WarSclerotic

DEBKA.

On Wednesday, June 15, 100,000 demonstrators marched in Damascus in support of President Bashar Assad‘s regime, carrying what was claimed to be the world’s longest national flag – 2.3 kilometers long. Security personnel were thin on the ground signaling the ruler’s trust in the loyalty of his capital’s inhabitants.
Later, Assad commented to his associates that this rally marked the breaking point of the opposition and proof of his success in vanquishing it, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources report. Now, he felt he could sit down and compose his victory speech to be delivered in the coming few days.
Our sources recall that this is not the first time Assad has worked on a victory speech. He was all set to deliver his first triumphant oration when, on June 3, the northern town of Hama exploded in a massive pro-Muslim demonstration, rekindling protest outbreaks in the north. That speech was never delivered.
This time, Assad’s confident assessment is supported by a consensus among the intelligence agencies monitoring Syrian unrest – Americans, Turks, Israelis and Syrian opposition leaders – with one difference: They see the turning-point in the contest between the regime and protesters as having occurred before the pro-Assad demonstration in Damascus, forged in the brutal military campaign launched June 12 in the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour by the Turkish border.
Assad’s success leaves Syrian economy broke
It was there, say our military sources, that the Syrian ruler’s decision to bet on the army for crushing the revolt rather than his security and intelligence services paid off. This victory also made the Syrian president’s younger brother, Gen. Maher Assad, who continually urged Bashar to entrust the uprising to the army, the most powerful man in Syria.
Western intelligence agencies have no reliable data on the cost to the Syrian exchequer of crushing the countrywide revolt, but it must be assumed to be very heavy: Some 70,000-100,000 security personnel are on a round-the-clock state of alert, dependent on logistical support for keeping thousands of vehicles and hundreds of tanks almost constantly on the move from one trouble spot to another.
The daily expenditure on the crackdown is roughly estimated at $2-3 million (compared with Muammar Qaddafi‘s outlay of close to $4 million per day for fighting NATO) and spiraling upward.
Wednesday, June 15, the Syrian army began deploying along the Syrian-Turkish border (870 kilometers) and the Syrian-Iraqi border (600 kilometers) to seal off the exits to the stream of fleeing Syrian refugees and smuggling operations from those two neighbors.
This deployment is extremely expensive. Calling for numerous mobile units spread over a large area and backed by air and helicopter reconnaissance planes, it could add another $1 million to Syra’s daily bill for suppressing disaffection.
West could have cut off his war funding by an oil embargo – but didn’t
Therefore, Western intelligence and financial experts familiar with the Syrian scene were highly skeptical when Minister of Finance Mohammed al-Jleilati insisted last week that the economy was “strong and healthy” – especially when he said Syria was self-reliant in food and had amassed foreign currency reserves worth $18 billion.
Some figures tell a different story: Syrian industrial output has declined by 50 percent in the 4 months of the uprising. The tourism industry, a key source of revenue, has collapsed, leaving hotels in Damascus and other tourist centers empty.
Had the US and Europe really wanted to hasten Bashar Assad’s fall and deny him access to war funds, they could have done so by an embargo on the export of Syrian oil, which accounts for $7-8 million in income per day. Their failure to enforce this step is further evidence that US President Barack Obama has not decided that it is time for Bashar Assad to go. US official condemnations of his savage crackdown of protest have never referred to the Syrian president by name. Administration spokesmen have also been instructed not to raise the question of an oil embargo for the time being.
Who would lend Assad money?
Even so, the assessment in the West is that by the fall, in September or October, just a few months from now, Damascus could run out of money for holding down the lingering revolt against his regime. He will then have two options – to print money and catapult Syria into hyperinflation or to borrow from outside lenders – except that no volunteer creditors are immediately in sight. It is hard to imagine the super-moneyed Saudis, who have sunk at least $2 billion in promoting the anti-Assad protest movement, suddenly turning round with an offer to lend him money or raise assistance from their Gulf allies.
Turkey might conceivably be willing to come to Assad’s aid, but only if the Syrian ruler is ready to bow to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan‘s demands for political reforms that would ultimately bring opposition parties into government in Damascus.
Even if the Syrian ruler has managed to reach a turning-point against the revolt, he will still need plenty of cash to rebuild and restore the security services which prop up his regime.

DEBKA.

Tayyip Erdogan

Voices were raised and war threats exchanged on both sides of the conversation Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan held with Syrian President Bashar Assad‘s special emissary, former Syrian Defense Minister Hassan Turkmani (until 2009), in Ankara Wednesday, June 15.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military and intelligence sources report exclusively that Erdogan first pinned his Syrian visitor down with four tough questions:
1. When will Assad halt military actions in the vicinity of the Turkish border? (See also next article on the turning point in the Syrian uprising.)
2. Can Damascus be trusted to stick to its commitment to Ankara to refrain from sending troops against rebels in the big Syrian Kurdish cities of Amoda, Ifrin, Azez, Tall Afar, Qamishli and Kubani in the Al Haksa region?
Erdogan’s main concern is with an old thorn in Turkey’ side, the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), which has set up an efficient organization in the Kurdish ethnic areas of northern Syria along the Turkish border. The Syrian branch of the PKK is a hard-line violent faction which could be tipped over into terrorist attacks in Turkey by Syrian military operations.
Neither Turkey nor Syria gives an inch
3. Will Assad agree to an immediate, peaceful and humanitarian solution for the more than 200,000 Syrian refugees now parked on both sides of the Syrian-Turkish border?
Erdogan made sure Turkmani understood that Turkey had no intention of being stuck again with masses of refugees as it was in 2003 when a million panicked Iraqis poured in after the US invasion of Iraq.
4. How does Assad propose to bring closure to his bloody contest with a disaffected opposition? By introducing democratic reforms? By allowing non-Baath parties to share power? By punishing the military and security chiefs who fired live ammunition and artillery shells against civilian demonstrators and killed thousands of Syrians?
Instead of answering the Turkish prime minister, the Syrian envoy fired back even tougher questions of his own:
– Why is Turkey massing military forces along its border with Syria?
– Will the Turkish army march into Syria as it did in northern Iraq (Kurdistan) in early 2003 to establish security buffer zones? Turkmani warned his Turkish host that Syria would hit back at any Turkish incursion by striking military targets deep inside Turkey.
– Is it true that US special forces preparing to strike inside Syria are poised at Turkish bases ready to go across – as Syrian intelligence reports?
– Why don’t Turkish authorities put a stop to the arms consignments flowing from Kurdish centers in southern Turkey to anti-government Kurdish rebels in northern Syria?
– And why doesn’t Turkey seal its border against the flight of Syrian refugees?
The conversation ended as grimly as it began: neither Erdogan nor Turkmani gave an inch.
Erdogan mulls giving Assad a last chance
Thursday morning, June 16, sources close to Erdogan’s office said that the Turkish Prime Minister is considering sending Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, or intelligence agency-MIT chief Hakan Fidan for a “final interview” with Bashar Assad. The suggestion was that this would be the Syrian ruler’s last chance to cooperate with Turkey’s demands. After that, he risked an Erdogan decision to opt for the course of military action.
However, the Turkish prime minister also needs to know if Assad has gone too far to step back – in which case he may refuse to receive a high-ranking Turkish envoy. He has already cut himself off from contact with the Americans and other Western parties, refusing to take phone calls from US administration officials or even Republican and Democratic Senators who for years made informal pilgrimages to Damascus to see him. UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon also called several times and was told Assad was out.
Last week, Erdogan talked on the phone with the Syrian ruler, but he is unlikely to risk calling him now and is hesitating about even sending a messenger to Damascus.
What he now has to decide, according to some sources in Ankara, is whether to send Turkish military units across the border into northern Syria in the full knowledge that a Turkish-Syria war might well ensue, the first armed conflict between two Muslim countries since the Arab Revolt erupted late last year.
A spate of strident threats to US and Turkey from Tehran
The acute escalation of Turkish-Syrian tension this week has more than one incendiary ingredient:
First, President Barack Obama and Erdogan are reported by military and intelligence circles in Middle East and Persian Gulf capitals to have reached an understanding: If Syria shoots missiles against targets deep inside Turkey, as Hassan Turkmani threatened, the US would provide Turkey with the shield of the AEGIS missile interceptors aboard American warships in the Middle East.
Neither Washington nor Ankara was willing to comment on this information.
Second, Tuesday night, following the harsh Erdogan-Turkman conversation in Ankara, the Lebanese Hizballah’s television station in Lebanon broadcast another Iranian threat, that went largely unnoticed in the West: Tehran would strike US bases in Turkey if that country attacked Syria or facilitated an operation against Syria from its territory.
Iran also warned the United Arab Emirates-UAE that any threat to the Syrian regime would spark a major regional conflagration. The broadcast bulletin ended with the allegation that Erdogan had accepted in principle the American plan which entailed a Turkish military incursion of Syria.
This broadcast threat came on the heels of warnings three senior Iranian officials issued this week against US military intervention in Syria.
US naval buildup in the region
An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said the Americans “are not allowed to launch a military intervention in any country of the region including Syria.” He said any military action in Damascus would be doomed to fail like the military action in Libya. He attacked the Zionist regime and blamed it for provoking “terrorist and sabotage operations” in Syria together with the United States.
Iranian Vice President Reza Rahimi then accused the United States of preparing and executing “the slaughter of Muslims” worldwide.
Iran’s ground forces commander Brig. Gen. Kioumars Heidari added: Any new military move by the US in the region will impose heavy costs on the country far greater than the costs it paid in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s military sources say that in addition to these threats, Hizballah moved some of its long-range surface-to-surface missile batteries from northern Lebanon to the center of the country.
Third, US military and naval forces in the Mediterranean, Adriatic, Aegean and the Black Sea were beefed up. A key piece of this deployment was the stationing of the amphibious attack ship USS Bataan, which carries helicopters and 2,000 marines, in the Mediterranean.
Also stationed in the region was the USS Whidbey Island, a dock landing ship carrying 600 more marines, together with the USS Monterey which is cruising in the Black Sea. This vessel which carries advanced AEGIS missile interceptor systems is in position for intercepting surface-to-surface missiles launched against Turkey from Iran, Syria and Lebanon.
An anti-American government for Lebanon
Fourth, Washington and Ankara were taken by surprise by the sudden breakthrough to the formation of a government in Lebanon headed by Najib Mikati, made possible overnight by Tehran, Damascus and Hizballah after long months of political stagnation in Beirut.
Lebanon finds itself ruled by the most anti-American government in its history. All the key portfolios – defense, interior, justice and treasury – have gone for the first time to Hizballah loyalists.
Tayyip Erdogan has taken this lightning maneuver as aimed at shutting the door in the face of Turkish influence in Beirut. On top of his failure to gain a foothold in any part of the Arab Revolt, the Turkish prime minister finds his country hemmed in by hostile regimes. He himself has been dropped by the alliance with Iran and Syria of which he was an important part in the last two years for the sin of lining up with Washington.
In Ankara, there are seasoned circles who believe the ambitious Turkish leader will not suffer these setbacks in silence and may strike out by ordering the Turkish army to march into Syria.

The threat of attack on Iran is needed to deter it – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Turkish FM calls for immediate end to Syri… JPost – Middle East.

  ANKARA – Turkey called for Syria to immediately halt a violent crackdown on protesters and pass democratic reforms, in a meeting on Thursday between Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and a top Syrian envoy.

The crackdown, which Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has condemned as “savagery,” has tested relations between the two countries, and Turkey has given sanctuary to some 8,900 Syrian refugees who have streamed across the border.

“We want a strong, stable, prosperous Syria. To achieve this we believe it necessary to implement the comprehensive reform process towards democratization guaranteed by [Syrian President] Bashar Assad,” Davutoglu told reporters after three hours of talks with Syria’s Hassan Turkmani on Thursday morning.

“In order to achieve this the violence must stop immediately. Yesterday I clearly saw the fear in the eyes of the people and I shared this,” he added, describing talks with Turkmani as friendly and Syria as Turkey’s “closest friend”.

Davutoglu on Wednesday talked to refugees at the border, including wounded men in camp hospitals at Yayladagi, across from the Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour, 20 km (12 miles) away. Refugees chanted “People want freedom!” and “Erdogan help us!”

On Thursday, Syrian tanks and armored vehicles reinforced positions around the northern town of Maarat al-Numaan.

Turkmani on Wednesday met Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has also called for rapid reform in Syria. Turkmani said then Syrian refugees staying in makeshift camps in Turkey’s border province of Hatay would soon be returning to Syria.

Assad asked to send an emissary when he called Erdogan on Tuesday to congratulate him on winning a third term in office.

On Thursday afternoon Davutoglu was to meet with Ankara’s ambassadors to the Middle East, United States and some EU countries to discuss Syria and policy across the region.

‘Turkey efforts to bring about peace in Syria will continue‘

Former advisor to Erdogan, Nabi Avci, said Turkey was dismayed by Syria’s response to its requests that it refrain from using violence against civilians and undertake reforms.

“Turkey’s efforts to bring about peaceful change in Syria will continue,” Avci said in Istanbul.

“The response of the Syrian regime so far has been, unfortunately, unhelpful and disappointing,” said Avci, elected a member of parliament for the ruling AK party in Sunday’s vote.

Asked about the possibility the Turkish military could enforce a buffer zone on Syrian territory to protect civilians, Avci said Turkey had no plan for military intervention in Syria.

But he said Turkey constantly reminded the Syrian government that intervention could become part of the international community’s agenda, and urged Damascus to make rational choices.

“We are trying our best for the last chance for the Syrian regime,” he said.

Preparations are being made for another influx of refugees far to the east along the 800-km (500-mile) border, with more tent camps able to shelter 10,000 people being set up near the Turkish city of Mardin and the town of Nusaybin.

High-ranking Syrian soldiers and police are among those seeking refuge at the camps in Turkey, state-run Anatolian news agency reported. Most recently a lieutenant colonel and four other soldiers arrived in Hatay on Wednesday evening after deserting.

There were also increasing numbers of Syrians arriving at the border but remaining on the Syrian side in makeshift tents.

Anatolian said all hotel rooms had been booked up in Hatay ahead of the visit by United Nations refugee agency goodwill envoy Angelina Jolie. The actress was expected to arrive on Friday afternoon.