WarSclerotic

Too soft on Syria? No, says the United States. Assad’s forces ready for more protests.

Al Arabiya

Friday, 06 May 2011

Syrian protesters, with the Syrian flag painted on their faces, take part in a protest calling for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to step down. (File Photo)

The Obama administration has defended itself against charges in Congress it has been too soft with the Syrian government over its deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

Senior State Department official Michael Posner dismissed a lawmaker’s suggestion that Washington take a tougher stand by withdrawing its ambassador from Damascus, saying the envoy acted as a key defender of Syrians’ rights, according to Agence-France Presse.

Before the current unrest hit Syria, Robert Ford arrived in Damascus in January 2011 as the first US ambassador to Syria in five years, the fruit of the Obama administration’s new policy to engage a longtime foe.

The unrest gripping Syria comes as President Obama pursues a new US policy of engaging with a former foe in a bid to promote a broader Arab-Israeli peace by driving a wedge between Syria and its ally Iran.

Analysts said early last month that the administration might be hedging its bets because it will still have to deal with the regime if President Bashar al-Assad and his powerful security forces end up crushing the unrest, according to AFP.

A Syrian opposition figure told Reuters: “The international response is intensifying. But President Assad will spill more Syrian blood before the world wakes up.”

Human rights campaigners say army, security forces and gunmen loyal to Mr. Assad had killed at least 560 civilians during seven weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations. Thousands of people had been arrested and beaten, including the elderly, women and children, they said.

The authorities blame “armed terrorist groups” for the violence, including the killings of civilians and members of the security forces.

President Assad, 46, said the protesters were part of a foreign conspiracy to cause sectarian strife in the country of 23 million people.

His father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, used similar language when he crushed Islamist and secular challenges to his rule in the 1980s, culminating in the violent suppression of an uprising in the city of Hama in which 30,000 people were killed.

The late president lost two wars to Israel, as defense minister in 1967 and as president in 1973. He maintained Syria’s position as a relevant player in Middle East geopolitics by building ties with Shiite Iran and backing Palestinian guerrilla forces.

The younger Mr. Assad has reinforced the anti-Israeli alliance with Tehran, despite disquiet on the part of Syria’s majority Sunni population.

Meanwhile, security forces have moved into central Syria and coastal areas ahead of Friday prayers in a test of will for demonstrators determined to maintain protests against the autocratic rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

In a show of force, tanks have taken up positions near the urban centers of Homs, Rastan and Banias in the last two days.

Last week, Mr. Assad ordered the army into Deraa, cradle of the uprising that began with demands for greater freedom and an end to corruption and is now pressing for his removal.

An ultra-loyalist division led by his brother Maher shelled and machine-gunned Deraa’s old quarter on Saturday. Syrian authorities said on Thursday the army had begun to leave Deraa, but residents described a city still under siege.

Troops were also deployed in the Damascus suburbs of Erbin, Saqba, and Douma and in the town of Tel, north of the capital.

A senior diplomat said demonstrations after Friday prayers, the only chance Syrians have to gather legally, were expected to increase “incrementally, not massively” in numbers compared with a week ago when tens of thousands took to the streets, according to Reuters.

Human rights campaigners say security forces killed at least 62 civilians, including 17 in Rastan alone, during those protests.

A doctor who planned to take part in Friday’s demonstrations said, “indiscriminate killings and inhumane arrests have generated total disgust among the average Syrian.”

“Soldiers with rifles no longer deter people. The propaganda that this regime is the only guarantor of stability no longer washes,” he said.

The United States, which had joined a European drive to improve ties with Mr. Assad under President Barack Obama’s administration, called the attack on Deraa “barbaric.”

Diplomats said the European Union could reach a preliminary agreement on imposing sanctions on Syria’s ruling hierarchy on Friday, but had yet to decide whether President Assad should be included.

Iran, which the United States accused of helping President Assad in his efforts to crush the demonstrators, said Syria’s rulers were aware of plots by the US and Israel to destabilize its only Arab ally.

(Abeer Tayel of Al Arabiya can be reached at: abeer.tayel@mbc.net)

With bin Laden dead, Iran is Israel’s greatest fear, PM says – CNN.com.

DEBKA.

With every passing day, Syrian President Bashar Assad loses ground.
Tuesday, May 3, he announced that the army had ended its operations in the southern province of Horon and its anti-regime protest center Daraa and would withdraw “very soon.” Two days later, on Thursday, Syrian generals stated that the withdrawal has begun.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources report that they lied; the forces responsible for shooting protesters at point blank range were still in place in Daraa.
The Syrian ruler shows no sign that he is conscious of the hate his brutal crackdown has generated across his country. When he spoke to visitors to Damascus from the northeastern provinces Tuesday, he remarked coolly that what was happening in Syria could take place in any country.
But the numbers of dead at the hands of his security forces have reached the point where his acts of repression will forever stain the annals of Syrian history: The uprising in Egypt, which has a population of 90 million – more than triple Syria’s 26 million inhabitants – left 860 dead. In the ten days since Assad sent the army into disaffected cities, 780 Syrian civilians have been killed and the number rises daily.
His remarks indicate either that he is a cold fish or that his close aides are too scared to tell him that with every passing day he loses the support of more and more army units. This week, no more than 20 percent of the soldiers deployed in the cities obeyed orders to shoot protesters; eighty percent were not even prepared to mount charges against the demonstrators as they did in the first week of the uprising.
Military units refuse to fire. Tanks won’t advance on demonstrators
Our military sources recall the conduct of the Egyptian army in January during the uprising against Hosni Mubarak. The brigade commanders there didn’t even bother to relay orders to the officers to have their men open fire and break up the demonstrations because those orders would have been flouted and resulted in a breakdown in discipline and order. (Incidentally, this is still the case in most Egyptian units.)
In Syria, only 34,000 troops are still obedient. They are members of the 4th Division under the command of Assad’s younger brother, Gen. Maher Assad, parts of the 14th Division and units of the Republican Guard. However, since the beginning of the week, the remaining 176,000 soldiers, the bulk of the Syrian army, are defying orders to fire live ammunition at protesters, whether to shoot them in the legs or even in the air to break up rallies.
The defiant units take up positions against the demonstrators when ordered to do so but then remain passive. Tank units, heavy armored carriers and armored infantry line up in columns. But when ordered to advance on demonstrators, they remain stationary.
Our military sources exclusively name the insubordinate units:
The 5th Syrian Division stationed in the Horan province and its capital Daraa near the border with Jordan –where the uprising against the Assad regime started and which became its epicenter.
Our sources reveal that the commander of this division, General Rifai Mohammed, has been missing for several days and no one knows where he is.
Assad’s big test Friday in Aleppo
The demonstrators, who have learned to identify the various armored units by their insignia and emblems,
know that the vehicles of this division will not attack them. So when they appear, they clamber atop the vehicles, wave flags and placards and shout ‘”The people and the army are one!'”
When Assad said the army has completed its mission in Daraa, he must have been covering up for his loss of control.
The 7th Syrian Division stationed in Homs is in the same situation: Its members are refusing to confront the demonstrators. On Wednesday, May 4, Assad deployed tanks and soldiers he believed would obey him around Al-Rastan, a town near Homs.
The 11th Syrian Division stationed near Aleppo, the second biggest city after Damascus with a population of nearly 3 million, is showing signs of insubordination among its officers and men. Friday is the main day of protest in Syria. This week it will be the big test for Aleppo and this division. If large-scale rallies take place there for the first time and if the 11th division refuses to break them up, a very large new nail will have been hammered into Bashar Assad’s coffin.
The Syrian ruler tried to restore his grip on Damascus, the capital, with mass arrests in its suburbs Thursday, May 5, after he was forced in mid-week to withdraw army units from the capital’s outlying districts and towns for refusing to fight the demonstrators. This means that control of the greater Damascus area and its population of about two million has passed to his opponents. In readiness for the regular outbreaks after Friday prayers, he has positioned 70 armored carriers and 30 tanks of the still-loyal Republican Guard on the main roads around Damascus. They stand ready to roll back into those urban areas and recapture them from the rebels.
Assad is deaf to advice from close advisers to halt crackdown
In the broad reaches of eastern Syria between Abu Kamal on the junction of the Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi borders up to Al-Azur in the north, not a single Syrian soldier is to be seen.
Assad just doesn’t have enough loyal forces to send there.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources report signs that support for the regime is also crumbling among the ruling Syrian Ba’ath party elite. Diplomats who are party members, high-ranking bureaucrats and senior party activists, once glad to present the ruler’s case to the Western and Arabic media, are suddenly too shy to speak on camera and don’t return media phone calls.
Some don’t conceal their disgust with the Assad regime’s harsh means of suppression.
The Syrian Ambassador to Jordan, Bahjat Sulaiman is one of the most prominent Assad loyalists turned critic.
Sulaiman is not just a run-of-the mill diplomat. For many years he headed Syria’s powerful intelligence services and was one of Bashar Assad’s father President Hafez Assad‘s closest associates.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who is very concerned that the Horan unrest will spill over into the Hashemite Kingdom, this week asked some prominent Jordanians to approach the Syrian ambassador and ask him to go to Damascus and tell Assad he must abandon his crackdown and stop the bloodbath engulfing Syria.
But the ambassador replied there was no point. Assad and the incumbent intelligence director, Gen. Ali Mamluk, are fixated on their mistaken course, Sulaiman explained, and refuse to heed any advice to the contrary.