Thread: Syria: Not as important as Libya.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Free Syrian Army

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Al Jazeera

Full marks for unbiased reporters and mercenary nick names.

As for the rest, I have enough western passports to choose from thanks.

Actually the "Free Syrian Army" is the name they gave themselves, as opposed to your comical George Galloway-esque "crusader coalition".

I know lots of Iranians and Lebos with western passports. They dish them out like candy these days.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

they gave themselves

Do you know who "they" are?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Iranians and Lebos with western passports

Two a penny in brixton, but who travel on them

it's amazing how harryb have all the answers, he must be reporting live from his basement

Originally Posted by Butterfly

it's amazing how harryb have all the answers, he must be reporting live from his basement

Oh look, another retarted ButtPlug comment that offers nothing to the discussion whatsoever.

How very unusual.

The Crisis in Syria: No Immunity for Bystanders


By RANIA ABOUZEID / BEIRUT – 29 mins ago


The Syrian Addounia TV channel has broadcast video it said was filmed in the aftermath of an attack on the government-escorted media trip to Homs, a city that has borne much of the brunt of the regime's wrath because of continuing anti-government protests. The film crew was on the roof of a building when an explosion seems to catch them off guard. The camera pans down, showing a man on the ground with thick dark blood seeping from him. "He's dead, he's dead!" a male voice, presumably that of the cameraman says. "Somebody move him!" Footage from street level shows several victims carried into mini-vans and yellow taxis. The camera pans along a wide street. A man off-camera reminds people that there are foreigners nearby, part of a delegation. A foreign man, wounded and perhaps dead, is seen lying across the back of a yellow taxi. A foreign woman, holding a camera, screams hysterically as she looks inside the taxi. "She's a journalist," a Syrian man says, while another calls for an ambulance. A pool of thick bright red blood stains the pavement.
As gory and dramatic as the footage may be, there were two immediate interpretations of what it meant. To the Syrian regime, it would once again serve as proof that the opposition was made up of, at least in part, Â terrorists. The opposition, however, raised the question: Did the Syrian regime orchestrate the Wednesday grenade attack on the foreign journalists, leaving more than half a dozen people dead, including a Frenchman?
The group of some 15 journalists were on a government-supervised trip. (It's virtually impossible for journalists entering the country legally to report without government minders.) Gilles Jacquier, 43, was killed after the group was allegedly hit by several grenades, according to a reporter who was also on the media trip to Homs. Jacquier worked for France-2 TV Television. The exact circumstances of the attack, which also claimed the lives of at least eight Syrians, according to the SANA state news agency, and wounded a Dutch journalist, remain unclear. The French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe quickly called for full clarification of what he called "this odious act." The Twitterverse was alight with conspiratorial claims that the regime orchestrated the bloodbath to warn the foreign media to stay away.


It would not be the first time that President Bashar al-Assad's ruthless regime has been suspected of creating its own gory facts on the ground. Three suicide bombings, one on Friday and a double attack just minutes apart two weeks before that, were described by the Syrian opposition as the regime's handiwork. It claimed that the devastating blasts in the capital Damascus -- a security bastion which is home to all 18 or so of Syria's security and intelligence agencies, as well as the military -- were meant to sway the small team of Arab League monitors that has been in the country since Dec. 26.


The Arab League observers have been tasked with ascertaining if the Syrian government has complied with a pan-Arab deal that requires it to withdraw its tanks and troops from cities and towns, cease violence, free political detainees, and start a real dialogue with the opposition. It doesn't take much to see that almost none of that has happened. The United Nations says the Damascus government has killed at least 400 of its own people in the two weeks since the Arab League representatives entered the country.


On Tuesday, a member of the mission quit, describing it as a "farce" and accusing the Syrian regime of committing war crimes. "I withdrew because I found myself serving the regime, and not part of an independent observer group," Anwar Malek told Al-Jazeera satellite channel. "I saw charred and skinned bodies that had been tortured," said Malek, still dressed in the fluorescent orange vests the monitors have donned inside Syria. "From time to time we would see a person killed by a sniper," he said. "I have seen it with my own eyes. I could not shed my humanity in such situations and claim independence and objectivity."


The observers have come under attack, verbally and -- in the past few days -- physically. The Arab League has said that its monitors were recently "lightly" attacked by pro-regime elements in the northwestern port city of Latakia and in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, as well as "from elements considered to be members of the opposition in other areas," the League's secretary-general Nabil el-Araby said this week.


Given that, it perhaps comes as little surprise that the League announced on Wednesday that it would not add to its Syrian team of 165 members "until the situation calms down," hamstringing efforts to find out what is really going on. It is in many ways, a tacit acknowledgement of the failure of the League's so-called protocol agreement between the pan-Arab body and Damascus. It's difficult to see how this plan, the League's best hope of finding an "Arab solution" to the Syrian crisis, can be accomplished if its people aren't on the ground in numbers.




On Tuesday, Assad lambasted the League in an almost two-hour speech that also blamed a vast media conspiracy, terrorists and U.S. journalist Barbara Walters for the turmoil in his country and how it is perceived internationally. He followed that up with a rare public appearance on Wednesday alongside his wife Asma and their three children at a pro-regime rally in the capital. The president once again railed against the "foreign conspiracies" and rampaging "terrorists." "These are the final phases of the conspiracy, and we will make sure that we will stand up victorious," he told the boisterous crowd in Damascus.
The Syrian leader may have reason to think that he's sitting pretty -- for now. The Arab League is on the back foot and still hesitant to submit the Syrian crisis to the wider international forum of the U.N. The Syrian opposition is struggling to unite and does not yet seem to be a viable alternative to Assad. Meanwhile, there is a sizable, silent portion of Syrian society that remains on the sidelines, fearful of what may follow Assad. The largely unarmed protest movement, meanwhile, is in danger of choosing to become more militarized. In that way, the Syrian regime may end up getting exactly what it has always claimed to be fighting throughout this 10-month crisis: an armed rebellion

^ The rally he attended was very reminiscent of the organised jamborees that Gadaffi had staged in front of the media he controlled in Tripoli.

And the same use of camera angles to make the crowd look much bigger than it was (not dissimilar to the tactic the Merkins used when they filmed the statue of Saddam being pulled down in Baghdad in front of an enthusiastic "crowd").

Now if they had allowed the foreign press in would they be allowed their own helicopters, for the overhead shots? There are one or two in Brixton which are surplus until the Olympics.

Several reports today, starting with this:

BEIRUT -- The head of the Arab League warned Friday that Syria may be sliding toward civil war, as security forces fired on thousands of people who poured into the streets in support of army defectors who switched sides to try to topple President Bashar Assad.
Over the course of the 10-month-old uprising, much of the violence has been from security forces firing on unarmed protesters. But in recent months breakaway soldiers have been attacking the Syrian military, and some opposition members have taken up arms against the regime, adding to the violence.
Despite that, Assad appears to maintain a firm grip on power in the face of growing international pressure to halt his crackdown and step down.
The Arab League chief, Nabil Elaraby, told The Associated Press that Assad's regime was either not complying or only partially complying with an Arab League plan that Syria signed last month to end its crackdown.
"We are very concerned because there were certain commitments that were not complied with," he said in Cairo, where the League is based. "If this continues, it may turn into civil war."
The U.N. estimates more than 5,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed one protester in the town of Ariha in the northwestern province of Idlib, where more than 20,000 people were demonstrating Friday.
The Observatory reported violence in the southern province of Daraa, the eastern region of Deir el-Zour and the central province of Homs, all centers of frequent protests.
The Arab League plan calls for removing Syrian forces and heavy weapons from city streets, starting talks with opposition leaders and allowing human rights workers and journalists into the country.

An Arab League team of observers began work in Syria on Dec. 27 to offer an outside view of whether the government is abiding by its agreement to end the military crackdown on dissent.
The mission has been plagued by problems, including accusations that the Syrian government is interfering with the team's work. This week, one of the observers resigned and told the pan-Arab TV channel Al-Jazeera that the monitor mission was a "farce" because of Syrian government control.
Adnan al-Khudeir, head of the Cairo operations room to which the monitors report, told reporters Thursday that two more observers, from Algeria and Sudan, would be returning to their home countries. He did not identify them but said the Algerian gave health reasons and the Sudanese cited personal reasons.
From the beginning, eyebrows were raised over the appointment of Sudanese Gen. Mohammed Ahmed al-Dabi as chief of the observer force. He served in key security positions under Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted for crimes against humanity in Darfur.
That raised questions about whether Arab League member states, with some of the world's poorest human rights records, were fit for the mission to monitor Syria's compliance with a peace plan.
___
Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb contributed to this report from Cairo.

Next:

Syria's army weakened by growing desertions

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis


AMMAN (Reuters) - The most senior commander to abandon the Syrian military during a 10-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad said desertions were wearing down the army but rebels could take more than a year to topple him.


A Syrian soldier who defected to join the Free Syrian Army (FSA) carries a rocket-propelled grenade as he poses for a photograph at an FSA base outside the town of Qusair January 8, 2012. REUTERS/ Stringer

General Mostafa Ahmad al-Sheikh told Reuters that up to 20,000 soldiers, mostly majority Sunni Muslims, have deserted despite "iron controls" and large swathes of land are regularly falling into rebel hands before loyalist forces mount operations to retake them.
However the revolt is likely to take longer than revolutions that toppled the autocratic rulers of Libya, Egypt and Tunisia because Assad retains the loyalty of highly trained and well equipped forces from his minority Alawite sect, he said.
"If we get 25,000 to 30,000 deserters mounting guerrilla warfare in small groups of six or seven it is enough to exhaust the army in a year to a year-and-a-half, even if they are armed only with rocket-propelled grenades and light weapons," he said in the telephone interview from south Turkey Thursday.
Sheikh said most deserting soldiers have not taken up arms against pro-Assad forces and their primary concern has been to evade capture by secret police units in charge of stifling dissent within the military.
He said he had started helping to reorganise the Syrian Free Army, an umbrella group of defectors that formed several months ago under which deserters are loosely based.
"The Free Syrian Army needs to remain under control for fear that the regime may suddenly collapse," he said, advising rebels to stick to protecting protesters until they are moulded into a more effective force.
Army deserters have carried out a wave of attacks on military and security targets, raising the prospect of the mainly peaceful protests against Assad being eclipsed by an insurgency that could tip Syria toward civil war.
DESERTERS STILL "SMALL GROUPS"
Sheikh estimated the size of the Syrian army, on which Assad has relied to try and put down the revolt, at 280,000 soldiers, including conscripts.
"The desertions have been locally based and in small groups. Mass defections will occur when there is an open horizon and when the soldier feels there is an international decision to bring down the regime," Sheikh said.
"Safe havens will help. If they are set up, whole units will defect and the regime will fall much quicker," he said, referring to a possible buffer zone on the border with Turkey.
Syrian soldiers were "under surveillance and iron constraints" and knew that deserting would trigger revenge against family members, he said, but desertions continued nonetheless.
"Every time now they storm cities or towns, Sunnis among the attacking forces defect," said Sheikh, who is from the northwestern province of Idlib.
Sheikh said he decided to desert after he was told that a security police unit gang-raped the 20-year-old bride of a young anti-Assad activist in the countryside near Hama, and after security police sexually abused and filmed students who had rallied in the main commercial hub of Aleppo, whose influential merchants support Assad or have taken no side in the conflict.
Sheikh's assertions could not be verified. Syrian authorities have denied reports of abuses and say they are fighting foreign-backed Islamists who have killed 2,000 soldiers and police.
Sheikh fled his post in the northern command among ground forces based in Aleppo this month and crossed to neighboring Turkey, becoming the highest ranking officer to desert.
He said he was still adjusting to freedom.
"We have lived 40 years in repression. The regime has separated brother from brother, along with murder and torture on an unimaginable scale. Syrians still need to believe that they are human beings," he said, referring to four decades of rule by Assad and his father, who took power in a 1970 coup.
Copyright © 2012 Reuters

Then:

Syrian opposition group, rebel army join forces

By the CNN Wire Staff
January 13, 2012 -- Updated 1222 GMT (2022 HKT)




CNN visits injured at Syrian hospital






(CNN) -- A Syrian opposition group demanding the end of President Bashar al-Assad's reign announced Friday that it has begun coordinating with the rebel Free Syria Army, while thousands of anti-government protesters were set to take to the streets to support the breakaway army.
The announcement by the Syrian National Council and the planned protests across the country in support of the rebel army appears to signal a shift in the anti-government movement, an effort to solidify coordination between the groups who say have been the target of a brutal crackdown by al-Assad's forces.
The move coincides with reports of increased violence against demonstrators by security forces despite the ongoing efforts of an Arab League fact-finding mission to determine whether the Syrian government is abiding by an agreement to end the crackdown.
Al-Assad, who has characterized the anti-government protesters as "armed gangs," has insisted his security forces are battling terrorists intent on targeting civilians and fomenting unrest.
State media reported that "terrorists" killed three soldiers and injured three others in Damascus on Friday.
As protests show no signs of abating, the United States, the European Union and a number of Arab countries have called on al-Assad to end the violence and step down.
French journalist killed in Syria attack
Syria attack 'looked like military op'
Inside Syria's deadly uprising
Syrian defector's horrific revelations
The Syrian National Council -- an umbrella organization for a number of opposition groups -- plans to establish a liaison office with the Free Syria Army "to maintain direct communications around the clock," the group said in a statement.
The council also is opening a direct channel of communication with the rebel force to ensure effective communication between the two groups "in order to achieve optimal service to the Syrian revolution," the statement said.
Additionally, the Syrian National Council and the Free Syria Army -- composed of military defectors -- agreed to reorganize the rebel military units and create a plan to accommodate additional soldiers, according to the statement.
The plan was hammered out Thursday during a meeting between members of the council and the rebel army, the statement said.
It was unclear where the liaison office would be situated.
Meanwhile, Syrian activists and opposition groups used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to urge thousands to take to the streets Friday in support of the rebel army.
More than 5,000 people have died since mid-March, when al-Assad began the crackdown on anti-government protesters calling for his ouster, the United Nations has said. But opposition groups put the toll at more than 6,000.
CNN can not confirm the claims by opposition groups of violence and deaths as Syria's government has limited access to foreign journalists, though a number of journalists have been allowed in to the country in recent weeks to travel with Arab League monitors.
The body of France 2 TV journalist Gilles Jacquier was returned to Paris on Friday, just days after his network said he was killed when a mortar shell struck the pro-government rally he was attending as part of a government-authorized tour of the flashpoint city of Homs. Eight Syrians also died in the attack.
A plane carrying Jacquier's body landed at Le Bourget airport near Paris where it was met by French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand, according to a France 2 report.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said Jacquier was among a delegation of international journalists visiting the city to document the damage by "terrorists."
But the Syrian Revolution General Commission, an opposition force, disputed that description of events. It said security forces fired two shells at journalists from an infantry vehicle.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has demanded Syrian authorities divulge details surrounding the killing of Jacquier, saying the government should have ensured the safety of journalists invited to carry out the visit.
The Arab League has called on Damascus to stop violence against civilians, free political detainees, remove tanks and weapons from cities and allow outsiders, including members of the international news media, to travel freely around Syria.
The fact-finding mission, which began December 26, will continue until January 19, said Ambassador Adnan Al Khudeir, head of the operations room to which the Arab monitors report. He put the number of monitors at 163 in 16 teams. One has left because of sickness and another because of personal reasons, he said.
Meanwhile, the Local Coordination Committees of Syria -- an opposition group that organizes and documents anti-government demonstrations -- said a 13-year-old girl from a village in Aleppo was shot and killed by government security forces Friday. The girl was traveling with her family when their vehicle was fired upon at a checkpoint, and she was hit three times, the LCC said.
Security forces forbade the family from taking the girl to a nearby hospital, and she died at the scene, the group said.
The LCC said earlier that 25 people in five provinces were killed Thursday: 10 in Homs, nine in Idlib, four in Deir Ezzor, and one each in Hama and the Damascus suburb of Douma. Two of those killed were military recruits who had defected, the group said.

From the Beeb:

13 January 2012 Last updated at 11:56 GMT

Syrian opposition activists have called for mass rallies in support of the Free Syrian Army, a group of army defectors seeking to topple the government.

Demonstrations are reportedly already taking place in Aleppo, Deir al-Zour, Homs, Idlib and suburbs of Damascus.

One activist group said two civilians had been killed, one of them a child.

On Thursday, the Free Syrian Army and the main opposition coalition, the Syrian National Council, agreed to co-ordinate their operations more closely.

An SNC statement said a liaison office would be set up with the FSA to "maintain direct communications around the clock".

The groups also agreed to devise a plan, which would include "the reorganisation of FSA units and brigades, and the creation of a format to accommodate within FSA ranks additional officers and soldiers, especially senior military officials, who side with the revolution", the SNC added.

The SNC initially opposed the use of force in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, while the FSA operated independently.

It is impossible to verify how many army defectors have joined the FSA, but its leader, Col Riyad al-Asaad, has put the figure at as many as 20,000.

The group has said it is behind an increasing number of attacks on Syrian security forces, and the authorities have acknowledged mounting losses.

The government says 2,000 security personnel have died combating "armed gangs and terrorists". The UN last month said more than 5,000 people had been killed by Syrian security forces since the uprising began in March.

Also on Thursday, the secretary general of the Arab League defended the organisation's observer mission in Syria, saying in an interview with the BBC that it had helped to save lives.
Syrian activists near the Turkish-Syrian border town of Kilis, Gaziantep (13 January 2012) Syrian border guards turned back activists who wanted to bring in humanitarian aid from Turkey

Nabil al-Arabi was responding to criticism of the mission, which one former monitor has called a "farce".

Mr Arabi said the presence of the observers had encouraged more Syrians to take part in peaceful demonstrations.

"The observers are in Damascus to verify that shooting and killing has stopped. This has not materialised. So, the rationale for sending observers has not materialised," he said.

He added that he regretted President Assad's criticism of the Arab League in a speech this week and hinted they had exchanged sharp words in private.

Meanwhile, Syrian border guards turned back several hundred activists who wanted to take humanitarian aid across the border from Turkey. The guards said they did not have the right permits to enter the country.

The activists, who called themselves the Freedom Convoy, said they would stage a sit-in protest close to the border.

Iran 'steps up military aid to Syria'
by Staff Writers
Tel Aviv, Israel (UPI) Jan 12, 2012

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad waves at supporters during a rare public appearance in Damascus on January 11, 2012 in which he vowed to defeat a "conspiracy" against Syria, a day after he blamed foreign interests for stoking months of deadly violence. Photo courtesy AFP.
Even though Iran's locked in a confrontation with the West in the Persian Gulf, it appears to be stepping up its military efforts to save its strategic Arab ally, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, as he battles an insurrection aimed at toppling his regime.
Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, head of Israel's Military Intelligence, claimed Wednesday Tehran's main Arab proxy, Hezbollah in Lebanon, is also "providing Assad with intelligence, weapons and other means, recently with active involvement."
On Tuesday, Turkish customs officials, acting on a tipoff, intercepted four trucks allegedly carrying "military equipment" from Iran to Syria on the Iranian border.
Turkey, one of Assad's most prominent and vociferous critics, imposed economic sanctions on the Syrian regime in November, following the European Union and the 22-member Arab League.
Earlier Sunni-dominated Turkey imposed an arms embargo on Syria to protest the slaughter of anti-regime protesters across the country by Assad's powerful security services and military forces.
By U.N. count, more than 5,000 people have been killed since the insurrection broke out March 15, 2011.
On Wednesday, a ship believed to be carrying tons of weapons to Syria was intercepted when it made an unscheduled stop at Limassol on the southern coast of Cyprus, 70 miles west of Syria, a day earlier.
Cyprus state radio reported the freighter, the Russian-owned St. Vincent-flagged Chariot, was seized by customs authorities after they found "tens of tons of munitions" aboard.
The ship was released after the Russian owners promised it would not go to Syria.
The Cypriots did not say where the Chariot was headed when it left Limassol Wednesday.
But security sources said it could well make a dash for the Syrian port of Tartus, where the Russian navy has a base, or nearby Latakia.
Russia is Syria's main arms supplier and has stood behind its former Cold War ally in the current crisis. A Russian navy flotilla led by Moscow's only aircraft carrier recently visited Tartus in a show of solidarity with Assad.
Kochavi said Tehran and Hezbollah are determined to ensure the survival of Assad's regime that's dominated by minority Alawite Muslims.
Syria is Tehran's gateway to the Levant, where it can directly confront Israel from Lebanon through Hezbollah.
The loss of Syria would be a major strategic setback for Tehran's expansionist plans across the Arab world, which is dominated by the mainstream Sunni sect, and dramatically change the Middle East's geopolitical landscape.
If Assad is overthrown, Syria's Sunni majority, led by the radical Muslim Brotherhood, would likely take over.
"The radical axis is trying to retain its power and as time passes, Iran and Hezbollah increase their efforts to help the Assad regime survive," Kochavi said.
Assad, who succeeded his late strongman father, Hafez al-Assad, in June 2000, vowed Sunday he will never step down and insisted, despite the carnage, he had the support of Syria's people.
"We will declare victory very soon," he declared in a rambling speech at Damascus University that frequently verged on the delusional as the uprising becomes increasingly violent with army defectors turning their weapons on the regime.
Assad's speech, and his refusal to acknowledge the scale of the swelling opposition, domestic and international, to his regime after nearly a year of bloodshed reinforced observers' suspicions he may not actually be in charge any longer.
He has displayed this apparent denial of the harsh realities surrounding his position in the three other public appearances he has made since the uprising began.
Assad, a self-effacing former eye doctor in London whose iron-fisted father chose him to take over after his eldest son and heir apparent, Bassil, was killed in a 1994 car crash, has appeared uncomfortable as president of one of the Arab world's harshest dictatorships.
"Assad Â… never really wanted the presidency and has proved himself spectacularly ill-suited to it," observed international affairs analyst Simon Tisdall in The Guardian daily of London.
"The Syrian leader's state of mind is increasingly relevant as the Â… crisis deepens, with no sign yet of how or when it may be resolved.
"Critics say the president is isolated and out of touch with reality; others that he's a pawn, or even a hostage, in the hands of more powerful relatives and military figures," Tisdall observed.
"He certainly does not give the impression of being happy in his work."

And finally - you should love this one OhOh:

What's at Stake in Syria?

By Lee Sustar

Source: Socialistworker.org
Friday, January 13, 2012

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HAMMERED BY repression, the Syrian revolution is at an impasse, and the U.S. and Europe are intervening in the hopes of shaping an outcome to suit their imperialist agenda for the Middle East.
An estimated 5,000 people have been killed by state forces in Syria since the uprising began in February, with many thousands more have been imprisoned and tortured. But anyone who thinks that Washington has the human rights of the Syrian people at heart should recall that in the opening weeks of the uprising nine months ago, the U.S. kept quiet as President Bashar al-Assad's forces tried to crush the initial protest movement in the town of Daraa. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described Assad as a "reformer," and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair John Kerry, who developed a close relationship with Assad in recent years, argued for giving the president a chance.
Neighboring Israel--which for decades has portrayed Syria as a major threat--has likewise lobbied the U.S. to keep Assad in place, in the interests of "stability" in the Middle East. On the surface, Israel talks about the Syrian regime as if it is an enemy in league with Iran. But Assad is still the safest option. If the regime changes or the democratic movement gains a concrete foothold in Syria, Israel doesn't know what to expect.
As the massacres continued and the revolutionary movement spread, the U.S. concluded that Assad's days were numbered and shifted toward a perspective of regime change. The West was also encouraged by the outcome of the Libyan uprising, which was hijacked thanks to NATO bombs, military "advisers" and former collaborators with the regime of Muammar el-Qaddafi.
Imperialist policymakers are therefore debating how to calibrate their intervention in Syria. An Iraq-type invasion is off the table for obvious military, political and economic reasons. But the State Department, European foreign ministries and military brass worry that even a Libya-style bombing campaign could fragment Syria, causing the kind of all-out civil war seen in neighboring Lebanon.
Their aim, therefore, is to oust the Assad regime while keeping the state intact.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
AS A result, the West is for now mostly limiting its intervention to sanctions and political support for the opposition. While NATO member Turkey allowed the establishment of a base for the Free Syrian Army--composed of defectors from the Syrian military--there is little evidence that these fighters have been given weapons and training of the sort provided to Libyan rebel forces.
Thus, the focus of the intervention has been sanctions. The Western powers--working through Turkey and the Arab League--are hoping for a military coup that would oust Bashar al-Assad and leave Syria's repressive security apparatus intact.
Burhan Ghalioun, the leader of Syrian National Council (SNC)--the umbrella opposition group with close ties to the West--says he wants the same thing: "We want to distinguish between the regime and the state in Syria. There will not be chaos like in Libya. We still have powerful military institutions that we want to preserve."
The SNC leader says he is against a Libya-style intervention and wants Syrians to make their own revolution. But he explicitly calls for the UN to authorize a partial no-fly zone to protect refugees and give the opposition a free territory in which to organize:
We're asking them [the international community] to assess every possible option to create and enforce a safe area in Syria and to stop the atrocities being committed in Syrian towns. We are seeking a partial no-fly zone: covering a limited area, just over one piece of territory. We don't want the complete destruction of Syria's air defenses.
The apparent model for the SNC is the no-fly zone imposed over Iraqi Kurdistan by the U.S. and Britain in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. Leading figures in the SNC arecirculating a document prepared by a British international security think tank outlining how such a "safe area" could be imposed by Western powers.
Ghalioun's views aren't necessarily held by all elements in the SNC, which contains both former regime elements and more left-of-center forces. But it is Ghalioun who is being elevated by imperialism as a key figure.
Meanwhile, there are differences within the imperialist coalition that the U.S. is trying to exploit.
For its part, Turkey wants to avoid an all-out war or NATO air strikes, which could result in a refugee crisis on its borders. It also wants to reassert itself in Syria, a territory of the old Turkish Ottoman Empire. This would give Turkey, which is increasingly assertive in Middle East politics, wider influence in the Arab world.
The intervention of the Arab League is also divided. The organization's highly publicized delegation to Syria included representatives from Gulf states who act as Washington's proxies along with figures like a former Sudanese military figure accused of war crimes who is more likely to be sympathetic with Assad than U.S. objectives.
But in general, the Arab League delegation was intended not to stop or tlo expose repression of the revolution, but to provide reconnaissance for imperialism--to search for a ruling-class alternative to Assad. The message: Ditch Assad, and you can keep your state security apparatus and economic privileges, much as the capitalists and military brass in Egypt are attempting to do in the post-Mubarak era.
The offer may yet tempt some Syrian general or politician looking to save their skins in a post-Assad regime. But for now, the Egypt option looks risky for the Syrian ruling class. The military junta running Egypt is having difficulty in navigating its transition to even a highly limited democracy, and the problems of such a move in Syria are at least as great. Given the tight networks at the core of the Syrian ruling class, there is no telling where an anti-Assad purge would end--and it could easily get out of control and lead to the unraveling of the state.
This is why Assad's forces were willing to shoot down protesters who took to the streets to make contact with Arab League observers. Whatever the intention of the individual delegates, they effectively acted as target spotters for the regime. Numerous videos posted by revolutionary activists showed the monitors did nothing as the repression took place, either because they were unable or unwilling to do anything.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WHILE THE West has been unable to oust Assad, neither has the revolutionary movement been successful.
For more than 40 years, the Baath Party regime has played on religious and ethnic divisions to consolidate its rule. Many of the leading military and political figures have been from the minority Alawite Muslim sect.
The state has, in turn, posed as a protector of minorities--Alawites, as well as Christians and Druze, against the Sunni Muslim majority. This was the stated justification for the 1981 massacre in Hama.
Kurds, however, were systematically discriminated against, including the denial of citizenship rights for some 300,000 people--until the regime offered a change in policiy in an unsuccessful effort to pull Kurds away from the revolutionary movement.
It is an oversimplification, however, to characterize the state as an "Alawite" regime. Assad has ruled in collaboration with a network of Sunni business interests, and this relationship has been reorganized by neoliberal market-oriented reforms that have restructured some industries traditionally dominated by the state. Assad has also presided over the restructuring of some industries traditionally dominated by established merchants. The sons of the regime elites have been using their family political connections to encroach on the businesses of the traditional merchants.
At the same time, there are many Christians opposed to the regime and far from all Alawites support it. Many Alawites oppose it because they feel the Assad family has taken actions in their names that they don't want to be associated with--and that they didn't benefit from.
With the prospect of a revolutionary movement that cut across religious and ethnic lines, the regime tried to reassert its role as the protector of minorities--most recently pointing to bombings in the capital of Damascus as the work of al-Qaeda and Sunni fundamentalists. Revolutionary activists claim that the regime itself planted the bombs as a pretext for further repression.
Whatever the source of the attack, it's clear that Assad and the regime have concluded that driving the struggle into civil war is its best hope for getting the ruling class, the military elite and minority populations to stick with them.
The problem for the regime, however, is that it lacks sufficiently loyal troops to carry out a simultaneous crackdown across the country. Therefore, it is trying to demoralize the movement with military onslaughts in targeted cities, while using snipers and thugs to terrorize protesters elsewhere.
Under this pressure, it has been difficult for the Local Coordination Committees--the revolutionary organizations on the ground--to put forward a clear political alternative independent of the increasingly pro-intervention SNC. The Syrian left is small and weak, divided between pro-regime organizations and small revolutionary groups that were forced to operate underground due to state repression.
The unions, moreover, have been traditionally dominated by the state. For this reason, as well as the divides along ethnic, religious, tribal and regional lines, the working class has not entered the fray independently.
While workers in key industrial enterprises may have participated in protests, their revolutionary activism hasn't come to the workplaces in a consistent way or at all. That is very different in Egypt, where last year's revolution was preceded by years of working-class activism, strikes and the struggle for unions free of state control.
There have been general strikes in several cities, but these have been civic strikes, with workplaces shut down alongside small shops in a cross-class show of protest. Demonstrations have been few in the capital of Damascus and the commercial hub of Aleppo, not only because of greater political pressure, but because business figures and the middle class have hesitated to break with the regime. There is also a concentrated crackdown in both cities, with snipers posted atop practically every major building.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
AN ADVANCE for the revolution depends on whether left-wing currents within the Local Coordination Committees can mobilize for working-class action that can hit the regime hard economically--as Egyptian workers did in finally forcing the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
Organizing such action in the context of repression and incipient civil war will be enormously difficult, of course. But unless the social power of workers is brought to bear, the regime will try to wear down the popular mobilizations with killings, arrests, torture and economic hardship. In such a war of attrition, the Syrian state has key advantages.
What next? The situation is highly unstable and unpredictable. The regime could split because of economic pressure and its inability to crush the revolt. Or the state could mobilize for an all-out civil war in a bid to hold onto power. Imperialist intervention could allow Assad to try to claim the mantle of nationalism and win support for continued rule.
But openings for a new revolutionary upsurge remain. The Syrian state will not be defeated by the Free Syrian Army in a military confrontation, but through mass defections in the armed forces that could neutralize the repression in key areas and open the way for a new revolutionary upsurge. The revolutionaries who have courageously organized against ferocious repression could take the struggle into the factories and gather forces that could paralyze the regime.
Such a turn to the working class is the perspective for the genuine revolutionary transformation of Syria--not the alliance with imperialism proposed by the SNC's Ghalioun.
Mais Jasser and Yusef Khalil contributed to this article.

Yes, even the Socialist Worker, which bangs on about "Imperialism", believes the figure of 5,000 civilians slaughtered by the murderous c*nt Assad.

And hopefully now you'll realise that there actually is something called the Free Syria Army.

harryb, try rooting your brain, it needs a serious upgrade, I recommend at least a 4.0 release with ROMs from tardoiz,

Originally Posted by OhOh

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

And hopefully now you'll realise that there actually is something called the Free Syria Army.

I never doubted it for a minute Harry. The FSA is the willing cannon fodder and the crusader coalition is backing it, via it's London directed SFC puppet, a la Libya. As posted here some time ago.

This time though without:

1. a "humanitarian aid" fig leaf resolution from the UN,
2. a "no fly zone" fig leaf resolution from the UN,
3. an arms embargo fig leaf resolution from the UN,
4. a few heavy weight "supporters",
5. some state of the art weaponry,
6. numerous supply lines - by sea, air and land from around the world ( or do you envisage crusader coalition forces facing up against Russian naval forces to uphold a siege whilst supplying the FSA with arms?),
7. an economy able to survive,
8. a leader who is able to elucidate to any western media which bothers to interview him
9. a government who up until now appears to be remaining behind him.

These might make a difference to the outcome or the seriousness to the world in general, of this illegal, by UN statute, regime change instigated once again by the crusader coalition.

But as you have pointed out my support for the Libyan government doesn't give me a great track record.

Assad is a puppet of the Iranians and customer of the Russians.

The only thing Assad is capable of doing to any media outside his control is to lie through his teeth.

As for the government "remaining behind him", no shit Sherlock.

Considering they're all Alawites in a 10% minority, of course they are behind him.

Give me strength.

Still, some of it is sinking in, eh?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Assad is a puppet of the Iranians and customer of the Russians.

how is that different from western puppets ?

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Assad is a puppet of the Iranians and customer of the Russians.

how is that different from western puppets ?

Do I *really* have to answer?

God what a fucking retard.

Syrian tanks attack town amid civil war warning
Reuters By Khaled Yacoub Oweis | Reuters – 8 hours ago


AMMAN (Reuters) - Unrest in Syria cost at least 15 lives on Friday and troops backed by tanks attacked Zabadani, a town near the border with Lebanon, an opposition leader said, in the first big military assault since Arab League monitors arrived last month.

The League chief said he feared a 10-month-old struggle to topple President Bashar al-Assad could slide into civil war.

The Arab League mission to Syria has been struggling in recent days, with some of its observers starting leave in protest at continuing violence directed against anti-government protesters by security forces loyal to Assad.

"Tanks are bombarding the town and have entered the outskirts, but they are being met with resistance," Kamal al-Labwani, an opposition leader from Zabadani who fled to Jordan two weeks ago, told Reuters. "The Free Syrian Army (army defectors) has a strong presence in the area."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said seven civilians were shot dead, four of them in the restive city of Homs. Three others died, including two wounded earlier in the week.

A total of five security personnel, including a lieutenant colonel, were killed and 15 wounded by "armed terrorist groups" in two separate attacks in Homs and the countryside around Damascus, the state news agency SANA reported.

"The people want the downfall of the regime," shouted a crowd in the port of Latakia at one of several anti-Assad demonstrations that erupted after Friday Muslim prayers.

Syrians have kept up a campaign to end four decades of Assad family rule since March despite a crackdown by the authorities that the United Nations says has killed more than 5,000 people.

Some, including army deserters, have taken up arms in recent months. Syrian authorities say foreign-backed "terrorists" have killed 2,000 soldiers and police since the revolt began.

CIVIL WAR

Armed clashes, now punctuating what began as a non-violent protest movement, have raised fears of a full-scale conflict in Syria, a Sunni Muslim-majority country of 23 million which also has Alawite, Druze, Christian and Kurdish minorities.

"Yes, I fear a civil war and the events that we see and hear about now could lead to a civil war," said Nabil Elaraby, head of the Arab League, which deployed monitors on December 26 to check whether Syria was respecting an Arab peace plan.

"Any problems in Syria will have consequences for the neighbouring states," he told Egypt's Al-Hayat television.

Syria, which borders Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel, is at the heart of the conflict-prone Middle East, where its closest allies are Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah group.

"The Syrian authorities must respond to the legitimate democratic aspirations of the Syrian people," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is visiting Lebanon, was quoted as saying by the Beirut newspaper an-Nahar.

He also urged the Security Council, where Russia and China have blocked firm action on Syria, to speak with one voice.

The most senior Syrian officer to defect to the opposition told Reuters that desertions were wearing down the army, but that rebels could take more than a year to topple Assad.

General Mostafa Ahmad al-Sheikh said that up to 20,000 soldiers, mostly Sunnis, had left despite "iron controls", although most were more focused on evading capture by the secret police than on fighting the security forces.

He said the revolt would take longer than those that toppled leaders in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia because Assad retains the loyalty of elite forces from his minority Alawite sect.

Video footage posted on the Internet on Friday showed the burning hulk of an armoured personnel carrier in Homs, a hotbed of protests and armed resistance to Assad. A voice on the clip said the Free Syrian Army (FSA) mounted the attack.

The main opposition Syrian National Council said it had agreed with the FSA to open a "direct channel of communication" with the rebel army, whose loosely-structured units would also be reorganised.

SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun has said rebel attacks could push Syria towards civil war, but his comments have made little impact on rebel fighters who operate largely independently of their nominal leadership, based across the border in Turkey.

Syrian opposition groups, and at least one disgruntled monitor, say the Arab League monitoring mission has only bought Assad more time. Arab foreign ministers are to due to hear a report from the monitors on January 19 and decide what to do next.

Elaraby said the bloodshed had abated somewhat since the observers arrived. That contradicts the view of a senior U.N. official said to have told the Security Council this week that the rate of killings had accelerated to about 40 a day.

A Russian-operated ship carrying ammunition docked in Syria this week, after it had been temporarily halted during a refuelling stop in Cyprus, a Cypriot official said.

France called for an independent investigation into the death of a French TV journalist killed in a mortar attack in Homs this week while reporting on unrest there.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans in Beirut, Lin Noueihed in Cairo and Michele Kambas in Nicosia; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Syrian tanks attack town amid civil war warning
Reuters By Khaled Yacoub Oweis | Reuters – 8 hours ago


AMMAN (Reuters) - Unrest in Syria cost at least 15 lives on Friday and troops backed by tanks attacked Zabadani, a town near the border with Lebanon, an opposition leader said, in the first big military assault since Arab League monitors arrived last month.

The League chief said he feared a 10-month-old struggle to topple President Bashar al-Assad could slide into civil war.

The Arab League mission to Syria has been struggling in recent days, with some of its observers starting leave in protest at continuing violence directed against anti-government protesters by security forces loyal to Assad.

"Tanks are bombarding the town and have entered the outskirts, but they are being met with resistance," Kamal al-Labwani, an opposition leader from Zabadani who fled to Jordan two weeks ago, told Reuters. "The Free Syrian Army (army defectors) has a strong presence in the area."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said seven civilians were shot dead, four of them in the restive city of Homs. Three others died, including two wounded earlier in the week.

A total of five security personnel, including a lieutenant colonel, were killed and 15 wounded by "armed terrorist groups" in two separate attacks in Homs and the countryside around Damascus, the state news agency SANA reported.

"The people want the downfall of the regime," shouted a crowd in the port of Latakia at one of several anti-Assad demonstrations that erupted after Friday Muslim prayers.

Syrians have kept up a campaign to end four decades of Assad family rule since March despite a crackdown by the authorities that the United Nations says has killed more than 5,000 people.

Some, including army deserters, have taken up arms in recent months. Syrian authorities say foreign-backed "terrorists" have killed 2,000 soldiers and police since the revolt began.

CIVIL WAR

Armed clashes, now punctuating what began as a non-violent protest movement, have raised fears of a full-scale conflict in Syria, a Sunni Muslim-majority country of 23 million which also has Alawite, Druze, Christian and Kurdish minorities.

"Yes, I fear a civil war and the events that we see and hear about now could lead to a civil war," said Nabil Elaraby, head of the Arab League, which deployed monitors on December 26 to check whether Syria was respecting an Arab peace plan.

"Any problems in Syria will have consequences for the neighbouring states," he told Egypt's Al-Hayat television.

Syria, which borders Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel, is at the heart of the conflict-prone Middle East, where its closest allies are Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah group.

"The Syrian authorities must respond to the legitimate democratic aspirations of the Syrian people," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is visiting Lebanon, was quoted as saying by the Beirut newspaper an-Nahar.

He also urged the Security Council, where Russia and China have blocked firm action on Syria, to speak with one voice.

The most senior Syrian officer to defect to the opposition told Reuters that desertions were wearing down the army, but that rebels could take more than a year to topple Assad.

General Mostafa Ahmad al-Sheikh said that up to 20,000 soldiers, mostly Sunnis, had left despite "iron controls", although most were more focused on evading capture by the secret police than on fighting the security forces.

He said the revolt would take longer than those that toppled leaders in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia because Assad retains the loyalty of elite forces from his minority Alawite sect.

Video footage posted on the Internet on Friday showed the burning hulk of an armoured personnel carrier in Homs, a hotbed of protests and armed resistance to Assad. A voice on the clip said the Free Syrian Army (FSA) mounted the attack.

The main opposition Syrian National Council said it had agreed with the FSA to open a "direct channel of communication" with the rebel army, whose loosely-structured units would also be reorganised.

SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun has said rebel attacks could push Syria towards civil war, but his comments have made little impact on rebel fighters who operate largely independently of their nominal leadership, based across the border in Turkey.

Syrian opposition groups, and at least one disgruntled monitor, say the Arab League monitoring mission has only bought Assad more time. Arab foreign ministers are to due to hear a report from the monitors on January 19 and decide what to do next.

Elaraby said the bloodshed had abated somewhat since the observers arrived. That contradicts the view of a senior U.N. official said to have told the Security Council this week that the rate of killings had accelerated to about 40 a day.

A Russian-operated ship carrying ammunition docked in Syria this week, after it had been temporarily halted during a refuelling stop in Cyprus, a Cypriot official said.

France called for an independent investigation into the death of a French TV journalist killed in a mortar attack in Homs this week while reporting on unrest there.

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans in Beirut, Lin Noueihed in Cairo and Michele Kambas in Nicosia; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Completely unbiased sources there harry.

It's Reuters OhOh. They report what people say, and what they know.

And all they can do is report it. Like if Assad says he isn't shelling towns with tanks, you might choose to believe him.

Of course, if I provided video of said shelling, you'd say it was made up.

So I'll just continue to report, and you can continue to pretend it isn't happening.