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DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis March 26, 2011, 1:45 PM (GMT+02:00)

His minority Allawites challenged by Sunni majority

The protest against Bashar Assad’s regime is swelling. From its first epicenter in the southern town of Deraa it spread Friday, March 25, to new cities, Homs, Aleppo, Latakia and parts of Damascus. It has quickly attained the scale unforeseen by the regime of

a popular uprising by the majority Sunni population (74 percent) against Allawite-dominated (15 percent) rule.

Army troops gunned the protesters down in what witnesses described as a massacre of scores and hundreds injured, raising calls from the opposition for international intervention.

The number of dead and injured cannot be reliably determined. debkafile’s intelligence sources report that special Syrian security clean-up units removed the bodies as they fell.

The authorities were caught unawares by the upsurge of street rallies that followed preachers’ sermons in hundreds of Sunni mosques calling on their congregations to go out and drive the Assads and the minority Allawite sect from power. The Syrian secret service missed the Muslim Brotherhood’s hand in organizing this mass street eruption. The strongest rallying cry came from the influential radical Egyptian television preacher Yussuf Qaradawi who called on Syria’s Sunni community to stand up for its rights as a majority.

Because the army’s 4th Division commanded by Bashar’s brother Maher Assad, the only unit to be manned by Allawites, is tied down in suppressing riots in the southern town of Deraa and most of the troops in all other units are Sunnis, Assad is short of trusted contingents to defend his regime. He figured that fresh outbreaks in Deraa would inflame the rest of the country and therefore kept the 4th Division in place.
But the outbreaks spread to other key cities anyway under slogans calling for solidarity with the martyrs of Deraa and threatening his power centers in Damascus and beyond.

Neither the conciliatory measures announced on Thursday nor the security crackdown against protesters has succeeded in stifling dissent and defusing the crisis.

Defiancecontinues in Deraa itself even after demonstrators were gunned down with live bullets. The al-Omari mosque, which was stormed by security forces on Tuesday night, was reported to be back in the hands of protesters.The mosque has been the focal point of dissent in Deraa.

The tipping point for the 11-year old Assad regime (which followed the one his father established after a military coup) is therefore not far off unless he makes the right decision or receives outside help.

He can either opt for the Qaddafi option, for instance, or follow the example of the King of Bahrain.

From the outset of the Libya revolt in February, Muammar Qaddafi opted for abandoning the east and focusing his military effort on preserving his centers of power in Tripoli and its outlying towns. After stabilizing his rule, he planned to set out and wrest the rest of the country from the rebels opposing his regime.

So far, his gamble has succeeded. The rebels backed by international forces have not unseated him.

Will Assad decide after Friday that he has enough loyal military strength to buttress his rule over all of Syria, or choose to pull in his horns and concentrate on saving Damascus?

Since much of his army is unreliable, the Syrian ruler may have to opt for the Bahrain remedy – namely, calling for outside help as did King Hamid al Khalifa who asked Riyadh for Saudi forces to prop up his throne against a Shiite-led uprising.

The allies who come to mind in the case of Assad are Iran, the Lebanese Hizballah, pro-Iranian Palestinian groups with bases in Damascus – Hamas, Jihad Islami and Ahmad Jibril’s Popular Palestinian Front-General Command.

It would take Tehran no more than a few hours to fly Revolutionary Guards units into Damascus. An Iranian command structure is already positioned at Syrian armed forces headquarters in Damascus. Also available to Tehran is an Iraqi Shiite militia, the Mehdi Army of the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, a good personal friend both of Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Assad.
Saturday, there was widespread speculation that Tehran would do its utmost to rescue the Syrian ruler who only recently opened the port of Latakia for an Iranian base.

Giving Hizballah a foothold in Syria is more complicated given the unstated competition between him and the Syrian ruler and the latter’s reservations about the former’s rising military strength and effective secret and terrorist capabilities. Assad would undoubtedly take into account that once Hizballah gained a foothold in Syria, it would be hard to dislodge.

Putting the fate of the Assad regime in the hands of radical Palestinian organizations would be equally imprudent and, worse, a humiliation.

It would give Palestinians their second open door to an Arab uprising, the first of which gave Hamas undreamed of leverage in Egypt.

Assad may even stage an attack on Israel as a desperate diversionary tactic from his trouble

Assad’s looming downfall?.

In southern Syria, the uprising against President Bashar Assad is continuing. On Wednesday, six people, including a doctor from a prominent local family, were killed when the security forces entered the Omari mosque in Daraa. Later in the day, security forces fired live ammunition at people protesting these killings, leading to a number of additional deaths. Thursday’s death toll was far higher. Accurate figures for the number now killed in Daraa are impossible to obtain.

Following the killings in the mosque, the Assad regime’s official media began to spread a somewhat surreal version of events. The official Sana news agency quoted an “official source” as saying an “armed gang” had attacked a medical team in an ambulance near the mosque. The armed gang, according to the source, was also responsible for the stockpiling of weaponry in the Omari mosque.

Sana noted the determination of the security forces to continue their pursuit of “the armed gangs which terrify civilians, and execute killings.” The report went on to note that “more than 1 million SMS” messages had been sent out – “mostly from Israel” – which were “inciting” Syrian citizens to use the mosques as launch pads for riots. Sana’s official source also noted that SMS messages had been sent to Syrian citizens abroad threatening to kill them if they reported the crimes of the armed gangs. So far, so bizarre.

THE CLUMSY propaganda of the regime’s mouthpieces at first glance might seem to have something pathetic about it. The “Syria Revolution 2011” page is on Facebook, updating every few minutes with fluent, impassioned messages.

News and rumors of events in Banias, Aleppo, Deraa and its surrounding villages spread across the globe at the touch of a button. The most that the Assad regime can manage by way of information warfare, meanwhile, is this absurd, clunky, Ceausescu-style finger pointing.

Talking to Syrian oppositionists, the sense that the Assad regime is running out of options is indeed very strong. Some say the prospect of a “Hama rules” style bloodbath is now simply a bogeyman, a bluff on the part of a regime running out of steam. One veteran member of Syrian’s exiled opposition noted that the people of Syria had lost their fear. This meant the fall of the Assad regime could now only be a matter of time, whatever measures it took.

Despite the undoubted aesthetic inferiority of the Assad regime’s information campaigns, however, it would be a major mistake to start dusting off the eulogies for the Alawite/Ba’athist family dictatorship in Damascus just yet.

This may be the first time Bashar Assad has faced concerted internal opposition, but it is not the first time his regime has looked on the ropes. In 2004, when the Americans entered Baghdad, there were many who predicted the demise of the Assad family regime.

Syria was forced into a humiliating withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005.

What followed was a deft campaign by Syria of ruthless political violence, mobilization of proxies, intimidation and burgeoning alliance with Iran which has led, five years later, to a resurgence by the regime, riding high for the last two years. Assad did not accept what looked like the verdict of history in 2004/5. There is no reason to suppose he will meekly do so now.

The “toolbox” the Syrian regime utilized in the 2005-8 period served it well. It still possesses it. This same box of tricks is the common property of the various members of the Iran-led Muqawama (resistance) bloc in the region, which includes the Hamas enclave in Gaza, Hezbollah’s Lebanon and Iran itself.

Recent events suggest that this set of options is currently being utilized by various members of this bloc to telling effect. Its members believe these methods will not only succeed in insulating them from any internal fallout from the Arab spring, but will also enable them to press forward, making gains from enemies weakened by the internal dissent.

The Iranian hyperactivity of recent weeks fits this pattern – the weapons ships, the convoys in Sudan, the arms-laden planes intercepted on their way to Syria.

Hamas, too, appears to want to change the subject of the conversation in Gaza by provoking a new fight with Israel.

This is the camp of which Assad is a part. These are its methods.

There has even been speculation on Arabic websites regarding a possible Syrian angle to the bombing in Jerusalem. Islamic Jihad and the smaller secular terror groups are domiciled in Damascus, after all. And Syria, too, has an interest right now in changing the subject of regional focus.

Impossible to know, of course. But not impossible.

SEEN FROM this point of view, the events and messages of the week in Syria no longer look quite so anachronistic. The killings in the Omari mosque are serving to slowly spread an atmosphere of tension and fear across the town.

Sana’s absurd explanations only add to the sense of strangeness and slightly unhinged ambiguity which is the Syrian regime’s natural element.

The “strategy of tension” brought the Assad regime back from the doldrums after 2005. Not all at once, but over time. Proxies, provocations, the artful application of sudden violence, ambiguity, military activity disguised as politics, politics disguised as military activity. This is what the Syrian regime does. This is what the regional alliance of which it is a part does. And is doing. And is gaining from. The notion that there is only Hama-style massacres or the victory of Facebook revolution is simplistic.

There is another set of rules by which Syria, Hamas, Iran and their friends operate. Call them Muqawama rules.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Gloria Center, IDC Herzliya. His book The Transforming Fire: The Rise of the Israel- Islamist Conflict was published in 2010.

Security and Defense: When deterrence erodes.

In March 2009, two months after Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip ended, Maj.- Gen. Tal Russo, head of the IDF Operations Directorate, claimed that Israel had defeated Palestinian terrorism. For a while.

“We are in a state of victory today against Palestinian terrorism, although this type of victory is always temporary,” Russo said according to the book Let the IDF Win, published in 2010, on the second intifada. “This does not mean that the current situation will last for another two years, since such victories need to be achieved all the time.”

It is two years later and Russo was right. The only change is that he is no longer head of the Operations Directorate. Today, he is head of Southern Command, in charge of maintaining the temporary victory against terrorism, in order to prevent, for as long as possible, another largescale operation in the Gaza Strip.

Russo stands out among his colleagues on the General Staff. He is the only bachelor and the only general in IDF history to become an officer without going to Bahad 1, Officer’s Training School.

Russo grew up in Kibbutz Haluta in the North and remembers as a teenager during the Yom Kippur War watching four Syrian MiGs get shot down by the air force. In 1978, he was drafted and served in the special forces. He left the army, traveled around South America and the US for about two years working as a mover and a truck driver and then returned to the IDF, this time for good.

Russo is a no-nonsense general who tends to analyze situations in what appear to be black-and-white terms. During his years as head of the Operations Directorate, he was a lone, ignored voice within the top IDF command who believed that more needed to be done to stop Hezbollah’s military buildup, possibly to the point of taking preemptive action.

SINCE THE escalation in the Gaza Strip, Russo has used the term “cannon talk” to describe the type of dialogue Israel has with Hamas and to explain the Ping-Pong type of attacks between terror groups in the Strip and the IDF.

This recent round of hostilities has had several triggers which lead Hamas to claim that Israel is actually the one escalating the situation. First, were the reports that Israel had abducted Gaza engineer and alleged Hamas member Dirar Abu Sisi from Ukraine and that he is in Israel undergoing interrogations.

Next, was Israel’s decision last Wednesday – in a rare move – to strike a manned Hamas position in the middle of the day in retaliation for an earlier rocket strike. Two Hamas operatives were killed.

While Israel has struck at Hamas targets in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead, it has rarely done so against manned positions. The idea was to send a message to Hamas that Israel viewed it responsible even though its operatives were not the ones firing the rockets, but not to kill its men so it would not have a pretext to join the fighting.

Yet that is exactly what the Wednesday strike did and on Saturday the Hamas response came swiftly with a downpour of 50 mortar shells – about a quarter of the entire amount fired last year – on bases and towns along the Gaza border.

The IDF responded to the attack by bombing additional targets in Gaza, including a tunnel being dug under the border, killing several more operatives.

From this point, the path was paved to an all-out confrontation, with daily rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. Wednesday’s bombing in Jerusalem – while not yet clear if directly connected to Gaza – was a demonstration this war is being fought on multiple fronts simultaneously.

The situation, though, is far more complex.

While Hamas did fire mortar shells on Saturday, it has refrained from firing rockets deep into the country. The Katyusha rockets that slammed into Beersheba, Ashdod and Ashkelon this week were fired by Islamic Jihad.

While to some, there might not be a difference between mortar attacks near the border and Katyusha attacks on cities, Hamas has reason to make a distinction.

Today it is a three-headed monster, with its leadership split between the political echelon in the Gaza Strip led by Ismail Haniyeh, the diplomatic echelon in Damascus led by Khaled Mashaal and the military forces in the Gaza Strip led by Ahmed Jabari.

Hamas fighters are frustrated at not being able to fight for two years, during which they have obtained new weaponry – longrange rockets, antiaircraft missiles and antitank weapons. They are not allowed to use them.

By allowing mortar fire, Jabari was letting his fighters vent their frustration. By preventing them from firing long-range missiles, he is sending a message that he does not yet want a full-fledged confrontation.

WHILE THE investigation into the bus bombing in Jerusalem continues, the IDF is already reviewing possible mistakes that might have led to the attack. The quiet in the West Bank in recent years has led to the lifting of close to 30 manned checkpoints, the withdrawal of some IDF forces from the territories and a drop in the number of arrest operations in Palestinian towns and cities.

These are all calculated risks, taken in an effort to bolster the Palestinian Authority and in recognition of its fight against Hamas and terrorism.

But, at the same time, fewer operations mean less intelligence. Without having boots on the ground inside the cities, the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) are going to have difficulty gathering information.

IDF ASSESSMENTS are that it is unlikely Hamas was directly involved in the Jerusalem attack. It was more likely carried out by Islamic Jihad, possibly with the assistance of Hamas infrastructure in places like Hebron, where it is known to have a significant presence. Another possibility is that the attack was carried out by east Jerusalem residents who could or could not be connected to a more established terror group.

According to a senior officer in the Southern Command, Hamas is not yet ready for another operation like Cast Lead and is still working on improving its offensive capabilities and command-and-control systems, a lesson from 2009 when its fighters fled in the absence of clear instructions and leadership.

Israel’s claim that Hamas is responsible for everything that happens in the Gaza Strip makes for good rhetoric but is not necessarily the case.

While Hamas has been using the time since Cast Lead to rehabilitate its capabilities, Islamic Jihad has used the time to gain independence and to hoard advanced weaponry that enables it to challenge Hamas’s authority.

If during Cast Lead, Islamic Jihad fought mostly under Hamas command, in a future conflict it will have its own units and field commanders. It is already known to have an arsenal of long-range Grad-model Katyusha rockets and it also might have some advanced antitank missiles.

The weaponry that was captured aboard the Victoria by the navy last week was destined for terrorist groups in Gaza, possibly Hamas and possibly Islamic Jihad.

There is no question that Israel’s deterrence, which has effectively staved off conflict since Cast Lead, is eroding. The challenge will be for the IDF to restore it and stave off a larger-scale conflict – if that is what the government wants.

Southern Command: ‘There is anarchy in Gaza and Hamas’.

Head of Southern Command Tal Russo said on Saturday that “there is anarchy in Gaza and Hamas.”

Russo toured the house in the Negev that was hit Friday night by a Kassam rocket and stated that “it is difficult now for Hamas to turn the wheel back.”

Late Friday night a Kassam rocket exploded in Eshkol Regional Council area, causing damage to one house but no injuries.

A local official said authorities were searching for a second rocket that had fallen in an open area.

On Thursday, a rocket fired from Gaza exploded north of Ashdod. While there were no injuries, Magen David Adom crew treated a number of people for shock.

Earlier Friday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak confirmed that he authorized the deployment of the Iron Dome missile defense system.

Speaking during a tour of the Gaza region, Barak said: “I authorized the IDF in the coming days to authorize the first operational deployment of Iron Dome batteries, here in the southern region.”

The test deployment, he said, “will continue for several weeks and the layout will vary with operational needs.”

The defense minister praised Iron Dome’s technology, calling it an “extraordinary development” by the defense industry. He cautioned, however, that it does not provide a 100 percent solution to the rocket threat.

The Iron Dome system will be part of the IDF’s solution to the barrage of rockets fired into southern Israel from Gaza in the last week, a statement from the IDF spokesperson said.

Iron Dome is designed to defend against rockets at a range of 4-70 km and each battery consists of a multi-mission radar manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries and three launchers, each equipped with 20 interceptors named Tamir.

The defense minister also praised the IDF’s operations in the southern region. “The IDF is doing a very good job – very professional and creative, with [good] results, along the border and in the Gaza Strip itself,” he said.

“Terror organizations in the Strip took a hard hit during the last 10 days,” Barak said, adding that the groups had lost fighters during that period.

He noted that “some 100 rockets and mortars  that reached communities further [from the Strip] than usual” were hit, including Beersheba, Ashdod, Sderot, Ashkelon, and the Gaza border-region communities. “We have no intention to allow terrorist organizations to renew the situation and breaking the status quo,” he said. The defense minister added, “We will act as it is needed to return the operations back to the [border] line itself.”

“I don’t recommend to Hamas or Islamic Jihad to attempt and return us to the situation when [rockets] were fired at areas deep into the country and at communities in the border region.”

Thousands of Syrian mourners burn Baath party buildings.

DAMASCUS – Thousands of mourners at a funeral for a Syrian killed in anti-government protests burned a ruling Baath party building and a police station on Saturday as authorities freed 260 prisoners in a bid to placate reformists.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was facing the deepest crisis of his 11 years in power after security forces fired on protesters on Friday, adding to a death toll that rights groups have said now numbers in the dozens.

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Mosques across Deraa announced the names of “martyrs” whose funerals would be held in the southern city and on Saturday hundreds were gathering in the main square chanting for freedom.

Three bare-chested young men climbed onto the rubble of a statue of late President Hafez al-Assad, which protesters pulled down on Friday in a scene that recalled the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Iraq in 2003 by US troops.

A witness said they had cardboard signs reading “the people want the downfall of the regime”, a refrain heard in uprisings across the Arab world from Tunisia to Egypt to Yemen.

In nearby Tafas, mourners in the funeral procession of Kamal Baradan, who was killed on Friday in Deraa, set fire to the Baath party building and the police station, residents said.

A human rights lawyer said on Saturday that 260 prisoners, mostly Islamists, had been released after completing at least three-quarters of their sentences.

Dozens of people have been killed over the past week around the southern city of Deraa, medical officials said. There were reports of more than 20 new deaths on Friday.

But the unrest came to a head after police detained more than a dozen schoolchildren for writing graffiti inspired by slogans used by other pro-democracy demonstrators abroad.

Amnesty International put the death toll in and around Deraa in the past week at 55 at least. Shops reopened in Deraa on Saturday, and security forces were not in evidence.

Amnesty on Syria: 55 protesters believed killed in Deraa.

Human rights group Amnesty International said on Friday at least 55 people are believed to have been killed since protests erupted in and around the southern Syrian city of Deraa a week ago.

“Security forces again opened fire on protesters in al-Sanamayn and carried out arrests in Damascus, according to reports on Friday, a day after the authorities pledged to investigate the violence,” Amnesty said in a statement.

Protests spread across Syria on Friday, challenging the rule of the Assad family after their forces killed dozens of demonstrators in the south.

In the southern city of Deraa, which has been in revolt for a week, gunfire and tear gas scattered a crowd of thousands after people lit a fire under a statue of late president Hafez al-Assad, whose son Bashar has ruled since his death in 2000.

Al Jazeera aired comments by a man who said security forces had killed 20 people on Friday in the nearby town of Sanamein.

In the Mouadamieh district of Damascus, security forces killed three people after a crowd confronted a procession of cars driven by supporters of President Bashsar al-Assad, residents said.

Meanwhile, the Syrian information minister said the situation in the country is calm, al-Arabiya television reported.

“The situation is completely calm in all parts of the country, the television station quoted Information Minister Muhsin Bilal as saying.

It was not clear when he was speaking.

The United States also weighed in on the situation in Syria, calling on the Syrian government to stop violence against demonstrators and the arrests of human rights activists, White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Friday.

“We strongly condemn the Syrian government’s attempts to repress and intimidate demonstrators,” he told reporters.

In Hama, in the center of the country, where the elder Assad put down an Islamist revolt in 1982 at a cost of many thousands of lives, residents said people streamed through the streets after weekly prayers chanting “Freedom is ringing out!” — a slogan heard in uprisings sweeping the rest of the Arab world.

The same chant had earlier marked funeral processions in Deraa for some of the at least 37 people killed on Wednesday, when security agents attacked pro-democracy groups at a mosque. In all, 44 deaths have been reported in the past week in Deraa.

Security men, on alert across the country during weekly prayers at mosques, quickly stifled a small demonstration in the capital Damascus. They hauled away dozens among a crowd of some 200 who chanted their support for people of Deraa.

In Tel, near Damascus, about 1,000 people rallied and chanted slogans calling relatives of Assad “thieves”.

Deraa violence

In Deraa itself, a bastion of the Sunni majority which resents the power and wealth amassed by the Alawite elite around Assad, a Reuters correspondent saw thousands rally unchallenged until the sound of heavy gunfire sent them running for cover.

Unrest in Deraa came to a head this week after police detained more than a dozen schoolchildren for writing graffiti against the government. In Damascus, a couple of protests by a few dozen people shouting slogans were broken up last week.

Among the targets of the crowd’s anger on Friday was Maher al-Assad, a brother of the president and head of the Republican Guard, a special security force, and Rami Makhlouf, a cousin who runs big businesses and is accused by Washington of corruption.

Allied with Shi’ite, non-Arab Iran against the Western powers and neighboring Israel, Assad’s Syria sits at the heart of a complex web of conflict in the Middle East.

His anti-Israel stance has protected him against some of the criticism aimed, for example, at Egypt’s deposed leader Hosni Mubarak, who defended a peace treaty with the Jewish state.

Demonstrators in Deraa turned that hostility to Israel against the government on Friday, highlighting the use of force against them and the failure of the Assads to take back the Golan Heights.

“Maher, you coward!” they chanted. “Send your troops to liberate the Golan!”

In Deraa, before the Friday midday prayers which are the high point of social interaction in much of the Arab world, a procession of cars coursed through the streets honking horns and raising pictures of the president. There were also pro-Assad congregations in other parts of the city.

Minarets in Deraa echoed throughout the morning with the calls of imams to the faithful to attend funerals of some of the civilians killed, most of them when security forces fired on demonstrators in the mainly Sunni Muslim city on Wednesday.

A Facebook page called Syrian Revolution called on people to gather on the “Friday of Dignity” after prayers, “in all mosques, in all provinces, in the biggest squares”.

Bashar al-Assad promised on Thursday to look into granting Syrians greater freedoms in an attempt to defuse the outbreak of popular demands for political freedoms and an end to corruption.

He also pledged to look at ending an emergency law in place since 1963 and made an offer of large public pay rises.

Syrian security forces pulled out on Thursday from the mosque where several people were killed. People later converged on the mosque to celebrate its “liberation”, setting off fireworks and honking car horns.