Nikolaos van Dam: Tragically, a bloodbath may now be inevitable

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Saturday, 11 June 2011

The latest actions of the Syrian regime yesterday indicate that all this is bound to lead to further bloody confrontation. The leadership knows that it is in danger, but it simply will not give up peacefully.

After all, it has seen what happened in Egypt, where Hosni Mubarak faces jail or perhaps even the death penalty.

So who is controlling the situation? It is clear that Bashar al-Assad doesn't have his own army and security people under control, and indeed, maybe never did. Bashar was parachuted on to the top of the regime to prevent disunity among the officers and ensure continuity, taking over from his father, Hafez, but that doesn't mean he has much power. He is not the one who issues the orders to shoot and kill; it is those who for tens of years have got used to acting with violence and intimidation. It was telling that a few weeks ago, the President's spokeswoman said Assad had ordered that there should be no more shooting, but it simply went on. He was apparently not in charge. But that does not mean that as president he is not fully responsible.

The situation is very different to Egypt, where the military is, more or less, still in place after the downfall of Mubarak. In Syria, the military is much more closely linked to the president. If he goes, his inner circle goes, albeit not without bloody confrontation. The leadership faces a major dilemma: reform could end this conflict, but they realise that any real reform will in the end lead to the disappearance of the present regime and the monopoly of the Baath Party.

The Syrian government is trying to start a national dialogue but I haven't seen any signs yet to suggest that the opposition wants to talk, unless certain preconditions are being met. The regime, after all, started this violence, and now it seems to be receiving it back. The regime reported that 120 of its forces died in Jisr al-Shughour at the hands of armed gangs, while some witnesses have suggested that it was in fact fighting between the military and its own defectors. If the violence at Jisr al-Shughour was because of defections then the regime really is in trouble.

The biggest danger to the regime is from within the armed forces. There will be some in the military who simply completely disagree with the atrocities which are taking place. Events may encourage them to plot against the regime and that could lead to the bloodiest confrontation yet.

Nikolaos van Dam is a former Dutch ambassador and has written extensively about Syria. The fourth edition of his book 'The Struggle for Power in Syria' has just been released.

The protest in numbers

1,300 people have been killed, Syrian rights groups say.

10,000 people have been arrested, with reports emerging of torture in custody.

4,000 civilians have fled to Turkey fearing a crackdown on Jisr al-Shughour.

6,000 have sought refuge in Lebanon, but many have been forcibly returned.

325,000 soldiers and other personnel make up Syria's armed forces.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/com...vice=Print

الاعلام الغربي "ينقض" على النظام السوري

تزامنت التصريحات والمواقف الغربية المنددة بالاحداث السورية وما يقوم به النظام من قمع وقتل للمتظاهرين، بهجة اعلامية ومجموعة كبيرة من التقارير التي تحفل بها وسائل الاعلام الغربية خصوصا المكتوبة والالكترونية منها.

استعرضت صحيفة "الفاينشيال تمايز" البريطانية "تاريخ العلاقات بين الرئيس السوري بشار الاسد والقادة الغربيين، وكيف انتهت هذه العلاقة الى المواجهة العلنية والعداء السافر"، واشارت الصحيفة الى ان "آمال الغرب خابت في الاسد"، مضيفة ان "الرئيس الفرنسي نيكولا ساركوزي في مقدمة القادة الغربيين الذين يقودون الجهود الدولية لفرض مزيد من العزلة على الرئيس السوري بشار الاسد وزيادة الضغوط عليه لوقف العنف التي يمارسه نظامه ضد المتظاهرين".


واستعرضت الصحيفة "خلف العلاقة الدافئة التي كانت تجمع الزعيمين حيث كان الاسد ضيفا خاصا في العاصمة الفرنسية باريس بمناسبة الثورة الفرنسية عام 2008 بعد ان فتح ساركوزي صفحة جديدة مع الاسد بعد سنوات من القطيعة والعداء بين الاسد والرئيس الفرنسي السابق جاك شيراك في اعقاب اغتيال رئيس وزارء لبنان الاسبق رفيق الحريري عام 2005".


واضافت انه "بعد ان فتحت القارة الاوروبية ايضا صفحة جديدة مع نظام الاسد وتحسنت علاقات سوريا مع الغرب وتكللت مع وقف الضغوط الاميركية على سوريا بات عضو الكونغرس الاميركي ورئيس لجنة العلاقات الخارجية جون كيري ضيفا دائما في العاصمة السورية دمشق خلال السنيتن الماضيتين".


كما نشرت صحيفة "النيوزويك" مقالا للكاتبة آسن سييرستاد تحت عنوان "بعيداً عن شبح الخوف في سوريا"، خصصته للحديث عن المتاعب التي واجهها عابد، طالب الهندسة السوري الذي تم اعتقاله مثل آلاف السوريين منذ اندلاع الثورة في سوريا في آذار المنصرم وعودته إلى بيته وهو بحالة مزرية، حيث أبلغه الضباط بأن هذه كانت مجرد نزهة"، مشيرةً إلى أن "الشعب الثوري خرج إلى الميادين والشوارع للاحتجاج، إلا أن السلطات أسرعت إلى مواقع الاحتجاجات التي كان يراقبها رجال بملابس مدنية يطلق عليهم اسم الأشباح".


وأوضحت الكاتبة أن "الرقابة تسيطر على كل مناحي الحياة في سوريا، حيث تقسم الاستخبارات إلى أقسام تراقب كل أجزاء المجتمع ويتحرك عملاؤها في كل شوارع البلاد"، واصفةً الرئيس السوري بشار الأسد، الذي توجد صوره على معظم الملصقات، بأنه "طاغية حل محل والده بعد وفاته وأن الإطاحة به هي هدف الاضطرابات الجارية".


ولفتت الكاتبة الى أن "عابد اشترك في مظاهرات الجمعة، إلا أنه فقد الوعي إثر شعوره بصدمة كهربية في عنقه ليفيق ويجد بجواره العديد من الأشخاص الآخرين مثله"، مشيرةً الى أن "الاستخبارات ظهرت من مكان لا يدرون عنه ليأخذوهم في حافلات بيضاء إلى خارج ضواحي دمشق وعندما وصلوا قام الجنود بتعذيبهم وربط أيديهم وأرجلهم ووضعهم في زنزانة ضيقة لا تستوعب عددهم وبعد ثلاثة أيام أصبحوا مستعدين من وجهة نظر الاستخبارات للاستجواب".


ويصف عابد أن "بعضهم تعرض للتعذيب المبرح، إلا أن أكثر من تم تعذيبه كان شخص ينتمي إلى الأقلية العلوية ولكن كان عابد محظوظاً لأنه أحد أعضاء حزب البعث، مما جعله لا يلقى التعذيب القاسي مثل الباقين"، لافتةً الى أن "عابد أصبح أحد أعضاء الحزب أثناء تربيته في درعا، وهي المدينة التي بدأت بها المظاهرات، فالحصول على العضوية ضروري لدخول الجامعة والحصول على وظيفة إلا أن عابد ضحى بذلك كله بعد إنهاء دراسته بعام لينضم إلى الربيع السوري قبل أن يفوت السوريون قطار الحرية"، مشيرةً الى أن "هدف السلطات واضح ويتمثل في عرقلة الاحتجاجات من بدايتها وليس السماح بما حدث في مصر عندما اكتظ ميدان التحرير بالثوار، ويصف عابد زنزانته بأنها كانت صغيرة الحجم وقليلة الهواء، ولكنه يشهد أن الأمور في الخارج تسير بصورة طبيعية، حيث يفتح أصحاب البقالة والمطاعم أبوابهم".

Sunday, 26 June 2011
Syria caught in crossfire of extremists Pro-democracy protests are being infiltrated by armed jihadists, provoking the army into lethal gun battles

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Hala Jaber in Ma’arrat Al-Nu’man, Syria Published: 26 June 2011
Anti-government activists on the streets of Daraa (Anwar Amro)

They came in their thousands to march for freedom in Ma’arrat al-Nu’man, a shabby town surrounded by pristine fields of camomile and pistachio in the restive northwest of Syria.
The demonstration followed a routine familiar to everyone who had taken part each Friday for the past 11 weeks, yet to attend on this occasion required extraordinary courage.
The previous week four protesters had been shot dead for trying to block the main road between Damascus, the capital, and Aleppo, the country’s largest city. The week before that, four others were killed.
So enraged were the townspeople at the blood spilt by the mukhabarat, or secret police, that intermediaries had struck a deal between the two sides. Four hundred members of the security forces had been withdrawn from Ma’arrat in return for the promise of an orderly protest. The remainder, 49 armed police and 40 reserves, were confined to a barracks near the centre of town. By the time 5,000 unarmed marchers reached the main square, however, they had been joined by men with pistols.
At first the tribal elders leading the march thought these men had simply come prepared to defend themselves if shooting broke out. But when they saw more weapons — rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers held by men with heavy beards in cars and pick-ups with no registration plates — they knew trouble lay ahead.
Violence erupted as the demonstrators approached the barracks, where the police had barricaded themselves inside. As the first shots rang out, protesters scattered. Some of the policemen escaped through a rear exit; the rest were besieged.
A military helicopter was sent to the rescue. “It engaged the armed protesters for more than an hour,” said one witness, a tribal leader. “It forced them to use most of their ammunition against it to relieve the men trapped in the building.”
Some of the gunmen were hit by bullets fired from the helicopter. When it flew away, the mob stormed the front of the barracks.
A fierce gunfight ensued. Soon, four policemen and 12 of their attackers were dead or dying. Another 20 policemen were wounded. Their barracks was ransacked and set on fire, along with the courthouse and police station.
The officers who escaped the onslaught on June 10 were hidden in the homes of families who had been demonstrating earlier, the tribal leader said. He and his sons and nephews retrieved 25 men and drove them to the safety of their headquarters in Aleppo.
Last Friday I watched Ma’arrat’s latest demonstration for democracy. Only 350 people turned up, mostly young men on motorbikes who raced along the main road towards a line of army tanks parked in some olive groves. Among them were bearded militants.
They shouted provocation and were greeted with stoicism. Local people said the tanks had not moved since they had taken up position 10 days earlier.
The significance of the low turnout was not lost on the tribal elders who have been organising the protests, hoping political reform will bring government money to their neglected town of 100,000 people. Thousands of ordinary people who had backed them were now staying at home for fear that armed elements would pick another fight.
Reports of gunmen opening fire at protests in at least four towns appear to mark the emergence of a disturbing pattern in a country already torn by three months of protests that have left nearly 1,400 dead and spread trepidation among its neighbours, from Israel to Turkey.
Activists interviewed last week by The Sunday Times fear the gunmen — including some jihadists — could divide the opposition and give Syria’s security forces an excuse to continue firing on their own people.
I arrived in Damascus last Tuesday, the first western journalist to enter Syria with the authorities’ knowledge since the trouble began. Senior officials promised that I could move and report freely.
Putting this to the test, I talked to opposition figures and activists as well as members of President Bashar al-Assad’s government. I found a country whose vibrant people are increasingly determined to secure change and whose leaders seem unsure how to respond.
It was not through the government sources that I established the presence of extremists, but through opposition figures and the evidence of my own eyes.
In the souks and cafes of the ancient capital, life and work continue largely as normal. What struck me as new was that for the first time in more than 20 years of visiting Syria, I heard officials acknowledging their mistakes. The criticism ranged from government corruption to the security forces’ killing of civilians.
“They see demonstrators in the hundreds or thousands, chanting anti-government slogans or tearing pictures of Assad — something that only a few months ago would have landed people in jail — and they react heavy-handedly and shoot randomly,” a security official said.
Yet the killing continued during demonstrations on Friday, when 20 people died, most of them in the town of Kiswa, south of the capital. Two more died in funerals there yesterday and three in Damascus house searches.
The Kiswa demonstrators carried a large Syrian flag to show that they were combining protest with patriotism. Five young men led the chanting and witnesses said that, for a few brief minutes, the atmosphere was almost carnival-like.
But within half an hour security forces in leather jackets had arrived, carrying AK-47s. The protesters responded by cursing Maher al-Assad, the president’s brother, blamed for the worst atrocities of the crackdown.
Cries of “We’re not afraid of you” were followed by shooting from Kalashnikovs and pistols, according to one witness.
“In just a few minutes I saw 10 protesters on the ground, bleeding heavily,” he said. “I saw a child covered in blood.” Hassan Sheeb, 13, reportedly died of his injuries shortly afterwards.
Men screamed, “Oh, God,” while women watching from windows shrieked. “For a moment I felt I would die and would never see my family again,” the witness said. “I heard the bullets and smelt the tear gas. It was hard to live this moment as I watched three young people bleeding on the ground.”
The images of bloodied protesters being dragged away by their friends have caused even more international concern than similar scenes from other countries across the Middle East during the Arab spring.
Syria is pivotal to many of the issues causing instability in the Middle East. A staunch ally of Iran, it backs the militant groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza strip. Chaos in Syria, which borders Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, means trouble for the region. Last week the United States expressed concern over reports that Syria was moving troops to the border with Turkey, where more than 12,000 people have crossed to seek sanctuary from the violence.
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said that unless Syrian forces immediately ended their attacks, “then we’re going to see an escalation of conflict in the area”.
As the funerals of Kiswa’s 14 dead got under way yesterday, the mood in the town remained defiant. Demonstrators rejected any suggestion that armed jihadists had provoked the security forces in protests there or anywhere in Syria.
“The regime keeps saying we are armed groups, Salafi groups or armed criminals,” said a 25-year-old university student. “I ask the world to come and see if we raise a knife or a stick in our demonstrations.”
Some opposition figures have reason to disagree. Mohammed Saiid Hamadah, 44, is a journalist who has been imprisoned for criticising the Assad government. Hamadah and his wife, Um Joud, were among the first protesters in Damascus. Her father has spent 31 years in jail for opposing the regime of the president’s father, Hafez al-Assad, who ruled from 1971 to 2000.
Last month Hamadah visited Ma’arrat al-Nu’man, his home town, to check on its protest movement and found it had no leaders. He formed a group of intellectuals in Damascus to direct the protests and ensure they did not come under the influence of insurgents.
On June 10, the day of the attack on Ma’arrat’s barracks, Hamadah saw several large cars on the main road nearby. Each contained at least six men with guns, some speaking into walkie-talkies, he said.
After the trouble had died down, Hamadah was driving near the town at midnight when a blinding flashlight forced him to stop.
Armed men surrounded the vehicle and demanded identification, and then blindfolded him, tied his arms behind his back and his feet together and dumped him in a car boot. After a 20-minute journey, he was pushed into a building with steep stairs and was informed that he was in the hands of “Syria’s revolutionary interrogation section”.
Hamadah said he was hit on the back with electric cables and cursed as a “dog” for spreading his message about peaceful protest. “You tell people not to fight the army when they come,” his interrogator said. “This is not Syria’s army, this is Bashar’s army, and we intend to burn and kill it with fire and iron.”
Hamadah endured further torture. Burning plastic was dripped over his back, thighs and ankles. He was electrocuted through his toes.
Among the contacts in his mobile phone, his assailants found the name George. This led to another beating for mixing with “a Christian infidel, a crusader and a pig”.
Hamadah was warned that if he turned out to be from the Alawite minority that forms Syria’s elite, his baby daughter would be cut to pieces in front of him. Finally, he was hung upside down while electrodes were applied to his back and buttocks.
“The pain was excruciating and I would scream and lose consciousness, then be woken with cold water splashed on me. They forced my eyes open and threw salt in them.”
After seven hours Hamadah was driven back to his vehicle. This weekend he vowed to continue working for peaceful protest despite the threats of his captors, who he insists were jihadists. “I reject such an alternative for my future and the future of my children,” he said.
The threat of an upsurge in Islamic militancy is worrying those who have seen insurgents or watched videos purporting to show them beheading security force members and mutilating their bodies.
Some Syrian analysts believe the hatred of Sunni extremists for Alawites and Christians may ultimately fracture the country along religious lines, raising the spectre of a civil war like the one that devastated its southern neighbour, Lebanon.
What is certain is that most demonstrators are ordinary people with no time for religious extremists, and that much innocent blood has been needlessly shed.
On the bloodiest day of the uprising, three weeks ago, more than 50 people were killed by government forces in the city of Hama — the scene of a massacre of 10,000 to 20,000 rebellious members of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1982, when Assad’s father was president.
According to officials, the latest shootings happened after the security forces became sandwiched between two groups of protesters.
One official claimed that after one protester shot into the air, the security forces were ordered to hold their fire. But when further shots followed, allegedly directed at them, they fired into the crowd.
Two days later the officer responsible was arrested with 19 other members of the security forces. They remain in prison, and Assad is said to be determined they will face trial.
Last Monday, in only his third address since the trouble began on March 15, the president promised reform, a national dialogue, changes to the constitution and a clampdown on corrupt officials.
Nearly 1m supporters were said to have demonstrated in favour of his speech, while the protest movement rejected it outright. Others speak of wanting to change the system but not necessarily the leader.
Unlike Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, Syria has not seen the defections of senior members of its military, political or diplomatic establishments. Syrian analysts see no immediate threat to the regime, but failure to enact reform could encourage armed elements, including jihadists, to exploit frustration. The government’s more moderate opponents insist they would not allow security to break down in this way.
“If these reforms are not translated as promised within the next few months, we will bring the regime down,” said one man at a meeting of tribal leaders last week. The others nodded in agreement.
Islamists battle Syrian regime 26 June 2011
Islamists battle Syrian regime
Attacks by extremists on government forces in Syria has raised fears of a jihad against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad
Hala Jaber in Damascus Published: 26 June 2011
Syrian protesters hurl stones in a Damascus suburb (Syrian News Agency Sana)

Syria caught in crossfire of extremists

A series of attacks by extremists on security forces in Syria has triggered fears of an Islamist insurgency against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Heavily armed gunmen have opened fire in at least four towns in retaliation for the killing of peaceful protesters by Assad’s forces.
In one attack, four policemen died in the northwestern town of Ma’arrat al-Numan when militants with machineguns and rocketpropelled grenade launchers stormed a barracks.
The development comes after three months of a violent crackdown on demonstrators demanding greater freedoms and democracy. Nearly 1,400 people have died.
Opposition figures emphasise that most protesters are unarmed and have no allegiance to Islamist groups. But last week I saw bearded militants among protesters taunting soldiers in Ma’arrat.
Extremist clerics in Saudi Arabia have called for a jihad against the Syrian regime, and there are growing signs of weapons being smuggled into the country from Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey.

Syria uprising is now a battle to the death
Rockets rain down on towns that residents can neither defend nor leave, as Bashar al-Assad's forces besiege Free Syria Army

Martin Chulov near Homs · guardian.co.uk
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The interior of a house damaged by Syrian army shelling in the Sunni Muslim district of Baba Amr in Homs. Photograph: Reuters The interior of a house damaged by Syrian army shelling in the Sunni Muslim district of Baba Amr in Homs. Photograph: Reuters

In the heartland of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad a grinding war of attrition has now become an unforgiving battle to the death.

The Free Syria Army has held this territory of orchards and farmland since September, during which time loyalist forces have never been closer, nor seemed more menacing. As rockets regularly thundered on Thursday into towns that residents could neither defend nor leave, the three months of freedom they had savoured now seemed illusory.

There is little left in the town in which the Guardian was based on Thursday, or in the equally deprived and forsaken villages that dot the hinterland near Homs. Electricity here was switched off two months ago, the phone lines were downed last week. And on Wednesday, contact by road was cut with Homs, Syria's besieged third city, whose fate is seen as a dire warning of what lies ahead for the rest of the area.

Homs was on Thursday a very difficult place from which to flee. Only three seriously wounded residents are known to have made it out of the devastated opposition held sectors of the city into the relative safety of nearby Lebanon. Two of the wounded are unlikely to survive.

The rest face a desperate plight, barricaded in concrete homes that are crumbling in the face of the relentless onslaught now spreading to nearby farmland and villages. Some residents of this town say a small number of families from the heaviest hit areas of Homs, Baba Amr and al-Khalidiyeh, have managed to hole up in other areas of the city. However they can no longer speak to those left behind, who they now fear face a gruesome fate.

"We'll be next," said a doctor at a makeshift medical centre in the heart of this town. The doctors and nurses on duty here had fled the state hospital, one kilometre away, and set up a triage centre and a surgical ward in a derelict house. All day they were tending to dead and seriously wounded men, many of them members of the badly outgunned rebel army.

The patterned plastic sheets the medics had placed on the floor were slick with blood and iodine as more and more war wounded were brought in by their colleagues.

One hulking man in military fatigue pants was carried in on a stretcher with a gaping wound in his navel. "He's a first lieutentant," said one of the clinic's nurses, Abdul Karem, who like everyone else in this overwrought hub, doubles as a revolutionary. The seriously wounded officer was taken to the improvised operating room, as nurses outside prepped themselves for surgery by washing their hands with kerosene and water.

Among those tending to him was an old French surgeon, a veteran of conflict zones dating back to the Vietnam war, who arrived in Syria on Thursday with a suitcase of medical supplies and a readiness to stay as long as he's needed.

The carnage of the rest of the day suggests he may be here awhile. Minutes after the lieutenant's treatment began, a truck screamed to a stop outside and Free Syria Army soldiers bellowed for a stretcher. The triage centre rapidly emptied, as the medics inside grabbed their flip flops – one also reached for his Kalashnikov – and hurried into the courtyard outside. They stopped next to the truck and looked inside and visibly stopped in their tracks. "Finished," one man said. "Take him to the graveyard." The dead man was a major, the leader of the Free Syria Army in this town, and one of many wounded by an attack on an outpost not far from here.

As night fell, the numbers of dead and wounded appeared to increase. Every massive boom in the near distance seemed to herald the arrival of more patients.

"There coming from the hospital that we ran away from," said one medic, Dr Qassem. "It's only a kilometre away."

Regime snipers were also wreaking havoc from a nearby intersection on the road to Homs. Opposition forces, meanwhile for the most part watched from hideouts in apricot and peach orchards and farm-houses dotted along muddy brown laneways.

More wounded were brought in, a rebel shot in the hand, another two with bullets in their back. The television showing footage of the carnage in Homs had by now been switched off as the triage room swarmed with walking wounded, frantic medics and others taking refuge from the shelling.

The first lieutenant inside was fading fast. As other surgeons piled the patient's intestines onto his stomach, Dr Qassem, who was holding a lamp over the operation said: "They are coming for us now. It is going to be very bad."

And then he added an optimistic note to a day that had so far offered nothing but misery. "The vote at the UN could be good for us in the future," he said. "All our students and doctors study in Russia and the standards are not good. "All our factories have Chinese equipment and it's the same thing. If we win, things will change, God willing."

He switched back to the dying patient as attention switched to the newest casualty, a man shot in the wrist, his blood streaming over shoes piled at the room entrance.

"There have been more than 100 people killed today," said one young university medical student as he held an x-ray machine over a patient lying prostrate on the floor. "We all have family in Homs and we are very worried about the situation there. It is much worse than here.

"Every day it has been getting worse here and there. No one is coming for us and we accept our fate."

Early in the day, a re-supply – of sorts – did arrive for the rebels; three sacks of rockets and rusting mortar tubes. They too were brought into the medical clinic and stored out of sight. It was hardly an arsenal to embolden a clearly struggling rebel army, but it was a sign that some weapons are finding their way across the porous Turkish and Lebanese borders.

"These are old," said one young fighter. "But they will do. We are grateful for everything that we get."

Syria uprising is now a battle to the death