In what appears to be the most successful and audacious attack by the rebel movement in Syria yet, an explosion in Damascus on Wednesday killed at least two members of the regime’s inner circle.
Exactly who carried out the attack or whether the explosion involved a suicide bomber is not known. What is certain is that President Bashar al-Assad’s brother in law General Assef Shawkat and defense minister Dawoud Rajiha were killed. Spokesmen for the rebel Free Syrian Army are rejoicing at the news, claiming responsibility for the operation.
Until today, Assad’s core supporters in the Syrian security establishment were insulated from the violence that has swept across the country since early last year. (more…)
Are the walls surrounding Syrian president Bashar al-Assad starting to crumble from within? To officials in the exile based Syrian National Council, the answer is an overwhelming yes.
It is not difficult to see why so many on the council and in the opposition more broadly feel this way. In addition to the concerted amount of international pressure that is being put on the regime by neighboring Arab states and the West, Assad’s armed opponents in the rebel Free Syrian Army are getting stronger by the day, in terms of manpower and military effectiveness. (more…)
The Russian navy recently announced that it is sending a number of warships to conduct exercises in the Mediterranean. What’s more, these ships are expected to stop in Tartus, the Russian refueling facility in Syria and several of the ships are carrying naval infantry.
This deployment has obviously raised concern in the West, much as a previous (false) report of Russian marines being sent to Syria did. The New York Times and Forbes‘s Mark Adomanis both provide a lot of useful information without excessive hype but I’m not sure either has the whole context. So let me spell out exactly what the deployment involves and provide some of that context.
This is far from the first time in recent years that Russia has sent ships to the Mediterranean. What’s more, when Russian ships go to the Mediterranean, either for exercises or in transit, they virtually always stop at Tartus. So there’s no cause for alarm there. The Times is right in noting that this current deployment is much larger than previous ones but (as Ilya Kramnik notes) the West is just going to have to get used to the return of Russian naval presence in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. (more…)
With the high-profile defection of Brigadier General Manaf Tlas, an elite member of the Syrian regime and close personal friend of President Bashar al-Assad’s, comes the renewed sense that the conflict in Syria is beginning to mirror developments in previous “Arab Spring” uprisings.
As Muammar Gaddafi’s inner circle fractured and defected around him and opposition forces consolidated their gains in the rebel stronghold city of Benghazi, the international community invoked the principle of the “responsibility to protect” and mobilized for a military intervention that was spearheaded by NATO forces. This event represents the most recent case of intervention justified by the moral and ethical concepts encapsulated within the “responsibility to protect” doctrine.
Though the principle itself is only a decade old, it has come under considerable scrutiny and criticism within the international community and has undergone several reinterpretations since its normative inception in 2001. (more…)
Amid new reports of Syrian government shelling on the northwestern city of Khan Sheikhoun, which has been controlled by the Free Syrian Army for months, Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle suffered a humiliating defection from one of its closest supporters.
Brigadier General Manaf Tlas, one of the highest-ranking Sunni military officers in the Syrian army, ditched his uniform and fled to Turkey last week, where Free Syrian army spokesmen have said he is now safe.
Tlas’ flight to Turkey comes after hundreds of conscript soldiers and dozens of Syrian army officers over the past two weeks have deserted the Syrian military in response to the government’s escalating crackdown on its own people. In one of the largest batches yet to befall the regime, 85 soldiers quit the military earlier last week. (more…)
It is perfectly possible for one country to argue with another over a controversial issue at the same time as cooperating with them on several others — as long as they both get their priorities right and are diplomatic in explaining their differences publicly.
Unfortunately, both Britain and the United States have failed to do this with regard to Russia: they have given more attention to Syria, where they disagree with the latter, than to the many more important issues on which they share common interests. The way British and American officials have explained their differences with their Russian counterparts has also been appallingly undiplomatic and, unsurprisingly, counterproductive. (more…)
Former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan at the University of Ottawa, Canada, November 4, 2010 (gazetteUO)
Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general who was appointed in February by the Arab League and the United Nations to lead a diplomatic effort to end the conflict in Syria, probably knew all too well when he accepted the job that it wouldn’t be easy. Indeed, sensing that the uprising in Syria was quickly changing from a peaceful protest movement to a civil war between supporters and opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, Annan wasted no time getting to work after he was nominated.
The signing of a ceasefire agreement by the Syrian government and the rebel Free Syrian Army on April 12 was the most significant achievement that Annan could produce with the consent of all of the parties, including the regime. The international community subsequently endorsed the move while the United Nations Security Council followed suit by affirming Annan’s initiative through a resolution.
Yet more than two months after the plan was put into effect, the Assad regime’s security forces have done nothing to abide by the charter’s six points which include the release of political detainees arrested in government sweeps, the end of shooting from all sides, the withdrawal of loyalist tanks and soldiers from populated areas and free access for emergency workers and journalists.
Absent the release of a few hundred people from prison, Assad has all but sidestepped the agreement, claiming that his government needs to respond to what is fast becoming a more lethal and capable insurgency movement seeking his ouster. Syrian troops are nowhere near leaving the cities, understanding that doing so would allow their armed opponents to expand their operational reach.
Instead, what we have seen is an acceleration of violence and the deployment of heavier weapons, not only from the Syrian army but from the rebels as well.
Government security forces have stepped up their military offensive this month in an attempt to flush out neighborhoods that have been converted into rebel headquarters. Far more often than not, the Syrian army has conducted those operations in the most indiscriminate way possible, lobbing mortars and shells onto residential areas before allowing the regime’s supporting militias to sweep them.
Assad has begun to use his arsenal of helicopter gunships as an offensive tool in the fight, a response to the insurgents’ greater capability in targeting Syrian tanks with rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank weaponry.
Annan has long recognized that his original peace agreement has failed in its main effort, even if the longtime diplomat refuses to acknowledge that fact in the public eye. Other United Nations officials, including the organization’s head of peacekeeping operations, have started calling Annan’s effort all but dead.
With the skepticism growing, Annan is back to the drawing board, pitching another idea that would bring any state with a major stake in the outcome together for an international conference. The purpose, as Annan has made clear, is to take advantage of every piece of leverage that the outside world has to stop the bloodshed before the conflict reaches the point of a full civil war.
The proposal, first reported by The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius, calls for an international contact group, without the Syrians, to lay out a framework for a post Assad political transition. The permanent members of the UN Security Council would attend as would Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — four countries that hold their own interests in Syria. If all goes as planned, the consultations would result in a unified document signed by all of the parties outlining a transitional phase for Syria’s politics.
Much like the process in Egypt and Yemen, timelines would be given on electing a new president, creating a new constitution and forming an interim national assembly that is made responsible for administering the state before the seating of an elected parliament.
The catch is that President Assad and the Syrian opposition would have to agree before the document could be given any chance to succeed, permission that Assad is unlikely to give unless he is absolved from any war crimes that have been committed in his name during the course of the sixteen month rebellion.
The idea is an interesting one, for it draws Iran, seen as Assad’s only ally in the region, in from the cold. The United States have already reached the conclusion that inviting Iran would be unwise and contradictory to the conference’s stated mission. It is easy to see why Washington has taken that view: Tehran is widely believed to be supporting Assad’s crackdown by sending weapons, technology and advisors into Syria. Iran’s rhetoric remains solidly on Assad’s side, despite his multiple crimes and isolation from most of the world.
Regardless of Iran’s public statements, excluding it from discussions about the future of Syria could hardly make the transition any easier. Despite its bombast, Iran is a rational power that may be willing to support President Assad’s removal if its core interests are taken into account. American officials may not like it but allowing Tehran to have a stake in the outcome could push them to be more constructive.
Much like the Syria conflict in general, nothing in Kofi Annan’s new diplomatic tact guarantees success. Iranian participation could simply elongate the process, resulting in more casualties. Nor is it certain that Assad would be willing to leave if he is assured exile. But an international conference could be worth a try. Every other option on the table seems ineffective, dangerous or politically unattractive.
Another day in Syria, another brutal massacre reported. The carnage inside of the Middle Eastern country is quickly evolving into a predicable cycle of abuse and counterabuse by all sides in the conflict, with an even greater number of civilians being killed in a systematically gruesome way.
The government of President Bashar al-Assad has ignored the United Nations-sponsored peace deal orchestrated by former secretary general Kofi Annan, degrading the arrangement into nothing more than a piece of paper that is fast bordering on the irrelevant.
A horrific spate of killings conducted by what are presumed to be pro-government militiamen in a small farming hamlet in the central part of Syria has further exposed the Annan plan for what it is — a cover for a United Nations Security Council unable to agree on anything other than the gravity of the violence inside of Syria. (more…)
If there was ever an instance that could graphically illustrate the ineffectiveness of Kofi Annan’s ceasefire agreement in Syria, it was a deadly attack on the villages of Houla this weekend that ended with casualties of virtually every age.
United Nations officials on the ground in the Arab country are still trying to figure out what exactly happened but preliminary reports backed up by international monitors suggest that the Syrian regime attacked the grouping of small towns with artillery fire and door to door raids by its Shabiha militia allies, killing over one hundred people.
The most shocking and saddening aspect of this attack was how many children died before the offensive was over — 49, most under the age of ten, are among the dead.
Artillery attacks by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime have been deadly for months. Since the Syrian uprising began more than a year ago, some 11,000 civilians are estimated to have been killed in government initiated violence. But when small children are killed by their very own government, some with their jaws blown off from high explosive munitions, the violence takes on a whole new dimension.
The attack on Houla epitomizes just how barbaric Syria’s conflict has become after fifteen months. Indeed, the killing that occurred over the weekend is just the type of case that can convince governments the world over that a change in their approach is needed to contain and, if possible, end the strife.
The question is whether the United Nations Security Council can actually arrive at this point.
To date, the council has been nothing but a hamstrung body, unable to make difficult decisions and too fragmented to pass important resolutions.
Courtesy of Chinese and Russian objections, the council has yet to push through any economic sanctions against the Assad regime for its military crackdown. The stalemate has convinced what once were peaceful demonstrators to take up arms and fight back themselves. The best the United Nations have been able to do is issue press statements about the extraordinary brutality, like the massacre in Houla last Friday and Saturday.
It is not just the Security Council that has been unwilling or unable to act however. Critics have charged the United States, which would like to see the Assad family dynasty collapse for good, with dragging its heels. Officials of the previous administration and some outspoken and powerful members of the Senate have blasted President Barack Obama’s national-security team with indecisiveness and a stubborn resistance to get the United States involved militarily against the Ba’athist regime.
This criticism is coming at a time when Obama Administration officials are weighting their military options — or at least trying to determine how they can assist countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which may be transporting heavy weapons to the Free Syrian Army.
Tired of stalled diplomatic measures and a ceasefire that has been broken by both sides since the pact was first signed, american intelligence officials are reportedly expanding their contacts with the armed opposition in an attempt to figure out which factions are worthy of receiving arms. Washington will still stay away from supplying Assad’s enemies but the administration could come around to the idea of supporting a Saudi, Qatari and Libyan campaign to send weapons to the Syrian president’s opponents.
No one knows whether the scheme will work. At the moment, the question may be beside the point. What is important to note is that the United States are increasingly agitated that Assad is able to snub the world over its calls for dialogue and to end the violence, despite his near total isolation. Horrific and unspeakable acts of violence like the Houla massacre will only embolden that perception.
Four days into the United Nations-mandated ceasefire, the conflict in Syria continues, albeit at a smaller scale.
The Security Council, with Russian support, hopes to ensure that envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan is being implemented seriously by all of the parties on the ground. On Saturday, it passed a resolution to send a preliminary team of thirty monitors to observe compliance.
Yet despite the council’s newfound unity, nothing in Syria is guaranteed. The civilian casualty toll over the past few days was low when compared to last week’s violence but the fact remains that no one knows for sure what President Bashar al-Assad and his military advisors are thinking behind closed doors.
Both the Syrian government and the Free Syrian Army, the main armed group resisting the regime’s efforts to consolidate control, have all said the right things when asked about Annan’s plan. Syrian ambassador Bashar Jaafari has told the council and news media that the Assad regime is fully committed to the plan’s success. Rebel commanders have uttered similar rhetoric, reiterating their policy of not shooting unless the Syrian government renews its offensive.
Their words need to be taken with a grain of salt. Bashar al-Assad has a terrible track record of misleading Arab League and United Nations diplomats and sidestepping his promises. The restraint of the militant fighters is anything but assured. Without a command and control system, any defector can break the truce agreement in its entirety by disregarding the Free Syrian Army leadership and taking matters into their own hands.
The observer team deployed inside Syria to monitor the Annan proposal is a departure from the United Nations’ previous reluctance to send its own people into conflict zones. The monitoring mission is not a strong one however. The observers will be unarmed, have a difficult time traveling the entire country, and that is assuming that the regime allows them to.
The cessation of major hostilities between the government and the opposition is understandably receiving the most attention. But the Security Council must not forget that the Annan plan is a multidimensional one with the ultimate goal of getting both sides to negotiate. There is no evidence to date that Assad has complied with any other point in the Annan agreement. Syrian troops continue to man checkpoints in major cities while heavy artillery remains positioned either inside neighborhoods or on the fringes of towns in preparation for another offensive.
The tens of thousands of prisoners taken by the authorities have not been released either, nor has there been a noticeable influx of foreign and Syrian journalists into the most damaged areas.
As was demonstrated by last Friday’s demonstrations across the country, the Syrian army will still not allow civilians to protest against in large groups. Five demonstrators were killed on Saturday, others were beaten on Friday.
This is an obvious calculation. The larger the group, the more likely the regime will have to confront a change in momentum toward the demonstrators.
The violence is undeniably lower and the shelling of neighborhoods that was previously the norm has either lessened or stopped entirely. But the ceasefire, which could break with a single incident, is only part of the package. For the Security Council, there is still work to be done.
It is hard enough being an international diplomat, especially when your job was specifically created to pacify one of the most deadly internal conflicts in the world today.
Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, was tapped by the Security Council to do exactly that — shuttle between the Syrian government and the fractious armed opposition to implement some sort of a peace before thousands more civilians are killed in the line of fire.
Sensing the gravity of the situation, Annan wasted no time to hash out his own peace accord which has garnered the absolute support of the Security Council in a rare show of unanimity on the issue.
Despite Annan’s efforts, the longtime diplomat is beginning to experience just how difficult and hopeless his mission may be. While President Bashar al-Assad and his adversaries have all agreed to the accord’s points, hardly a day goes by when government officials, commentators and United Nations personnel express their extreme reservations about whether the agreement will actually do any good.
Annan’s plan has been buoyed by the support of all five permanent members of the Security Council, in addition to the largest opposition group, the Syrian National Council. But with Syrian army units continuing to arrest protesters and hitting entire cities with mortar attacks, other nations are just about at the end of their rope in terms of supporting a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
This impatience is doubly so for the Sunni kingdoms in the Persian Gulf, a group of countries which view the downfall of Assad as a strategic opportunity just as much as a moral obligation. What is bad for Iran, so goes the logic, is good for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Annan is thus confronted with three problems simultaneously. Not only is he trying to broker a tentative ceasefire and a Syrian led political rapprochement process that may be dead upon arrival; he is attempting to do this fast enough for the Saudis and the Qataris to hold off on sending weapons to the rebels, yet slow enough to retain the support of Syria’s main backers on the Security Council, China and Russia.
A resolution of the conflict and a complete cessation of the violence will depend on the Syrians themselves. But for that process to begin (if it ever does), Annan will be forced to reassure a broad coalition of countries that, however different their interests in the conflict may be, Syrians will need time to negotiate an acceptable solution.
As the international community remains stymied over how to resolve the conflict in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad must feel confident.
Warning from European nations and the United States that Assad’s downfall was but a matter of time have been silenced in recent weeks. China’s and Russia’s endorsement of United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan provided the world with a common set of goals and aspirations on the crisis. Yet divisions over how to implement Annan’s proposals remain, as well as questions as to whether the Syrian strongman is actually sincere in carrying out the strategy.
Indeed, the past two months for Assad and his regime have not been all that bad from a military standpoint. (more…)
Various sensationalistmedia accounts yesterday and this morning have been reporting that Russia has sent some sort of anti-terror troops to Syria.
The whole media frenzy seems to go back to an ABC News report, which in turn is based on what is almost certainly a misinterpretation of this report on the RIA-Novosti Arabic website. It seems pretty clear that this is a major exaggeration of what is actually happening in Tartus.
Obviously, I don’t have channel to the Russian Ministry of Defense, so treat the following as well informed speculation, rather than reporting. Nevertheless, what is actually happening seems pretty clear from the available information.
The ship in question, called the Iman, is a tanker that as far as I know has been participating in Russia’s counterpiracy mission in the Gulf of Aden. Its mission in Tartus is to refill supplies. Given its previous mission off Somalia, it undoubtedly has a contingent of naval infantry on board for the protection of the ship’s crew. In fact, the original RIA-Novosti report seems to state that the troops in question are marines rather than “anti-terror troops,” whatever those may be.
So it seems to me that this whole episode is nothing more than a small contingent of ship protection troops being mislabeled as Russian troops potentially coming to help Bashar al-Assad.
(For a very similar interpretation of events from a Russian source, take a look at Konstantin Bogdanov’s article on the RIA-Novosti website.)
Now, one might argue that the presence of any Russian ship at Tartus at this point in time should be viewed as a show of support for Assad. There is certainly an aspect of that here but one should note that the naval presence is not new. Russian ships have repeatedly docked at Tartus since the uprising began. The Iman in fact replaced the Ivan Bubnov, another tanker that had been docked in Tartus until recently.
It may be that Russia has decided to keep a ship in Tartus in case evacuation of Russian citizens becomes necessary though that seems to be a bit of a waste of resources.
More likely, the ship presence is the result of a combination of factors, including the need to resupply, the desire to show support for Assad and the potential need for evacuation.
The key point is that Russian ship presence at Tartus is not a policy change and the ship protection unit are almost certainly not “anti-terror troops” come to support Assad.
The whole episode will become a “bomb certain to have serious repercussions” (as described by an unnamed United Nations Security Council source in the ABC News report) only if the Western media narrative turns it into something that it’s not.
With the death toll in Syria possibly approaching 10,000, diplomats and analysts around the world are more enmeshed than ever on President Bashar al-Assad’s state of mind. What is the Syrian strongman thinking behind closed doors, as his security forces continue to pummel demonstrators and Free Syrian Army rebels from city to city? Is he struggling personally with the decision to kill his people or is he willing to let his army continue to bombard cities to deter others from joining the opposition’s movement? And what, if anything, has Assad learned over the past year of bloodshed and turmoil in his country?
To date, most of these questions could not answered. The American intelligence community has been frank in telling the press that its reach inside Syria is not very good. The human spy networks that are prevalent elsewhere in the Middle East are nowhere to be found in Syria, where the government has been highly cognizant in keeping potential sources on the run, if not locked up in prison.
But in what appears to be an intelligence bombshell, some of the information that Arab and Western governments have long been trying to get a hold of are now open to the public, courtesy of a Syrian dissident group that managed to tap into and track the personal email files of the Syrian president and his inner circle.
The thousands of communications were handed over to The Guardian newspaper in London where some have been transcribed and posted for all to see.
It would be imprudent for other countries to base their foreign policy decisions on a small collection of emails. But this caution does not mask the fact that these communications do, in fact, help the world in evaluating the attitudes and spirits of Bashar al-Assad, his family and his inner circle.
Those evaluations, in turn, can help policymakers craft a more effective package of sanctions, diplomatic pressure, anti-Assad media blitzes and, if need be, international military intervention.
Those who have long predicted that the Assad regime is on its last legs will be disappointed to learn that the emails paint a picture of a leader that is far away from the violence and more determined than ever to continue his internal crackdown.
Moreover, it seems that Assad is getting a considerable amount of assistance from loyal men and women inside and outside of his government.
Among the noteworthy facts that can be derived from the emails is that a daughter of Qatar’s emir has been trying desperately to convince Assad’s wife to leave the country for the sake of her family and her personal safety. She writes, “looking at the tide of history and the escalation of recent events — we’ve seen two results — leaders stepping down and getting political asylum or leaders being brutually [sic] attacked.”
In January, the Qatari ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, told CBS News’ 60 Minutes that in order “to stop the killing” in Syria, “some troops should go.” His country supported the NATO intervention in Libya last year.
A powerful Lebanese businessman urged the Syrian government to tamper down its rhetoric on Al Qaeda. The tycoon, Hosein Mortada, argued that the Assad regime would be far better off blaming the United States and the internal opposition for two suicide attacks that rocked Damascus last year. The terrorist group has come out in support of the Syrian opposition as has the Palestinian militant organization Hamas.
Syrian media advisors meanwhile appear hard at work trying to help Assad project a sense of patriotism, realism and populism in his speeches.
In what is by far the longest email in the collection, an advisor to the president’s highlights the importance of showing gratitude for the sacrifices of the Syrian army and police. He warns that if Assad neglects to celebrate their work, he could drive a wedge between the government and the families of those whose loved ones have died for the regime.
Referring to a BBC interview with a defected Syrian diplomat, another Assad advisor favored a stern response from the government in order to discourage other foreign service officers from abandoning the president.
The email suggests that when the defector’s identity is discovered, he must be discredited or punished for his act. The Syrian government’s policy in responding quickly and harshly to defectors may explain why there have been so few civilians leaving the regime — they fear for their own lives and the lives of their families.
The Syrian city of Homs is a city under siege. The army has surrounded Syria’s third largest city, in between Damascus and Aleppo, for nearly two weeks. Tanks and mortar crews are positioned along the its main arteries just outside downtown. No Syrian can get in to the area to visit family members or friends and any Syrian who attempts to get out is considered lucky.
Thanks to the Syrian government, no foreign journalists are allowed into the country to document what exactly is going on and how bad the violence really is. Nonetheless, humanitarian and civil society organizations with contacts inside Homs report that at least four hundred people have been killed over the past thirteen days, with a total of seven hundred killed nationwide since China and Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have called on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down.
The scene currently unfolding in Homs is a twenty-first century iteration of the infamous siege of Sarajevo, when Serbian forces unleashed an indiscriminate barrage of shelling on a town whose residents were unable to flee. The violence has gotten so bad that the normally apolitical Arab League, which has turned itself into an unusually assertive regional body over the past year, has expelled Syrian diplomats and is calling for the world to reach out to the Syrian opposition. Saudi Arabia, the heavyweight of the Gulf Cooperation Council, has followed suit by resending practically the same resolution that Beijing and Moscow rejected to the General Assembly of the United Nations which was enacted by a wide margin.
Not to be outdone, the UN’s top human rights official, Navanethem Pillay, addressed the Generally Assembly on Monday with some of her strongest words yet on President Assad and his security forces. Crimes against humanity have been conducted by the Syrian government since March, she said. And in words seemingly aimed at China and Russia, Pillay argued that “the longer the international community fails to take action, the more the civilian population will suffer from countless atrocities committed against them.”
Yet the international community cannot do much more at the multilateral level. The Chinese and Russians have taken the Security Council option off the table, ensuring that any more attempts at the council to push Assad from power will be met with another veto. The European Union is reportedly stepping up its own economic sanctions against the Assad regime, cutting off its transactions with the Syrian central bank. The United States continues to support the Arab League’s calls for the violence to stop unconditionally, all the while trying to determine how it can increase financial and political resources to the opposition without making the situation worse.
However the Obama Administration chooses to respond, Gulf Arabs are getting restless over their fellow Sunnis being killed by a government that is controlled by Shia Alawites. An unnamed Arab official hinted that channeling weapons to the Free Syrian Army, Assad’s most significant military foe inside the country, may be an option if the current rate of killing continues unabated.
If anything spurs the world to action, it should be the prospect of an already deadly civil conflict in Syria becoming even more militarized. The result of such a development would most certainly entail greater numerical losses for the Syrian people, even more support to the Assad regime from Iran and Russia, and the Syrian people facing the greater prospect of mass casualty attacks on civilian areas.
Syria’s conflict is the most deadly segment of the Arab Spring protests, behind Libya. But the situation will only deteriorate further if more machine guns, AK-47s, explosive devices and ammunition are introduced into a conflict that is smack at the center of the region’s many divides.
