United Nations staff hold signs with photos of children stating they are not targets. The U.N. has struck a deal with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to stop using child soldiers and to release all youngsters from their ranks. Courtesy: UN Women/Ryan Brown

By James Reinl
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2019 (IPS)

The United States-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have struck a deal with the United Nations to stop using child soldiers across swathes of eastern Syria under their control and to release all youngsters from their ranks, the U.N. announced Monday.

General Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the SDF, an alliance of armed groups that includes the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG), signed an accord over the weekend to halt recruitment of children under 18 years and to punish any officers who break the new rules.

The YPG has been identified as a recruiter of child soldiers in the U.N.’s annual “list of shame” since 2014. In its most recent annual study, the world body confirmed 224 cases of minors being recruited by the group in 2017.

“It is an important day for the protection of children in Syria and it marks the beginning of a process as it demonstrates a significant commitment by the SDF to ensure that no child is recruited and used by any entity operating under its umbrella,” said the U.N. Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba.

The deal was the result of months of talks between the U.N. and the SDF, which must now identify any boys and girls among its force and send them back to their families. The group must also discipline officers who break the new rules.

Conditions for children in Syria are among the “direst” on her agenda, Gamba said. In 2017, she confirmed at least 6,000 violations had been committed against youngsters by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Worse still, the patchwork of rebels, terrorists and other armed militias fighting in Syria’s chaotic civil war committed more than 15,000 violations against children — ranging from recruitment to rapes, killings, maimings and the bombing of schools.

In addition to the YPG, the U.N. has named and shamed Syrian government forces, the rebel Free Syrian Army, the Islamic State (IS), the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham group, Jaish al-Islam and Tahrir al-Sham, the latest iteration of al-Qaeda’s former affiliate the al-Nusra Front.

After releasing all child soldiers and fulfilling the terms of its deal with the U.N. — known as an “action plan” — an armed group can be removed from the U.N.’s list of shame, as has happened with militias in Congo, Chad and Ivory Coast in recent years.

“Action plans represent an opportunity for parties to change their attitude and behaviour so that grave violations against children stop and are prevented to durably improve the protection of children affected by armed conflict,” Gamba said.

The SDF controls the quarter of Syria east of the Euphrates river after driving back IS in a series of advances from 2015 that culminated in March with the group’s defeat at its last holdout in Baghouz, near the Iraqi border.

Washington’s support for the SDF has been problematic, as Turkey views the Kurdish-led force as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a domestic independence group that Ankara sees as a terrorist organisation.

Children are among the victims of a recent spike in fighting in Syria’s Idlib Province, the last remaining bastion for anti-government rebels and where a shaky truce brokered by Russia and Turkey appears to be falling apart.

Thousands of pregnant women, vulnerable infants and young children are among the estimated 330,000 people fleeing conflict in the northwestern area, the Christian aid group World Vision said in a statement Monday. 

“It’s hard to imagine the trauma, distress and physical toll that the flight from air strikes and bombs has on families in Idlib. And it’s even worse for pregnant women and those with babies and young children,” said Mays Nawayseh, a World Vision aid worker.

The war in Syria, now in its 9th year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions since it started with the violent repression of anti-government protests in March 2011.

What remains of a street in Aleppo, August 2014. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
GAZIANTEP, Turkey, Sep 4 2014 (IPS)

The woman who walked into the Islamic Front (IF) media office near the Turkish border was on the verge of fainting under the hot Syrian sun, but all she cared about was her infant son.

With over half of the country’s population displaced, she was just one of the parents among the more than three million UN-registered Syrian refugees grappling with how to keep their children safe and healthy while dealing with the innumerable dangers inherent in war zones, refugee camps and statelessness.

When IPS met the young woman in early August, she was living in the nearby Bab Al-Salama camp in northern Syria after having been displaced from an area of heavy fighting.Over 200,000 Syrians are living outside the camps in Gaziantep and rent prices have roughly tripled since the massive influx of refugees starting. Protests broke out in mid-August against their presence, and they are increasingly being targeted by violence.

The infant was only a few weeks old and needed to be breastfed, but there was nowhere out of the sight of men. And so, wearing a stifling niqab, she asked to use the room that now serves to ‘register’ foreign journalists crossing the border.

The room afforded some shade and privacy in which to breastfeed and, once the twenty-two-year-old former fighter in charge of the office had stepped out, she started feeding her child.

As she blew gently his sweaty forehead, the woman told IPS that she had kidney problems and could not sit – she could only lie down or stand up. She said that she was also having problems accessing medical care, for both herself and her feverish son. And even if the black abaya covering her body and the niqab over her face were hot, ‘’it’s better to use them,’’ she said, ‘’it’s war”.

The area around the Bab Al-Salama camp just across the border from the Turkish town of Kilis has been bombed several times, including a car bomb in May that killed dozens.

On the other side of the border, the camps that the Turkish government has set up for the over 800,000 Syrian refugees registered with the United Nations are said to be able to accommodate fewer than 300,000 of them.

In formal and informal refugee camps throughout the world, women are notoriously at risk of sexual crimes. Alongside economic issues, many parents on both sides of the border cite this as a reason to marry off their daughters earlier, in the attempt to ‘’protect their honour’’ and find someone to provide for them.

The children resulting from these unions are almost always unable to be registered and are thus stateless, joining the ranks of the many Syrian Kurds and others denied citizenship under Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s regime.

Mohamed was an officer in the Syrian regime’s army. From a fairly large tribe in Idlib, his family was targeted by the regime once the conflict began and he has fought with different Free Syrian Army brigades over the past few years.

Soon after a number of women were reportedly raped by ’shabiha’ in his area, he moved his young wife, mother and sisters across the border. He now crosses illegally into Turkey to see them when not fighting.

Street scene in rebel-held Aleppo, August 2014. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

Mohamed is seeking ways to reach Europe. When IPS first met him in autumn of 2013, he had no intention of leaving. However, since then, his first son has been born, stateless.  The Syrian regime did not issue passports to officers in order to prevent them from defecting even prior to the 2011 uprising, and none of his family possesses one.

As a professional soldier without a salary and with no moderate rebel groups providing adequate wages to support a family, as well as no desire to join extremist groups – many of which would pay better – he feels does not know how else he can provide for his family.

‘’There’ s no future here,’’ he said.

On the Turkish side of the border, Ahmad – originally from Aleppo, Syria’s industrial capital – says he does not want to leave the region.

“I once asked my wife what country in the world she would go to if she could, and she answered ‘Syria’,’’ he told IPS proudly.

However, he added that he had stopped going backwards and forwards as a fixer and media activist as the day approached for his wife to give birth and the situation in Aleppo worsened.

When children approached a table as IPS was having tea with him in a Turkish border town, he somewhat gruffly told a little girl begging that she should ‘’work, even if that means selling packets of tissues on the streets.’’

‘’They have to learn to work and not just ask for money. Turks are starting to get angry that we are here,’’ he said.

Over 200,000 Syrians are living outside the camps in Gaziantep and rent prices have roughly tripled since the massive influx of refugees starting. Protests broke out in mid-August against their presence, and they are increasingly being targeted by violence.

Meanwhile, some attempts are being made to raise money for schools inside Syria that would be virtual ‘bunkers’, as Assad’s regime continues to target both schools and medical facilities.

In rebel-held Aleppo, IPS stayed with a Syrian family for a number of days in August as the regime barrel bombing campaign continued and as the danger of an impending siege by government forces or a takeover by the extremist Islamic State (IS) became more likely.

The eldest of the family’s four girls – only eight-years-old – had recently been hit by a sniper’s bullet while crossing the road to one of the few schools still functioning. Although it was healing, the exit wound will leave a very ugly scar on her arm.

Whenever the bombs fell during the night, the occupants of the room would move about restlessly, while the eight-year-old was always already awake, staring into the dark, utterly motionless.

Her father was adamant, however, that – come what may – the family would not leave.

In the late afternoon, little boys could be seen playing outside in the street with scant protection from snipers, only the nylon tarp of a former UNHCR tent hung across the street in an attempt to shield them. Large gaping holes marked the buildings, or what was left of them, in the street around them.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

A central Aleppo street after a barrel bomb attack, August 2014. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS

By Shelly Kittleson
ALEPPO, Syria, Aug 16 2014 (IPS)

Volunteer civil defence units operating here in Syria’s largest city careen through crater-pocked routes of precariously hanging, pancaked concrete where barrel bombs have struck.

Greyish dust blankets the dead, the alive and the twisted steel jutting out.  The panicked confusion immortalised in innumerable photos – with bloodied survivors raking desperately through the rubble for loved ones – is granted a modicum of order by the arrival of the rescue teams, in their distinctive white hard hats and black knee pads and boots.

When IPS arrived on the scene a few moments after the explosion of one such barrel bomb in early August, the men were already there, looking for survivors amid the rubble. One stood ready ear glued to his walkie-talkie, eyes darting between onlookers he was trying to keep at a safe distance and the sky – the first barrel bomb is almost always followed by another within 10-30 minutes, targeting would-be rescuers.One [rescue worker] stood ready, ear glued to his walkie-talkie, eyes darting between onlookers he was trying to keep at a safe distance and the sky – the first barrel bomb is almost always followed by another within 10-30 minutes, targeting would-be rescuers

The Hanano civil defence centre in eastern Aleppo is a repurposed school, its corridors dusty and empty except for a few firemen’s boots airing out, a broom, and a few morale-boosting posters of the civil defence men in uniform.

Body bags and trauma kits sit alongside fuel for Bobcat excavating and rubble-clearing equipment, pickaxes with USAID logos on them, drills and boxes of firemen’s suits, propped up against chalkboards still bearing the marks of lessons once taught in them.

Many of the men are in their twenties, clean-shaven, former university students. Khaled Hijjo, a former law student in his mid-twenties and head of the centre, told IPS that the rescue and fire teams work in two shifts: 12 hours on, 12 hours off.

At the moment there is only one medical specialist at the centre, he said, so this specialist is on call 24 hours a day. The man, who did not give his name, said he had worked for the Syrian Red Crescent even prior to the 2011 uprising and subsequent violence, but that he had no time to train the other men in basic first aid.

Correct carry and extraction procedures prevent aggravating injuries, including paralysing spinal injuries, and the heavy equipment received has proven vital to remove rubble and save those trapped underneath.

For the past four months, the rescue workers have been receiving a salary from the government-in-exile and courses from a number of foreign bodies and governments.

Entry-level first responders are given a salary of 175 dollars, while the heads of the various centres instead receive 200, civil defence chief and former English teacher Ammar Salmo told IPS, adding that 21 members of the team had been killed by barrel bombs while on duty.

When the bombs bring down entire buildings, ‘’many are trapped and nothing can be done. There are five still alive in one area that we know of, but there is no way to get them out’’, one local media activist told IPS, saying he felt helpless, and that taking pictures of the dead and wounded had ceased to make him feel useful

Though many of the local media activists have been given expensive cameras and satellite equipment and attended training programmes funded by Western nations in southern Turkey, virtually none of them seem to have had any basic first aid training.

Given the extremely severe shortage of trained medical staff left in Aleppo after the repeated attacking of medical facilities by the regime, the civil defence teams play an even more vital role in saving lives.

Ambulances donated from abroad and brought in through the sole supply road still under rebel control into the city go with the first responder team in central Aleppo, while those injured in the surrounding countryside are taken in cars to the nearest first aid centre. Communication is possible only via walkie-talkie, because there is no mobile phone reception.

A training centre was recently established inside Syrian territory but outside of the city, where team members were attending 20-day training sessions a few at a time, said Salmo.

He added that more civil defence centres were currently being set up in the Idlib region further to the west, and that it was proving easier to manage them than those in Aleppo, because many of the men ‘’were regime defectors and are more familiar with how institutions work.’’

He said the deputy chief of civil defence was a former regime general, and that four other former generals are currently working with them.

Of the instructors at the training centre, Salmo told IPS,  ‘’five are defectors from Assad’s forces, including a general teaching how to deal with barrel bombs and fire, and two doctors serve as medical experts to train the men in first aid.’’

The group has experienced some minor problems with some of the armed groups. One team member also told IPS that some of the heavy equipment had been ‘’borrowed’’ for a day by a Free Syrian Army group a few weeks earlier, but that they had promised that they would return it soon.

‘’We’re trying to solve the matter through dialogue,’’ he said.

When asked whether the group had had problems with the more extremist groups such as the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra, he scoffed, saying ‘’Jabhat Al-Nusra doesn’t need our things. They already have enough money.’’

No fire engines or other emergency vehicles could be seen in the immediate vicinity of a civil defence centre near a front line where IPS spoke to Salmo, who said that the teams had to be careful.

‘’Once you are seen as more organised,’’ he noted, ‘’you’re also seen as more of a danger to the regime.’’

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Bashar Ja'afari (centre), Permanent Representative of the Syrian Arab Republic to the U.N., listening during a Feb. 25 briefing on the humanitarian situation in Syria. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 25 2014 (IPS)

An inflow of Russian-made weapons. Political and military support from Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Sharp dissension among fractious rebel groups. And the unyielding loyalty of the armed forces.

These are four primary reasons why Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has succeeded in tenaciously holding onto power while battling a mostly Western-inspired insurgency since March 2011, according to Middle Eastern diplomats and military analysts."Send money to refugees, decry the violence, and do nothing but kowtow to the Russians on Syria. This is not a policy." -- Paul Sullivan

“The United States and the Western powers have been virtually out-manoeuvred by Assad,” reckons one Arab diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Geneva peace talks ended in abject failure last week and unless there is a dramatic change on the ground, Assad will continue to survive, he predicted.

Dr. Paul Sullivan, professor of economics at the National Defence University (NDU) and adjunct professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University, told IPS Assad will go only when his military and intelligence turn on him.

Considering most of the leadership are part of his Alawite sect, this is unlikely at the leadership level, said Sullivan, pointing out that most of the lower-level officers and foot soldiers, however, are Sunnis.

This is where the time-bomb for Assad is ticking, said Sullivan, who is also adjunct senior fellow, Future Global Resource Threats, at the Federation of American Scientists.

He said that weapons, money and help are coming from Iran, Hezbollah and even across the border from Iraq, to the Assad regime.

A resident of Aleppo in the midst of buildings damaged by an airstrike from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

Russian arms exports to Syria are a lot less now than prior to the conflict.

“The opposition movements are split, argumentative and mostly dysfunctional in their attempts to oust Assad,” said Sullivan. “This is more to Assad’s advantage than the arms imports. The opposition are their own worst enemies.”

He said Assad does not need a divide-and-conquer strategy. “The opposition is doing that for him,” he said.

The wide-ranging opposition groups – including the Supreme Military Council, the Free Syrian Army and its splinter group the Syrian Revolutionary Front, the Nusra Front, the Syrian National Coalition, the Islamic Front, and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham – are mostly in disarray.

After Assad’s father, Hafez al Assad, took power in 1971, Syria was linked to the then Soviet Union by a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.

Under this treaty, the country’s armed forces were equipped with Russian heavy weapons, including MiG and Sukhoi fighter planes, Mil helicopters, frigates, fast patrol boats, a wide variety of surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles, battle tanks, armoured personnel carriers, rocket launchers, howitzers and mortars.

William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Centre for International Policy (CIP), told IPS cutting off the flow of arms from Russia could reduce the savagery of Assad’s war effort, saving lives in the process. For that reason alone, it is worth pushing for, he said.

“But given Assad’s accumulated arsenal and dogged determination to cling to power, it may or may not significantly shorten the war,” Hartung added.

Both the United States and the United Nations have sharply criticised the Assad regime for its air attacks on civilians, and specifically, the use of “barrel bombs” in civilian neighbourhoods.

Women walk past destroyed shops in Al Qusayr, Syria. Credit: Sam Tarling/IPS

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said early this month he was “deeply concerned” about the continued armed escalation, “most deplorably the ongoing aerial attacks and the use of barrel bombs to brutal, devastating effect in populated areas.”

But Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin has a different perspective on the attacks: “Everybody’s speaking about barrel bombs, dropped in cities. Sounds pretty horrific.”

He was quoted as saying last week that if civilians are suffering to the scale which is being described, “that of course is a very dramatic thing.”

“But we have to be clear on something: this is not something that’s per se prohibited by international law,” he added, virtually justifying the use of barrel bombs by the Syrians.

Pieter Wezeman, senior researcher in the Arms Transfers Programme at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), told IPS, “As far as I know, the barrel bombs are improvised local production. Not something I would expect Russia to deliver.”

Wezeman said all information indicates Russia has been in the past five years, and still is, the main supplier of arms to the Syrian regime.

He pointed out Russia has opposed a U.N. arms embargo on Syria, and Russian officials have regularly stated about the continued supplies of arms to Syria.

“It is however unclear what Russia has been delivering the past year and why Syria has chosen to use improvised bombs and not standard ones purchased from Russia or may be Iran,” he added.

Sullivan described Syria as “a ruined country”. If Assad falls, he told IPS, there is likely to be no united and organised opposition ready to take his place.

“This could lead to great chaos and more conflict in the country,” he noted.

Syria is, sadly, trapped in the worst of all conflict cycles – when there is no way out, given the way the leaders of the relevant parties act and act with each other, Sullivan said.

He said the United States, the European Union and others have approached this situation in “an invertebrate nature”.

Russia has out-manoeuvred the West in so many ways, but those leaders are so clueless they do not even see it, he said.

“Send money to refugees, decry the violence, and do nothing but kowtow to the Russians on Syria. This is not a policy. It is an embarrassment,” Sullivan declared.

Syrian refugees in Boynuyogun refugee camp in Hatay, Turkey shout Islamic slogans against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in March 2012. Credit: Freedom House/CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 20 2013 (IPS)

Three months after averting a military strike against Syria with a last-minute deal to deprive it of its chemical weapons arsenal, U.S. policy toward the world’s most violent conflict appears increasingly at sea.

The weakening of Washington’s favoured rebel faction, dramatically illustrated earlier this month by the Saudi-backed Islamic Front’s takeover of the main headquarters and warehouses of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) along the Turkish border, has deprived it of a viable secular force in the armed struggle against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

At the same time, U.S. efforts to persuade the newly formed Front, whose factions have worked closely with Al-Qaeda’s affiliates in Syria, even as they deny any such association, to return the purloined equipment to the FSA, let alone take part in the Geneva II peace talks scheduled for Jan. 22, 2014 with the government, appear to have been rebuffed.

“The Islamic Front has refused to sit with us, without giving any reason,” Washington’s special envoy on Syria, Robert Ford, said in an interview with al-Arabiya television earlier this week."America is paralysed...because they can't support Assad, but they won't support these radical Islamists either."
-- Joshua Landis

The result, according to analysts here, is that the Jan. 22 conference, if it takes place at all, is unlikely to affect the situation on the ground where the war consists increasingly of two extremes, neither one acceptable to the United States or its western allies.

“What’s really significant about this past year is that any pretence that there are important moderate, secular or liberal forces fighting in Syria has really been swept away,” Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, told IPS. “What you’re left with are radical forces: those behind Assad and those behind Islamist and jihadist groups.”

“America is paralysed, as well as most of the West, because they can’t support Assad, but they won’t support these radical Islamists either,” according to Landis, whose blog, Syria Comment, has an influential readership here.

That paralysis – as well as a civil war that most analysts believe remains stalemated – is of growing concern here. At least 125,000 people are believed to have been killed over the last two-and-a-half years, while 6.5 million, or a third of the population, are internally displaced.

Another 2.3 million have fled the country to neighbouring countries that are mostly ill-equipped to take them because of the demand on infrastructure and, in the cases of Lebanon and Jordan, the impact on political stability. Of the request for 13 billion dollars in humanitarian aid submitted for 2014 by the U.N.’s top relief coordinator, half is earmarked for Syrians.

In a survey of 1,200 U.S. government officials, academics and other experts released Thursday, the Council on Foreign Relation’s Centre for Preventive Action rated the spillover effects of the Syrian civil war, along with the increased violence in Afghanistan, at the top of 30 possible conflicts that are most likely to escalate and affect key U.S. interests in 2014.

In the past year, the conflict in Syria has contributed to a sharp surge in sectarian violence in neighbouring Iraq, while the influx of predominantly Sunni refugees and the deployment of some Hezbollah units to Syria have exacerbated sectarian tensions in Lebanon.

The Obama administration immediately suspended its non-humanitarian assistance to rebel groups after the Islamic Front took control of the FSA facilities. Washington has continued its humanitarian aid, which now exceeds 1.3 billion dollars since the crisis began.

While neo-conservatives and other strongly anti-Assad voices here still insist the administration should do more to aid secular factions on the ground, including with airstrikes against key government weapon systems, the notion that the alternative to Assad will likely be worse is gaining traction here.

Last week, the highly regarded former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, told the New York Times that it was time “to start talking to the Assad regime again. As bad as he is, he is not as bad as the jihadis who should take over in his absence.”

Similarly, former CIA director Michael Hayden suggested recently that living with Assad might be “the best …[of the] very ugly possible outcomes.”

Most analysts here, like the administration, argue that neither side is strong enough to defeat the other militarily. But the main foreign sponsors of the two sides – Russia and Iran on Assad’s side, and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states on the other – still believe their side will prevail, according to these analysts.

“The Americans have to accept that Assad’s not going and that we’re going to have to deal with him,” according to Landis.

“Iran and Russia have both entertained the hope that he will reconquer Syria, but they have to be persuaded that’s not going to happen, and the Gulf states have wanted a total Sunni win, and they have to be convinced they’re not going to get it,” Landis said.

“Everybody has to compromise in a serious way – to stop sending in weapons and money that fuel the fighting and to do it together, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia,” he added.

While the recent nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 has opened the possibility of some rapprochement between Washington and Tehran on regional issues, prioritising the nuclear issue has crowded out discussion of Syria.

Iran has said it wants to attend Geneva II, but it insists it will not do so under the precondition that it explicitly endorse the creation of a transitional government whose composition would be decided by agreement between the Assad regime and the opposition.

The precondition was established at the first Geneva conference held last year and was insisted on by the Saudis, who, it is widely believed here, are responsible for the Islamic Front’s refusal so far to attend the talks.

Washington’s deference to the Saudis, whose complaints against both Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran and his failure to follow through on threats to attack Syria in September have become deafening recently, has contributed to the impression of paralysis in U.S. policy.

“If ever there was a time when the Saudis deserved criticism, it would be now,” according to Tony Jones, a Gulf expert at Rutgers University. “Instead, we have [Secretary of Defence Chuck] Hagel going to Manama and offering up the standard view to ameliorate Saudi anxieties and Ford’s reaching out to the Islamic Front.”

“Saudi Arabia wants to win in Syria, while the administration says it is open to a broader range of options. But it appears that maintaining a strong relationship with the Saudis…is more important to the Americans than resolving the Syrian crisis in a way that might alienate them.”

The United States, according to Jones, should make it clear that it is “trying to prevent a further escalation of the conflict, and the only option would be for the Saudis to join it and as many other actors in Syria, including the Iranians, as are willing to participate in Geneva.”

Redur Khalil: “Were it not for the Jihadists, the regime would have been toppled long ago.” Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
QAMISHLI, Syria , Oct 25 2013 (IPS)

Kurdish fighters have emerged as a powerful player in the Syrian war thanks to the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG – “People’s Protection Units”), a seemingly well-organised armed group which has so far proved capable of defending the territory it claims in northern Syria.

IPS spoke to Redur Khalil at YPG headquarters in Qamishli in northeast Syria. A former Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighter with ten years of experience, Khalil – considered the public face of Kurdish resistance in Syria – has been a senior officer in the YPG since the start of the Syrian war.

About 40 million Kurds comprise today’s largest stateless nation. Numbering around three million in Syria, they are the biggest minority in the country, as many as the Alawites, the ethno-religious group of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Kurds are still in control of their areas in northern Syria, in a precarious balance between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Assad’s army. Nonetheless, the biggest threat towards stability in the areas where they are concentrated is posed by groups linked to Al Qaeda, several of which are allegedly backed by Turkey.

Q: What´s the current security situation in Kurdish-controlled areas?

A: Since Jul. 16 our forces have been constantly engaging in clashes with Al Qaeda-linked groups like Jabhat al Nusra and, especially, the ISIS – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – all across our territory.

These terrorist groups have not only killed and abducted Kurdish people and displaced civilians from their villages but also looted their properties, homes and places of work. After heavy clashes in areas like Afrin, 340 km north of Damascus, and Serekaniye, 506 km north of Damascus, we have pushed them down to Til Kocer, 840 km northeast of Damascus on the Syria-Iraq border.

Q: Many claim that Turkey has been funnelling jihadist cells across their border. What´s your take on that?

A: There´s no doubt about it. A few days ago we spotted them again coming from the Turkish border and we´ve even been attacked by Turkish artillery from their side. Two of our fighters were killed by gunfire from Turkish soldiers on the other side. But we also have a huge collection of IDs that belonged to fighters coming from Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrein… Many from Iraq and, so far, three from Turkey [he produces a pile of ID cards].

Q: But Assad´s presence in your areas is almost anecdotic. Why is there such a big presence of foreign fighters in the area?

A: It´s an unfortunate convergence of two agendas: Turkish chauvinism, which wants to boycott any step towards the recognition of the Kurdish people in Syria or elsewhere, and the Arab Islamists’ dream of an Islamic state.

We Kurds are caught in between those plans; we´re very much an obstacle for them so it´s actually us, and not the regime, that they´re fighting against now. We have suffered over 20 suicide attacks in the last 20 months.

Other than the foreigners, Assad also released prisoners from all over the country. Were it not for the Jihadists, the regime would have been toppled long ago.

Q: Do you have communication of any kind with such groups? And with Assad’s forces?

A: A few days ago we released some of their prisoners in exchange for the bodies of our martyrs. That´s all. As YPG we have no communication whatsoever with the Assad regime.

Q: Rumour has it that PKK fighters are flocking into Syria´s Kurdish areas to join your ranks.

A: It´s not true. Besides, we´re not waiting for them because we have clearly proved that we can manage the situation by ourselves. We have an army of 45,000 fighters, who have all gone through a 45-day training programme in the several camps across the Kurdish areas.

Q: Nonetheless, the PJAK – PKK’s counterpart in Iranian-controlled Kurdistan – has publicly said it wants to come and fight alongside your troops.

A: They are prepared to send their fighters, but as I said, we can handle the situation without any extra help. Both PKK and PJAK are welcome if they want to come, but for the time being we don´t really need them.

Q: Are there any non-Kurds within your ranks?

A: Indeed. A number of Arabs, Assyrians and Turkmens have joined us as well as men and women from all walks of life. Thirty-five percent of our fighters are women. We have lived together for centuries and they are an integral part of Kurdistan just as the Kurds are. YPG’s mission is to protect Western Kurdistan and all of its ethnic, national, and religious components.

Q: But there are also allegations that YPG is recruiting children.

A: Recruitment of conscripts under the legal age is completely rejected, it´s unacceptable and prohibited by the rules and regulations in force in this area.

Unfortunately, this did not prevent a few who did join voluntarily under the pressure of circumstances and through the neglect of some. In those few cases they were not allowed to participate in military operations and were not deployed in ‘hot’ areas. What I want to underline is that it was only actions of individuals, not of the system or the organisation as a whole.

Q: Kurdish opposition parties have accused you of indiscriminate use of force against protesters in the town of Amude, which resulted in the death of three activists last June.

A: We have videos, photos and documents that show that what happened in Amude was part of a conspiracy. Gunmen joined those protests and did not hesitate to shoot at a YPG convoy returning from a combat operation in the outskirts of Hasakah, 550 km northeast of Damascus. A member of the YPG, Sabri Gulo, was killed in that attack and two other fighters were injured.

Q: Where do you get funds and supplies?

A: We get support from the Kurdish Supreme Committee as well as from taxes collected at the borders under our control.

Q: Jabhat al-Akrad is also a Kurdish armed unit but not fighting alongside the YPG. What´s your relationship, if any, with them?

A: Jabhat al-Akrad was set up as a Kurdish unit that joined the FSA in Aleppo. But they´ve even engaged in clashes with them, when the Arab opposition attacked Kurdish areas. They´re also committed to the defence of the Kurdish land.

Q: How do you see the peace process between Ankara and Turkey´s Kurds?

A: As usual, the Kurdish side has moved forward whereas the Turks haven´t lifted a finger yet. Despite the obstacles, I strongly believe that peace will finally come and that issues between both sides will be settled. It´s not just one side but Turkish society as a whole that is demanding it. It may take longer than expected but I´m sure it will finally happen.

The United States has said it will increase direct support to the Syrian opposition. Credit: Freedom House//CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Jun 14 2013 (IPS)

With U.S. intelligence agencies’ concluding that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against rebel forces, the White House announced Thursday that it will increase “the scope and scale” of assistance it has been providing to the opposition, including direct support to its military arm.

In a late afternoon teleconference, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, repeatedly declined to say whether support will include arms that the western-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC) has requested in light of recent setbacks it has suffered on the battlefield.

“We’ve heard their request, and our aim is to be responsive,” he said. “This is going to be different in both scope and scale in terms of what we have provided to the SMC…and will be aimed at strengthening [its] effectiveness.”

But Rhodes appeared to rule out direct military action, including creating a “no-fly zone” to protect the rebels or carrying out airstrikes against facilities used by the regime’s forces, whose ranks were recently bolstered by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon.

“We have not made any decision to pursue a military operation such as a no-fly zone,” he said, as it “would carry great and open-ended costs” and would not necessarily ensure a dramatic improvement in the rebels’ situation on the ground."We have not made any decision to pursue a military operation such as a no-fly zone."
-- Ben Rhodes

“We are prepared for all contingencies, and we will make decisions on our own timeline,” he said. “Any future action we take will be consistent with our national interest and must advance our objectives.”

The White House announcement came amidst a growing sense of urgency by the opposition and their U.S. supporters, who are worried that recent battlefield successes by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – notably their capture last week of the border town of Al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border – has shifted the tide of the war in the regime’s favour.

While the administration initially described the opposition’s setbacks as tactical and unlikely to end a strategic stalemate, U.S. intelligence agencies and some independent analysts have reportedly painted a more pessimistic picture, suggesting that momentum in the nearly two-and-a-half-year-old war has moved decisively towards the regime.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that top SMC commander, General Salim Idris, had sent what it called a “desperate plea” to the United States, Britain and France for anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft weapons and hundreds of thousands of ammunition rounds.

Without such materiel, he warned, rebels may soon lose their hold on Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city located close to the Turkish border.

Syrian army, pro-regime militias, and Hezbollah fighters have reportedly been moving into positions around Aleppo in preparation for a major assault that could deliver a decisive blow against rebel forces in the northeastern part of the country.

The White House has come under growing pressure to escalate its involvement in the conflict from providing rebel forces with humanitarian and “non-lethal” assistance, ranging from medical supplies to night-vision goggles, to providing them with direct military support, whether by military intervention or by providing the kinds of arms requested by Idris.

That pressure has come both from the rebels’ backers in the region – notably, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have provided arms to the SMC and other rebel groups, including radical Sunni Islamist fighters, some reportedly associated with Al Qaeda – and from neo-conservative and other right-wing hawks in the media and Congress, chiefly Republican senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

They have been joined over the past weeks by a smattering of liberal interventionists, some of whom supported the 2003 Iraq invasion. But their biggest catch came this week when, at a private gathering with McCain, former president Bill Clinton said he agreed with the Arizona senator, calling Obama’s refusal so far to provide more support to the rebels a “big mistake”.

“Sometimes, it’s best to get caught trying, as long as you don’t over-commit,” Clinton said, echoing the off-the-record position of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state reportedly argued last fall in favour of escalating U.S. military support for the rebels during a particularly intense internal administration debate.

As it grew clear in recent days that the opposition, in its weakened state, was adamantly opposed to participating in proposed U.S.- and Russian-backed peace talks in Geneva in the coming weeks, Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, has reportedly taken over from where she left off, urging the administration to take stronger action in order to level the playing field in advance of any negotiations.

Obama, whose concerns about deeper involvement in yet another Middle Eastern war appear to mirror those of the general public, according to recent polls, has until now resisted these pressures. But he also promised last year that he would escalate U.S. intervention if the Assad regime crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons.

“The president has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has,” Rhodes said Thursday, noting that the U.S. intelligence community had concluded with “high confidence” that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.

Between 100 to 150 people had died in these attacks, he said, noting that the estimate was “likely incomplete…[and] a small portion of the catastrophic loss of life in Syria that now totals more than 90,000 deaths”.

The use of chemical weapons had added to the urgency of the situation, he said, suggesting, however, that the increased involvement of Hezbollah and Iran was also a major factor in the White House announcement.

Precisely what kinds of additional – and presumably lethal – assistance Washington will provide the SMC, however, remains unclear and the source of continued debate within the administration.

Rhodes’s vagueness and his statement that the administration will now consult with Congress and its allies – Obama attends a Group of Eight meeting in Northern Ireland next week – suggested that the issue was far from settled.

In the past, senior officials have said they opposed providing shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles to the rebels for fear they could be transferred to or captured by Al Qaeda-affiliated elements in their ranks.

Rhodes indicated that that those concerns have diminished somewhat as Washington has stepped up its humanitarian and non-lethal military aid to the SMC.

“General Idris and the SMC we are comfortable working with,” he said.  “It’s been important to work through them while aiming to isolate some of the more extremist elements of the opposition, such as al Nusra. We now have those relationships. We now have that pipeline flowing.”

Kurdish militias in Syria have controlled the oil rich area of Rumelan since early March. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
DERIK, Syria, Apr 11 2013 (IPS)

At seven o’clock in the morning on Mar. 1, Kurdish militias took over the only operational oil refinery in Syria, located about 800 kilometres northwest of Damascus.

“They told us to go home, and to wait for two days until everything was settled,” recalled Mahmud Hassan, one of 3,000 workers at the Rumelan refinery.

According to Abu Muhamad, an engineer at the production department, the plant consists of over 1,350 “Canadian-type extractors spread over an area of ​​about 3,000 square kilometres.

“Before the revolution we would easily produce 165,000 oil barrels a day but today we are pumping around 50,000,” he told IPS, adding that the Kurdish militias are “protecting the wells” and are tasked with distributing salaries to the workers.

The oil plant has become a symbol of Syria’s fractured oil industry, which has gradually ground to a halt since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime broke out in 2011.

Locals sources say it may also have brought the different armed groups closer together in order to negotiate how the last remaining local oil supply will be managed.

Before the revolt, the country’s many oil fields yielded 300,000 barrels a day. In 2010, oil exports touched the three-billion-dollar mark.

Now, the government is importing the very resource that was once the axis of its entire economy in order to meet local demand.

Though oil from Rumelan continues to flow to Homs and Banyas, located 160 and 280 kilometres north of Damascus respectively, “international sanctions (against Assad’s regime), and constant sabotage by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) or people who want to sell the oil by themselves, have cut the supply drastically since the revolution”, said Hassan, who worked for over two decades at the state-owned Syrian Petroleum Company that owns the Rumelan refinery.

He fears that if various armed groups continue to spar over control of the refinery, it could be catastrophic for the country.

While Assad’s government concentrates its efforts on crushing the rebellion raging through Syria, most of the northeastern region of the country has been under de facto Kurdish rule since July 2012.

Many have suggested that the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant political party representing Syrian Kurds, negotiated a truce with Assad’s government in exchange for greater control over the country’s Kurdish-majority regions.

PYD Chairman Salah Muslim told IPS that no such agreement had taken place.

But there is no doubt that the party and its militias enjoy widespread influence and control, with or without the government’s blessing.

Commander Feirusha, head of one of the Popular Protection Committees (known by the Kurdish acronym YPG), told IPS, “We have more than 30,000 troops deployed throughout all the Kurdish regions in Syria. We never (use) violence unless it is absolutely necessary,” he added proudly, driving his pickup truck across the flat landscape dotted with bouncing oil pumpers and fire columns.

“We respect the FSA units but we hate the Salafists,” continued 30-year-old Feirusha, who has 300 militiamen under his command.

He assured IPS that the Rumelan refinery takeover was conducted in a “peaceful way, through dialogue and without any shooting”, a testimony supported by footage taken on the spot by Abbas Khabat, a local journalist at Hawar News Agency.

But this claim has not stopped the government from lashing out at the local workers, whose wages have been withheld since March.

Most of the refinery’s 3,000 workers live with their families in a residential compound not far from the refinery, in a cluster of concrete blocks surrounded by scrub, the flat roofs lined with water-collection tanks.

Every day that they don’t receive their wages, concern grows among the staff.

“We keep working in the same way, our routines have not changed at all,” explains electrician Hafez al Nuseibi. This veteran refinery operator fears that Damascus may have interrupted salaries in retaliation for the recent takeover at the plant.

But in this tense atmosphere, fear quickly gives way to anger. “If we don’t get paid in the forthcoming days we’ll go on strike and paralyse the whole country,” Nuseibi warned.

Other workers are convinced that the different political groups are in cahoots with one another, and the delay in salaries is a result of secret negotiations that might not yet have reached a conclusion.

“A week after the YPG took over the plant, two secret meetings were held between the Kurds, the FSA and government representatives,” said Firat Dicle (not his real name), who has worked at the Rumelan refinery for over 25 years.

“The guests were hosted at the refinery’s administration building and their main point of discussion was how to split the profits from Rumelan into three parts,” he told IPS.

“Eventually they agreed that both the FSA and the YPG-PYD would get 30 percent, whereas 40 percent of the revenue would go to Damascus. While the three parties are fighting on the ground it’s clear they all badly need to keep fuel flowing,” says the veteran oil worker.

The situation is compounded by the fact that “everybody is afraid of both the regime and the FSA.”

Clashes between the FSA and the YPG reached their peak during the three-month battle of Serekaniye, 500 kilometres northeast of Damascus, until both sides declared a ceasefire in February.

Abu Muhamad, who combines his technical position with the political post of PYD head delegate in Rumelan, stressed, “Rumelan belongs not only to the Kurds but also to the Arabs, the Christians and the Syrian people as a whole.”

The senior representative disputes allegations that the Kurdish party entered into deals with the FSA or the government to share oil revenues, insisting, “Neither the PYD nor the YPG get any economic benefit whatsoever.

“Our main goal is that the plant continues to operate for the common good – a disruption of the supply will only be fatal for us. We would be paralysed while Damascus would still receive fuel from Iran, Russia and China.”

Tunisian families have begun to dread knocks on their doors, or late-night phone calls, fearing that the messenger will bear the news that their son has been smuggled out of the country to join the “jihad” in Syria.

Semi Ghesmi, a Salafist student and elected head of the National Students Union in Tunisia, supports what he calls the “jihad” in Syria. Credit: Giuliana Sgrena/IPS

Families here told IPS that they have no way of contacting their sons once they leave — whether by choice or coercion they will never know — for the warring nation nearly 3,000 miles away. At most, family members receive an inaudible telephone call from Libya, where the soon-to-be militants are trained, the muffled voice on the other end of the line saying a quiet and final goodbye.

After that point, no news is good news. If they are contacted again, it will only be an anonymous caller announcing the death of a son, brother or husband, adding that the family should be proud of their martyred loved one.

The next day, the family might find a CD, slipped under the door, containing filmed footage of the burial.

There are no reliable data on exactly when young Tunisian men began rushing to join the Free Syrian Army, currently engaged in a battle to depose Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, but experts and civil society activists are agreed on one thing: the number is increasing.

On Mar. 29, local sources reported that between 6,000 and 10,000 men have left the country, while the Algerian press say the number could be closer to 12,000.

Families tell IPS the self-proclaimed jihadists leave in secret, often under cover of darkness, and change their names en route so that Facebook and internet searches yield no results. They believe mosques and charity organisations serve as fronts for this “recruitment” process.

Widely considered the cradle of the Arab Spring, Tunisia has gained a reputation as a progressive country, bolstered by the strong democratic current that toppled former dictator Zine Abadine Ben Ali in January 2011. The election of the moderate Islamist party Ennahda in October 2011 further raised hopes that the country would stay on track towards a more inclusive future.

But beneath the moderate veneer, a strong ultra-conservative undercurrent remained, steered by Salafist-controlled mosques – like Fath, Ennassr, Ettadhamen, and the great mosque of Ben Arous located on the outskirts of Tunis – that are now serving as headquarters for the smuggling of fighters.

A true revolution is made by the people, not by jihadis coming from other countries.
The imams of these mosques often hail from the Gulf and are skilled at convincing young men – who run the gamut from poor, uneducated Tunisians, to wealthy professionals — that they must “help their Syrian brothers” in the “jihad” against Assad.

Charity organisations like Karama wa Horrya, Arrahma, Horrya wa Insaf, which provide basic humanitarian assistance to the poor, also play a role in this network that gathers able-bodied Tunisians, transports them to Libya and then, after a brief stop in Turkey, sends them onwards to the frontlines of the Syrian war such as the north-western border with Lebanon, and the city of Aleppo.

Young fighters’ first point of contact in Syria is with the Jabhat al Nusra (meaning the ‘Support Front for the People of Syria’), considered the most aggressively militant arm of the FSA.

Beyond these vague details, very little is known about the actual recruitment process. The only credible information comes from wounded jihadis who are sent back to Tunisia if their injuries have resulted in handicaps that render them unfit for battle. Most die in the fighting and those that return are often too afraid to speak of their experiences.

Tunisian youth, who played a crucial role in the 2011 revolution here, have conflicting views about the Syrian uprising, and their countrymen’s participation in it.

For some, like Semi Ghesmi, elected representative of the technological department of the National Student Union, Syrians are engaged in an outright jihad in the strictly religious sense of the term, meaning a battle between “good” Muslims and “kafirs”, or infidels. In this war, the FSA has the moral highground and must be supported.

Others like Nassira, a student at the Manouba University in Tunis, say the Syrian conflict “is not a revolution like the Tunisian one”. In her opinion, a true revolution is “made by the people, not by jihadists coming from other Muslim countries”. She favours the Tunisian model, which was dictated not by a small circle of extremists but by the majority of the people.

During the recent World Social Forum, held in Tunis from Mar. 26-30, the division between supporters and opponents of the Syrian rebels came to light when local participants burned FSA flags in the streets.

Jihadis – or racketeers?

Most families who spoke to IPS were too afraid to give their names, fearing reprisals. They suspect powerful and wealthy interests have a hand in the smuggling of fighters, since some families have received as much as 4,000 dollars in “payment” for each jihadi recruit.

Those who spoke to IPS under condition of anonymity believe the recruiters themselves also receive a fee. Many denounced the government for allowing this “business” in human lives to thrive.

A local journalist who has been investigating the process, but did not want to be identified by name, told IPS the government almost certainly makes money off this racket as well.

Experts believe Ennahda leader Rachid Ghannouchi’s statement, issued through the Ministry of Religion, that “we don’t suggest young people leave… but we have no right to prevent them” is tantamount to an admission that the government has no plans to put a stop to the practice, or apprehend those involved.

Observers find further proof of the government’s complicity in an agreement, signed in the Libyan capital Tripoli on Dec. 11, 2011 by Ennahda’s Ghannouchi; Burhan Ghalioun, former chief of the Syrian National Council (SNC); and Mustafa Abdel Jalil, former chairman of the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC), outlining plans to send weapons, along with Tunisian and Libyan jihadis, to Syria. The contents of the agreement were leaked to the public last year.

Not content with recruiting only men, clerics have begun to urge women and girls – some as young as 14 years – to take up “jihad through marriage” by travelling to Syria to satisfy the sexual needs of anti-Assad forces.

The phenomenon picked up speed after a Saudi religious scholar named Mohamed al-Arifi issued a fatwa in December 2012 allowing the “temporary marriage”, sometimes lasting just a few hours, of young girls to Syrian insurgents. Though he has subsequently revoked the edict, following a public outcry, the practice continues.

Here again, numbers are impossible to pin down – but IPS has heard of several cases in the last three months of Tunisian teenage girls who have gone missing, which has sparked fears of a new form of religiously sanctioned sexual trafficking.

(END)

In Aleppo, Karm al Jabal. This neighbourhood is next to Al Bab and has been under siege for six months. Mar 4, 2013. Credit: Basma/cc by 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

As the Syrian uprising enters its third year, the United States and its allies are preparing to materially increase their support of the armed opposition in Syria.

Secretary of State John Kerry pledged an additional 60 million dollars in direct aid to the rebels, marking the first time Washington will directly supply rebel forces, but the administration appears as wary as ever to get more directly involved.The CIA is on the ground helping sort out who should get money, and they’re training people in Jordan. The idea is, they don’t want to get involved any further.

The provision of battlefield materiel has been met with some support from hawks who have pushed for greater military intervention, though many policymakers have urged the president to go even further. Exhortations for intervention have increased since rumours began of a chemical weapons attack in Aleppo. Though U.S. officials have largely dismissed the reports, many members of Congress expressed concern about the use of weapons of mass destruction in Syria.

On Monday, Rep. Eliot Engel, the most senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced legislation that would authorise funding for “limited lethal assistance” to Syrian opposition groups, assuming that the groups would be carefully vetted in the process.

Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin concluded a Senate hearing on Syria by stating that a no-fly zone would “be helpful in breaking the deadlock and bringing down the Assad regime”.

During the hearing, Senator John McCain reiterated his long-held position that the U.S. should intervene more directly in the uprising. Levin and McCain have signed on to a letter urging President Obama to establish no-fly zones and provide more military aid to rebels.

Both the House legislation and the Senate letter were applauded in a press release Thursday from the Foreign Policy Initiative, the think-tank successor to the neoconservative Project for a New American Century: “This week, key members of Congress stepped into the void of U.S. leadership on the Syria conflict, calling for action to end the Assad regime’s slaughter of the Syrian people and avoid an even greater regional catastrophe.”

But the boldest military endorsement thus far came from Senator Lindsey Graham, who responded to rumours of the chemical attack by stating, “You’ve got to get on the ground. There is no substitute…I don’t care what it takes…I vote to cut this off before it becomes a problem.”

The Obama administration and senior military officials have pushed back against this type of involvement. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said earlier this week, “I don’t think at this point I can see a military option that would create an understandable outcome. And until I do, it would be my advice to proceed cautiously.”

Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, warns that this should not be taken to imply that the appetite for any intervention is low.

“They’re clearly already involved in the armed opposition,” Bennis told IPS. “The CIA is on the ground helping sort out who should get money, and they’re training people in Jordan. The idea is, they don’t want to get involved any further.”

Prominent Republicans from both sides of the aisle have also expressed concern about further militarising the conflict. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Chairman Ed Royce concurred with the sentiment that “the U.S. has no good options in Syria,” and Rep. Karen Bass warned that the Syrian opposition leaders are too weak to be credible in Syria.

“Who are those good rebels we want to arm?” asked Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The interventionists seem to take for granted that we know them well. The fact is, the interventionists themselves and the U.S. government don’t know squat about Syria and know even less squat about these rebels.”

The Free Syrian Army, the moniker bestowed on disparate militias and defected military units that have become the primary vehicle of the anti-Assad opposition, still lacks a functional central structure, and many fear that it has grown increasingly beholden to extremist Salafi groups such as Jabhat Al-Nusra.

“The very real risk in the U.S. providing arms even to those we believe to be moderate Sunni rebels is that even if they do better, and Assad’s regime is weakened, who would be the real beneficiary?” writes Gelb. “No one disputes that the extremist jihadis are far better positioned to take advantage of defeating Assad.”

The Central Intelligence Agency, Defence Department, and State Department have been vetting opposition elements in Jordan and Turkey, attempting to identify “friendly” groups and individuals to furnish with U.S. support, but the process has been fraught with unknowns.

Though the presence of U.S. officials in surrounding states has become near-ubiquitous, Washington continues to suffer from a significant deficit of information from inside Syria itself. This not only precludes the ability to identify friendly (or antagonistic) actors that remain within the Syrian borders, but also the knowledge of what happens to U.S. materiel after it crosses into Syria.

Nevertheless, the changing U.S. position is a clear indication of a shift away from President Obama’s expectation that the uprising would topple Bashar Al-Assad without added U.S. support.

“Obama would have preferred not to get involved at all,” said Bennis, “but that’s not an option. Others are eager to get involved, but their rationale is political, not based on strategic interests.”

According to Gelb, “There is one path to sensible strategy and to staying out of trouble. It is for America’s leaders in Congress, the media, and, above all, the administration to learn the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam and get themselves to satisfactorily ask and reasonably answer the tough questions before we selflessly, inadvertently, and foolishly find ourselves in another war.”

But as exhortations to further intervention rise, the tenor in Washington appears to be moving decidedly in the other direction.

The escalating warfare in the past week alone has involved aerial bombardments, car-bombings, and a government shut-off of national internet service. Credit: Rami Alhames/cc by 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 2012 (IPS)

As Syria descends further into civil war, the Barack Obama administration has struggled to balance its support for anti-Assad groups with its concerns that the opposition leadership – including the newly-formed umbrella coalition – is controlled by hardline Islamist groups.

Washington’s support for the rebels has become increasingly tenuous as the escalating violence has led to worrying developments from both sides. Noting “increased concern” of potential chemical weapons deployment, President Obama warned this week that the use of WMDs by the Syrian government would be “totally unacceptable”.

Washington has been reluctant to get too directly involved in the conflict, despite appeals from pro-war organisations, Syrian rebels, and other Western states. U.S. officials have enacted rigorous sanctions and diplomatic pressure on the Syrian government, and have furnished the rebels with “non-lethal” material support, but have been unwilling to commit U.S. troops or weapons.

However, NATO officials announced earlier today that Patriot Missiles have been approved for deployment on the Turkish border, bringing the U.S. and its European allies closer to direct conflict than ever before.

Joshua Landis, associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and proprietor of the widely-read blog Syria Comment, does not expect the NATO arms shipment to lead to a direct confrontation with Syria.

“The Patriot missiles have been in the works for months, when the situation on the ground was quite different,” Landis told IPS. “Things are moving fairly quickly in Syria, and the rebels have made a lot of advances…and events on the ground have overtaken the initial issues.”

Phyllis Bennis, a Mideast expert at the Institute for Policy Studies, largely agrees. “There is a danger, although still small, that the Obama administration will look at the escalating European support for the newly configured – though largely unchanged – rebel alliance, and decide that it is more risky to remain outside,” Bennis told IPS.

Consolidated opposition struggles for control

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the umbrella group created after U.S. and its Gulf allies grew disillusioned with the existing opposition organisations, closed out a three-day conference in Cairo last week. Though the coalition made little progress in determining the make-up of its 11-member executive political assembly, the Muslim Brotherhood appears to wield increasing control in coalition proceedings.

Attendees claim that members of the Brotherhood have overwhelming control in the determination of the final leadership body, as well as the drafting of the organisation’s internal constitution.

Riad Hijab, who served as the Baathist prime minister in Syria until his defection earlier this year, currently serves as the liaison between the coalition and the rebels on the ground. With the fragmentation of the armed movements inside Syria, the coalition will have to find a means to reunite right-wing Islamists in northern Syria, armed tribal elements in the East, and Kurdish militias in the northwest, none of which have expressed a willingness to fall in line under the leadership of the coalition.

Local fighters buck national leadership

Days after the formation of the coalition, rebel groups in Aleppo rejected the organisation’s leadership, denounced the coalition’s “conspiratorial” attempt to seize power, and declared their intent to establish an Islamic state in Syria, rather than the purportedly secular plan of the coalition.

Though Syrian rebels have made striking gains in the past few weeks, launching an offensive in the capital just this week, profiles of opposition figures and Syrian regime arrests show an increasing internationalisation of the opposition. Some rebels have recently acknowledged the growing influence of Jabhat Al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda affiliate which claims to have up to 10,000 fighters in Syria.

It is near-impossible to determine the influence of such groups on the overall opposition, but many are concerned that the protracted conflict has empowered the wrong actors to properly manage a post-Assad transition.

Bennis cautions that, “It appears that the vast majority of the weapons flooding the conflict by outside forces are being used by partisans of the first few battles, far less by those concerned with Syrians themselves.”

Friends of Syria plan for the future

Late last week, delegates from dozens of states gathered in Tokyo for the fifth meeting of the “Friends of Syria” group convened by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Though Clinton promised that the U.S. would “do more in the weeks ahead” to aid the Syrian opposition, the Obama administration’s path forward remains unclear.

The United Kingdom, France, Turkey, and most Gulf states have already recognised the new coalition as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said on Thursday that he “strongly, strongly, strongly” supports the efforts of the coalition, but Washington has yet to extend any official recognition to the body, though it has maintained strong networks of support and assistance to the group.

“The U.S. has made clear that it has no intention of stopping its regional allies, primarily Qatar, Turkey and the Saudis, from arming the various factions of the Syrian opposition,” said Bennis.

With Washington’s acquiescence, rebels’ weapons and money from the Gulf States have flowed freely into Syria through Turkey, while the regime appears to have secured arms shipments through Iraq.

According to Landis, much of the problem stems from a lack of long-term planning at the start of the uprising: “Back in 2011, everyone was predicting that Assad was going to fall within a couple of months, and everyone miscalculated badly.”

The escalating warfare – which in the past week alone has involved aerial bombardments, car-bombings, and a government shut-off of national internet service – demonstrates an unwillingness of either side to consider the possibility for a negotiated outcome.

Though most of these actions evince a growing confidence and organisation among the rebels, the political effect remains largely the same.

“Developments in Syria these last couple of weeks have escalated militarily, with the opposition forces showing greater capacity,” said Bennis. “But politically, little has changed.”

A member of the Free Syrian Army at the entrance to Sarmeen. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS.

By Shelly Kittleson
SARMEEN, Syria, Dec 3 2012 (IPS)

As the death toll in Syria tops 40,000 and some 400,000 have taken refuge beyond the country’s borders, a dearth of funding for civilian projects in areas under Free Syrian control risks undermining efforts to keep inhabitants united and the limited lines of communication flowing.

A number of young Syrian activist groups travel between Istanbul and cities under Free Syrian Army (FSA) control to set up local administration councils, racing to provide essential services to the population before another winter arrives amid scant electricity, dwindling access to basic necessities and continued shelling of civilian areas. The groups coordinate with medical workers in the border area and FSA members, and maintain regular contact with embassies, individual donors and local populations.

Abdullah Labwani, 27-year-old nephew of well-known dissident and physician Kamal Labwani works with the Istanbul-based NGO Civil Administration Councils (CAC). In “another life”, as he called the period leading up to the revolution, he worked as an architect and taught at the University of Damascus.

From Istanbul he maintains contact with those inside Syria while trying to convince Western diplomatic representatives to send funds for medical, communications and food needs as managed by the councils.

This IPS correspondent travelled with Labwani to Sarmeen in the northwestern Syrian province Idlib in early November. With just over 20,000 inhabitants before the uprising, several thousand had fled the town amid continuing conflict in the area.

In March of this year, some 318 houses, 87 shops and numerous warehouses, pharmacies and mosques were destroyed in attacks by Syrian government forces on the town.

Human Rights Watch found that regime troops had killed at least 95 civilians, many by summary execution, in the assault on the eastern and southern parts of the province. Three brothers from Sarmeen’s Hajj Hussein family, for example, were taken out of their home, had their hands tied behind their backs and were killed and burned in front of their mother as a “lesson” to the town’s inhabitants.

Sarmeen has been under Free Syrian Army control since late March, but regime shelling near the town can be heard frequently. In the days spent there, helicopters were spotted flying overheard a number of times. The regime has reportedly engaged in extensive dropping of barrel bombs and cluster munitions on towns in the province.

Residents use flashlights, candles, oil lamps and generators, and are fortunate to get an hour or two of power a day – an hour when everyone hastens to turn on television sets to see the news and to recharge phone batteries.

To the background noise of generators whirling, a meeting was held on my first night there in the basement of a building by the members of the community selected to form the council.

The 20 to 25 local men who took part were enthusiastic over the possibility voiced by Labwani of sending some of them to Istanbul for training courses if CAC manages to raise funding. Sugary tea and Turkish-produced cola drinks were brought round whenever attention started to wane.

A few wore the traditional red and white keffiyeh, and an imam and a doctor were in long flowing robes, but most of those in their twenties sported jeans and the older men were dressed in more formal Western-style trousers and shirts. The ruddier, worn expressions of those with walkie-talkies by their sides marked those among them most heavily involved in the FSA.

The major point of contention was whether or not FSA members could be included in such initiatives and their role in the civil administration, as embassies potentially willing to put up the funds require a clear distinction between helping civilian initiatives and aiding military ones. FSA commanders feel they deserve the right to positions of authority in the town administration.

In the following days this correspondent visited the nearby village Ta’um, not far from the military base in Taftanaz. Of some 7,000 inhabitants before the conflict, less than 2,000 are said to remain.

Mostly only FSA members have chosen to stay on in this village filled with rubble, the remains of exploded and unexploded ordnance, and a few stray cats. It continues to be bombed, as do approximately 60 to 200 other towns across Syria every day.

FSA fighters repeatedly call for more weapons, and claim that if they get them soon enough they could “prevent the need for large amounts of food aid and other assistance,” one of them, Abu Yassir, told IPS.

Given the fallout resulting from funneling weapons to non-state actors in recent decades, though, it is unlikely that arms will be supplied in any substantial amounts directly to the FSA by Western nations unless the Syrian National Coalition receives recognition as a government in exile, and until the FSA is seen as being under its command structure.

The Syrian National Coalition was founded in Doha on Nov. 11 to replace the Syrian National Council, and has thus far been recognized as the “sole legitimate representative” of the Syrian people by the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, France, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Whether those doing the fighting will be willing to relinquish control to those who are not remains to be seen. That said, with the exception of the commanders, all of the FSA members IPS spoke to had other hopes for the future – to return to their studies, to open a business, or attend a military academy “to get some real training”, as the fighter and former university student Abu Yahia put it.

In the meantime, civil administration councils seem one of the few ways to keep communities organised, make sure outside funding goes towards providing essential services, and establish a structured channel for communication and coordination between those inside and those outside the conflict area. (End)

Rebels travel in the back of a pickup truck in a town in northern Syria. Credit: Freedom House/cc by 2.0

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 6 2012 (IPS)

Following its failed efforts to contain the 19-month-old insurrection in battle-torn Syria, the United Nations has issued a new warning: the besieged country is heading towards “destruction”.

A much-publicised ceasefire for the Islamic holiday of Eid-ul-Adha last month was violated by both warring factions, while a video of summary executions of Syrian soldiers have triggered charges of war crimes against the opposition.

At this point, no one in Syria – not the government, not the rebels – can emerge from the crisis with an unsullied reputation.

Both factions are now strong candidates to face charges before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the joint special representative of the United Nations and the League of Arab States, has also hit a dead end both with the Syrian government and the rebel groups fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad, who is refusing to step down or agree to a political compromise.

“The United Nations remains helpless against the political and military complexities inside Syria,” says one Asian diplomat.

This may well be one of the biggest political failures of the United Nations, he said, pointing out the sharp divisions in the Security Council where China and Russia have already vetoed three Western-inspired resolutions against Assad.

Brahimi, who recently visited Moscow and Beijing, returned virtually empty-handed.

Briefing the Security Council Tuesday, Jeffrey Feltman, under-secretary-general for political affairs, said the situation inside Syria is turning grimmer every day, and the risk is growing that this crisis could explode outward into an already volatile region.

He said there are signs of this spillover in Lebanon and Turkey, as well as activities in recent days in the area of U.N. peacekeeping operations in the Golan.

Feltman provided a grim scenario of the new reports of atrocities: “a shocking video” of alleged executions of captured soldiers by opposition forces; credible reports of the use of cluster bombs by the government; as well as fighter jet strikes reportedly firing in Damascus for the first time and continued shelling of population centres.

Additionally, he said, car bombings have increased and activists reported 250 deaths on Monday alone.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation remains dire: over 382,000 refugees, more than 2.5 million in need of assistance, and continued difficulties of access and funding with winter approaching.

“The current path will lead Syria to its destruction,” he warned.

Clearly, there is a need to shift away from the military logic that is prevailing at the moment.

“The solution must be arrived at through a political process. It has to be a Syrian-led process; it can’t be imposed. It must bring real change and a clean break from the past,” Feltman told the Security Council.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, has continued to monitor the violence, executions and the killings of civilians since March 2011 when the crisis erupted. She told the Human Rights Council last month the situation amounts almost to a terrible disregard – and contempt – for the protection of civilians, as the country plunges ever deeper into conflict.

“Human rights abuses are rampant, and have reached the point where mass killings, summary executions and torture are the norm,” Pillay said.

In addition, she said, the humanitarian situation is deteriorating rapidly with tens of thousands of civilians now suffering shortages of food, water, electricity, employment and other basic necessities.

Gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law continue to take place every day. Thousands have been killed, thousands more injured.

“As we speak, civilians, including children, are continuing to be injured and killed in Syria virtually every hour of every day… No end to the conflict is in sight,” she said, pointing out that she fully supports the initiatives by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Brahimi, “whose job, as he himself has said, appears at this point to be close to impossible.”

A Syrian independence flag painted on on a government school wall. Credit: Freedom House/ CC by 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Aug 23 2012 (IPS)

As violence in Syria spikes after a short lull, the prospect of international military intervention appears to be growing by the day. Earlier this week, almost exactly one year after President Barack Obama first called on Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad to step down, Obama warned of “enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons”.

Though the warning hardly indicated a significant policy shift in the Obama administration’s response to the growing catastrophe in Syria, it does represent the latest step in a slowly shifting willingness of administration officials to consider the use of direct military force against the Syrian state.

Early reactions of the Obama administration – and much of the American public – were largely opposed to yet another foreign military intervention.Still reeling from setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, with forces stretched into Yemen, Pakistan, Mali, and elsewhere, administration officials were also discouraged by the lack of political capital gained by the controversial intervention in Libya.

They pushed back against committing the United States to yet another military endeavour in the Middle East, despite strong urging from hawks in both parties that advocated an immediate aerial campaign against the Assad regime.

However, Washington has not been content to sit on the sidelines and wait out the conflict; it has deeply involved itself on all levels of the uprising – from the daily violence to the transitional plans –hoping to mould the process and outcome to suit its own regional geopolitical interests.

Instead of committing U.S. troops, the administration has chosen a different tactic. For months, Washington has been facilitating the arming and coordination of the Free Syrian Army, the loose umbrella group of militia members, foreign fighters and army defectors that has rapidly grown in size and capacity to take on Assad’s security forces.

Reuters recently uncovered covert CIA involvement with the Free Syrian Army in Turkey, and the administration has allowed a U.S. organization to funnel money to Syrian opposition forces. These moves align the administration not only with the anti-Assad opposition writ-large, but with a particular subset of that opposition movement that has prioritised a violent struggle above all other alternatives.

An armed uprising to unseat a dictator is not necessarily an illegitimate course of action; many successful and inspiring revolutions have followed a similar course. However, the armed uprising in Syria is arguably the least legitimate component of the country’s two-year revolution.

From the very outset, “rebels” have had to rely on financing, equipment and even manpower from external sources, often either from other autocratic neighbouring states with non-democratic expectations for a post-Assad Syria, or from international players with disastrous track records of involvement and influence in Middle Eastern political affairs.

In this context, there are no indications that this iteration will somehow be substantively different than the countless others that have come – and failed – before it.

Syrian proponents of international military intervention are well aware of these dangers, yet some have consciously chosen to disregard them. The majority, however, claim that these complications are a necessary price to pay in the absence of any other alternative. Without Gulf and Western involvement, they argue, the opposition is doomed to defeat, which would inevitably result in a bloodbath for the people of Syria.

This claim belies the fact that the conflict does not exist in the black-and-white binaries presented by pro-intervention groups. Armed insurrection is not the only way to bring down the Assad regime, and the strengthening of armed groups directly undermines alternative methods of resolution to the conflict.

The opposition encompasses a number of different forms, with widely divergent tactics, and commensurate variation in efficacy and legitimacy. It is highly telling that popular demonstrations in Syria have all but vanished as the armed insurrection has gained control and prominence.

Anecdotal evidence points to the rapid disillusionment of many Syrians with armed gangs that have “hijacked” their uprising, potentially to advance the interests of some foreign power with designs for Syria. Charles Glass, a former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent who recently returned from Syria, warned that the Syrian popular democratic opposition is being “drowned out in the cacophony of artillery and rifle fire”.

The effects of the armed uprising are also being felt across the region. In addition to sizable refugee outflows into Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, the Syrian crisis has served as a catalyst to reignite long simmering tensions in its neighbouring states, a particularly dangerous development for the fragile political equilibrium in Lebanon.

In clashes yesterday, at least a dozen individuals were killed in a gunfight between pro-Assad and anti-Assad factions in Tripoli, and Lebanon has been host to a number of kidnappings of Syrian individuals in retaliation for Lebanese kidnapped earlier in Syria.

It is in this context that Washington’s positioning toward the crisis is particularly dangerous; the explicit support for the armed opposition has effectively edged out all alternatives. It has sidelined moderates, nonviolent activists and a large portion of the Syrian population that has no love for Bashar Al-Assad, but no interest in a Qatari, Saudi or American vision for a future Syrian state.

More importantly, it has emboldened the rebels to continue on a course that will inevitably lead to greater bloodshed, animosity and social collapse. The current course of action gives undue power and political legitimacy to outside actors with little to lose in Syria’s continuing descent into chaos; they can afford to hold out for maximalist objectives because they are not the individuals bearing the costs.

The Syrian regime, similarly buttressed by Russian and Iranian attempts to maintain strategic positioning, has openly floated the idea of an Assad resignation, and advocated the beginning of a dialogue with opposition groups.

Based on the regime’s history of reneging on internationally-mediated efforts to end the violence, the sincerity of this pledge is clearly circumspect. It does, however, represent a growing awareness within some Syrian circles that dialogue is the only way out of this stalemate that would keep the Syrian nation intact, a fact that the militarised Syrian opposition refuses to acknowledge.

As the last remaining U.N. monitors depart Syria today amid bombs and artillery fire in Damascus, it seems that the rest of the world has done the same.

The Syrian army has launched a ground assault on the northern city of Aleppo, sparking fierce clashes with opposition fighters in the frontline district of Salaheddine.

“The army is advancing from west to east to cut Salaheddine in half horizontally,” an official said on Wednesday on condition of anonymity, referring to the key rebel stronghold in the city.

Wassel Ayub, a commander in the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), said: “The regime forces advanced into Al-Malaab Street with tanks and armoured vehicles and fierce fighting is now taking place in the area.”

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Ahmed Zaidan, reporting from Aleppo, said “a large number of people have been killed or injured in a fierce battle near Salaheddine in which advanced Russian tanks have been used by the government forces”.

Zaidan says control of Salaheddine, and Aleppo, is “very important for both sides”.

“Aleppo is the second largest city and financial hub of Syria. We shouldn’t forget that almost 60 or 70 percent of the Syrian economy now is on a standstill because there is no life in Aleppo,” he added.

“Aleppo battle might decide the future of Syria and the future of the position of the regime.”

Fierce clashes

Clashes have also been reported in Hanano, Tareeq Al Bab and Sha’ar in the besieged city, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

The observatory said that the clashes taking place in the streets of Salaheddine and in surrounding areas were the most fierce that the northern city has seen in the nearly 17-month uprising.

SOHR said neighbourhoods of Maysaloun, Sakhour and Tal Rifaat were under shelling by government forces.

The Syrian army has made progress but rebels have not abandoned Salaheddine, our correspondent said, adding that the FSA has shot down a plane and destroyed five tanks in Aleppo.

The army, which has been massing its troops and armour in and around Aleppo since late last month, was moving from west to east, coming from Hamdaniyeh, a district adjacent to Salaheddine, the FSA’s Ayub said.

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin, reporting from neighbouring Beirut, said: “It’s not just symbolic but also where most of Free Syrian Army is concentrated, and for the world it also became symbol of FSA’s major success in getting their hold on this city.”

“FSA has been bringing in its own rebels from outside Aleppo from country side e.g. Idlib, Homs because for them it’s a major battle. Salaheddine is also crucial for government, as it has been a pillar of support for the (Syrian) President (Bashar al-) Assad in the last 16 months,” she said.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent Andrew Simmons, reporting from Antakya, on the Syrian-Turkish border, said people in Al Dana, near Aleppo, “are fully aware that only minutes away is the potential for massive shellfire raining down on their city.”

“They are within range of the long-distance artillery; they know that the situation could change – so that atmosphere permeates throughout the town. You you talk to people and they have the same symptoms, the same fear etched on their faces, because they are also concerned of retribution should the Syrian government forces return to where they live,” he said.

“They are trying to get by, it is extremely difficult, and they look to the Free Syrian Army for everything really. But security is not heavy on the ground, because so many of the young men have gone from the area to go to the battle for Aleppo city.

“That is the primary objective, they are aware of that, but many feel that Aleppo is the final battle but there is a long distance to go. There is a solemn feeling there really, a feeling that liberation is a long way away.”

Retired guards among Iran hostages

In other developments, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Wednesday that “retired” members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and army were among 48 Iranians taken hostage in Syria by rebels, the ISNA news agency reported.

Salehi said the former military personnel were exclusively on a religious pilgrimage to Damascus when they were seized on Saturday.

“A number of the (hostages) are retired members of the Guards and the army. Some others were from other ministries,” Salehi was quoted as telling reporters as he flew back from Turkey, which he asked for help in freeing the Iranians.

Another senior Iranian official visited Damascus on Tuesday where he met Assad.

Saeed Jalili, a senior aide to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Assad that Iran will continue to back the Syrian government.

During talks with Assad, Jalili said that what was happening in Syria was “not an internal issue”.

It is “a conflict between the axis of resistance on one hand, and the regional and global enemies of this axis on the other,” Jalili said.

On Monday, while on a visit to Beirut, the Lebanese capital, Jalili issued a veiled warning to countries backing the rebels.

“Those who believe that, by developing insecurity in the countries of the region by sending arms and exporting terrorism, they are buying security for themselves are wrong,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted him as telling Adnan Mansour, Lebanon’s foreign minister.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Syrian refugees shout slogans against Assad at Boynuyogun refugee camp in Hatay province on the Turkish-Syrian border in March. Credit: Freedom House/CC BY 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Aug 6 2012 (IPS)

As government security forces continue a week-long siege of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, high-ranking Syrian officials have begun to defect from the regime in record numbers.

The U.N. estimates that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled the fighting in Aleppo, which has witnessed a sharp increase in military tactics by both sides, including the use of helicopters, jets, tanks, and other heavy weaponry. It remains unclear if the rebel offensive was planned to coincide with a similar offensive in Damascus and the recent bombing that claimed the lives of four senior regime officials.

The death toll in this latest round of violence remains unclear, but reports show entire neighbourhoods levelled in skirmishes between the two sides, and a senior regime official warned Saturday that the true “battle for Aleppo” had not yet begun.

Fighting has also broken out in and around the Al-Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, where shells likely fired by the regime killed at least 20 Palestinians, and in Al-Abbasyieen, an area in the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus. On Monday morning, Syrian state media claimed that a bomb exploded inside a pro-government TV station in Damascus.

The regime has been further undermined by a series of high-level defections, including Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab who fled Sunday night to neighbouring Jordan.

“I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution. I announce that I am from today a soldier in this blessed revolution,” said a spokesperson for Hijab.

The situation looks grim for the embattled Syrian regime, which is facing dwindling resources and cooling relations with its international supporters in China and Russia, but thus far the army has successfully retaken most areas that have come under its direct offensive.

The Syrian government has appealed to Russia for financial relief from crippling international sanctions that may be starting to deprive the regime of much-needed fund and oil to maintain its strained security apparatus.

However, as the battle for Aleppo drags on and sporadic fighting continues in Damascus and elsewhere across the country, it is unclear if the limited remaining resources of the Syrian army will be able to continue to fund the embattled security apparatus.

Reports have emerged that northeastern Syria has increasingly come under the control of Kurdish forces under the auspices of a newly-formed Supreme Kurdish Council. Abdelbaset Sieda, the new president of the Syrian National Council after Burhan Ghalyoun’s resignation several months ago, has issued a statement arguing for a negotiated solution to sovereignty in the Kurdish areas, while maintaining a policy of zero tolerance for compromise with regime officials who have “blood on their hands”.

There have also been significant changes in international responses to the uprising, including a Treasury Department waiver to allow U.S. groups to fund the opposition, and the recent revelation that President Barack Obama has secretly authorised the arming and training of Syrian rebels in neighbouring Turkey.

The spiralling violence has led to some international concern that the conflict could rapidly become far worse. The government recently relocated several of its chemical and biological weapons stockpiles, and though the Syrian foreign ministry promised that no weapons of mass destruction would ever be used on Syrian civilians, it did reserve the right to use them against “foreign enemies”, a distinction that has become increasingly blurry as the Syrian opposition develops closer ties to international players in the U.S. and the Gulf.

Some concern has also been directed toward the Free Syrian Army (FSA) itself. While still structurally outmatched by pro-regime forces, it has significantly bolstered its military capability in recent weeks. In addition to worries about sectarian language from some FSA fighters, human rights organisations have begun to condemn potential war crimes committed by the FSA, including kidnappings, summary executions, and bombing attacks on civilian areas.

The window for an internationally-mediated ceasefire and transitional peace plan appears to be closing, as Special Envoy Kofi Annan announced his plan to resign from his post at the end of his current mandate on Aug. 31. Though the U.N. is scrambling to find a suitable replacement, the U.N. mission in Syria and Annan’s six-point peace plan appear to be nearing their end, leaving few diplomatic options left on the table.

Many inside of Syria have begun to worry that a prolonged civil war is now all but inevitable. As the military battles increase, the incidence of peaceful, mass-based demonstrations have effectively vanished. It is unclear, however, to what extent the dwindling numbers are a result of fear of regime reprisal, or a lack of faith in the militarised Syrian opposition movement.

Despite the string of FSA victories, the Syrian opposition remains deeply divided and struggles over leadership and direction continue to plague coordination efforts. A conference planned by Haytham Al-Maleh, a prominent opposition figure who recently broke with the well-known Syrian National Council, is being boycotted by several opposition groups, including the SNC.

A number of analysts in the U.S. have roundly rejected both the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition, including As’ad Abu-Khalil, a professor at California State University Stanislaus and the proprietor of the popular Angry Arab News Service.

Abu-Khalil warns in his blog that “the Free Syrian Army took over and hijacked the uprising. Most activists stayed home and washed their hands of what was going on, and some still supported the FSA even if they did not join.” He claims that there is now “no civilian movement left: it was killed by the regime and the FSA.”

Abu-Khalil also warns of the increasing influence of Al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist Islamist groups operating under the guise of the FSA, which still lacks strong central coordination and leadership. Websites affiliated with Al-Qaeda groups have taken responsibility for a number of bombings and attacks in Syria, and analysts have warned that many pro-Al-Qaeda fighters have left Iraq to join the ranks of the Free Syrian Army.

As the Assad regime’s legitimacy – and institutional capability – plummet to new lows, there is little indication that the opposition movements have built the necessary public support to effectively replace it in the event of a total government collapse. U.S. and Israeli plans for post-conflict reconciliation have been roundly rejected by key opposition figures, but no credible alternative has been offered in their place; Syria’s future is apparently as unpredictable and dangerous as its present.