings that could not be corroborated, this was a different situation.
By failing, the UN mission appears finally to be having an impact. The roughly 300 unarmed observers cannot possibly monitor a nonexistent cease-fire, during which more than 2,000 people had been killed by the end of last week. The UN observers cannot prevent what is happening, but they can prevent it from being covered up. This isn’t much, and for angry Syrians who burned images of Annan, it’s far too little. ”We called the observers during the massacre,” a man from Houla who calls himself Abu Emad was quoted as saying, ”but they refused to come and stop the murders. Damn then, and damn the entire mission!”
“The men, some in civilian clothing and others dressed in army uniforms, went from house to house, reported survivors like 11-year-old Ali, who told CBS News: ”They came to our house at night. First they took out my father and then my oldest brother. My mother shouted: Why are you doing this? Then they shot both of them, and after that my mother. Then one of the men came in with a flashlight and saw my sister Rasha. He shot her in the head.” Ali hid with his two little brothers. The man saw them and shot the brothers, but he missed Ali.
Other survivors who hid or played dead consistently gave the same accounts: The men combed through house after house and room after room, killing everyone, some with knives and some with guns. The massacre continued until the morning hours. When the UN observers arrived, they found nothing but corpses in the villages controlled by regime forces. The survivors had fled to neighborhoods held by the FSA, where they placed the bodies they had recovered on mats in the mosques before filming and burying them.
The regime in Damascus could not deny that the massacre had taken place. But Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi, parroting the government’s standard position, promptly blamed the killings on ”armed terrorists” and ”Islamists.” The Russian government, which had blocked every Security Council resolution condemning Syria, launched into a bizarre attempt to apportion the blame. The regime was apparently responsible for the assault by tanks and mortars, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. But the brutish murders, said Alexey Puchkov, chairman of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs, ”were definitely committed by the other side.”
Igor Pankin, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador, agreed: ”We cannot imagine that it is in the Syrian regime’s interest to sabotage Special Envoy Kofi Annan’s visit to Damascus.” And he is right in one respect. In PR terms, a massacre of children cannot be helpful to the Assad regime. But he was wrong in another sense, inadvertently putting his finger on Russia’s growing frustration with its ally: Syria‘s leadership is no longer taking decisions that would make sense for a government hoping to reach a political solution to the crisis.
By gradually concentrating power in the hands of the Alawite minority, to which the Assad clan belongs, the regime is fomenting a religious war against the Sunni majority, the very conflict it claims it wants to prevent. Now Assad has backed himself into a corner from which he believes there is only way out: victory. This is why the latest proposal from Berlin and Washington to attempt the ”Yemeni solution,” which would be to depose Assad but keep the regime in power, will not work. The regime is relying solely on violence, accompanied by an outrageous propaganda narrative that blames foreign terrorists and al-Qaida for the uprising.
This conspiratorial obsession is nothing new. Starting in 2003, the intelligence services began secretly organizing the transfer of jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Libya and Kuwait across the Syrian border into Iraq, to deter the Americans from seeking regime change in Damascus as well. At the same time, the regime painted itself as a bulwark in the fight against al-Qaida.Foreigners who were later arrested reported how they had been kept in Syrian intelligence camps in Homs while waiting to be transferred into Iraq.
The attacks on several Scandinavian embassies in Damascus after the Danish cartoon controversy in early 2006 were blamed on an Islamist mob, but as it turned out, the regime had planted Islamists in the crowd. As a precaution, it also removed the guards from in front of a general’s house next to the Norwegian Embassy. Although there was no evidence that the regime was behind the major bombing attacks in Damascus, Aleppo and Deir al-Zor in recent months, they had several strange elements in common:The bombers had immense quantities of explosives, which they easily managed to get through all government checkpoints, and they detonated most of their bombs in front of empty buildings. When the regime published its death tolls after the first attack on Dec. 23, they included the names of men who had already died elsewhere. During the ostentatious burial service at the Umayyad Mosque, signs attached to many of the coffins read ”anonymous martyr.” On May 9, just before a bomb exploded near the convoy of UN observer mission chief Robert Mood, the vehicles were detained at a military checkpoint just long enough so that they would be nearby at the time of detonation.
“Murderous ‘Ghosts’
What happened in Houla followed the pattern of earlier attacks like the one in Homs. First, the target is bombarded with tanks and artillery from a great distance. Then the regular troops move in and drive out or shoot the last remaining rebels. Finally, the regime sends in its helpers, the Shabiha (”ghosts”), over which it has less and less control.
What were once gangs of thugs and smugglers from the hills around Latakia, the home turf of the Assad clan, have turned into an army of irregular troops numbering in the thousands. The gangs are backed by the beneficiaries of the regime, those who profit the most from Syria‘s façade of a market economy, and who now have the most to lose. It’s a Faustian bargain. As long as they are loyal to Assad, they are permitted to murder, loot and rape, as was the case in Houla, where the Shabiha came from neighboring villages to the south.
The Shabiha were also active in the capital Damascusin August 2011. Every evening during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, dozens of them stood in front of mosques in Sunni neighborhoods, prepared to bludgeon and drag off anyone who said anything derogatory about the regime after emerging from prayers. At about 8 p.m., swarms of Shabiha thugs emerged from the intelligence service quarters, were loaded into requisitioned buses and driven to their deployment locations, where they lay in wait until the faithful dispersed after leaving the mosques.
The Shabiha are criminals and day laborers, mostly Alawites, but also Kurds with the PKK terrorist group, members of Sunni clans from Aleppo loyal to the regime, and some Christians. The Shabiha are the shadow force of a regime that no longer trusts its own army, but instead has created a monster that is taking on a life of its own, undermining the Syrian government long before it suffers a military defeat.
Months ago, the author and dissident Yassin al-Haj Saleh, who is in hiding in Damascus, wrote: ”The current heads of the security services may very well reform themselves into a mafia-type organization after the collapse of the regime and continue to practice the violence, theft and discrimination at which they are so adept.”Syria could eventually be controlled by marauding gangs, driven by greed and the fear of reprisal, which becomes more justified with each new wave of killings.”
The Shabiha: Inside Assad’s death squads
The Shabiha started off as racketeers and smugglers. But now, as ultra-loyal enforcers ofSyria’s brutal regime, they have taken on a far more bloodthirsty role, write Harriet Alexander and Ruth Sherlock.
“The door to Dr Mousab Azzawi’s clinic, on the Mediterranean coast ofSyria, was always open to anyone who needed help. But, operating in the heartland of the feared Shabiha militia, there were some patients the doctor would have preferred not to treat.
”They were like monsters,” said Dr Azzawi, who worked in Latakia. ”They had huge muscles, big bellies, big beards. They were all very tall and frightening, and took steroids to pump up their bodies.
”I had to talk to them like children, because the Shabiha likes people with low intelligence. But that is what makes them so terrifying – the combination of brute strength and blind allegiance to the regime.”
As President Bashar al-Assad’s country continues its savage slide towards full-blown civil war, the violent, dark and secretive world of the Shabiha is coming out into the open.
Nine days ago, 108 people were butchered by the Shabiha in the town of Houla.The pro-Assad thugs went through the village, house to house, and slit the throats of anyone they came across – including 49 children. Exactly a week later, the Shabiha pulled 12 factory workers off a bus in the town of Qusayr, 40 miles to the south; tied their hands behind their backs, and shot them in the head. “
“The world is learning just how bloodthirsty the Shabiha can be. But insideSyria, their capacity for hideous brutality has long been known.
”Even before the revolution, any time there was unrest they would go out into the streets and stop it for the government,” said Selma, who comes from a prominent Alawite family – a Shia Muslim sect, into which the Assad family was born, and to which almost all of the Shabiha belong. Her cousins are Shabiha.
”They would just break people’s arms and legs. They would fight for Bashar to the death. It is natural – they have to defend their sect.”
Her cousins wore civilian clothes, she explained – ”then the television can say that these are just civilians who love Bashar.”
“President Assad, and his father Hafez before him, used the Shabiha to terrorise Syrians into obedience, brainwashing the militia into believing the Sunni majority was their enemy. “
“After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Syria’s French rulers needed soldiers willing to defend the regime from a Sunni uprising, so they incorporated large numbers of Alawites into the army, who were only too happy to fight their Sunni ”oppressors”.
They became the most politically powerful sect in Syria, and the vast majority of the country’s top intelligence and military officers adhere to the faith. It was from the army that Hafez al-Assad emerged to stage his coup.
Initially the Shabiha were a mafia clan, making money through racketeering. Selma, the Alawite with Shabiha family, said her cousins were ”filthy rich” through smuggling in diesel, milk and electronics. ”Anything toLebanon that is cheaper inSyria, and whatever is needed inSyria fromLebanon,” she said.
The ruling Assad family turned a blind eye to their criminal behaviour and violent methods.In return, the Shabiha became the Assads’ fiercely loyal defenders and enforcers.
”They are fuelled by this belief that they are fighting for their survival,” said Dr Azzawi. ”Assad tells them that they must defend the government or else they will be destroyed; it’s kill, or be killed.”
“An enormous man, identified on the video as Areen al-Assad – a member of the president’s family clan – posed with his gun, grinned from the steering wheel of his car, and flexed his muscles. His huge bicep bulged with a tattoo of the president’s face.
At the end of the video, the posturing Shabiha militants proclaim: ”Bashar, do not be sad: you have men who drink blood.”
”It is their motto,” explained Dr Azzawi, who said that many of the men were recruited from bodybuilding clubsand encouraged to take steroids. ”They are treated like animals, and manipulated by their bosses to carry out these murders. They are unstoppable.”
“The militia operated with blind devotion to the leaders, referred to as ”muallim”, meaning boss, or ”khaal”, uncle. And indeed, it was in many ways a family business.
Mr Assad’s cousin Numir has taken over as one of the key rulers of the Shabiha – even though the government is careful to avoid direct association with the militia and their murderous acts.
How the men are paid is unclear, although many claim the Shabiha is funded by businessmen tied into the Alawite clique that dominates the government.
What is known is that the Shabiha have a strong economic motives for backing the regime. Foot soldiers can earn up to £120 for a day’s thuggery – a fortune in Syria.”
“”If they know the whole area is against the regimethey have no problem killing everybody,” she said. ”That is how it works.”
The armed opposition
It has been fascinating to watch the development during the last 15 months of the opposition’s developing from the first few demonstrations. How the demonstrations started spreading and got bigger and bigger.
To the first sporadic attempts from civilians to defend themselves and their families, villages, neighbourhoods etc. against the attacks by the Assad regime. Via the first appearance of the defectors from the Assad army. Until today where you have a lot of groups going from hit-and-run attacks to learning how to coordinate and organize more sophisticated attacks against stronger targets.
They are learning, and they are learning fast because they have to.
In addition, they have increased the pressure on the regime many times over, increasing attrition and increasing defections etc
Still the armed opposition desperately lacks weapons and ammunition, especially to defend against Assad’s tanks and helicopter gunships.
The rebels are also gaining confidence. “Every day we control more territory, every day we have more defections, and we are having better organization in our ranks,” said Maj. Sami al-Kurdi, a spokesman for the Homs Military Council, one of the new military structures that are being established around the country. “The regime now controls only the territory under its tanks, and the evidence is that they don’t dare step out of their tanks.”
And as I said, they are growing in effectiveness and strength.
After driving rebels from strongholds in the Baba Amr district of Homs and several Idlib towns in March, the government has since been unable to press home the advantage. Repeated efforts to dislodge the FSA from the provincial Homs towns of Rastan and Qusair have failed, and a major offensive launched last week against a rebel stronghold in the town of Haffa, northeast of Latakia, faltered despite intense shelling and the deployment of combat helicopters.
The Assad regime can go in and suppress an area with heavy weapons, but as soon as they leave it, it losses the control.
The result is that many parts of northern and central Syria have effectively fallen under the sway of the opposition,
Which also makes it really hard for the regime to move around, and for them to get out of their checkpoints that they are barricaded in. The Assad forces are in many cases pinned down.
Remember that I two months ago talked about how the Syrian army de facto had defected “in place”? Well, now the defections have started to increase and continues at a steady rate. And regular troops are weary after nearly 15 months of continuous deployment since no new conscripts have been called in.
One example – Of 400 soldiers originally stationed in the provincial capital of Idlib, just around 60 remained last week defending their base near the centre of the city, which has seen significant fighting. In the small city of Maraa, near Aleppo, 15 soldiers defected within the space of a week — as many as in the entire previous year.
The rebels also are starting to inflict heavy casualties on government troop’s security forces. It is likely to hit a record level in June for the second month in a row. As of Monday, June 11, the state news agency has announced the funerals of 259 soldiers and police officers who were killed in combat with rebels this month, a record 57 of them Saturday June 10 alone. Well ahead of May’s pace, when 404 such burials took place
Just during the period of June 10 to June 13, here are some of the main events:
– FSA Attacked the Taftanaz military airport.
– In Deir Ezzor several BMP:s and tanks where destroyed there alone. In Baba Amr, where the massacre occurred, well the FSA is back and on June 12 they destroyed two BMP:s.
– And on the same day three tanks where destroyed in Haritan,Aleppo
– The FSA captured the Deir Ezzor checkpoint operated by Army and shabiha. They captured lots of weaponry and ammunition after the attack
– FSA attacked a big regime convoy outside Latakia in operation ‘Cutting the snake’.
– Capture by FSA of shabiha and army in one of their strongpoints in Al Qusayr on June 10.
– Syrian rebels on June 11 briefly seized control of the strategic army base al-Ghanto (surface-to-air missiles are stationed there), close to the central town of Rastan before the army rained down artillery and forced them out of the station. They seized a lot of weapons and ammunition.
– On June 3, rebels attacked a Syrian Air Force As Suwayda air base east of the southern town of Deraa opposite the Israeli Golan border – their first such attack in the 14-month uprising, Several rebel groups firing mortars set fire to fighter aircraft and assault helicopters in their hangars and ripped up runways.
Does this sounds like some “ragtag” wild bands on the lose?
Inside Syria: You will never guess who arms the rebels
In any revolution, getting weapons is a key challenge. Syria’s rebels have found an interesting solution.
“JABAL AL-ZAWIYA, Syria— At the Free Syrian Army base here, a group of men led a nervous prisoner from his cell to a car waiting outside. A few hours later, the rebels returned alone, with a trunkload of weapons.
As they loaded the store room with new bullets and rocket-propelled grenades, Hamza Fatahallah, an army defector who joined the Free Syrian Army nine months ago, described the transaction that had taken place.
“We have caught many army prisoners,” he said. “We send them back home for a small amount of money on the condition they do not return to the regime. We use the money to buy weapons.”
For the release of this prisoner, Ahmed Haseeba, the group received $500. With this money, Fatahallah said they were able to buy ammunition from their main supplier: Syria’s national army, also known as the enemy.
This strange cycle of exchanging prisoners for weapons has been playing out between rebel forces and President Bashar al-Assad’s army since the beginning of the revolution.
Fatahallah estimated that his village purchased 40 percent of their weapons from the regime. Prisoner exchanges have so far contributed almost $80,000 toward weapons purchases, he said. And they obtain an additional 50 percent of their weapons during battle. The remaining 10 percent are donated and smuggled from outside the country, or are purchased from private merchants, mostly from Iraq.
Occasionally, prisoners are also exchanged directly for weapons, Fatahallah said. They have received up to two Kalashnikov rifles in exchange for a prisoner in the past.
For the regime, or at least the duplicitous members of it, supplying the enemy is a big business. Government officers also sell Kalashnikov bullets, which typically sold for less than 40 cents before the uprising, for about $4 each, according to Ahmed Al Sheikh, the leader of the armed opposition in Jabal al-Zawiya. He leads about 6,000 men from eight battalions that are collectively known as the Sham Falcons.
Kalashnikovs are bought for about $1,000, he said. Rocket-propelled grenade launchers, complete with a set of four rockets, cost up to $4,000, as does a BKT machine gun.
“These officers sell to us not because they love the revolution but because they love money,” Al Sheikh said of his chain of suppliers. “Their loyalty is to their pockets only, not the regime.”
While most of the sellers are corrupt officers, they said lower ranking soldiers have occasionally stolen supplies from government weapons storage and sold them to the rebel forces.
The relationship is not always a smooth one.
Back at the base, the men were relaxing after lunch when a loud explosion shocked everyone to their feet. As they feared, the previous night’s purchase of Kalashnikov bullets had been booby-trapped. This time their colleagues were lucky enough to survive the discovery.
The men had learned from prior experience — bullets acquired from the regime are sometimes emptied of their gunpowder and filled with TNT designed to destroy the Kalashnikov and its owner, rather than the enemy.
After several injuries and the loss of two rifles, the men had learned to spot the fakes. To everyone’s relief this had been a controlled explosion, by someone suspicious of the new batch. The damage inflicted was only a blackened hand, some singed hair and a hole in the table.
“These ones here are good bullets,” said battalion leader Asad Ibrahim, showing the red marking on the base of one of the bullets. Holding up another with a slightly darker red off-center mark he said, “These are Bashar’s bullets to explode our guns.”
The men said bullets like these have destroyed many guns and killed or seriously injured several of their fellow fighters. But desperate for ammunition, they take the risk.
Commander Al Sheikh said that half of the Sham Falcon arsenal are seized from the enemy. Most are taken either during battle, or after attacks on government checkpoints.And the rebels carry out organized raids on government weapon stores whenever they can.
During an attack on a checkpoint in Mughara last week, Al Sheikh proudly boasted that his men had managed a rare grab: a T62 tank along with anti-aircraft weapons.
Another source of arms is from the army defectors themselves, who bring their own weapons along when they join the rebel forces.
Sitting at the base, the men laughed as they recalled the story of two friends, both defectors, who told their superior they needed one of the gun-mounted vehicles and some heavy weapons to check on a call regarding rebel activity. Loading the truck with as much ammunition and weapons as they could find, they drove straight toward the rebels, checking in by radio with their boss with stories of hunting down “rebel traitors” hours after they had already betrayed sides.
While the Free Syrian Army has been adept at obtaining weapons, it has also proven skillful in manufacturing their own.
In a secret warehouse across town from the base, fertilizer and sugar were being boiled in a large pot. Everything from teapots to large metal pipes were being filled to make roadside bombs for attacks on tanks and army vehicles. 23mm bullet casings were filled with explosives with a small wick on top, looking more like an ACME special from a Loony Tunes cartoon than a deadly hand grenade.
”We are using very simple weapons against the highly sophisticated weapons of the regime — tanks, rockets, missiles. What a government! What a regime. Doing nothing but killing their people,” Fatahallah said during a tour of the busy workshop.
The men from the battalion spoke constantly of the need, not for military intervention from abroad, but for international help in obtaining more weapons. But with or without this support, they vowed to continue the fight until Assad is removed.
“The Quran says to prepare whatever weapons you can to fight your enemy,” said Al Sheikh, the commander, as his local leaders discussed preparations for their next mission.
“Even if no weapons are available and all we have left to use are stones, we will go on with our revolution until Assad falls.”
Syrian rebels in Turkey doubtful over new Arab arms supplies
“ANTAKYA, Turkey(Reuters) – Syrian rebels resting and recovering from wounds in Turkeysay that far from receiving a host of heavy weapons to take the fight to government forces, they feel forgotten by their Western and Arab backers.
Some rebels and opposition figures inside and outside Syria say there has been an upsurge in recent weeks of heavier weaponry being smuggled into Syria via Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq from suppliers inSaudi Arabia and Qatar.
The weapons, which according to the rebels are being supplied by private sponsors, include thousands of shells, hundreds of sniper rifles, as well as anti-armor missiles.
But in the verdant hills, wooded mountainsides and languid refugee camps of Turkey’s southern Hatay province, Free Syrian Army rebels returning from the fight to rest and tend their wounds, said they had seen no sign of any new weapons.
One rebel said less than half the fighters in his unit even had a gun. What weapons they did have, the rebels said, came from inside Syria.
”This is an absolute lie. We have not seen anything. If they are coming through Lebanon, maybe, but if they were, we would see these weapons. We don’t see them, where are they?” said one rebel who gave his name only as Ahmad.
”Every household has had one person killed or wounded. If we had weapons we could defend ourselves,” said Ahmad, clean-shaven and dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt, not fitting the typical image of a rebel fighter.”
“After the tanks push their way through the town and surrounding villages, Ahmad said, Assad’s soldiers, move from house to house rounding up young men and looting their homes. What they leave behind, they destroy, he said.
From a hospital ward in Hatay’s main cityAntakya, Ahmad becomes frustrated when speaking about weapons. He motions his hands emphatically to drive home his point.
”By God, we don’t trust anyone. We don’t believe anyone anymore. The world has forgotten us,” he said.
Like most of the Syrians inTurkey, Ahmad would only give one name for fear of reprisals against his relatives at home.
As Ahmad spoke, the newest wounded arrival, 31-year-old Lutfi, was wheeled into the emergency department below. Lutfi, a Free Army fighter was shot in the leg during a clash with government troops in Jabal al-Krad near the western city of Latakia.
Lutfi said he and some 150 rebel fighters ambushed around 200-250 of Assad’s men who were on their way to occupy one of the surrounding villages. Two rebels were killed in the clash and another four were wounded.
The right leg of his camouflage military trousers has been ripped off, revealing a bandage covering his bullet wound. Lutfi laughed when asked whether new weapons had reached his men.
”There are no new weapons. All we can do is attack and retreat. They are nothing against their weapons,” he said.
ONLY 40 PERCENT HAVE WEAPONS
Some 45 km (30 miles) south of Antakya only minutes from the Syrian border, Nasim, another rebel stands outside the Yayladagi refugee camp – tents erected inside an old, derelict tobacco factory that now serves as his temporary home.
Like at the others camps scattered around Hatay and further to the east, here fighters come to recoup with comrades or family members. Syrians are free to enter and leave the camp but access to the media is restricted.
Nasim says he regularly crosses back into Syriato smuggle food and blankets to fighters stationed inside but said he had not seen any new weapons cross from Turkey into Syria and that all the weapons he had seen had been acquired in the country.
”Three months ago I heard that Arab countries were going to send us money or weapons but I have not seen anything. Not one country has sent us money or weapons,” said Nasim, a short, stocky, scruffily dressed man in his 30s with a full black beard.
”The only weapons we get are by pooling our money together and buying them in Syria, or someone who supports us will come and give us their hunting rifle or something. Sometimes soldiers from the army sell us weapons,” he said.
Only around 40 percent of his unit even had a weapon, Nasim said, ”and these are light weapons. Assad is hitting us with tanks.”
Some 40 rebels and activists who spoke to Reuters this week all said that apart from a small number of light weapons which had been bought on the black market, they had not seen any weapons smuggled to Syria through Turkey.
While Turkey has thrown its support behind Assad’s opposition, has called for the Syrian leader to step down and given sanctuary to senior defected Syrian army officers, it has opposed any outside military intervention in its neighbor.
Turkish officials sayAnkara is not arming the rebels and have denied reports that weapons from other countries are being smuggled over Turkish territory.
Corroborating accounts of what is happening inside Syria is difficult because the government tightly restricts foreign media access. Most rebels also cross into Syria during darkness and Turkish security forces do not allow media near informal border crossings.
But for the rebels it does not matter where the weapons originate or how they get there, as long as they come.
”Wherever they come from it does not matter. We want weapons. We want to be able to defend our women and our families. We don’t want money, just weapons,” said Omar, another rebel smuggler at Yayladagi.”
“Yet the cynical joke about the soldiers at the checkpoint reflects a reality that grows closer with each day, one which is welcomed by many Syrians: The regime is finding its soldiers slipping out of its grasp. One noncommissioned officer from the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib, just hours after defecting to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), relates breathlessly how he made his escape: ”The officer was sitting there, and when he was alone with me and a friend of mine, he demanded, ‘What are you still doing here? Go on and get out of here!’ The officer will issue the order to shoot them, the defector says, and he’ll call their families and threaten them, but all that is nothing but show. It’s over, he says, and it was time for them to disappear.
Shooting from a Distance
Of 400 soldiers originally stationed in the provincial capital of Idlib, just a couple dozen remained last week defending their base near the center of the city, which has seen significant fighting. In the small city of Maraa, near Aleppo, 15 soldiers defected within the space of a week — as many as in the entire previous year.
In Azaz, where Assad’s troops still control a checkpoint at the edge of the city, a heavily fortified city quarter and the minarets of the largest mosque, two soldiers defected a few days ago under the cover of a fake attack. They reported they had received hardly any supplies in weeks, and that they were living on dried out bread and brackish water. One earlier defector had taken with him the numbers of everyone in his unit who owned a cell phone. The FSA then contacted each of them, offering to help them escape. Many of the soldiers found it an attractive offer.
This is just one small insight into the situation in northern Syria, but deserters from other parts of the country who have managed to make their way back to their native villages near Aleppo tell of similar conditions in their own units. Reports of the types of attacks carried out by Assad’s troops also suggest the situation in the south, in the area around Damascus, in Deir al-Zor in the east and in Homs in the west is much the same as it is in the north: In many cases, the army no longer deploys its troops, but instead shoots from great distances using tanks and heavy artillery, or from helicopters, strategies which decrease the risk to the army.
One defector from Homs, a city that has also been the site of heavy fighting, describes a cycle of accelerating collapse. ”If I’d left sooner, state security would have arrested my family and burned down my house,” he says. ”But they’re not going to come now, certainly not just because of me.”
Diminishing Fear
With each bit of the country that slips from the regime’s control, the soldiers’ fear diminishes. That in turn increases the number of defectors, more and more of whom join the FSA. One officer, who defected to the FSA and has a precise mind for figures, estimates the group has around 40,000 former army soldiers in its ranks, although the proportion of soldiers and civilians varies among regions.
Outwardly, power dynamics in Syria have changed little in the past 15 months. The rebellion has gripped the cities, but unlike in Libya, here there is no still no large, contiguous region for the rebels to defend. But the appearance of stability is deceptive. While it’s true that soldiers are no longer allowed to travel by intercity bus without a permit, and that many of those who escape still risk being shot by the omnipresent intelligence service, the fact remains that the regime is no longer able to stay the gradual erosion of its army.
The impression of power and control emanating from the centers of Damascus, Aleppo and other major cities may also be deceptive. The Western half of Syria is a land of villages and small cities, which have joined together with the insurgency in the most densely populated provinces. The area around Aleppo, Idlib, Homs, Hama and Daraa together forms a zone in which the government’s troops may attack anywhere, at any time, yet are no longer able to control the area permanently. And in many places, the people living here have switched sides. Sunni Muslims have certainly done so, but so have most Druzes and Ismailis. And though Kurdish villages in the northwest, such as Basuta and Ain Dara, have started flying the Kurdish flag in recent weeks, rather than the revolutionary flag with its three stars, there’s no one left here who still defends the regime.
Around 50 soldiers are stationed on Sheikh Barakat Mountain near the Churchof St. Simeon, northern Syria’s famous late antiquity ruin, but for the past two months they’ve received supplies only by air, because convoys are no longer able to pass through the surrounding area, which is completely under the FSA’s control
‘We Don’t Get Orders’
The FSA itself is a peculiar entity. It’s clear that it’s effectively organized at the village level and in small cities, each group loosely connected with other districts and provinces, but without a set hierarchy or command structure. ”We have a good relationship with the FSA’s commander in exile in Turkey,” says one local commander, ”but we don’t get orders. We’re in charge of ourselves.”
This set-up isn’t enough to allow coordinated attacks on the regime’s centers of power, but it appears to be good enough to control the rest of the country. What’s sustaining the regime is its monopoly on heavy weaponry, as well as its tough core of 100,000 to 200,000 officers, secret police, elite soldiers and militia members, most of whom are Alawis and fear that the regime’s fall would spell their own end as well. These troops have their stronghold in the Ansariyah Mountains in the west of the country and control parts of the larger cities as well, but they no longer hold all the land between.
Everyone — the rebels, the hundreds of thousands of undecided currently fleeing through the country to wherever they feel they will be somewhat safer, even those who support the regime — are all dreading the ”next step,” in the words of Abu Ali al-Dirri, an officer who changed sides six months ago. The next step is the air force.
‘They’re Going to Bomb the Country’
Syria has made massive improvements to its air force in the past year, but so far, aside from the helicopters, hardly put it into action. ”But before the Assads go down, they’re going to bomb the country,” Dirri believes. For years, he says, the regime has made a point of ensuring the loyalty of the air force, the branch of the military where President Bashar Assad’s father Hafez began his career. ”They’ve increased the proportion of Alawi cadets at the military academy in Aleppo constantly, especially in the air force,” he says. ”They knew things would turn against them at some point.”
At most, Dirri says, the regime would face the problem that many older pilots have been discharged in recent years, while many newer pilots have only barely completed the number of flying hours necessary in order to fly a fighter jet. Dirri himself, as a Sunni, hasn’t even been allowed to carry a gun since the revolution began.
For years, the officer says, ”Russia didn’t want to supply replacement parts any more, because we never paid, but now Russia is providing enormous amounts of assistance, even sending over personnel.”He adds that more than 1,000 Russian engineers were present in the country this January. Many of them were officially there as agricultural consultants, ”but their work doesn’t have much to do with agriculture.” Iran has sent arms and ammunition, he adds, but not much in the way of personnel, while China has a group of air force specialists stationed at Aleppo‘s military airports.
Around half of the air force’s 360 fighter jets are fully operational, Dirri says. It’s roughly the same proportion with its 120 helicopters. Its French ”Gazelle” helicopters, equipped with armor-piercing weapons, are in the best condition, ”but not a single one of them has ever taken off — they’re all stationed at the presidential palace airport.”
Where Will the West Draw a Line?
As long as the West continues to declare every few days that it has no intention of carrying out a military intervention, says Colonel Dirri, the regime in Syria will continue to use everything at its disposal. ”Its strength rests in the fact that the whole world is saying, ‘We’re not going to get involved,'” he says. ”If this Rasmussen” — a reference to NATO’s secretary general — ”would just shut his mouth for once, that alone would do Syria a great service!”
At the very latest, after the massacres in Houla two weeks ago and in Mazraat al-Qubair last Wednesday, none of the rebels in northern Syrian still believe the UN’s peace plan will be successful. Instead, their greatest hope is little more than a rumor: that at some point the US must surely draw a line, and perhaps Russia too. What will it take to reach that line? The deployment of Syria‘s air force to carpet-bomb the country? Or perhaps the regime resorting to its arsenal of chemical weapons?
One thing is clear: With or without a vote from the UN Security Council, the rebels want an intervention.”
The T-HOMS 75
Finally the T-HOMS 75. It is a Toyota pickup fitted with steel plates to protect teams of three rebel fighters each behind the rockets and machine guns. Under the motto, “you take what you have”
This is what NATO and Anders Fogh Rasmussenprobably would call“a serious proliferation of weapons in the region”.
And this piece from Haaretz on the left and very critical of Israeli policies. Regarding the deafening silence from nearly ALL Israeli Arab artists in Israel and Jewish radicals, the peace movement etc.
A deafening silence
Tolerance in the face of Assad’s bloody murderousness is liable to have the same effect on Arab-Jewish radicalism in Israel.
“Remember Deir Yassin? The number of innocent people murdered in Syriaover the past year is 100 times greater than the number of innocent people who were murdered in this Arab village at the edge of Jerusalem in 1948.
Remember the Qibya incident? The number of innocent people killed in Syriaover the past year is 250 times the number of innocent people killed in this pastoral village in Jordan in 1953.
Remember Sabra and Shatila? The number of innocent people butchered during the past year in Syria is 20 times the number of innocent people who were butchered in those Palestinian refugee camps in western Beirut in 1982.
Remember the bloody rioting in October 2000? The number of innocent people who were shot to death in Syria during the past year is 1,000 times the number of innocent people who were shot to death by the Israel Police in the Galilee and the Triangle area in central Israel.
Remember Operation Cast Lead? The number of innocent people who were felled in Syria during this past year is dozens of times the number of innocent people who fell in the Gaza Strip during that widely condemned Israeli military operation in the winter of 2008-09.
The picture is clear: During one year, the secular Arab nationalism of Bashar Assad has spilled more innocent blood than the Zionists have in decades. This Arab tyrant, who in the past was the darling of Arab Knesset members, is massacring his fellow Arabs in a way that Israel never did.
Arab cities are being bombed, Arab women are murdered, Arab children are slaughtered. An Arab society is being shredded, and an Arab state shattered into fragments.
Despite all this, the The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel is not demanding that the United Nations intervene to stop the bloodshed. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, is not petitioning the International Criminal Court in the Hague to put the war criminals on trial. Large Land Day type demonstrations have not been called. Protesters who take part in mass marches every October aren’t marching. Arab students who mark the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 aren’t coming out against the Syrian Nakba of 2012. Israel’s Arab minority and its anti-Zionist left are watching as thousands of Arab are massacred – and are standing idly by.
It’s crystal clear that the Syrian tragedy unfolding before our eyes has serious international ramifications. It is taking all meaning out concepts such as international community, international law and the idea of moral validity in international relations.
It’s crystal clear that the Syrian tragedy has serious pan-Arab ramifications. It is taking all meaning out of concepts such as Arab unity, Arab solidarity and the idea that the contemporary Arab world accords any real meaning to human rights.
But the Syrian tragedy has serious ramifications for Israel’s anti-Zionist community as well. The inability of this community to directly confront Arab evil undermines the moral basis for its battle against Israeli evil.
Its unwillingness to demand that universal values be upheld in Hama and in Homs pulls the rug out from under its demands that universal values be upheld in Ramallah and Nazareth. Its silence when faced with the butcher of Damascus makes its condemnations of the State of Israel sound hollow.
The Syrian challenge is a moral challenge. There are some Israeli Arabs who are passing this test honorably. For example, Azmi Bishara, the former MK who fled Israel after being questioned on suspicion of aiding the enemy, who in the past was close to Assad, is today waging a brave and intensive campaign against him on Al Jazeera tv. Unfortunately, few of Bishara’s colleagues in Israel are following suit.
Israeli Arab artists in Israel and Jewish radicals in Israel are silent about what’s going on just over the border. This troublesome silence makes one wonder if their declared humanitarianism is authentic. When they spoke up – against Israel – about human dignity and freedom, perhaps they were simply fooling us?
Communism in the West was destroyed in the 1950s because it tolerated Stalin’s bloody dictatorship. Tolerance in the face of Assad’s bloody murderousness is liable to have the same effect on Arab-Jewish radicalism in Israel.
See Part 1 – Introduction in my original series for more info
Refusing to arm or help the opposition will not end the conflict or limit it; it will drag on as all the examples of like Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Bosnia (Srebrenica anyone?) etc. shows. Leading to more massacres and atrocities.
And by waiting the situation gets worse and much more complex, then “they” used its complexity as an excuse not to intervene while decrying the lost opportunity for intervention. And ALL this time the killing and atrocities committed by Assad’s regime just continues as nothing has happened.
On the contrary, the Assad regime has increased it’s attacks since Bashar al-Assad agreed to implement the “new” peace plan.
The international community’s response has been ludicrous. Syrians on the ground have felt forgotten and betrayed. A system that is supposed to protect civilians from brutal force has failed on a monumental scale.
And to ALL these countries, USA, EU, NATO, Turkey etc. that are supposed to defend and protect freedom, liberty and human rights.
To ALL these global government organisations (UN),and local ones like the Arab League etc.
To ALL the statesmen and politicians that talk so loudly about “responsibility to protect” (Samantha Power anyone?), freedom, liberty and human rights.
I say only one thing: You should be REALLY BE PROUD of yourselves and the children of Syria will remember you. Each one of you.
Third, the countries and organizations that makes this possible (continuation):
USA and the Obama Administration
You can say much about the Obama administrations Middle East policies. But the easiest is to state the obvious – it is an utter and total failure. In fact, it is even worse than that.
Because what Obama has managed to do is to totally destroy US reputation and standing in the region. He has single-handed managed to alienate ALL the traditional allies in the region like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel.
The Saudis was so upset after the way Obama throw Mubarak under the buss that they decided that they could NO longer trust this man. After that, they strengthen the Gulf Cooperation Council, intervened in Bahrain etc.
And how Obama have supported the Muslim Brotherhood and the fundamentalist take over after Mubarak and the military regime.
And the Israelis, the way the have been treated regarding the fundamental and existential treat from a nuclear Iran.
Make no mistake; this is a fundamental strategic break. That America will suffer the consequences for many years to come.
Add to that the total failure inIraq where you now have a US installed government that is closely allied to Iran. And is helping Iran support Assad in Syria.
You can add to that the disintegration of Afghanistan. Yemen, where the Obama administration forced out the sitting president Ali Abdullah Saleh and now al-Qaidi controls large parts of that country.
Etc.
Etc.
Remember also that Obama and Hillary Clinton switched the policy 180 degrees compared to the Bush time. Assad was “their” man because he was a ”reformer”. And there was a parade of American politicians going toDamascus to shake the “reformers” hand and praising Assad for his “reforms”.
Even several months into this uprising and the slaughter, Obama and Hillary Clinton still vehemently defend him as a reformer refusing to condemn what was going on.
And Turkey, under his close personal friend Erdogan, witch Obama has hold up as a role model for the rest of the Middle East.
A Turkey under Erdogan which have, on purpose, slowly but very determined Islamized Turkey. With hundreds of political prisoners like journalist, judges, layers, military, kurds etc. Who have spent years and years in prison without a trial.
And the latest example of how far this process have gone:
This Week, Turkey Went a Long Way Toward Becoming an Islamic Republic
“Hardly surprising; deeply upsetting; and geo-strategically catastrophic, it’s official. Turkey has now passed over toward being an Islamist state.That turning point is marked by a tiny event of gigantic importance. Fazil Say is an internationally acclaimed Turkish classical pianist. He has performed with prestigious symphony orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Berlin, Israel Philharmonic, France, and Tokyo as well as being a European Union cultural ambassador. The Turkish state is now going to put him on trial.
An Istanbul court has accepted the prosecutor’s charge, which amounts to heresy. Specifically, he is accused of insulting Islam because of tweets he sent. Say suggested that since the Koran says there are rivers of drinks in heaven that makes it sound like a pub, while the beautiful women available there make it sound like a brothel. A number of his tweets are quoted here. That’s his crime, writing a couple of sentences to describe his thoughts.
We are not talking of someone criticizing Say or disagreeing with him. We are talking about the power of the Turkish state being used to charge a man with a crime and send him to prison for exercising free speech. True, they are only asking for a sentence of eighteen months in prison but once the precedent is set their ambitions will expand.
There are already hundreds of political prisoners in Turkey today who have been in prison for over three years without any trial at all. Now if criticizing Islam in Turkey is a crime, Turkey is not a secular state. And with all of those innocent people already thrown in jail by the regime on trumped-up charges of treason and terrorism, Turkey is no longer a democratic state either. “
Yeap, that really sound like a good role model for the rest of the Middle East!
This is the same Turkey, with active American help, trying to make Syrian National Council(SNC, i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood) the sole “representative of the Syrian opposition. Thereby fuelling ALL resources to them and not to the rest of the more secular, democratic opposition inside Syria.
Doesn’t this also seems like another excellent policy by the Obama administration if you REALLY want to be sure of a democratic development in Syria in the future??
And this obsession of Obama and Hillary Clinton that the Russians has to “approve” everything before he actually do anything.
The Obama administration is actually, which is astounding, giving Russia de facto veto power over US foreign policy. A Russia, which literally hates everything USA stands for and it’s position in the world. And witch have done everything it can to interrupt, damage or sabotage US foreign policy.
Russia is the one that is supporting and protecting Assad, Iran etc. Russia is the one selling ALL these weapons to Syria and Iran etc.
And remember that Obama actually told outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on March 26 that he is going to be “more flexible” after the election in November.
MORE FLEXIBLE???
Just to give some recent examples of the “democratic development” in Russia:
This is the Russia that just raised the fines for participating in unsanctioned rallies or demonstration from 300 rubles to300,000 rubles, a year salary for a normal Russian.
Putin signed the bill on June 8.
The Kremlin’s own Human Rights Council said in a statement the bill violates an article in the constitution guaranteeing freedom of assembly.
And oh by the way, the Russian authorities don’t very often give “permission” for demonstrations.
In March, a discriminatory ban on “homosexual propaganda” went into effect in St. Petersburg.
And on the same theme – Moscow Bans Gay Pride Parades For 100 Years
Yeas, you read right. Moscow city courts has banned ALL pride parades for the NEXT 100 years!
“Yikes,Russia! A week after protestors for gay rights were arrested in Moscow, a district court upheld the decision by a Moscow city court to ban gay pride parades for 100 years. Yes, the government can now legally forbid gay pride for a century, from March 2012 to March 2112.”
And this how the Russian government defend it:
“The Russian government has said that rulings such as that of the Moscow City Council are not anti-gay but rather rulings that protect ”the majority’s rights.”
“Russian police have searched the homes of leading opposition figures in an apparent crackdown on the eve of a planned mass protest against President Vladimir Putin’s third term as president.
The opposition figures have been summoned for questioning by investigators on June 12 — the same day as the planned protest.
Police, some armed with assault rifles, carried out searches on the homes of opposition figures including Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin, Ksenia Sobchak, Sergei Udaltsov, Aleksei Navalny, and at least five others.
Udaltsov said police showed up at his door early in the morning.
”Police and Investigative Committee officers started banging on my door early in the morning, at 7 a.m. At the same time, they searched my parents’ home,” Udaltsov said. ”They presented a search warrant as part of the criminal investigation of the events of May 6.”
Udaltsov said police confiscated his computer, a flash stick, his iPad, and mobile telephone.”
By the way “the criminal investigation of the events of May 6.” was a demonstration against Putin.
I could continue another 3-4 pages with some more recent “democratic” developments inRussia. But I think you get the picture.
Doesn’t this also seems like another excellent policy by the Obama administration??
Begging Russia, your enemy, to “help” you and de facto giving them veto power over your policies.
After ALL the “resets”Russia hasn’t moved one millimeter to help USA. On the contrary
Just a few examples:
US condemns Syria massacre and looks for Russian help to oust Assad Hillary Clinton harshly condemns Syrian president as Obama reportedly plans to urge Putin to back a transition of power
“The comments came amid reports that President Barack Obama is preparing to push Russia to back the departure of Assad under a scheme modelled on the transition of power in Yemen.
According to an article in the New York Times, Obama hopes to enlist President Vladimir Putin’s support over a transition of power in Syria during a meeting next month – the first between the pair since Putin’s return to the Kremlin.
Under the reported plan, the international community would broker a settlement in which Assad would leave, but remnants of the political structure would remain intact.
But for the plan to have a chance of succeeding it would need greater backing from Moscow, which to date has been strongly opposed to Assad’s removal.
Russia, as one of Assad’s few remaining allies, has long blocked tough sanctions against the regime proposed by the United Nations, claiming that it could lead to the bloody ouster of Assad.”
And more peddling of the same:
Clinton presses Russia to back political change in Syria
““STOCKHOLM — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Russia Sunday to get behind a political transition in Syria, saying President Bashar al-Assad’s departure was not a precondition but should be ”an outcome”.
Clinton spoke to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by telephone at the weekend to say that Washington and Moscowneeded to work together on a plan that would halt the violence and bring about political change in the country.
”In my conversation with him, I made it very clear there would be no point to any meeting unless it included all elements of Kofi Annan’s (peace) plan, and that certainly means we have to focus on a path forward for a political transition,” Clinton told reporters Sunday during a visit to Stockholm.
”Assad’s departure does not have to be a precondition but it should be an outcome, so the people of Syria have a chance to express themselves,” she said.”
“Russia has resisted UN Security Council efforts to sanction the Assad regime, a longtime ally of Moscow, questioning the effectiveness of sanctions and warning that outside meddling could lead to civil war.
Clinton has sharply criticised Moscow for ”propping up” the Assad regime with continued arms shipments, prompting President Vladimir Putin to defend Russia‘s stance in meetings with the leaders of Germany and France.”
“She said her message to Lavrov was: ”We all have to intensify our efforts to achieve a political transition, and Russia has to be at the table helping that occur. The Syrian people want and deserve change.”
U.S. Hopes Assad Can Be Eased Out With Russia’s Aid
“WASHINGTON — In a new effort to halt more than a year of bloodshed in Syria, President Obama will push for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad under a proposal modeled on the transition in another strife-torn Arab country, Yemen.
The plan calls for a negotiated political settlement that would satisfy Syrian opposition groups but that could leave remnants of Mr. Assad’s government in place. Its goal is the kind of transition under way in Yemen, where after months of violent unrest, President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to step down and hand control to his vice president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, in a deal arranged byYemen’s Arab neighbors. Mr. Hadi, though later elected in an uncontested vote, is viewed as a transitional leader.
The success of the plan hinges on Russia, one of Mr. Assad’s staunchest allies, which has strongly opposed his removal.
In the past year, Russia has blocked any tough United Nations Security Council action against Mr. Assad, arguing that it could lead to his forced ouster and the kind of fates suffered by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi ofLibya, who was killed, or Hosni Mubarak ofEgypt, who was imprisoned and put on trial. ButRussia is facing intense international pressure to use its influence to bring about the removal of Mr. Assad as the killings inSyria continue unabated, including the massacre of more than 90 people in a village nearHoms that was reported by United Nations officials on Saturday. “
The Yemen example has been widely discussed in Moscow, so much so that the option has become known by its Russian term, “the Yemenskii Variant,” even in theUnited States. In part, that reflectsRussia’s desperation for a solution to the crisis in Syria, where, the United Nations says, thousands of civilians have been killed since protests began there in March of last year.
Mr. Obama, administration officials said, will press the proposal with President Vladimir V. Putin ofRussianext month at their first meeting since Mr. Putin returned to his old post on May 7. Thomas E. Donilon, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, raised the plan with Mr. Putin in Moscow three weeks ago.
When Mr. Obama brought it up with Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia at the Group of 8 meeting at Camp Davidlast weekend, Mr. Medvedev appeared receptive, American officials said, signaling that Russia would prefer that option to other transitions in the Arab upheaval. During the meeting, “Medvedev raised the example of Mubarak in a cage,” a senior official said, referring to Mr. Mubarak’s confinement at his trial. The official, who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the discussions, said Mr. Obama had then “countered withYemen, and the indication was, yes, this was something we could talk about.”
And
“After the hopeless gridlock at the special UN session on the Syrian crisis Thursday, an American delegation headed by Fred Hoff, the Secretary of State’s special adviser on Syria, drew a blank in the talks it conducted at the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow Friday, June 8, with Syrian expert, Mikhail Bogdanov.
Moscow has flatly rejected President Barack Obama’s proposal to post 5,000 armed UN monitors in Syria, most of them Russian troops, as the core of a new plan to resolve the Syrian crisis. The Russians may consider convening an international conference, but only if its remit is limited to offering a basis for negotiations between the Assad regime and the opposition and new political reforms. On no account must it deal with Bashar Assad’s removal.
Moscow’s position has grown tougher in the last few days. After Russian officials stated this week that keeping the Assad regime in power was not a priority, Bogdanev said Friday: Moscow isn’t discussing ways to promote Bashar al-Assad’s ouster with Washington. “We aren’t holding such talks.”
He stressed that the only way forward on the Syrian issue was by expanding Annan’s peace plan.
However, the only thing that all the participants at the UN could agree on was that the Annan peace plan had failed. And now that the US mission to Moscow has run into another dead end, the violence in Syria will continue to run riot with no world power or body prepared to step in and stop it.
Adding to the complications, the Syrian conflict and the Iranian nuclear controversy are becoming inextricably intermeshed. The U Sofficial Hoff knew he was arriving in Moscow at a grave disadvantage after Iran indicated to the six world powers that it was seriously considering not turning up for their third round of nuclear talks in Moscow on June 18-19.
Its pretext: The West had failed to come up with “serious proposals.”
Most of all, Tehran took umbrage over US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s demand that Iran come to the talks prepared with “concrete steps to curb its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity.”
When she spoke, Clinton knew there was not the slightest chance of the Iranians accepting this demand.
Tehran also pulled in its horns at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters inVienna when confronted Friday, June 8, with demands to open up its suspect nuclear sites to international inspection.
These related developments all point in one direction: US President Barack Obama’s deep reluctance to intervene directly in Syria and preference for Russia and Iran to take over have run up against equally powerful reluctance in Moscow and Tehran to put their hands in the Syrian fire or take part in any international effort to quench its flames.
Indeed, the Russians and Iranians believe that as the flames of the civil war already raging there spread, the US president will be blamed by the American public and the Arab world for the horrendous sectarian bloodbath.
And if Obama and America’s European allies do decide on military intervention, they will be too late and find themselves pulled down into a bottomless quagmire.”
Here is yet another example of the utter folly of the Obama administrations policy:
How Can Obama’s Middle East Policy Possibly Get Worse? Answer: Look at Syria
“Some of my readers are unhappy that I keep criticizing President Barack Obama and his government. The problem is that this administration keeps doing terrible things in the Middle East. And the most damning evidence on these actions comes not from Obama’s enemies but from the administration itself and the supportive mass media.
Here’s the latest such item:
“U.S. Hopes Assad Can Be Eased Out withRussia’s Aid,” by Helene Cooper and Mark Landler, in the New York Times.
For almost three years, Obama insisted he would win over the Syrian dictatorship and make it America’s friend rather than Iran’s number-one ally. That was ludicrous. Forced by the uprising to back away from Damascus, the Obama administration has spent almost a year bumbling about what to do.
The U.S. government’s main activity was to entrust to the Turkish Islamist regime the job of forming an umbrella Syrian opposition leadership. Not surprisingly, Ankara pursued its own interest by assembling a Muslim Brotherhood-dominated group, the Syrian National Congress. Though several members resigned, complaining of the radical Islamist control, the Obama administration is still trying to force hostile oppositionists to join.
Now the administration has unveiled a new and equally terrible policy. I’ll let the New York Times’ reporters explain it:
President Obama will push for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad under a plan that calls for a negotiated political settlement that would satisfy Syrian opposition groups but that could leave remnants of Assad’s government in place. The success of the plan hinges on Russia, one of Assad’s staunchest allies, which has strongly opposed his removal. Obama, administration officials said, will press the proposal with President Putin ofRussia at their meeting next month. Obama’s national security adviser raised the plan with Putin inMoscow three weeks ago.
Good grief! There are four different acts of strategic insanity involved in this paragraph. They are…
1. “A negotiated political settlement that…could leave remnants of Assad’s government in place.”
The Syrian dictatorship is led by murderous thugs who know this is a case of kill or be killed. They aren’t going to give up any of their power. And why should they since they think they’re winning and may well be right? They know the outside world won’t do anything, despite the regime killing around 10,000 civilians.
2. “A negotiated political settlement that would satisfy Syrian opposition groups but that could leave remnants of Assad’s government in place.”
The opposition is not so foolish as a Washington pundit, policymaker, or politician. They know that their only hope is to destroy the regime entirely. The democrats want to do so in order to have a modern democracy. The Islamists want Islamism. The Kurds and Druze want autonomy. How could there possibly be a coalition? Both sides know that within days people would be murdering each other. How could anyone expect this kind of deal would work or that the opposition would accept it?
If anyone in Syria might favor such a plan it’s the Muslim Brotherhood. which has toyed with the idea of using such a transition period to strengthen its own hand. So the idea cannot succeed but reveals once again that the Obama administration seems to get many of its strategies from the Muslim Brotherhood. That’s an observation, not a conspiracy theory.
3. “The success of the plan hinges on Russia, one of Assad’s staunchest allies, which has strongly opposed his removal.”
Just think about that sentence! The Obama administration wants to depend on a country that’s disdainful of U.S. interests, wants to sabotage them, and is on the opposite side!The president wants to ask a country that is “strongly opposed” to Assad’s removal to remove Assad!
And finally, equally amazingly:
4. “Obama, administration officials said, will press the proposal with President Putin of Russia at their meeting next month. Obama’s national security adviser raised the plan with Putin in Moscow three weeks ago.”
It’s Obama, not Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who is pushing this plan to put Russia in control! If your enemy tries to fool or cheat you, that’s a problem. If you beg him to cheat you and hand him the means to do so, that’s a betrayal of U.S. interests.
To summarize, the Obama policy shows three characteristics that have wider implications for the president’s strategies:
•It favors Islamist enemies.
•It “leads from behind” by giving the initiative to those who wish America no good.
•And it shows no interest in helping genuinely pro-American moderates who are fighting for their lives.
And that, friends, is why I spend so much time bashing Obama’s Middle East policy, because it is so very bad and dangerous.
Now a possible explanation for all of this would be that Obama doesn’t really want to do anything about Syria for other reasons. The United States doesn’t want to get dragged into direct intervention; it’s a lower-priority issue; there’s no great policy option; and his only concern is the American election.
But so what? It’s still possible to come up with a better policy than this, a policy that would make Obama look good as well as serve U.S. interests. He could call for Assad’s overthrow; back truly moderate oppositionists; subvert Islamist influence; and send arms and money, but only to the moderates. In order to portray himself as decisive, heroic, and a friend of democracy, Obama could take every possible overt and covert opportunity to weaken Assad, even helping at a low cost to create a no-fly zone and safe havens. None of this is going to happen.
Instead, though, he turns over dealing with the opposition to an Islamist regime in Turkey and subcontracts dealing with the regime to a pro-regime Russian government. I’d say that Obama’s policy in the region could not easily be worse, but who knows what’s next, especially if there’s a second term.”
More on the Kurdish question and Obamas push for them to join SNC:
“Sherkoh Abbas, a veteran Syrian Kurdish dissident, called on Israel this week to support the break-up of Syria into a series of federal structures based on the country’s various ethnicities.
Speaking from Washington, Abbas was also critical of US attempts to induce Syrian Kurds to join and work with the main opposition body, the Syrian National Council. Abbas, who heads the Washington- based Kurdistan National Assembly, said that dismantling Syria into ethnic enclaves with a federal administration would serve to “break the link” between Syria and the Iran-led “Shi’a crescent.”
Syrian Kurdish, Druse, Alawite and Sunni Arab federal areas, he suggested, would have no interest in aligning with Iran.
At the same time, a federalized Syria would avoid the possibility of a resurgent, Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Sunni Islamist Syria emerging as a new challenge to Israel and the West.
“We need to break Syria into pieces,” Abbas said.
The Syrian Kurdish dissident argued that a federal Syria, separated into four or five regions on an ethnic basis, would also serve as a natural “buffer” forIsraelagainst both Sunni and Shi’ite Islamist forces.”
“When a delegation of Syrian Kurdish rebels recently visited Washington, D.C., the State Department met them to ask for a favor. What was it? The Obama administration urged them to join the Syrian National Council (SNC), the organization created by the U.S. government through Turkey to lead the opposition movement and receive Western aid for all Syrian opposition groups.
But the Turkish Islamist regime, which Obama put in charge of forming the SNC, put the Muslim Brotherhood in control, a fact I pointed out within hours of the announcement of the SNC leadership’s names.
Now that several SNC leaders have resigned complaining about Brotherhood domination, followed by some Arab journalists pointing out the obvious Brotherhood domination at the SNC’s last meeting, that reality is clear. But the implications of such an incredibly foolish policy—America putting an anti-American, antisemitic group into the “official” leadership of Syria’s rebels — have never been properly examined as a case study for Obama’s disastrous Middle East policy.
The Kurds had walked out of the talks that formed the SNC last year when they saw how Islamists would be in control. Not only do they oppose Islamism itself but they also see the Brotherhood as an Arabizing and centralizing group that would impose a regime oppressing the non-Arab Kurds.
The new U.S. effort so backfired that, with the Obama administration ignoring their concerns, the enraged Kurds in the delegation spoke for the first time of breaking up Syria altogether!
To sum up, Obama policy has strengthened the Islamist forces in the opposition and fragmented the rebels, thus helping preserve a radical anti-American Syrian regime that is an ally of Iran or helping make any revolution more likely to produce a radical anti-American Syrian Islamist regime that will be an ally of an Islamist Egypt.
Now comes a very peculiar story in the Washington Post with the headline, “Syrian rebels get influx of arms with Gulf Neighbors’ Money, U.S. coordination.” Let’s break this down logically:
–The Saudis and Qataris have been providing arms already.
–They know how to buy weapons, how to get them to the Syrian border, and how to give them to Syrian rebels.
What do they need American “coordination” for? What does the word “coordination” mean? I presume it means that the Obama administration, absolutely clueless about what to do regarding Syria, simply wants to take credit for others’ actions. It is part of the pre-election spin about what a great job Obama is doing.
Yet there is another problem here, a potentially devastating one. Who is getting the weapons? There are different people and groups in the Syrian opposition. Some are Salafists who feel comfortable with al-Qaida; some are Brotherhood men; some are ex-Syrian army officers, professionals and relatively apolitical; and some are liberals who really want democracy.
Whoever gets these weapons will be tremendously empowered. So what’s to say that the arms being “coordinated” by the United States aren’t going to revolutionary Islamists? While this is a complex subject, there is information that these arms supplies up until now have not been sufficiently discriminatory toward moderates and away from Islamist radicals. We will know more in the weeks to come if we can see and identify which opposition groups in what parts of Syria have become better armed.
And if it comes out that the U.S. government is “coordinating” the arming of such people with weapons — as it is already helping their political counterparts in the SNC — wouldn’t that be a tremendous scandal?
Let’s be clear here: A proper U.S.policy would help moderate Syrians overthrow the Assad dictatorship and make sure weapons went to the best elements in the Free Syrian Army’s decentralized forces. Such a policy would make sure to deny money, weapons, and power to the Islamists and Salafists, who are proportionately far weaker in Syria than in Egypt.
Obama policy follows the worst possible course. It minimizes U.S. help to the revolution while at the same time ensuring that a disproportionately large amount goes to Islamists.”
And
Will There Be Room for Kurds and Other Minorities in a Post-Assad Syria?
“New York Times reported that the US hopes that Russia, one of the Assad regime’s allies, along with the Islamic Republic of Iran and China, might offer some assistance to facilitate Assad leaving the embattled regime in Damascus. Prof. Eyal Zisser of the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University in a recent Israel Hayom article, “The Road to Damascus Runs Through Moscow,” noted the transition proposal of the Obama Administration:
The Americans pulled a new rabbit out of their hat in the form of Russian President Vladimir Putin. They suggested that Moscow and Washington jointly impose the ”Yemen solution” on Syria, which calls for Assad’s removal while keeping his regime in place to rule Syria until elections can be held; similar to what took place in Egypt and Tunisia. The Americans hope that such a solution will appeal to those inside Assad’s inner circle, who feel his end is near and will agree to abandon him in order to ensure their own futures.
However that may be a vain hope. Given US, Turkey, Saudi, Qatar and Gulf Emirate support for the Syrian National Council what might follow in Syria could be a Sunni Arab nationalist regime. A regime dominated by a fundamentalist Islamist coalition. That would dash hopes of minority ethnic and religious groups for a secular democratic federal republic. A federal republic that might include secular Sunni and Alawi moderates, Christians, Druze, Turkmen and the country’s second largest ethnic group, the Kurds. Arabs constitute nearly three-fifths (57 percent) of the country’s 22 million population. That is the hope of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria (KURDNAS) leader Sherkoh Abbas. He has joined with US Syrian Sunni reformer Dr. M. Zhudi Jasser to advance this cause via the Syrian Democratic Coalition.”
“For Abbas and other Syrian Kurds, the past four decades witnessed socio-economic deprivations and Arabization of the Kurdistan Region by the Assad regimes – a virtual ethnic cleansing. An estimated 500,000 Kurds were denied Syrian citizenship following a special census in 1963. They lived as aliens in their ancestral lands in the northeastern border areas adjacent to Turkey on the north and Iraq to the east. Arable land and control of valuable oil resources in the Syrian Kurdistan heartland were seized to become the personal wealth of the Assad family. Instruction and schooling in Kurdish language and culture was stopped. This repression of Syria’s Kurds witnessed virtual starvation and usurpation of their national provenance. That led to the uprising in 2004. Dozens of Kurds were killed; more than 4000 were jailed and tortured. “
“Abbas demurs. He maintains that Syria post-Assad may not become another fundamentalist Sunni Arab post-revolutionary government. He noted in a recent Front Page Magazine interview with Joseph Puder, “Syria: An Alternative Choice”:
The Muslim Brotherhood, with the support of President Obama and Turkey, will not succeed in controlling all of Syria. The Alawis and Hezbollah backed by Iran, Russia and China, will not give up power easily.
Asked what the US role might be in the current struggle, Abbas asserted:
The US has a moral responsibility to insure freedom and democracy for all Syrians. .. an Arab nationalist or Islamist regime would lead to more violence and civil war.”
“Gordon: Recently, the US State Department held meetings in Washington with the Syrian National Kurdish Council. What were the purposes of the session, who attended and what did the Obama Administration hope to achieve?
Abbas: The U.S. Administration has asked the Kurdish National Council delegation to join the Syrian National Council, and wanted this meeting to directly hear Kurdish opinion. The interpretation of the U.S. Administration in support for the Kurdish political movement is premature. This was a positive event, but the US government should contact and meet various representatives of the Syrian Kurdish street, especially those that work for a federal Syria and want to bring down the Assad terrorist regime.
Gordon: Do you believe that the Obama Administration has played a productive role in fostering Syrian dissident opposition during this crisis?
Abbas: Unfortunately, the Obama administration played a role in the mismanagement of the Syrian crisis. It did not encourage a clear and supportive policy toward democratic groups. If the Syrian Revolution fails, the current U.S. administration will have had a key role.This policy is producing harmful results for the Syrian peopleand encourages the system to continue to commit crimes against humanity. The question for President Obama is what is his Administration’s goal? Is the goal either keeping the Baathists in power in Damascus or bringing Muslim Brotherhood Islamists who control the SNC to power? Both cases do not serve the interests of either the majority of the Syrian people or the international community.”
And the Obama administration stopped a France and Saudi plan to in one strike take out the top Assad leadership:
“US President Obama recently vetoed a detailed Franco-Saudi plan for ending President Bashar Assad’s rule by means of a massive air strike against his palace that would at one fell swoop wipe him, his family and top leadership circle out,
Their plan was for the presidential palace situated atop Mount Qassioun northeast of Damascus to be devastated by French warplanes taking off from the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier off Syria’s Mediterranean coast and Saudi and United Arab Emirates bombers flying in through Jordan.
They would bomb the palace for 12 hours in several sorties while at the same time American fighter jets launched from a US aircraft carrier cruising in the Mediterranean or Red Sea would shut down Syria’s air defenses, which are considered among the most sophisticated and densely-arrayed in the region.
US warplanes would also keep the Syrian Air Force grounded and prevented from repulsing the incoming bombers.
This plan was presented to President Obama separately by Nicolas Sarkozy before he was voted out of office and Saudi Defense Minister Prince Salman, who arrived at the White House on April 12 for a personal presentation. The prince maintained that there is no end in sight for the Syrian conflict; it would only spread and ignite the rest of the Middle East. The peril could only be rooted out at source by a single, sharp military strike that would remove Assad and his close clan for good. This would be the only acceptable kind of Western-Arab armed intervention in Syria and it had the added advantage of being effective without bringing foreign boots to Syrian soil.
In early May, Sarkozy was still trying to talk Obama around to the plan. He spent his last days in the ElyséePalace in long telephone conversations with the White House in which he drove home three points:
1. Because Assad has concentrated his family, top military command and intelligence chiefs at a single nerve center behind the fortified walls of the QassiounPalace, the snake’s head can feasibly be cut off at one stroke.
The case of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi was different because, unlike Assad, he never stayed long in one place and was constantly on the move.
2. Once that nerve center is destroyed, Syrian army and intelligence would be bereft of their sources of command. Their troops may remain in their bases and wait for news, while their officers may use the sudden political vacuum inDamascus to try and seize power. In either case, the Syrian military would be free of its orders to crush the anti-Assad revolt.
3. The French, Saudi and UAE air forces lack a central command center capable of coordinating a major combined air operationand therefore depend on the United States to provide this essential component. American military input is also vital for paralyzingSyria’s air defenses by applying its cyber warfare capabilities to disrupt the radar systems ofSyria’s anti-air missile batteries.
Our Washington sources report that Obama consistently resisted repeated French and Saudi efforts to jump aboard their initiative.
The Saudi defense minister at one point in their conversation told the US president harshly that it was time for the Americans to stop talking and start acting. But Obama remained unmoved.
These events, provide the background for Presidents Barak Obama and Francois Hollande’s divergent responses Tuesday, May 29, to the al-Houla atrocity and its 108 brutally murdered victims.
The White House repeated its objection to military intervention in Syria “at this time,”because it would only “increase the carnage.” A military option was left on the table.
That was standard Obama-speak for the crisis in Syria, behind which he remains determined to stay out of armed action for unseating President Assad and instead seek a deal with the Russians on the Syrian ruler’s fate as part and parcel of a comprehensive accord on Syria and Iran’s nuclear program.
President Hollande was at first quoted as saying he does not rule out armed intervention in Syria. Elysée sources later watered down this statement with the qualifier: …”only with UN Security Council approval.”
On top of the American hurdle, Moscow and Beijing rushed Wednesday, May 30, to reiterate that they would oppose (veto) any Security Council resolution authorizing military intervention in Syria, so effectively nipping the French intention in the bud.
Bashar Assad accordingly had no qualms about sending UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan off empty-handed from a final bid to salvage his peace mission:The world powers have left him sitting pretty in his palace, unconcerned about his future and free to pursue one of the most vicious anti-opposition campaigns of modern times.”
I wrote six weeks ago:
“Samantha Power, a prominent advocate of humanitarian intervention and the principle of ”responsibility to protect”, is considered to be the key figure within the Obama administration in persuading the president to intervene militarily in Libya.
Power, was a senior foreign policy adviser to senator Obama, and now a Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director of the National Security Council.
But on Syria? NOT A PEEP!
And the same Samantha Power, Special Assistant to President Barack Obama and Senior Director of the National Security Council, mentioned above just got apointed by Obama to head the new White House Atrocities Prevention Board.
But still on Syria? NOT A PEEP!
So apparently she is Very SELECTIVE in which atrocities to “prevent”.”
And now over a month later, the White House Atrocities Prevention Board hasn’t said one letter or peep about Syria.
So apparently the slaughter of over 15 000 civilians, many of them children, in the most barbaric ways imaginable are not apparently considered by Samantha Power, The White house, Hillary Clinton or Obama; to be atrocities.
So the next time these people in their usual pompous ways start talking about human rights, peace, the UN Charter, ”responsibility to protect”, prevention of atrocities etc. ; you know it’s utter crap and a lie.
Their hypocrisy is so staggering that it is sickening. Literally. And they are the enablers of this crime against humanity.
I have to stop here because this is way too long already. I could continue for another, say 30 pages. to describe the folly of the Obama administrations Middle East policy. But that I leave for another day.
See Part 10 – US and the Obama administartion in my original series for more info
“NATO military action in Syria was not on the table despite the massacre of civilians by the regime, the US envoy to the alliance said Thursday.
NATO allies have neither discussed an intervention in Syria nor made any military planning to stop the relentless crackdown by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad against dissidents, said US ambassador Ivo Daalder.
Daalder noted that the alliance launched its air war in Libya last year after three conditions were fulfilled: a ”demonstrable need” to intervene, support from nations in the region, and a UN Security Council mandate.
”With respect to a demonstrable need, clearly when government forces are attacking civilians with artillery and tanks, there is a need to bring that to an end. That was true in Libya and that is true in Syria,” he said.
But there is neither regional support nor a UN mandate to act militarily in Syria.
”So under those circumstances, the NATO countries understand that the issue of military intervention, which is also always complex, is not right now on the table when it comes to Syria,” Daalder said.
All NATO members, notably Syria‘s neighbor Turkey, are watching the situation ”very carefully and that is where things stand right now,” the ambassador added.
”How it will evolve in the future is anyone’s guess,” he said.
”But the point is that for now there is no active planning in NATO for a military intervention and there is no agreement among or even within the NATO members for moving in this direction at this point.”
This is interesting to say the least. Ivo Daalder just TOTALLY rewrote the NATO doctrine and reason d’être.
In Libyat here was only some “support” from nations in the region”. And the mandate from UN was very different for what they actually used it for.
And in Afghanistan the same thing, only some nations in the region supported that.
But in either case, it didn’t stop NATO from intervening.
So now suddenly when it comes to Syria, and NATO don’t want t do anything because there is “no” support from nations in the region. Well, there is ALOT OF SUPPORT IN THE REGION FOR THAT. So that’s not the real reason.
It seems that NATO is changing it’s doctrine to fit the circumstances and as an excuse for not doing things when it so chose.
In NATO: s new doctrine, the “New Strategic Concept” adopted in Lisbon in November 2010, there is no mention that a prerequisite for any NATO action is to have “support from nations in the region”.
If NATO doesn’t want to do anything in Syria, fine. But be straightforward and say so instead of hiding between “grand principles” and inventing excuses that is not in their doctrine.
It is sad to see an organisation that played such a crucial role for the protection of the Western European countries become what it now have become.
And it’s getting even more ridicules as I have written about before. NATO pretends that doing ANYTHING in Syria “would fuel a proliferation of weapons in the region”.
So on one side Russia, Iran and China literally pouring in all types of heavy weapons (remember the 240 mm Russian mortar bomb), personal, training etc for the Assad regime.
On the other unarmed civilians and a resistance with some light arms.
And NATO is apparently very worried that if the civilians get anything more than Kalashnikovs and the odd RPG, so they at least can defend themselves and offer some resistance to the Assad forces, that that would constitute “a proliferation of weapons in the region”.
“NATO’s chief on Monday said the alliance was opposed to providing arms to the Syrian opposition seeking to counter a regime crackdown, warning that it would fuel a proliferation of weapons in the region.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen called for a diplomatic solution and reiterated that NATO, which led the Libya air war that contributed to Moammar Qaddafi’s downfall last year, had ”no intention whatsoever to intervene in Syria.”
And to top it off:
”We monitor the situation closely,” Rasmussen said, adding that the situation in Syriacould impact neighboring Turkey, a NATO member.
”It’s absolutely outrageous what we have witnessed in Syria,” he added.”
This must be one of the most hypocritical, cynical and ridiculous statements ever made by NATO.
The people of Syria will “thank you” for your “deep concern” as they are being slaughtered by the Assads forces.
So according to this superb NATO logic, the Russian 240 mm mortar bomb, supplied by the as always helpful Russia, used to destroy block after block, neighbourhood after neighbourhood in CIVILIAN Syrian cities, is NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER.
It isthe largest mortar bomb known to be in production and use. It weighs 130 kilograms and contains 31.93 kilograms of TNT as an explosive charge.
But giving this to the resistance so they can defend themselves is a serious “proliferation of weapons in the region”
Really good work there NATO!
By the way, the use of such weapons in dense urban environments is a war crime.
This is the same NATO that without any hesitation went in full scale in Libya. Then it wasn’t any talk about “that it would fuel a proliferation of weapons in the region”.
See Part 8 – EU and NATO in my original series for more info
As for the do nothing as usual UN, it “proudly” upholds its tradition of doing ABSOLUTLY NOTHING when it really maters, like Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Bosnia (Srebrenica anyone?) etc. And now Syria.
Remember that the UN observers are now there in full “force” and all the slaughtering going on is happening on their watch.
Just to show the total and utter failure of this latest UN and Kofi Annan peace plan:
After the latest massacre, number XX in order, the UN observers where stopped by Assads troops from reaching the place of massacre. And then Assad troops shot at them.
Doesn’t it really seems that Assad is fulfilling EVERY POINT OF THE PEACE PLAN HE FORMERLY AGREED TO?
It’s pathetic and the people of Syria is, as usual, paying the price.
Heavy weapons, drones, gunfire used against UN monitors inSyria, Ban says
”NEW YORK– Heavy weapons, armor-piercing bullets and surveillance drones have been used against UN observers in Syria to hamper their efforts to monitor the worsening conflict, UN leader Ban Ki-moon told a Security Council meeting Thursday.
Diplomats inside a closed council briefing on Syriaquoted Ban as saying the tactics had been used to try to force the unarmed monitors to withdraw from areas where government forces have been accused of staging attacks.
Ban said the heavy shelling had been used to deter a UN Supervision Mission in Syria convoy, drones had monitored the movements of observers and the armor-piercing bullets had been fired at UN vehicles.
According to UN officials, UN vehicles are shot at almost every day in Syria.
Ban told the 15-nation council that UN observers had seen Syrian military convoys approaching villages and tried to stop tank assaults against populated areas but had been ”ignored.”
“Syrian troops and local residents are preventing UN observers from reaching a site where 55 people were reported killed by pro-regime militants, the head of the UN mission in Syria said Thursday.
”The UN Supervision Mission in Syria dispatched UN observers to Al-Kubeir early Thursday morning to verify reports of large-scale killings in the village,” Major General Robert Mood said in a statement.
He said the observers were stopped at Syrian army checkpoints and in some cases turned back. He said civilians were also stopping the monitors.
”We are receiving information from residents of the area that the safety of our observers is at risk if we enter [the]village of Al-Kubeir,” Mood said.
”Despite these challenges, the observers are still working to get into the village to try to establish the facts on the ground,” he added.
Mood said he was concerned that the restrictions imposed on the movement of the monitors will impede their ability to carry out their mission.”
UN monitors shot at trying to get to Syria massacre, Ban says
“UN monitors trying to get to the scene of a new massacre in Syria were shot at, UN leader Ban Ki-moon said Thursday, calling the latest atrocity ”shocking and sickening.”
Ban discussed the attack on the UN monitors in a speech to the UN General Assembly hours after the reported slaughter of dozens of people in the village of Al-Kubeir.
”UN monitors were initially denied access,” Ban told the 193-country assembly.
”They are working now to get to the scene and I just learned a few minutes ago that while trying to do so, the UN monitors were shot at with small arms.”
A UN spokesperson, Farhan Haq, later gave more details of the attack.
”The mission reports that, around 3:00 pmlocal time today, a four-vehicle convoy from the mission was hit by small arms fire in Hama, while en route to investigate yesterday’s alleged killings,” Haq said.
”No UN military observers were injured, but one vehicle was slightly damaged. The patrol was forced to withdraw to a nearby government checkpoint.”
Al-Kubeir is close to the protest city of Hama.
”The monitors were not able to enter Al-Kubeir today. They will try again tomorrow,” Haq added.
Ban again strongly condemned President Bashar al-Assad’s government, saying it had ”lost all legitimacy,” with its record further tarnished by the massacres in Houla last month and in Al-Kubeir.
”The trail of blood leads back to those responsible,” he said. ”Any regime or leader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity.”
Ban called the reports coming from Al-Kubeir ”shocking and sickening.”
”We condemnthis unspeakable barbarity and renew our determination to bring those responsible to account,” he said.”
On Friday, the observers finally managed to get to al-Qubair:
UN’s Syria monitors sift through debris of al-Qubair attack Scenes of burned-out houses and charred human remains in village where up to 78 people were reportedly killed in cold blood
“UN monitors on Friday entered for the first time the Syrian village where up to 78 people were reportedly killed in cold blood on Wednesday, the latest in a series of atrocities that have underlined the gravity of the escalating crisis.
The observers were met with scenes of burned-out houses, charred human remains and the clear impression that a ”terrible crime” had occurred in Mazraat al-Qubair near Hama, according to a BBC correspondent following the UN team. On Thursday the monitors were fired at and their access blocked by Syrian forces.
”It is not hard to verify. As soon as you walk into the first house, you are hit by the stench of burnt flesh,” reported Paul Danahar. ”You can see that a terrible crime has taken place. Everything has been burnt, houses have been gutted. The most distressing scenes were at the house next door. I walked in and saw brains lying on the floor. There was a tablecloth covered in blood and flesh and someone had tried to mop the blood up by pushing it into the corner, but it seems they had given up because there was so much of it around.”
In a video clip posted on the internet, a Syrian woman named Lathat calmly described how the hamlet had been attacked by ”regime forces and Shabiha” (government militia) who killed children, including two of her daughters, with knives and axes. ”The army came with the Shabiha with a tank,” she said. ”May God take revenge on Bashar al-Assad.” Like much material emanating from Syria, it was impossible to verify independently.”
And
UN observers reach Syria massacre village, activists say
“United Nations observers on Friday reached the Syrian village of Al-Kubeirwhere dozens of residents were massacred two days ago, activists told AFP.
The monitors on Thursday were fired at by gunmen and forced to turn back as they tried to reach the village located in a farming region in the centralprovince of Hama.
”The observers first headed to the village of Maarzaf where the victims were buried and then to Al-Kubeir to survey the damage from army shelling,” activist Abdel Karim al-Hamwi said.
He said soldiers at a checkpoint in Maarzaf ordered residents not to speak to the observers or face reprisals.”
“Paul Danahar, a BBC correspondent travelling on Friday with the UN convoy, reported seeing gutted buildings in Al-Kubeir and no sign of life.
”The largest of the two houses on a hilltop in Al-Kubeir has been gutted by fire. The stench of burnt flesh is still strong,” he wrote in a post on the social networking website Twitter.
He quoted activists as saying that government forces had removed the bodies of the victims on Thursday while the observers were being hindered from reaching the village.
Danahar said Al-Kubeir consists of just a few single-story flat-roofed buildings set in the middle of corn fields.”
And what do they do about these in their own words barbaric acts? – Nothing as usual!
Expressing horror at the latest massacre in Syria, UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan told the major powers on Thursday that it was time to threaten ”consequences” if President Bashar al-Assad does not act to halt the strife.
Annan and UN leader Ban Ki-moon condemned the reported slaughter of dozens of people in the villageof Al-Kubeir on Tuesday and told the 193-nation UN General Assembly it was time to increase pressure.
Annan expressed ”horror and condemnation” at the Al-Kubeir killings. Ban said the massacre reports were ”shocking and sickening.”
”The trail of blood leads back to those responsible,” Ban said, in describing how UN monitors trying to get to Al-Kubeir were shot at. ”Any regime or leader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity.”
The international envoy, who secured Assad’s agreement to a six-point peace plan, grimly told the assembly: ”I must be frank and confirm that the plan is not being implemented.”
Yeah, it took him over two months to discover that witch was obvious to anyone with eyes and more than one brain cell after only the first week..
And AS USUAL what do the UN/Kofi Annan recommend? MORE OF THE SAME TOTALLY USELESS “measures”. While the slaughter is going on.
“Annan called for stronger international action to back his peace plan, which includes demands for Assad to pull troops and guns out of cities and halt violence so that political talks can start. But a cessation of hostilities that officially started on April 12 has now all but collapsed.
Annan said the international community had united behind the peace plan ”but it now must take that unity to a new level.”
”We must find the will and the common ground to act—and act as one,” he said.
”Individual actions or interventions will not resolve the crisis. As we demand compliance with international law and the six-point plan, it must be made clearthat there will be consequences if compliance is not forthcoming.”
He warned that without change in Syria, ”the future is likely to be one of brutal repression, massacres, sectarian violence and even all-out civil war”
The future???
IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING SINCE 15 months!
“UN leader Ban also expressed grave concern at the growing death toll, which Syrian activists say has now surpassed 13,000 in 15 months of conflict.
”In view of the deteriorating situation, I would welcome further international discussion on how we can act more effectively,” Ban said.
”No one can predict how the situation in Syria will evolve. We must be prepared for any eventuality. We must be ready to respond to many possible scenarios.”
As I said before what do the UN/Kofi Annan recommend? MORE OF THE SAME TOTALLY USELESS “measures”. While the slaughter is going on.
The most recent example: Annan now wants to create a new “contract group”.
It is to be composed of the five permanent Security Council members (US, UK, France, Russia and China) plus Iran,Turkey,Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
IRAN???
So it is NOT ENOUGH THAT RUSSIA and CHINA IS BLOCKING EVERY MOVE against Syria. Now that “genius” Annan wants IRAN, which together with Russia is the biggest supporter of Assad and made sure that he has survived so far, to be on the group that is supposed to make all the decisions regarding Syria.
And of course the Obama administration immediately approved of this plan. At least the French had the sense to demand that Iran be excluded from this group..
As for the rest of the countries on that list, they are the countries that have managed to do absolutely nothing during these 15 months of the slaughter and uprising,
Remember also that Iran have been trying for the last year to kill Saudi Arabian diplomats all over the world, including in USA. And Iran also want to overthrow ALL the Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia. That’s what behind the troubles in Bahrain.
And Saudi Arabia on it’s hand is doing everything to thwart and overthrow the Iranian regime.
Doesn’t this sounds like a “lovely, peaceful and harmonious” group that is going to solve everything regarding Syria??
Only a “genius” like Annan and UN could come up with a so derailed plan. Because in their perverted world view it is ONLY diplomacy that MATTERS. If one plan fails, ok so we try another and another in all endlessness regardless of how useless or ridicules the plans are.
They change a comma here, add an asterisk there, change a word or the ending of a word here etc. in their “peace plans”.
And voila – everything is magically fixed and solved forever!
In the meantime, as we have seen time and time again ALL OVER THE WORLD, the civilian populations are getting killed and slaughtered year in and year out.
While the UN “observes” and condemns.
And do nothing in the name of the high charter they were founded on.
The contract group:
“Iran stalled the US Secretary and UN-Arab League Envoy Kofi Annan’s plan to present the world body’s special session Thursday, June 7, with a plan for a contract group based on five permanent Security Council members and Iran to handle the Syrian impasse. Tehran refused to join the group as long as it faces nuclear conditions, after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Istanbul that Iran must come to the nuclear talks in Moscow “ready to take concrete steps” to curb its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity.
Discussion of the plan was therefore abandoned in the hall and confined to UN corridors. By forcing the pace at the special general assembly crisis session, Tehran once again demonstrated its refusal to play ball with the international community until its major power status in the Middle East is recognized.
Iranian sources have insisted in recent days that the six power talks with Iran were not just about its nuclear program but affected a wider spectrum, because the nuclear issue could be settled at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Tehran has made it clear that the continuation of nuclear diplomacy is contingent on the general recognition of Iran’s major power status.
Kofi Annan warned that if nothing changes in Syria, the future holds all-out civil war. His words attested to the helplessness of the world body to put a stop of the bloodshed in Syria, combined with the Obama administration’s refusal to intervene in the crisis in the expectation that Russia and Iran would step up. That expectation has faded.
Israel remains dormant despite the serious consequences to its strategic and security situation threatened by the new proposal the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria Kofi Annan is to present to the UN Thursday, June 7, for saving his peace plan. The nub of his proposal, is the creation of a “contact group” for handling the hot Syrian potato. It is to be composed of the five permanent Security Council members (US, UK, France, Russia and China) plus Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The proposal has won the blessing of the Obama administration, meaning its consent to letting the two powers that will dominate the contact group, Russia and Iran, determine the course and outcome of the Syrian crisis.
Washington believes that only they have the clout in the Syrian army for bringing about Bashar Assad’s removal and his replacement in Damascus by a provisional military regime. Washingtonalso hopes, according to our sources, that this gesture will give Moscowa strong incentive to lean hard onTehran for concessions at the next round of its talk with the six world powers on June 13.
Neither Iran nor Moscow have promised the US anything of the sort, but the administration hopes Iran will start being forthcoming on its nuclear programafter being permitted to assume a central role in Damascus.
There is less optimism outside administration circles and inIsrael. They expect from Tehran nothing more at the next round of talks than token nuclear concessions, and none at all toward curtailing its work on a nuclear weapon.
However the Obama administration appears to have opted for this course, even though it is the first time since the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in December 2010 that the United States is willing to let go of a major Middle East crisis and allow its foremost Middle East rivals, Moscow and Tehran, to take charge.
President Barack Obama had proposed to President Vladimir Putin the creation of a large force of 5,000 international monitors for Syria, most of them Russians, to safeguard Assad’s stock of biological and chemical weapons against falling into the hands of al Qaeda or Syrian rebels. This team consisting of thousands of Russian troops would be the operational arm of the future “contact group.”
As far as Israelis concerned, the plan has disastrous connotations. Instead of containing the spread of hostile Iranian influence in the region, as Obama promised Israel, he is opening for the door for Iran to extend its influence squarely in the countries neighboring on – and still at war with – Israel, while at the same time moving back from a focused effort to draw the sting of Iran’s nuclear bomb program.
Israel’s political and security tacticians never took into account that a consequence of the Syrian revolt would be the establishment of full-blown Iranian sway over Damascus in partnership with Russia. Indeed, for 15 months, they insisted that the Syrian uprising was proof ofAmerica’s success in breaking up the dangerous Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis.”
France backs new Syria “Contact Group,” says Foreign Ministry
“France backs UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s bid to bring key powers into a contact group on the Syria crisis, but it opposes bringing Iran into the group, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.
”We are favorable to any initiative that can help put into operation the Annan plan,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Bernard Valero told reporters.
But he noted that Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had already stated two days ago that Iran, an ally of the regime led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, could in no way be involved in such a group.
Setting up a new contact group on Syria was not incompatible with the Friends of Syria group meeting on July 6 in Paris, said Valero.
That group seeks to co-ordinate Western and Arab efforts to stop the violence inSyria.
Annan is under pressure to revive his six-point peace plan, which the international community has accused Assad of flouting. A series of massacres of civilians have heightened international outrage over the conflict.
Annan’s proposal for a contact group however risks setting off new tensions over Syria.
The United States quickly made it known that it considered Iran to be a ”spoiler” in the worsening Syria crisis.
Russia, Assad’s last major ally, has offered to host an international conference on the situation in Syria.”
And this is the UN that wants to be a “world government” and a words power.
See Part 9 – UN and Kofi Annan in my original series for more info
“The Russians have no problem telling the truth: They have no idea of the direction the Syrian crisis is heading to. In ongoing diplomatic contacts amongIsraeland senior Russian officials, the Russians admit that their policy is determined from one week to the next.
In fact, they’re not alone. The Russian policy, which the Chinese share, is no different in essence than Europe’s and America’s policy towards Syria. In Mideastern terms we can say that both sides are making their decisions from one massacre to the next.
A few weeks ago, the head of Israel’s National Security Agency, Major-General Yaakov Amidror, visited Moscow in a bid to convince the Russians to end their support for Assad and stop pouring weapons to his regime. The Russians made it clear that they have no intention of doing so, and never had such intention.
It’s not as though they are clinging to Assad the man; they would have no trouble endorsing someone else, as long as he will be able to preserve Russia’s regional interests the way Assad can. They also have no trouble, alongside the arms shipments, to prepare the immediate evacuation of their people should Assad fall.
IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz heard the same mantra, more or less, when he visited China recently and the Syria issue came up.
The Foreign Ministry’s political research center, which is an intelligence agency in every way, has been drafting detailed lists of the civilians killed in Syria since the crisis erupted: The total stands at 12,500 people. The killing rate at this time stands at 50-60 dead civilians per day, on average.
See you in next massacre
Yet despite this, the conclusion of Foreign Ministry researchers is that the state of Assad’s regime today is essentially no different than it was six months ago. There is indeed gradual erosion, yet one cannot yet see the great crisis that will prompt its collapse.
Indeed, all the talk about Assad’s de-legitimacy is meaningless as long as the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians and the Lebanese think he’s legitimate. He also maintains his legitimacy for now in large sectors of Syrian society.
So the US State Department publicizes yet another plan referring to the need to invoke the UN’s Chapter 7 and accuse Assad of undermining the global order. Big deal. The Americans are talking about 3,000 monitors – instead of the current 300 – who would also engage in enforcement. They are again talking about buffer zones along the Syrian border and about humanitarian corridors deep in Syria to be protected by gunships. For the time being, it’s all talk.
So what did we have in Syria this week? Two brutal massacres, more horrific pictures, and a meeting of world leaders in Turkey that produced numerous declarations on the Syrian question and zero actions.
We’ll see you in the next massacre. Under this state of affairs, President Assad can survive for a long time. “
Third, the countries and organizations that makes this possible (continuation):
TURKEY
There are reports that Turkey has switched side again (for the fourth time). Remember that up to last summer Erdogan was Assads (and Iran’s) buddy and ally. Then Turkey switched to “neutrality”, sort of. Then last winter Turkey switched to sort of support for the opposition.
It is now reported that Ankara had secretly notified leaders of the rebel Free Syrian Army on Thursday, May 31 that it had withdrawn permission for them to launch operations against the Assad regime from Turkish soil.
So the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has double-crossed Western/UN/Arab Syrian policy and moved over to help prop Assad up at the very moment his regime was partly on the point of buckling under international after-shocks from the systematic massacres of his own people
That day, Foreign Minister Davutoglu announced over Turkish NTV: “We have never advised either the Syrian National Council or the Syrian administration to conduct an armed fight, and we will never do so.” He added: “The Syrian people will be the driving force that eventually topples the Syrian regime. Assad will leave as a result of the people’s will.”
This was precisely what Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the day before when he spoke out against violent rebellion, military intervention and sanctions to topple the Syrian ruler.
Obama and his administration have built their whole Syrian policy by letting Erdogan in practice be in the driving seat. Remember also that Obama repeatedly have said that he consider Erdogan to be a “close personal friend” and one of the five top international friends.
To be fair, Turkey had some proposals how to support the opposition and what to do, But they were ALL turned down by the Obama administration, And Turkey didn’t dare going at it alone.
See Part 6 –Turkeyin my original series for more info
“European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Thursday condemned the ”horrendous” and ”unforgivable” massacres of citizens in Syria.”
Just a hint – if they are SO ”horrendous” and ”unforgivable” why don’t you DO SOMETHING FOR A CHANGE!
”It is totally unacceptable and unforgivable that any party to the Syrian conflict, either government oropposition forces, continues to commit these heinous acts of violence against innocent Syrian citizens,” she said.”
So let’s se if I get this right – The Syrian civilian population are in effect, according to this “brilliant analysis of EU: s Foreign Minister, slaughtering themselves in the most barbaric way??
Yeah, that sounds right.
”I strongly condemn the brutal violenceand killing of dozens of civilians yesterday” in the villages of Al-Kubeir and Maarzaf in Hama province, she added in a statement.
”The Syrian government has the responsibility to protect its people,” the statement also said. ”I call for a full investigation of the horrendous crimes and support all efforts to this end.”
Well, the Assad regime doesn’t want to “protect” its people. It wants to slaughter ALL the opposition, which is most of the country.
“Ashton said the EU also condemned efforts to obstruct the implementation of Special Envoy Kofi Annan’s six point plan and called on the international community ”to unite behind a political process leading to a democratic transition.”
”It is time for us to agree on a united way forward. There is no time to lose. The UN Security Council must continue to support Kofi Annan and use all its influence to stop the violence.”
“There is no time to lose” Eehh – the slaughtering has been going on for over 15 months by now. With over 15 000 dead. And the brutal dictatorship has been going “on” for over 45 years.
After all this talk, what do they propose? More of the same that has failed all this time. And time and time again before Syria.
Another meaningless sanction.
Another condemnation.
Another meeting or conference.
Another “peace plan”.
Another “observation” mission.
Etc.
See Part 8 – EU and NATO in my original series for more info
A new Massacre (number XX) – now in al-Qubeir. In the all too familiar pattern. First, the army begins by a merciless barrage of artillery on a village, town or neighborhood. Second, the Shabiha goes in and literally slaughter EVERYONE. From the youngest child to the oldest pensioner.
Syria: full horror of al-Qubeir masacre emerges
The voice of Laith al-Hemary’s brother whispered on the mobile phone: ”There are shouts and screams coming from outside,” he said. ”They are killing everyone they find.” Then the line went dead.
“This was the last time that Mr Hemary, 30, spoke to his brother before he was killed inside the family home in the Syrian hamlet of al-Qubeir on Wednesday.
He was among 78 victims who are believed to have died in a frenzied onslaught in this village in a farming district some 15 miles from the city ofHama.
The full horror of the atrocity was betrayed by bloody videos of mutilated children’s bodies and charred corpses.
In a few hours, almost the entire population of al-Qubeir was massacred in what appears to have been one of the bloodiest incidents since the start of the Syrian uprising.
Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were responsible, according to opposition activists. They said that regular forces were working in tandem with a pro-government militia, known as the Shabiha, recruited largely from Mr Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
The regime’s troops began the attack on Wednesday afternoon with a heavy artillery barrage, said the activists. Then Shabiha militiamen entered the hamlet armed with sticks, guns and knives. They attacked homes and farmhouses, shooting and slaughtering all the inhabitants they could find.
Mr Hemary and his cousin were among only a handful of survivors of the massacre. ”I could see thick smoke rising from al-Qubeir,” he said. ”I called my brother constantly on the mobile. He was hiding in our home. He told me cars full of Shabiha had come to the village and were attacking everyone and burning houses.”
At 5.10pm, three hours after the attack began, Mr Hemary’s brother’s voice died away and he stopped answering his calls. Pushing open the door of his home several hours later, Mr Hemary found the bodies of his mother, three sisters and three brothers lying bloodied on the ground.
”They had been beaten on the head by sticks and stabbed with knives,” he said. ”I went to other homes. I saw family after family slaughtered by knives.”
After the militia departed and al-Qubeir fell quiet later that evening, people from nearby villages ventured into the stricken hamlet. ”I saw a two-month-old child without a head,” said Abou Hisham al-Hamouli, who lives in a village just over a mile from al-Qubeir. ”I saw the burnt corpse of a woman. Her two children were wrapped around, hugging her. They died like that. There were two many burnt bodies.”
Other eyewitnesses reported how the militiamen sang songs in praise of Mr Assad.
A former soldier who joined the rebel Free Syrian Army said that he reached the village within hours of the massacre, but left quickly because Syrian government troops were still in the area. ”I went into houses and saw children without a head, and others without arms. Some were burned and some were without eyes,” he said.
There were only five known survivors, he added. The exact number of victims could not be confirmed, but people from the nearby village of Maarizab said they had buried 57 corpses. A further thirty bodies were missing and had not yet been buried, said activists.
With almost no foreign reporters inSyria, the accounts of what happened in this remote farming village cannot be independently verified.
The massacre comes less than two weeks after an atrocity in the town of al-Houla in Homs province, where eyewitnesses blamed the killing on the same Shabiha milita.”
Or as EU:s Lady Ashton said: ”It is time for us to agree on a united way forward. There is no time to lose”
Yeah sure, You are going to hit Assad with a 16th round of sanctions and he will be “so scared” that he stops the slaughtering don’t you think?
And the as always helpful Russians are as usual blocking EVERY ACTION:
“Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov Thursday vowed there would be no UN Security Council mandate for outside intervention in Syria, indicating Moscow would use its veto to block any military action.
”There will not be a Security Council mandate for outside intervention, I guarantee you that,” Lavrov told reporters on the sidelines of a trip toKazakhstan by President Vladimir Putin.”
This piece from Amal Hanano sums up the desperation inside Syria quite well:
“Confession: the images of the carnage in Houla did not move me like they seem to have moved the rest of the world. Yes, they were tragic, horrific acts of violence against the most innocent of victims. But they didn’t break anything inside of me that was not already broken, nor did they raise the level of outrage or sorrow I feel everyday over what is happening in Syria.
Maybe it was because in the twenty-fours hours before hearing about the Houla massacre, I had heard that a friend’s relative had been killed, I had heard that another friend’s elderly relative had been kidnapped by gangs for ransom, I had received desperate Skype messages from an activist in Homs, crying, “my precious ones are gone, my precious ones are gone,” referring to three Shaam News Network media activists who had been shot dead by Assad forces, I had spoken with the brother of a martyr in Aleppo, who told me that since his older brother was killed one week ago, he was trying to act normally but the truth was, his “heart was burning.” By late afternoon, when I watched the first video of the children of Houla, with their tiny throats slit open below their ashen, angelic faces, all I could feel was yet another heavy thud of dread. One we had felt many times before.
The days after Houla brought the news of the death of Basel Shehade, the brilliant, young filmmaker who was killed by the shells falling over Homs. (Will the shells ever stop falling over Homs?) The days after Houla brought news of continued shelling and burning of Aleppo’s and Idleb’s countryside, and the deaths of another a dozen men — their eyes blindfolded and hands bound — executed in Deir al-Zor. The days after Houla brought news of thousands of Syrian refugees inEgypt who found themselves stranded with empty homes, empty pockets, and a bleak, uncertain future.
The days after Houla continued as all the days had before. But the world’s eyes halted on the massacre.
Houla’s images instigated the world’s outrage in its predictable forms: in heart-wrenching eyewitness accounts of children watching their families being murdered; in sectarian-tainted op-eds that cynically questioned who had perpetrated the crimes; in dry-eyed, canned statements by regime mouthpieces complaining about the media’s “tsunami of lies” which painted the regime as criminal when in fact it was a “victim.” There was outrage over the images themselves andoutrage over the decision to exposing the international public to the violent images (as not to upset an innocent British boy or girl).
And the outrage moved from analysis and narrative to questions: Is the UN plan working? Is a regime-led investigation a fair way to proceed? Who committed the crimes? Is killing by shelling (by the regime) as bad as killing by close-range (by unknown “monsters” according to Bashar al-Assad)? Is it pronounced Houla or Huli? Were the slaughtered people Sunni or Shite (or Sunnis who had converted to Shiism)? Are we with or against foreign intervention? Who will replace Assad? Who will arm the rebels? Who are the rebels? Why is the Syrian opposition still fragmented?
And of course the debate: Will Houla be Syria’s Sabra and Shatila, Syria’s Srebrenica, Syria’s game changer?
What exactly is the “world” responding to? The graphic images? The sheer brutality? The number of dead? The gruesome stories?
Over the last fifteen months we have seen Houla and variations of Houla happen over and over. We witnessed slaughtered bodies in February in the Karm al-Zeitoun massacre. We have seen men and boys dripping with blood, with half their face blown off, still struggling to breath. We watched while an entire city was destroyed, missile by missile.We watched a man flattened by an Assad tank, over and over, into human road kill. We have seen dead children, not only slaughtered but bombed, burned, and mutilated. We know in addition to Houla’s fifty-two dead children,there are hundreds of others; in addition to Houla’s murdered men and women, there are thousands of others. Our dead have been left to rot on the streets of Homs. Our dead have been buried in the public parks ofHama. Houla’s mass grave is just one more to add to the others, inHoms,Hama, Rastan, and Jisr al-Shoughour. And let’s not forget the unknown thousands of Syrians buried under the concrete foundations of a luxury hotel inHama by Assad the elder.
Houla was tragedy. But it was not a game changer. Not even close. Not to us, at least. Maybe it was to those who have been hedging bets on Syria’s future. Or to those who keep a secret, magic “number” of how many Syrians are allowed to die before it’s too much.
How many more gruesome violent videos can we watch before we really can’t stomach it any more? How many people have to die before the world either says enough is enough, or turns away from their screens? How long before the daily death toll in Syria is no longer on the front pages and becomes an invisible battlefield, like Iraq, like Afghanistan, like Libya?
How long before you are desensitized?
How long before you forget?
The cynics still claim that the majority of the Syrian people still back the murderous regime, (although by this time the regime and its “silent majority” should be irrelevant like it would be anywhere else in the world in face of such violence, includingBahrain). When a regime decides to kill thousands of its own, its supporters have become accomplices not neutral citizens.
Why the empty debates? Because the cautiously-watching (yet horrified) world has not decided yet on our “so-called” revolution. They claim it has changed from its romantic (and just) beginnings and has become armed, violent, and sectarian. While the world doubts, we watched the “sectarian” Abd al-Basset Sarout and his “bloodthirsty Salafi” FSA brothers sing in a room to a gleaming wooden coffin with a cross, that held their friend Basel Shehade’s shrapnel-ridden body. We witnessed the regime shut down Basel’s memorial service last Thursday in Damascus to the peaceful thousands who wanted to join the church service and light a candle in his honor. We watched last Friday in mosques across Syria, as Muslim men performed an “absentee” prayer for their martyr,Syria’s martyr,Basel. These are the Syrian people too, whether the world wishes to see them or not. Or perhaps they only tolerate seeing them as shrouded corpses.
Those who still argue searching for game changers in Syria should stop exerting themselves. Those who wait for Assad to change his ways and stop the killing, don’t hold your breath. For those who have been waiting for their magic “number,” it’s too late. The number is too high and has passed the threshold of forgiveness.
The game changed months ago while you were turned away.
Whether your eyes decide to confront or slide away from the images of our slain children makes no difference. Because we have already moved on, to face tomorrow, which holds only one Syrian certainty: there will be blood.
I, along with thousands of Syrians, made a decision from the moment the first fingernails were torn from the innocent hands of Bashir Abazid and his schoolmates in Daraa.After decades of our own silence, we had two words for the Assad regime: Game Over.
As for the world, across the spectrum, from the ones fretting anxiously to the ones claiming Houla was a “hoax,” and everyone else in between: we have one question:What’s your number?”
That is a good question.
What is the number of dead and slaughtered civilians the world “accept”? It now stands at over 15 000 dead.
Without the enormous Russian material support, weapons, training, intelligence, troops, personal, diplomatic support etc. the Syrian regime would not survive very long.
Russia has invested more than 55 years into this country and this regime going back to Soviet times. So the Russians are not going to give all that vested strategic interest up voluntarily. Regardless of how many civilians Assad is going to slaughter.
After all, Vladimir Putin is the butcher of Grozny and Chechnya. Or as Paul Conroy so aptly put it: “What Russia taught Syria: When you destroy a city, make sure no one — not even the story — gets out alive.”
And
“Five years later, Russia was back. And Putin’s new strategy was unbending: silence, encircle, pulverize, and ”cleanse.”
To just give one small example of this Russian duplicity. While they “talk” about their support for the Annan peace plan another huge arms shipment was delivered toSyria.
Thursday, May 24, a Russian arms ship, the Professor Katsman (owned by the Russian arms company Rosoboronexport), was detected outside Cyprus. The crew had shut down ALL communications systems, including its transponder, in breach of international regulations and crept forward in silence. The ship also refused to disclose its cargo manifests.
The Russian vessel anchored in the Syrian port of Tartus Friday May 25. Military equipment was then unloaded behind tarpaulin screens and transferred to waiting Syrian military truck convoys.
The cargo? Large quantities of artillery and tank shells as well as spare parts for tanks.
And of course none of these shells is ever going to be fired at the Syrian civilian population, as they have been everyday for the last 15 months.
On June 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, as for reports that Russia is arming the Syrian military, “Russia is not shipping weapons that could be used in a civil conflict.”
And more arms are on the way, the North Korean arms ships Odai is also reported on its way to Tartus with hardware for the Syrian army.
Rosoboronexport by the way is Syria’s main weapons supplier. Since 2007, Rosoboronexport has had a virtual monopoly on arms exports from Russia.
According to shipping records collected by ThomsonReuters, at least four cargo ships have left Russia’s Black Seaport of Oktyabrsk – which Reuters said is used by Rosoboronexport for weapons shipments – for the Syrian port of Tartus since December 2011. In addition, a Russian-operated vessel, the MV Chariot, was carrying four containers of “dangerous cargo” from St. Petersburg to Syria when it stopped in Cyprus in January 2012. Although the ship ostensibly changed course for Turkey, it nevertheless traveled to Syria, according to Reuters, which described the cargo as ammunition reportedly supplied by Rosoboronexport. Davidenko, the company spokesman, declined to confirm or deny the report, telling Reuters, “We do not comment on where our deliveries go, when they leave port or how.”
Here is a list by SIPRI, which is considered an authoritative source on the trade in heavy weapons, of Russian arms transfers to Syria. I want to point out that this by far IS NOT a complete list. This is the ones they found out. Also, it doesn’t include the huge quantities of ammunition, spare parts and lighter weapons etc:
•36 Pantsyr-S1 mobile air-defense systems, delivered between 2008 and 2011;
•Some 700 surface-to-air missiles for use with the Pantsyr mobile air-defense systems, delivered between 2008 and 2011;
•87 anti-ship missiles, delivered from 2009 to 2010;
•Two Bastion-P mobile coastal defense systems, delivered from 2010 to 2011;
•72 anti-ship cruise missiles, delivered from 2010 to 2011, for use with the Bastion-P coastal defense system;
•300 air-to-air missiles, ordered in 2010 for use with MiG-29 combat aircraft;
•Two surface-to-air missile systems, delivered in 2011, from an order for eight such systems;
•40 surface-to-air missiles, delivered in 2011, from an order for 160 such missiles, for use with the missile systems;
•36 Yak-130 jet trainers/combat aircraft ordered in 2011; and
•24 MiG-29 fighter aircraft, ordered in 2007 (delivery pending).
In addition, Jane’s Defense Weekly in 2010 cited a deal for Russia to supply armored vehicles to Syria. The Moscow-based arms research organization Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) has reported that from 2007 to 2011, Russia completed a contract to upgrade 1,000 T-72 battle tanks. A media report indicates that Russia also has arms contracts with Syria worth $250-$400 million for delivery of ammunition, pistols, sub-machine guns, machine guns, anti-tank missiles, and rocket-propelled grenades.
Just to mention a “few” Russian arms deals.
These are the people that Obama and his administration are basing their whole policy on that they, the Russians, are going to “change” somehow.
In the “meantime”, every day Syrian civilians are slaughtered with Russian arms, Russian ammunition, Russian trained “soldiers” and “officers”, Russian advisers, sometimes directing at the “front”, and with the use of Russian intelligence.
See Part 3 –Russia in my original series for more info
Without the enormous Iranian material support, weapons, training, intelligence, troops, personal, diplomatic support etc. the Syrian regime would not survive very long.
Between Russia and Iran, there is a division of labour of how they support Syria. Iran, usually, has more troops, personal, advisors etc direct on the “front line” where the direct slaughtering is going on.
Assad TOTALLY depends on Iran (together with Russia and China) for his survival.
For Iran, Syria plays a vital roll in its ambitions to control parts of the Middle East. In addition, Syria is crucial for Iran’s support and control of Hezbollah and Lebanon. And Hamas in Gaza.
For the first time the Iranian regime have openly admitted that it has troops in Syria and is actively supporting the Syrian thugs.
On May 27, the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) first published and then removed an interview with a senior member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force in which he said Iran is involved inSyria.
“Someone” understood what a blunder this was and pulled the plug a few hours later.
The interview was with Deputy Quds Force commander Brigadier General Ismail Ghaani. He said ”Thanks to Iran’s presence in Syria– physically and nonphysically– big massacres were prevented.” He also said that “the Quds Force had had an ”effective” presence in Syria.”
He also claimed that ”if the Islamic republic had not been present in Syria, the massacre of its people would have been multiplied.” SIC!
And he said: ”Despite all the problems that the Syrian government has — and we have asked them to address those — Syria is a location of resistance. The reason for all the pressure from the U.S. and Israel is that they have realized the country is impossible to occupy”.
In another twist of fate, Hezbollah, with over a 25-year record of kidnapping and murder against Israelis, Americans and other Westerners, have had a taste of their own medicine.
In two incidents, Hezbollah operatives were kidnapped by the Syrian opposition.
You should remember that Hezbollah, together with Iran, actively has helped the Assad regime against his own people.
The first group of eleven was captured on May 22 in a bus heading home through Aleppo from Iran. The story was that these people were “pilgrims” returning. In reality, they were Hezbollah operatives. They are now held by FSA.
The second and much more serious for Hezbollah was a very sophisticated commando raid outside Damascus, where 5 top Hezbollah officers was kidnapped. This has sent shock waves through Tehran and the Al Qods Brigades command there.
The unidentified commandos, guided apparently by precise intelligence, ambushed a Hezbollah car 15 km west of Damascus after they left the Syrian military base of Al-Hame 4 km from the Syrian capital. And captured five top-ranking Hezbollah officers. A sixth escaped.
Al-Hame is one of the two big military bases Hezbollah has outside Damascus. The other one is in Al Zabadani. It is there that Hezbollah maintains its heavy Scud D long-range missiles, as well as it’s more sophisticated and advanced hardware and missiles/rockets it intends to use against Israel.
One of the kidnapped Hezbollah officers was Ali Safa, a senior officer of Hezbollah intelligence and nephew of Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. The kidnapped also included Hussein Hamid, Dep. Commander of Hezbollah forces in South Lebanon; and Ali Zerayb, member of the Hezbollah Jihad Council.
This is part of Hezbollah core leadership so no wonder Tehran is worried.
It is said that Obama is doing nothing in Syria because he does not want to “disturb” the nuclear weapons negotiations with Iran. Negotiations that have led nowhere during all these years. In the meantime, Iran is SO MUCH closer to make nuclear weapons, if it decides to do so.
At the same time, every day Syrian civilians are slaughtered with Russian and Iranian arms, Russian ammunition, Iranian led “soldiers”, Iranian advisers and with Iranian intelligence.
See Part 4 –Iran in my original series for more info
Without the Chinese material support, weapons, training, intelligence, personal, diplomatic support etc. the Syrian regime would not survive very long. The Chinese support is however on a smaller scale than Russia and Iran.
China helps Assad mostly through its sanction busting system it has set up to help Iran.
China has helped Iran to sidestep the regular global financial system to create a huge clandestine money-transfer, commercial and currency exchange machine for getting around the US-led Western sanctions hurting Iran’s international trade.
They are assisting in the construction of this underground network as a pipeline through which Iran can continue to conduct its commercial business with the outside world. And to help Iran evade the financial isolation because of the sanctions regarding its nuclear weapons program.
China also profits enormously from these sanctions-busting measures. Two years ago, anticipating the blockage of its regular trade relations, Iran began transferring billions of dollars to Chinese banks, which as a rule do not enter into foreign currency transactions with foreign banks.
China undertook to make available the amounts need to buy essential goods that the embargo prevents Iran from acquiring directly.
Beijing does the shopping and draws on the Iranian deposits to pay for the purchases. The goods are delivered to China and transferred to Iran via Pakistan.
China is making a very tidy profit from its shopping service for Iran. China is charging Iran an extra four-percent to cover insurance dues and another four percent surcharge as a “risk fee,” over and above the expensive roundabout delivery route. Already, China may be clearing as much as a billion dollars a year from this service alone.
And the Chinese use this system to also help Assad with ALL the things he needs to suppress the uprising.
See Part 5 –China in my original series for more info
It is now nearly one month since I finished my 11 parts series of background on what is going on in Syria (Syria and Vladimir Putin: The Butcher of Homs Part 1-11). So I thought it would be appropriate to give an update of what has happened or not happened since then.
And surprise, surprise – NOTHING HAS CHANGED. The same old same old.
The barbaric slaughter of civilians, including children continues unabated. While’s the rest of the world talks, make statements, have meetings etc.
And yet Assad hangs on, slaughtering his own people, destroying and despoiling whole neighbourhoods, calling the bluff of the Arab League, Turkey, UN, USA and EU/NATO.
Helped to a very large degree by the enormous material support, weapons, training, intelligence, troops, personal etc. from Russia, Iran, China and Hezbollah.
As for the do nothing as usual UN, it “proudly” upholds its tradition of doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING when it really maters, like Rwanda, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Bosnia (Srebrenica anyone?) etc.
And this is the UN that wants to be a “world government” and a words power.
So very shortly, here are some observations.
First the Houla Massacre:
Click on the satellite image and it gets bigger
These Assad Thugs are some of the people responsible for the Houla Massacre where 49 children were literally slaughtered one by one:
“Supervisor: Brigadier General Mohammad Anis, serving in the role of Deputy Commander of the 67th Brigade, Commander of Tank Battalion 11.
Implementer: Staff Colonel Ali Khalouf, head of Reconnaissance Brigade #67, Tank Battalion. He also looted homes and stole personal property. He personally raped the wife of a Colonel who was killed by internal security in Taldo.
Colonel Habib Mohammed, Battalion Tank Commander. He carried out the bombing.
Colonel Mohamed Nasr Khaddam, Commander of the Shabiha groups. He stole personal property and set fire to homes. He drives a Toyota Double Cabin pickup truck painted in camouflage colors.
Captain Tamam Rahija, platoon leader and shabih who stole houses and cars.
Lieutenant Shaher Ibrahim, a platoon leader and shabih who stole cars and robbed houses.
Lieutenant Colonel Nidal Salman, Commander of a Tank Company; responsible for the Taldo checkpoint. He robbed houses, stole cars, and raped women.
Lieutenant Colonel Ali Jahani, Company Commander and leader of secret patrols and shabiha. He is from Al-Masoudieh village inHoms.
Lieutenant Colonel Ayham Salameh, head of the Kafar Laha and Tal Dahab checkpoints. He murdered, robbed, tortured, and raped women in his office, which contains a torture chamber.”
”!HOULA MASSACRE – THE CHILDREN HAD THEIR HANDS TIED BY ASSAD’S FORCES BEFORE THEY WERE SLAUGHTERED.
Bashar Al Assad’s forces first began shelling the town indiscriminately towards the city center. While on the outskirts of the town, where the people had no protection from the FSA, Assad’s forces moved from house to house and butchered men, women and children.”
“The children of Houla were not killed by random shelling. The UN yesterday revealed that they were murdered one by one. The militia came in the night armed with knives and guns, and the young victims were executed with a bullet to the head or a knife to the throat.
One photograph shows a cherubic baby girl, no older than 2, with a tiny gold ear-stud. She is wrapped in a white shroud. Half her skull has been hacked or blown away. A saucer of bone juts from a bloody gash in what remains of her head.
Another shows what appears to be a boy of perhaps 6 or 7. The blanket in which he is wrapped has fallen away to expose a bare white shoulder. He looks as if he is sleeping, but the back of his head has been lopped off like the top of a boiled egg. His brain lies on the blanket behind him.
A third shows a pretty young girl staring upwards, her mouth slightly open as if smiling. Above her right eye there is a large, bloody bullet hole surrounded by a mess of flesh and bone.
The pictures go on, some mercifully out of focus, most far too shocking to print in The Times though our failure to do so spares the Assad regime.
There is a baby wearing nothing but a nappy, seemingly untouched except that it lacks an arm. Another young girl wearing a blood-soaked T-shirt with the word “Baby” or “Dolly” written on it has had her jaw shot away. A man carries the body of a child with only half a head remaining.
There are children — brothers, sisters, cousins? — wearing blood-drenched shorts and T-shirts with their eyes gouged out, with their faces slashed by knives or with neat bullet holes in their torsos. One girl has had her nose and cheek sliced off. A couple of the children lying on the floor of a makeshift mortuary appear to have had their hands bound.
These are some of the 49 children killed in the Houla massacre, not by random shelling but knifed to death or shot at close range by President Assad’s Shabiha thugs. They were summarily executed, the United Nations said yesterday.
At least 108 civilians were killed in total, 34 of them women, in a slaughter of infants and innocents with few modern precedents. Only 20 of the deaths could be attributed to artillery or tank fire, Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the UN Commissioner for Human Rights, said.
“What is very clear is that this was an absolutely abominable event that took place in Houla, and at least a substantial part of it was summary executions of civilians, women and children.At this point it looks like entire families were shot in their houses,” he added.”
You can se the rest of the horrific pictures of the slaughtered children here:
“An elderly woman from the Abdel Razzak family who survived the attack told Human Rights Watch:
I was in the house with my three grandsons, three granddaughters, sister-in-law, daughter, daughter in-law and cousin. [On May 25] around 6:30 p.m., before sunset, we heard gunshots. I was in a room by myself when I heard the sound of a man. He was shouting and yelling at my family. I hid behind the door. I saw another man standing outside by the entrance door and another one inside the house. They were wearing military clothes. I couldn’t see their faces. I thought they wanted to search the house. They walked in the house; I didn’t hear them break in because we never lock the doors. After three minutes, I heard all my family members screaming and yelling. The children, all aged between 10 and 14, were crying. I went down on the floor and tried to crawl so I could see what was happening. As I approached the door, I heard several gunshots. I was so terrified I couldn’t stand on my legs. I heard the soldiers leaving. I looked outside the room and saw all of my family members shot. They were shot in their bodies and their head. I was terrified to approach to see if they were alive. I kept crawling until I reached the back door. I went outside, and I ran away. I was in shock so I don’t know what happened later.”
A 10-year-old boy from the Abdel Razzak family told Human Rights Watch that he saw men wearing military clothes shoot his 13-year-old friend:
I was at home with my mother, my cousins, and my aunt. Suddenly I heard gunshots. It was the first time I heard so many gunshots. My mother grabbed me and took me to a barn to hide. I heard men screaming and shouting. I heard people crying especially women. I looked outside the window. I was peeking sometimes but I was afraid they would see me. Men wearing [uniforms] like army soldiers, green with other colors [camouflage] and white shoes, entered our house. They went outside after a couple of minutes. Then across the street I saw my friend Shafiq, 13 years old, outside standing alone. An armed man in military uniform grabbed him and put him at the corner of a house. He took his own weapon and shot him in the head. His mother and big sister – I think she was 14 years old – went outside and started shouting and crying.The same man shot at both of them more than once. Then the armed men left and the FSA soldiers came.
The boy’s mother confirmed many of the details to Human Rights Watch:
At around 6:30 – 7:00 p.m., we started hearing the sound of gunshots. They were very close to us. We ran and hid in the barn. After the armed men left, and I heard the sound of their cars driving away, my sister and I went outside. I saw Shafiq [the 13-year-old friend of her son] on the ground dead. I saw three families: three women, two of them with children. All of them were shot. Some were shot in the head and others had multiple shots in the body. One of the children survived. She is 14 years old. She was shot twice in the leg. I also saw my cousin who was shot in the chest. A 13-year-old boy who was paralyzed was shot three times in his chest as well.”
Remember also that the, as always, “helpful” Russians blamed this barbaric massacre on the opposition:
“President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said Friday that he rejected outside military intervention as an answer to the increasingly horrific bloodshed in Syria, and the Kremlin publicly sided with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria in blaming Mr. Assad’s armed rebel opponents for a massacrethere last week that incited world outrage. “
“Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said it was clear the army had used tank shells but not who shot civilians at point blank range.
“We are dealing with a situation where both sides participated in the killings of innocent civilians… this district is controlled by the armed militants and at the same time it’s encircled by the governmental forces and troops,” he said.”
And
“Alexei Pushkov, chair of the international affairs committee of the Russian parliament, the Duma, was more explicit: “We have very strong doubts that those people who were shot at point blank [range] and were stabbed, that this was the action of forces loyal to President Assad,” he told the BBC.
“The shelling was probably the responsibility of the troops of Mr Assad, but the stabbing and point blank firing was definitely from the other side.”
These are the people that Obama and his administration are basing their whole policy on that they are going to somehow “change”.
Also remember that this massacre happened under the UN/Kofi Annan and their “observers” watch.
The independent Front Page May 27
Second the Assad thugs are continuing, now with UN “observers” watching, with what they always have been doing and are “good at” – atrocities and massacres:
There are SOOO MANY videos EVERY DAY showing their barbaric behaviour. It’s sickening. Here are just three.
LEAKED VIDEO – ”ASSAD’S FORCES RUN OVER A MAN IN THEIR TANKS – ONE AFTER ANOTHER. (Idleb) – Words can do no justice to the disgust and barbarity that epitomizes Assad, his forces and his supporters as they cheer and encourage such things.
Where on Earth can this happen other than Syria? How sick does one have to be to find joy in running over a human being in a tank?”
LEAKED VIDEO – ”HORRIFIC – A TRUE SCENE OF HELL. ASSAD’S FORCES FILM INSIDE THE HOMES OF FAMILIES THEY JUST MURDERED IN BABA AMR & JOBAR. Homs (Baba Amr) – Bodies of mutilated, burnt and crushed men and women are strewn about the rubble after Assad’s forces enter the district of Baba Amr after a month long siege where they shelled the area round-the-clock for 30 days and cut off all food and medical supplies.
When they finally entered the neighborhood, the most impoverished in Homs, they went from house to house and executed entire families or anyone that dared to stay. Many of their victims had their throats slit and were burnt.
This is Assad. These are his forces. This is what they do.”
LEAKED VIDEO – ”ASSAD’S FORCES FILM THEMSELVES SMILING AS THEY STAND ON THE BODIES OF MEN THEY JUST KILLED. Rastan (Date Unknown) – As is the case with many of these videos, Assad’s forces have no problems showing their faces, smiling and laughing over bodies of people they just killed.
They live in Assad’s Syria, where they are free to do as they please.”
UD/RK Samhälls Debatt 