Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Syria

  • Kerry-Lavrov Agreement Unlikely to Affect Syrian War

    As far as Arab and European countries and the United States are concerned, Russia has been anything but helpful in Syria. Three United Nations Security Council resolutions that would have sanctioned Syrian president Bashar Assad were vetoed by the Russians who have continued to sell military equipment to his regime.

    Secretary of State John Kerry sought to snap that streak when he traveled to Moscow last week and, to his credit, succeeded in one respect: getting the Russians to publicly support a transitional government in Syria.

    Secretary Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov both reaffirmed their commitment to the Geneva communiqué that the two powers signed in June of last year. It called for negotiations between the Assad regime and opposition in pursuit of an interim government. 

    Kerry was so upbeat about his most recent trip to Russia that he speculated that his new Syria initiative could begin in early June and said that a tremendous amount of preparation had already been done.

    Yet to the frustration of both the Americans and Russians, pledging allegiance to the Geneva accord and the theory of a transitional government in Syria is premised on the assumption that negotiations can stop the shooting and resolve the civil war. Despite both sides in the conflict deploying evermore brutal violence, the European Union and the United States still seem to hope that cooler heads will eventually prevail and that, however horrible the situation in Syria may be, its ramifications can be contained within Syria’s borders.

    The Syrians who are doing the fighting and dying do not appear to be viewing the Kerry-Lavrov initiative the same way. Grotesque scenes of massacres along sectarian lines, the execution of prisoners of war and the mutilation of bodies do not suggest that there is much room for meaningful talks.

    There have been no goodwill gestures from either the Assad regime or opposition umbrella groups besides public interest in the diplomatic route. As much as Russia, the United Nations and the United States might like to see a negotiated settlement, the protagonists are nowhere near agreement on the issues that are so important to ending the carnage: whether Assad can be a part of the equation; what Syria will look like in the future; how transitional justice for war crimes will be meted out; who will be allowed to serve in a transitional administration.

    The reality is that the fractious rebel movement on the ground, combined with President Assad’s determination to prevail and the radicalization that is taking place along sectarian and ideological lines, is not an environment that suits diplomacy well.

    Diplomacy can only succeed if one side is convinced that it will lose or if the combatants are convinced that they have more to gain from talking than fighting. Since both Assad and his opponents are going for broke and engaging in even more horrific human rights abuses, the compromise that Kerry and Lavrov are talking about, however commendable, is unlikely to yield anything concrete.

  • Majority Arabs, Turks Opposes Arming Syria’s Rebels

    With lawmakers in the United States pushing President Barack Obama into providing military support to the Syrian opposition and Israel striking targets in the vicinity of the capital Damascus, commentators are predicting that the civil war in Syria may be entering a new stage with greater foreign involvement.

    Fortunately for the Obama Administration, which has been put into an uncomfortable position since suspected chemical weapons use in Syria crossed the president’s “red line,” a vast majority of people both in the Middle East and the United States does not believe that foreign intervention would be a wise course of action.

    Indeed, while many Middle Easterners fear that the violence in Syria could affect their own societies, a majority of them in five of the six countries recently surveyed by the Pew Research Center oppose sending rebels to the rebels who are trying to end the Assad regime. (more…)

  • Iranian Foreign Minister Signals Support for Assad

    =Iran’s foreign minister put to rest on Sunday any suggestion that his government might be reconsidering its financial and military support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

    Standing next to his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem at a news conference in Tehran, Iran’s Ali Akbar Salehi reiterated strongly to reporters that the Islamic republic was wholeheartedly behind the Syrian president as he attempts to suppress a two year-old uprising in his country.

    “Assad is Syria’s legal president until the next elections. Individuals have the freedom to run as candidates,” said Salehi. “Until that time, Assad is Syria’s president.” (more…)

  • As Civil War Drags On, Syrians Less Likely to Talk

    There was a time, long before the situation in Syria regressed into a full-scale civil war, that people believed the government and its opponents could enter negotiations and solve the political crisis in a pragmatic way. Nearly two years into the turmoil, it is difficult to imagine that Syria’s uprising was entirely peaceful in its first few months when tens of thousands chanted for greater freedoms, reforms and simple respect from their government.

    Once the regime of President Bashar al-Assad chose to use bullets and tanks to snuff out dissident, the civil activism that at the time dominated the protest movement morphed in a completely different direction. Twenty-three months later, the war will most certainly be won through the force of the gun rather than the voice of reason.

    Millions of lives have been shattered in the interim as the violence has crept closer to the heart of Damascus than ever before. The United Nations estimate that 70,000 Syrians have been killed in the conflict but given the difficulty and confusion of counting deaths, that number is almost certainly on the conservative end of the spectrum. (more…)

  • Syria Arming Civilians Sympathetic to Regime

    The Syrian army is reported to be in the process of clearing out opposition fighters from the Damascus suburb of Daraya, an area that has nearly been destroyed by airstrikes and tank fire since the battle started last August. For the most part, the military is slowly taking back that territory, albeit with considerable losses from rebel ambushes and snipers.

    Just as the Assad regime is making slow inroads around the southern half of the capital, army units are holed up in bases and surrounded by insurgent fighters pummeling them with rocket propelled grenades and mortars on a daily basis. While loyalist forces are still in control of most major cities in the country — with the exception of Aleppo which is divided in two — the insurgency’s decentralized structure and maturation on the battlefield is forcing the president to enact ever more desperate measures.

    With its back up against the wall in vast stretches of northern and eastern Syria, the army has used an ever expanding list of weapons to keep the rebels at bay and give its air force a much needed rest. (more…)

  • Syria’s Assad Soldiers On, Blames Foreigners for Civil War

    In his first public address to the Syrian people in six months, President Bashar al-Assad ended any and all speculation as to whether he would consider stepping down from his post to end the bloody civil war that has engulfed his country for almost two years.

    A vast segment of northern Syria may now be in rebel hands and the capital city of Damascus a critical frontline in the battle; Assad was calm, composed and defiant in front of his supporters, pledging to fight for the safety of Syria against what he calls a campaign of terrorism armed and financed by foreign states.

    The president’s speech, just under an hour long, took place in a packed opera house in the center of Damascus, the government’s power base and an area that the Syrian army has locked down with dozens of checkpoints. The regime had clearly been careful and methodical in its preparation. Hundreds of supporters stood up and applauded Assad as he walked to the podium. Dozens of loyalists rushed the stage to shake hands with him once the speech was over. The whole affair had a cult like atmosphere, with rhythmic chants of “God, Syria, Bashar is enough” erupting during the speech. (more…)

  • United States to Label Syrian Rebel Group Terrorists

    Concerned that radical Islamists are eclipsing the more moderate and secular brigades of the Free Syrian Army, the United States is in the process of designating Jabhat al-Nusra a foreign terrorist organization. The group is suspected of ties with Al Qaeda.

    The designation would prohibit all American citizens from providing money or support to fighters under the Nusra umbrella. Assets that Nusra may have under American jurisdiction would be frozen.

    The announcement by the State Department comes at a particularly violent phase in Syria’s civil war. The capital Damascus now appears the fault line between President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and its supporters and the largely Sunni opposition. Several reports last week suggested that government forces were assembling chemical weapons for possible use against rebels. (more…)

  • War Crimes Undermine Syrian Rebels’ Credibility

    In a huge blow to President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, various rebel units under the Free Syrian Army managed to disperse government troops from three checkpoints in the northwest province of Idlib on Friday.

    The battle for the town of Saraqib, which lies thirty miles southwest of Aleppo, has been an especially brutal fight between loyalist and rebel forces in the last week. With the defeat of Syrian troops there and the scattering of their units to other parts of the country, the Free Syrian Army has stricken a deep setback to the regime’s defensive positions.

    The fact that Saraqib is strategically located between two key transportation arteries will make it extraordinarily difficult for the regime to send reinforcements to their troops in Aleppo, where the regime’s army has been locked in major urban warfare for the past four months.

    But any jubilation that the rebels felt after dislodging regime forces was quickly overshadowed by horrific images of them taking justice into their own hands. An amateur video that was released on public forums immediately after the battle depicted a large group of rebels beating, kicking and eventually executing a small cadre of captured government soldiers. The video is graphic not only due to the killings but because the captured men appeared terrified and were pleading for their lives. Their pleas were ignored. All ten soldiers were murdered in a hail of gunfire.

    Rupert Colville, the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, quickly spoke to reporters after the incident to make the organization’s disgust known. “Unfortunately, this could be the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces and groups affiliated with them,” Rupert said. “The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants and therefore, at this point, it looks very like a war crime.”

    Indeed, this wasn’t the first time that rebels fighters have been accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. Another particularly violent episode was recorded last August which consisted of an FSA brigade killing fifteen members of a prominent Syrian clan that was reportedly helping Bashar al-Assad quash protests in Aleppo. The men were told to say their names to the camera before being ushered outside and killed in a mass execution. Another video released shortly after showed rebels tossing the bodies of dead Syrian soldiers from a ceiling after a police station was captured.

    Rebel commanders have tried to reduce the damage, telling CNN that they in no way condone or accept the type of behavior that was recorded in the video. One spokesman blamed extremist elements for the crime, adding that those who engaged in the killing would be detained and tried by the opposition if caught.

    Whether anyone will be held accountable is exceedingly unlikely in a war that has claimed the lives of over 36,000 Syrians and resulted in the displacement of more than three million. While the Syrian government appears to be perpetrating most of the atrocities on the ground and through the air, videos like the one released on Friday show that rebels of all stripes are copying such heartless tactics.

    This is a terrible development, not only for the sake of human rights law but also for the opposition’s campaign to elicit weapons and support from abroad. Extrajudicial killings, even if carried out by a small band of anti-Assad fighters, hurts the credibility of the entire movement in the eyes of the Western world.

    Denouncing atrocities of all kinds is fine and talking of prosecution is even better but holding people accountable for war crimes will be extremely difficult in a conflict where both sides view the other as the offspring of the devil.

  • Brahimi’s Syrian Ceasefire Doomed from the Start

    Lakhdar Brahimi, the man who took over from Kofi Annan in August envoy to the Syrian crisis on behalf of the Arab League and the United Nations, never had much of a plan to jumpstart the type of diplomacy that is essential to ending the conflict. That is not entirely his fault. No matter how hard he might work, he cannot initiate peace talks when both sides are actively seeking the other’s destruction. Even for someone like Brahimi, who has been a veteran diplomatic troubleshooter for over fifty years, the civil war in Syria is a problem that many of his colleagues worldwide akin to mission impossible.

    Just because resolving the war is hard does not mean that Brahimi has given up. Indeed, after spending weeks circulating around the Middle East for meetings and consultations, he managed to broker a short-term, tentative ceasefire for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha which ends this Monday.

    After receiving the formal plan from the envoy, the Syrian government stated that it would be willing to adhere to its demands, as long as the armed opposition, which the regime has consistently referred to as “terrorists,” does not use the calm to ambush its soldiers or resupply its men.

    Brahimi’s initiative, however, is not really a ceasefire in the traditional sense of the word. With an opposition that lacks a strict and centralized chain of command and a regime that has a poor record of keeping its promises, the proposal is more like a general, ad hoc respite from the fighting than a hard-pressed, ironclad peace agreement.

    It took only a few hours for violations to occur. By the end of the first day of the truce, activists reported a death toll of forty to as high as seventy, half of what the daily toll has been for the past few months but far from indicative of a ceasefire.

    Violations are unfortunate but they are almost to be expected. The conflict in Syria has reached such a heightened level of violence that most of the parties engaged in the fighting are more intent on winning outright than negotiating. The Assad regime has shown no inclination that it is willing to talk with it opponents, despite the urgent calls of United Nations officials and Arab governments that dialogue is the only way that the war can end without violence spilling over Syria’s borders. The Syrian National Council has softened its negotiating position as of late but the conditions that it continues to put forth are still too stringent from Bashar al-Assad’s perspective.

    The rebels, in the meantime, are far more interested in getting rid of the regime by force than sitting down with a president they think of as bloodthirsty and ruthless. With tens of thousands of lives already lost, Free Syrian Army rebel commanders are not about to cast away the sacrifices that have been made by opening up discussions with a government discredited in much of the world.

    This is why Brahimi’s ceasefire, while noble, is not likely to lead to any substantial political settlement. You cannot lay the groundwork for negotiations if the people who matter consider talking a sign of weakness and surrender.

  • Syrian Opposition Council Signals Willingness to Talk

    Nabil Elaraby, secretary general of the Arab League, and Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, during a meeting of the Friends of Syria summit in New York, September 28
    Nabil Elaraby, secretary general of the Arab League, and Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, during a meeting of the Friends of Syria summit in New York, September 28 (France Diplomatie/Martin Loper)

    In what is seen as a surprising move on the part of the Syrian political opposition, the leadership of the Syrian National Council has indicated that the bloc is open to negotiations with members of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

    The only stipulation, according to the council’s president Abdulbaset Sieda, is that those officials must be free and clear of the massive human rights violations that are taking place inside the country today. Assad himself is still off limits, as are his generals who are directing the military crackdown against the uprising. Yet there are others, such as Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa, who the opposition are willing to talk with.

    The announcement comes as the Syrian army has launched a new offensive on Free Syrian Army positions in the rebel bastion of Homs and the contested city of Aleppo, the country’s largest and a place where establishing control is significant for both government and opposition forces.

    Last night, two suicide bombings severely damaged an Air Force intelligence compound in a suburb of Damascus, killing a number of loyalist soldiers and possibly injuring prisoners that were picked up during the revolution and held in the facility.

    Over 140 people were reported to have died in bombings, shelling and shootings on Tuesday but that figure is now relatively common in Syria’s eighteen month civil war.

    With reel army units taking a pounding over the past week as a result of the renewed government offensive, it appears that Abdulbaset Sieda is quickly coming to the conclusion that too many civilians are being killed while the negotiation process stalls. Every Arab League and United Nations initiative to cease the fighting and promote preliminary discussions between regime and opposition representatives has been broken.

    Kofi Annan, the United Nations’ point man for potential peace talks, resigned in a tirade of frustration, unable to complete a job that he said was hogtied by bickering in the Security Council and an unwillingness by the parties to stop the shooting. The man who took Annan’s place, Lakhdar Brahimi, is not having much luck either, unable to even draw a plan of his own outside of the Annan’s framework.

    In other words, achieving a lull in the violence has eluded everyone, which is only contributing to the bloodshed. This is why Sieda’s newfound openness to talking with the regime is unlikely to gain much traction. While the Syrian National Council is the largest anti-Assad coalition in the game right now, it has lost a considerable amount of credibility due to its disorganization and inability to win the confidence that it needs from the international community. The various rebel brigades that are battling Assad’s forces are likely to take Sieda’s words as either a sign of weakness or as a boost to the president’s message that the Syrian army is slowly but surely winning the conflict.

    Unless Farouk al-Sharaa is willing to risk his life by starting a secret, direct and independent diplomatic channel with the council, the prospect of the Assad regime entering negotiations seems exceedingly remote. At present, both sides are simply too invested in winning through arms, attrition and a strategy of total war.

  • Jordan’s Quiet, Growing Role in Syria’s Uprising

    With the daily death toll in the Syria civil war reaching an average of nearly one hundred, a growing number of Syria’s neighbors are ramping up their support of those fighting the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

    Most attention has been directed at Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, a group of Sunni dominated countries that have sent the largely Sunni opposition in Syria money and weapons and provides shelter and training.

    Turkey’s support has grown to such an extent that Bashar al-Assad himself has blamed Ankara for much of the violence.

    But neighboring Jordan has also begun to increase its commitment to the anti-Assad rebellion. (more…)

  • Syrian Regime Suffers Diplomatic, Military Setbacks

    You would not know it from watching or listening to official Syrian state television but the regime of President Bashar al-Assad has suffered a trifecta blow over the past two days to a rebel movement that is increasing in maturity and a coalition of world powers that are pulling out all of the diplomatic stops to pressure Damascus into capitulation.

    Thanks to the regime’s use of its air force and artillery, loyalist forces may still have the upper hand in the battle for Aleppo. But even as they are a disadvantage, the Free Syrian Army has managed to score a significant and symbolic victory against the military in another part of the country.

    In what is widely being celebrated by the rebels as a direct assault on Assad’s fleet of fighter aircraft, an FSA brigade in the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor evidently shot down a Syrian combat jet with an anti-aircraft weapons system presumably captured by the insurgents from a military depot. (more…)

  • In Syria, Human Rights Violations On All Sides

    The Syrian government and its armed allies have been perpetrating human rights violations for well over a year now. Combatants who are loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have used just about every coercive tool in the book to silence dissent and punish his opponents. The United Nations have called the Syria’s use of shelling in residential neighborhoods, widespread torture of detainees and cold blooded murder of women and children crimes that could be sanctioned under international humanitarian law. The world has, in effect, come to prepare itself for more of this behavior as Assad’s regime continues to lose strength to a strong and dynamic armed opposition movement.

    What the world has not done is prepare itself for similar crimes being conducted on the other side of the conflict. (more…)

  • Assad Has the Advantage Before Battle of Aleppo

    Month after month, the ancient city of Aleppo in Syria’s northwest was a haven in its own world, isolated from the violence, massacres and bomb attacks that were pulverizing dozens of other cities across the country.

    Aleppo, known as Syria’s commercial and economic center of power, operated as if everything was normal: stores were open, gasoline was available for purchase and families were free to walk from place to place without the threat of being arrested, beaten or killed. Yet with the regime of Bashar al-Assad slowly but surely starting to lose control over what was once considered a government stronghold, it is as if the calm that was once so reassuring in this city was just a long and pleasant dream.

    Indeed, the same metropolis that was labeled by activists and outsiders alike as too calm to join the revolt is now thrust right in the middle of it. Battalions of men from the rebel Free Syrian Army have taken at least a third of the city’s neighborhoods, setting up checkpoints and trying to keep the loyalist army out of others. (more…)

  • In Syria, United Nations No Longer an Option

    If there was anyone in the world who still believed that the civil war in Syria could be resolved through a concerted, staged diplomatic process, whatever support that was left in that camp was quickly extinguished on Thursday.

    For the third time since the uprising in Syria began seventeen months ago, Chinese and Russian diplomats came together to veto a British backed United Nations Security Council resolution that would have punished the regime of Bashar al-Assad if it failed to comply with Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan.

    Afraid that the British proposal would have authorized the use of military force under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, China and Russia rejected the draft resolution as “biased” and unproductive. (more…)