I often get asked what advice I would give to President
Obama should I ever have an occasion to meet him. Naturally, at different
points I would have recommended different things. At this point, though, I
would tell him to take a page out of opposition leader Moaz Alkhatib’s book and
show some moral gumption by going against the accepted wisdom in his circles.
Indeed, the U.S. options regarding Syria are not about avoiding getting dragged
into another regional conflict, but about managing a bad situation in order to
prevent a worse outcome. We should bear in mind here as well that the bad
situation itself is, in part, the product of this avoidance mindset. Yes, America
does need to look before she jumps, but with regard to Syria, President Obama
has been navel-gazing for far too long. This is not leading from behind: this
is not leading at all.
Wednesday
February 6, 2013
Today’s
Death Toll: 162 martyrs
including 5 women, 7 children and one martyr who died under torture. 77 in
Damascus and suburbs; 30 in Aleppo; 15 in Daraa; 13 in Homs; 8 in Hama; 7 in
Deir Ezzor; 3 in Idlib; 1 in Lattakia; 1 in Raqqa and 1 in Sweidaa (LCCs).
Points
of Random Shelling: 276 locations. The
most intense shelling was reported in Damascus and its Suburbs, among the
points targeted by shells 120 were shelled using mortar, 103 with heavy caliber
artillery and 53 with rockets (LCCs).
Clashes: 116 locations. Successful rebel operations included downing
a regime’s warplane in Adra, destroying a regime’s checkpoint in Quneitrah, attacking
the Military Intelligence checkpoint in Palmyra, and attacking and destroying a
loyalist checkpoint in Zamalka Neighborhood, in Damascus City, and another in
Jobar Neighborhood, among many others (LCCs).
News
Clashes
Erupt in Damascus, Shattering Lull, as Prospects for Talks Dim Some
antigovernment activists described the resumption of fighting, which had lapsed
for the past few weeks, as part of a renewed effort by rebels to seize control
of central Damascus, the Syrian capital, although that depiction seemed highly
exaggerated. Witness accounts said many people were going about their business,
while others noted that previous rebel claims of territorial gains in Damascus
had almost always turned out to be embellished or unfounded.
Nearly
800,000 refugees flee fighting in Syria, US officials say Anne
C. Richard, assistant secretary of State for population, refugees, and
migration, and Nancy Lindborg, USAID's assistant administrator for democracy,
conflict, and humanitarian assistance, recently returned from a fact-finding
trip to Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait -- three of the countries that have absorbed
the greatest numbers of refugees. They recounted "emotionally raw"
scenes of children huddling in frigid temperatures at night, and parents
desperately searching for missing children whose images are emblazoned on cell
phone screens.
Image
indicates Syria building unscathed by Israel strike Diplomats,
Syrian rebels and security sources said Israeli jets had bombed a convoy near
the Lebanese border last week, apparently hitting weapons destined for the
Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which fought a 34-day war with Israel in
2006.
Aid
flows to rebel-held parts of Syria previously inaccessible The
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the U.N. refugee
agency, said on Friday it had reached an opposition-held area of north Syria
for the first time and found about 45,000 displaced people in appalling
conditions. The Syrian government agreed to give the United Nations access to
the zone of Azaz, north of Aleppo near the Turkish border, enabling a convoy to
deliver tents and blankets to needy people living in the open in freezing
temperatures.
The conflict in Syria has been deeply divisive
in the Middle East, pitting a largely Sunni opposition against a regime
dominated by Assad's Alawite minority – a heterodox offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Sunni nations such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have thrown their weight
behind the rebels, while Shiite heavyweight Iran is Damascus' closest regional
ally.
Syria
opposition demands all women prisoners freed by Sunday On its
website, BBC Arabic quoted Alkhatib as saying in an interview that "the
initiative would be broken" if the detainees were not released.
"Women must be released by the coming Sunday," he said. "If any
woman stays in prison, I consider the regime not responding." Alkhatib also
said the Damascus government was letting Iran makes it decisions and his
proposal for dialogue with Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Shara was rejected.
"They refused my suggestion to enlist the name of Vice President Farouk
al-Shara as a party of dialogue," he said. "I insist on dialogue with
Farouk al-Shara."
Special
Reports
Syria
rebels train 'killing machine' teenagers "When they arrive
here, they are children. By the time they leave, they are killing
machines," said Abdel Razzaq, a 38-year-old former army sergeant who
trains the boys. "I train them not to be scared of war and not to hesitate
when the time comes to kill," he said, speaking of his latest group of 20
volunteers, aged 14 to 18. "There are no more adult men in the villages.
Now it's the children who come for military training," said Abdel Razzaq.
The P.Y.D.’s militant Kurdish
nationalism, which puts ethnic identity before allegiance to Syria, and their
goal of some form of autonomy has put them at odds with Syria’s rebels. After
decades of discriminatory policies against the Kurds under the Baath Party, the
P.Y.D. is opposed to anybody but Kurds ruling their areas.
Nesma and her eight family members
fled Homs for Syria's Bab al-Salam refugee camp near the Syria-Turkey border in
December. They share a thin, tarp-covered tent designed for six that floods
with torrential winter rains. Temperatures dip below zero at night, and without
heat, blankets donated by wealthy Gulf States are not an adequate barrier
against the cold. Two toddlers have died of hypothermia-related causes this winter.
Obama has evidently tired of waiting
for others to do the self-evident “right thing.” Washington remains as
committed as ever to a democratic transition that results in Assad's departure,
but it has now opened the door in support of negotiations with all parties to
achieve it. In the past, the suggestion that Assad was prepared to lose an
election in 2014 could not be made in polite company. No longer. This change
does not insure success, but at the very least it helps to establish a
formidable and broad-based diplomatic counterweight to the killing.
With international humanitarian access
and staff limited by the Assad government, liberated areas see not only
deteriorating conditions but also new roles for Syrians outside and inside the
country confronting the consequences.
For Syria to reach end-game, either
one side must win, or they must reach a clear stalemate, with the country split
in two (or, more likely, three or more) parts. Until then, no diplomatic
solution is possible. Seeking one before the war is resolved isn’t a sign of
America’s renewed leadership — but just an exercise in avoiding the real tough
choices.
My
new paper, prepared for a briefing in Washington, D.C. that took place on
January 15, 2013, is now out and is titled “Syria
2013: Rise of the Warlords.” It should be read in conjunction with my
previous briefing “The
Shredded Tapestry,” and my recent essay “The
Creation of an Unbridgeable Divide.”
Quick Responses
·
AFP reports
that rebels are now training boy soldiers to take part in the fight against
Assad. This is horrendous. But pro-Assad militias have been relying on teen
soldiers for months now, and the trend is bound to continue in both camps. Albeit, the rebels are clearly one-upped when
to comes to the recruitment of women into the fighting force: pro-Assad
militias have created all-female militias including women from all age groups
and professional backgrounds, but in
confessional terms, the overwhelming majority of these women are Alawite, with
sprinkling of Christian recruits.
·
President Obama’s purported
“pivot” on Syria is said
to be intended to produce a “broad-based diplomatic counterweight to the
killing” there. But, unless military realities on the ground have shifted
drastically in favor of rebels, this alleged pivot would prove completely
useless and will be nothing more than another way for staying Missing in
Action. President Obama has committed himself to the goal of regime change in
Syria, but so far he has failed to produce a policy that can help achieve that
goal. That needs to change.
Today, Amer Matar
feels betrayed by the "international community" - twice over. First,
for not defending the peaceful movement that sought freedom; second, for not
helping it when the conflict turned violent.
When I asked Yassin
al-Haj Saleh what he now expected from the international community, he
answered: “If you do not want to help (the revolution) then fine. But do not
stop others helping us. The pretext initially was that the opposition is
disunited, then that there are jihadis. How can you say you want such groups
not to emerge when tens of peoples are being killed every day for two years,
and over a hundred people every day for the past six months?”
When Syria's people
revolted, they wanted freedom, to make their claim to be part of the modern
world. The regime refused, and the rest of the world did not rush to help them.
Now, the Syrians are doing it their own way, with whatever help they can get.
The growing mood
among Syrian opposition activists is that it suits the great powers for
internal destruction and division among Syrians to continue. Michel Kilo, a
leading dissident figure now exiled in Paris, wrote in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat in
August 2012 that the west had created many pretexts not to intervene in Syria:
from saying the opposition is not unified to arguing the regime's air defences
are too powerful. A "new lie" is "the penetration of the Free
Syrian Army by al-Qaida, as if [the west] did not pave the way between Benghazi
and Tripoli with their planes to enable al-Qaida fighters to attack from
eastern Libya. And those who were leading the fight against Gaddafi were
formerly in Guantánamo.”
The position of
western countries vis-à-vis the Syrian events is a complex one. But the idea
that the west will accept a protracted conflict in order to weaken Syria as a
state, exhaust it as a society, and reduce its ability to play a role in the
region, is now widespread among the opposition. It is another bleak signal in a
conflict without end.
That the sense of abandonment produced such an anti-western reaction on
the elite and grassroots level, as described above is not surprising. After
all, our culture has always been steeped in anti-Westernism, and more
specifically, anti-Americanism. There was a limited window of opportunity for
changing this state of affairs. It came at the beginning of this revolution, and
ended after the Obama Administration watched on as Assad troops swept across
Hama, then, started pounding the hell out of protest neighborhoods in Homs. But
a change in policy might still enable America to find few friends in Syria, but
the real challenge at this stage is to avoid complete state failure, a
prolonged civil war and a regional meltdown that seems increasingly likely.
Moaz al-Khatib, the
Damascene preacher elevated to lead Syria’s rebel coalition last November, is
the most astute tactician the opposition has fielded so far... The Khatib
initiative is pragmatic, hard-nosed and devious. “It is proving to the
international community that Assad is not willing to compromise one millimetre
and we need to take advantage of that”, one opposition leader told Reuters. It
would be a shame if a gambit designed to sow dissent within regime ranks ended
up by splitting the opposition.
Video Highlights
A rally in Boustan Al-Qasr, Aleppo City: a little girl signing
and is “rudely” interrupted by a mortar round that well-nigh claimed her life http://youtu.be/--L0-KfiNtE Today,
rebels and loyalist militias clashed http://youtu.be/C03PYMc7c_c
, http://youtu.be/yPLTz5U2mdo , http://youtu.be/qcSL_0kofHo
Rebels in Damascus City document their battle in Jobar
neighborhood and their takeover of a loyalist checkpoint there http://youtu.be/NPv7wTiQt9k , http://youtu.be/8_qeW7JwNac Loyalist
militias responded with mortar attacks http://youtu.be/--v9BhomsNI
Checkpoint liberated http://youtu.be/n7zOUBMUqcI
, http://youtu.be/52qUB2VIDvw The
scene from a distance http://youtu.be/RBC-lHwwfIQ
Clashes took place in nearby Dafalshawk as well http://youtu.be/1gCX-zV8xN0 The sounds
of clashes could be heard all the way in central parts of the Damascus City
http://youtu.be/YXFbjurWeT4 At night,
a huge explosion takes in the southern parts of the city on account of the
continuous pounding http://youtu.be/depM93_mZiI
Intense clashes took place in Al-Qadam neighborhood as well http://youtu.be/uQovnbva2d4 A car bomb
explodes in Al-Zahirah Neighborhood http://youtu.be/DlRY5U-xdzI
To the north, Al-Qaboun Neighborhood was pounded http://youtu.be/HaMEVHKbEQ8 A fire break
out in Abdassid Square http://youtu.be/K5URlhczQTE
The Yarmouk Camp was pounded as well http://youtu.be/abAA5V-Q2c4
The nearby town of Arbeen, Eastern Ghoutah, Damascus Suburbs,
was pounded as well http://youtu.be/2ddx-jVscag
, http://youtu.be/5oiq6y3C0sk
On February 4, an entire neighborhood in the suburb of Tadamon
was leveled by regime forces as a form of collective punishment for the restive
locals http://youtu.be/v6QQq3Z98uw
In Hama, aerial raids against the town of Kafrenboudeh continue http://youtu.be/YEcTq_xhUAQ
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