WarSclerotic

Military defections expose cracks in Syrian army | Reuters.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A growing number of Syrian soldiers are deserting the army to avoid taking part in the military crackdown against protesters demanding the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.

Unwilling to open fire on demonstrators who have taken to the streets chanting the revolutionary slogans of uprisings across the Arab world, some Syrian troops have chosen to lay down their arms and flee to neighboring countries like Turkey.

It is difficult to estimate how many have done so, partly because they are afraid to speak out and partly due to severe restrictions on foreign media reporting in Syria, which makes it hard to corroborate accounts inside the country.

But Internet videos have begun increasingly to surface in recent weeks of men displaying military insignia and identification cards who say they have left an army that has used tanks and guns to suppress protesters calling for freedom.

Assad has relied on the armed forces, whose commanders are mostly from his minority Alawite sect, to crack down on protesters, who are mostly from the majority Sunni population.

The shabbiha, irregular Alawite loyalists, have also been deployed. Often clad in black, witnesses and activists say these are among the harshest enforcers of a crackdown that has left at least 1,300 civilians dead, according to rights groups.

In a sign cracks are appearing in the army, Turkey’s Anatolian news agency said high-ranking Syrian soldiers and police were among more than 12,000 refugees seeking shelter in Turkey during attacks on protesters in northwestern Syria.

Reuters spoke by telephone to two men presented by Syrian opposition activists as soldiers who had deserted. One was of ethnic Kurdish descent who had escaped to Turkey and another was a captain who said he was originally from the rebellious town of Jisr al-Shughour and was now somewhere by the Turkish border.

Syrian authorities say “armed gangs” and “terrorists” are to blame for the violence. They say at least 500 soldiers and police have been killed by militants.

“SAW TRUTH IN DERAA”

The first deserter, a 21-year-old conscript from the mainly Kurdish northeastern province of al-Hasaka, told Reuters that officers would force soldiers to watch Syrian television showing “infiltrators” — a term used by authorities to mean militants entering or backed from abroad — shooting at protesters.

“Before we went to Deraa, they would tell us there are infiltrators and gunmen among civilians who were opening fire on the army,” the conscript said, referring to the southern city where the uprising against Assad began in March.

“And we were eager to go and fight. We believed it, but when we arrived in Deraa, we no longer believed this story.

“We saw the truth in Deraa. We saw that the gunmen were under the protection of the state,” he said, referring to the shabbiha. He said he saw militiamen ordered by army officers to kill protesters — “to show that infiltrators were doing it.”

The 21-year-old, who asked that his name be withheld to protect his family in Syria, said had been drafted to the 14th Brigade in December, arrived in Deraa on April 25 and fled a month later. Dressed in civilian clothes, he escaped from Deraa via Damascus and Hasaka, to Turkey, leaving his family behind.

“You were forced to open fire on protesters,” said the soldier. “I used to fire in the air, at walls, on the ground, just so they could see that ammunition was being fired.

“In the army, you defend yourself in time of war, but don’t go and kill the people of your country, your brothers and your family. My conscience is clear now I don’t have to kill people.”

ARMY LOYALISTS

Witnesses and opposition activists have reported several occasions when they said soldiers refused to fire on protesters, or when soldiers were killed for refusing to kill demonstrators.

Assad still commands loyalty among the mainly Alawite units led by his brother Maher, including the Republican Guard and the 4th Armored Division, each of which have about 10,000 men backed by tanks.

They are better trained and paid than the rest of the army, which numbers over 200,000 troops including conscripts, and are helped by smaller formations of loyalists and Alawite militias in several parts of the country.

A doctor in a military hospital in Damascus said earlier this month that 17 soldiers with gunshot wounds were brought in from Deraa: “I was working in the emergency room and the soldiers were brought in on trucks,” he told Reuters.

“They told me they were shot by shabbiha because they refused to fire on protesters.”

Most of the statements from self-declared deserters that have been aired on Arab satellite television channels or in online videos seem to be from the Sunni rank and file, some of whom appear to have been angered to hear news from home of killings in their native provinces.

Experts say that as the crackdown continues in restive regions, defections could draw in more and more senior soldiers.

A man who described himself as Captain Ibrahim Majbour told Reuters by telephone that he had refused to allow his unit to go to places of unrest to fire on protesters. He said he went to the central province of Homs in an unofficial capacity in May where he said shabbiha and security forces were raiding homes.

“I did not participate in the repression of protests,” he said, adding that he had feared for his own life and decided to defect. A statement by him is posted on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMEsc5eGW9M&feature=youtu.be).

Majbour said he commanded a unit in the special forces of the 14th Brigade and was originally from Jisr al-Shughour, where the army launched an intensive assault this month.

“I am from Jisr al-Shughour before I am an officer in the army,” he said, adding he was angered by seeing “my family homeless and my town destroyed.” Speaking from an undisclosed location in the same region, on the Turkish border, he warned:

“The officers will come back to achieve victory for the country and to protect protesters.”

He declined to elaborate, but shortly after he spoke on Tuesday a group calling itself the Free Officers Movement said in a statement it was giving the army one week to “determine its position toward the regime and to side with the protesters.”

Reuters could not independently determine the authenticity of the group, or how much support it might have.

A man who said he was a Syrian journalist read out the group’s statement near the Turkish border. It listed the group’s aims, including electing a transitional council, and appointed a Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Harmoush, whose defection has been documented on video, as its official spokesman.

The journalist said the group consisted of 16 officers in refugee camps in Turkey and some 35 still in Syria.

While the capabilities of the group remain unclear, such defections signal a potentially violent new element in the three-month-old unrest that has posed the gravest challenge to Assad’s tight control over Syria.

For now, the 21-year-old conscript said, the balance of power is with those with the guns: “How can the regime change when the people have no weapons and the government has them?”

(Additional reporting by Omer Berberoglu in Turkey; Editing by Dominic Evans and Alastair Macdonald)

Syria tank assault kills four near Turkey … JPost – Middle East.

  AMMAN – Syrian troops shot dead four villagers on Wednesday, an activist said, as authorities pressed on with a tank-led assault that has already driven thousands of refugees across the northwest border with Turkey.

“The four died in random firing on the village of Rama from tank machine guns, which has become customary in these unjustified assaults. The tanks started firing on surrounding woods then directed their fire on the village,” Ammar Qarabi, president of the Syrian National Human Rights Organization, told Reuters from exile in Cairo.

The assault on Jabal al-Zawya, a region 35 km south of Turkey that has seen spreading protests against Assad’s 11-year rule was launched overnight, a day after the authorities said they would invite opponents to talks on July 10 to set a framework for a dialogue promised by President Bashar Assad.

Opposition leaders have dismissed the offer, saying it is not credible while mass killings and arrests continue. The Local Coordination Committees, a main activists’ group, said in a statement on Wednesday that 1,000 people have been arrested arbitrarily across Syria over the last week alone.

“Jabal al-Zawya, was one of the first regions in Syria where people took to street demanding the downfall of the regime. The military attacks have now reached them and they will likely result in more killings and in more refugees to Turkey,” said Qarabi, who is from the northwestern province of Idlib.

He said he based his information on several witnesses’ testimony. Syria has banned most international media, making it difficult to independently verify accounts of violence.

A resident of Jabal al-Zawya said he heard heavy explosions overnight around the villages of Rama and Orum al-Joz, west of the highway linking the cities of Hama and Aleppo.

“My relatives there say the shelling is random and that tens of people have been arrested,” he said.

Another resident said 30 tanks went to Jabal al-Zawya on Monday from the village of Bdama on the Turkish border, where troops broke into houses and burnt crops.

Rights campaigners say Assad’s troops, security forces and gunmen have killed over 1,300 civilians since the uprising for political freedom erupted in the southern Hauran Plain in March, including over 150 people killed in a scorched earth campaign against towns and villages in Idlib.

They say scores of troops and police were also killed for refusing to fire on civilians. Syrian authorities say more than 500 soldiers and police died in clashes with “armed terrorist groups”, whom they also blame for most civilian deaths.

Assad adviser Bouthaina Shaaban told Sky News: “We hope that by conducting and hastening the national dialogue, we will be able to isolate any militant or violent group and work together with the international community to overcome that big problem.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report June 29, 2011, 5:14 PM (GMT+02:00)

Kavoshgar-5 can carry a nuclear payload

British Foreign Secretary William Hague stated Wednesday, June 29:  “Iran has also been carrying out covert ballistic missile tests and rocket launches, including testing missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload in contravention of UN resolution 1929.”

This was reported first by debkafile last year and repeated in the face of US and Israeli denials. Hague was the first  Western leader to confirm debkafile disclosures up to and including our report Tuesday on Iran’s 10-day exercise. Our military sources stressed that Iran’s plan to launch a monkey into space – and therefore a 330-kilo payload – by the Kavoshgar-5 was evidence that it had developed a rocket capable of delivering a nuclear warhead at any point on the planet. Click here for this report.

Hague also pointed out in a statement to parliament that Iran had announced plans to triple its capacity to produce 20 percent enriched uranium – “enrichment levels far greater than is needed for peaceful nuclear energy.”
debkafile‘s military and intelligence sources note that the Foreign Secretary’s words follow the concentration of large-scale American naval, air and marine forces in the Mediterranean, the Aden and Oman straits, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. This seaborne army is positioned for strikes against targets in Iran, Syria and Libya at 12 hours’ notice. It may be safely assumed that Hague’s ominous disclosure was pre-arranged with Washington.
In the past month, our sources have also quoted several Saudi royal princes as warning that if Iran attained a nuclear capability, it would not be the only Persian Gulf nation to be armed with a nuclear weapon and missiles for its delivery.
As Iran’s military exercise went into its third day, Aerospace commander of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Amir Ali Hajizadeh announced the launching of the new Ghadir radar system which he said had been “designed and manufactured to discover air targets, stealth planes, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and satellites at low orbits.” The system, claimed to have a range of 1,100 kilometers in radius and height of 300 kilometers, was said to be operational in Iran for the first time.

In another blatantly hostile gesture towards the United Sates, Hajizadeh announced that Russian military experts had been allowed to examine American drones said to have been shot down in the Persian Gulf for a close-up examination.
This disclosure came on top of his announcement Tuesday that the fourteen 2,000-kilometer range missiles tested Tuesday were designed exclusively to hit American bases in Afghanistan and Israel.
He referred to the downed US drones in the plural while not indicating where, when and how they were shot down. The sort of inspection permitted the Russian military delegation of the pilotless aircraft’s electronic systems is normally conducted discreetly so as not ruffle relations. This time, it was most unusually made public – not a good message for Russian-US ties especially in view of Moscow’s steps against Washington’s war on Libya and bid for sanctions against Syria.
By letting Russia know how they were shot down and displaying models constructed by reverse engineering, Tehran and Moscow indicated they shared the secrets of the US drones’  vulnerabilities to attack.

Six months ago, Iran announced it had downed two American drones on January 2. At the time, Revolutionary Guards navy commander Ali Fadavi said the planes shot down were among the most modern US navy drones with a long-range capability.
The US Fifth Fleet operating in the Persian Gulf never responded to this Iranian statement but it did not deny it either. Generally, the American navy in the Middle East uses the unmanned MQ-8B Fire Scout helicopter for information-gathering missions, but the Iranians did not specify whether the American drones came from ships or from other air bases in the Middle East.

Britain: Iran testing missiles w… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

  Iran has been carrying out covert ballistic missile tests and rocket launches including testing missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Wednesday.

He told parliament the tests were in clear contravention of UN resolution 1929.

Iran denied the claims.

“None of the missiles tested by Iran is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead,” Ramin Mehmanparast, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeman, told Reuters.

Iran is carrying out a 10-day military exercise in a show of strength it hopes will warn Israel and the United States against any attack.

As part of the exercise, it test-fired surface-to-surface missiles on Tuesday with a maximum range of 2,000 km.

On Wednesday it was also announced that Iran has tested a new radar system. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace division, said the new radar system, called Ghadir, was used for the first time.

“The Ghadir radar has been designed and built to detect airborne targets, radar-evading planes, cruise and ballistic missiles and low-orbit satellites,” he was quoted as saying by the student news agency ISNA.

The radar has a range of 1,100 km (680 miles) and a height of 300 km (190 miles), he said.

As part of the “Great Prophet 6” exercise, Iran test-fired surface-to-surface missiles on Tuesday, with a maximum range of 2,000 km (1,250 miles), emphasizing it could hit Israel or US targets in the region in the event of attack.

The United States and Israel have said they do not rule out military strikes on Iran if diplomatic means fail to stop it developing nuclear weapons. Tehran says its uranium enrichment program is geared to producing electricity, not atom bombs.

Saudi Arabia signs nuclear-energy deal with Argentina.

(This is the beginning of the Arab response to Iran’s nuclear program. – JW)

Al Arabiya

Wednesday, 29 June 2011

A desalination plant in the eastern city of Khubar, Saudi Arabia. (File Photo)

‘Warning to Assad: Attack us, we’ll hit yo… JPost – Middle East.

  Israel sent a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad in recent days, warning him that if he started a war with the Jewish state in order to divert attention from domestic problems, Israel will target him personally, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, the personal warning was sent through Turkey following intelligence reports of unusual Syrian troop movements, including the moving of long-range ballistic missiles that could be used to target Israel.

The report added that the IDF has increased its preparedness on the northern border out of fear that Hezbollah may attempt to stage another kidnapping of soldiers or civilians along the Lebanese border.

Last month, following deadly attempts to breach Syria’s border with Israel, US-based Syria experts accused the Assad regime of being behind the Naksa Day protests on the Israeli border in order to distract from the prolonged uprising challenging Syria’s rulers.

“It’s almost a cliché – this is what he always does. He’s under pressure at home, so he deflects attention,” Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said. During the 2006 Second Lebanon War, “it was by rallying the people around resistance to Israel, and this time it’s with the Palestinian cause. This is not going to work.

Government sources on various continents also accused Assad of at least enabling, if not spurring the deadly protests that turned into the most volatile clashes on the Golan border since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Mullah missile madness–Amir Taheri – NYPOST.com.

Iranian regime gets cockier

Convinced that President Obama is preparing the United States for a strategic retreat, the leaders of Iran’s Khomeinist regime have put their latest military hardware on show in support of their claim of domination in the Middle East.

In a four-day “firepower show” that started Sunday, the Revolutionary Guard — a parallel army — is simulating attacks on US bases and warships in the Persian Gulf. Code-named Great Prophet, the exercises have unveiled a new generation of medium-range missiles designed to hit Israel as well as US military assets in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.

getty

Firepower show: A Zelzal (Earthquake) missile launching during yesterday’s Great Prophet military exercises by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

The new weapons belong to the family of Shahab and Sejjil missiles developed with the help of North Korean, Chinese and Russian technology. The first generation of these missiles had a range of 75 miles. The new generation, just unveiled, has a range of 1,200 miles.

“The Zionist regime is within [750 miles] distance from us,” Gen. Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, Commander of the IRGC aerospace project, told the official news agency IRNA. “Thus, we are able to hit it [Israel] from deep within our own territory.”

Hajizadeh mocked the United States as “an empire in decline,” adding that it is Iran and not “an outside power” that must ensure the region’s security.

“The Americans have facilitated our task by building bases in surrounding countries,” Hajizadeh said. “Their bases are placed between [75 and 430 miles] from our missiles. We could hit all of them from many different directions.”

Attending the Great Prophet show were military delegations from 18 countries, including North Korea, China, Russia and Brazil.

Part of the exercises consisted of Iranian-made drones shooting down “attacking American” warplanes. According to Hajizadeh, the Russian “guests” were allowed to inspect and examine the drones and the aircraft they’d shot down over the Persian Gulf.

“We only regard the US and Israel as strategic enemies and do not feel threatened by any other country,” Hajizadeh said. “Thus, we have no need for longer-range missiles, although we have the technology to develop them.”

He also claimed that European nations need not worry about being attacked by Iran. “We do not regard the Europeans as enemies,” he said.

Broadcast live on Iran’s Arabic-language satellite-TV networks, the Great Prophet show is part of a broader propaganda effort by Tehran to advance the regime’s claim to being the new “regional superpower.”

The message being beamed to Arabs is simple: America is in retreat and can no longer pretend to protect its Middle East allies; the only power that can provide protection is the Islamic Republic. The Americans will go away, but the Iranians will always be there.

Tehran is especially anxious to prevent the emergence of a new alliance of democratic Arab countries to challenge the Khomeinist regime’s regional ambitions.

It is also trying to drive a wedge between Washington and its European allies before entering the next round of negotiations about its nuclear program. Here, too, the message is that, to protect their interests, the Europeans will have to reckon with Iran as the leading power in the Middle East.

The publicity given the Russian and Chinese military “guests” is designed to show that Moscow and Beijing already acknowledge Tehran as the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, marking the beginning of the end for Washington’s traditional position in the region.

The current tone of Tehran shows that the Islamic Republic leadership no longer worries about a possible US or Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Those fears peaked in 2008, then declined sharply with Obama’s election. Now the possibility of an Israeli attack is all but ruled out, while chances of an American strike are deemed only “a theoretical configuration.”