Over the last few weeks, the momentum has clearly shifted in
favor of the rebels, and barring setbacks and surprises, the liberation of the
north and south will be completed by the summer. The battle for Damascus will continue
to pick up steam, then, all hell will break loose along the coast and in central
Syria. The fragmentation continues.
Monday March
25, 2013
Today’s
Death Toll: 102 martyrs,
including 4 women, 11 children and 14 under torture: 33 in Damascus and Suburbs,
27 in Homs most of them in Abel village, 14 in Aleppo, 11 in Idlib, 9 in Hama,
5 in Daraa, 1 in Lattakia, 1 in Raqqa and 1 in Deir Ezzor (LCCs).
Points
of Random Shelling: 282 points. Aerial bombardment
counted in 15 points. Scud bombing counted in 1 point. Shelling using
Surface-to-Surface missiles counted in 1 point. Shelling using cluster bombs recorded
in Sarmeen in Idlib. Thermobaric bombs recorded in Tabaqah in Raqah and
Kafarzeta in Hama. Artillery shelling counted in 112 points. Mortar shelling
counted in 88 points. Rocket shelling counted for 62 points on various parts of
Syria (LCCs).
Clashes: 103. Successful rebel
operations include the liberations of the last of the checkpoints at Yadouda
town, Daraa, laying siege to the Military Battalion in west Alma town in Aleppo,
liberating a number of loyalist positions in Seif Al-Dawleh neighborhood in
Aleppo City, targeting a loyalist convoy near the town of Kafranboudeh, Hama,
and pounding a snipers headquarters on the outskirts of Damascus City (LCCs).
News
The rebel Free Syrian Army's Col. Riad
al-Asaad was reportedly injured in a blast, while the Free Syrian Army rejected
the political council's appointment of Ghassan Hitto as provisional prime
minister.
Syrian
Rebels Hit Central Damascus Square With Mortar Shells Shelling
in such central areas has panicked residents, who fear that Damascus, which has
largely been spared the urban warfare that has devastated Syria’s other major
cities, could be next. But so far, the government has managed to keep rebels
from pushing deep into the capital. After mortar shells fell Sunday and Monday
near the Sheraton, the downtown Damascus hotel that the United Nations uses as
its Syria headquarters, the world body told its 800 Syrian employees to work
from home for the time being, and evacuated half of its 100 non-Syrian
employees to Beirut or Cairo, according to Martin Nesirky, the spokesman for
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Nesirky said the steps were temporary and
should not affect the distribution of humanitarian aid coordinated by the
United Nations in Syria.
Special
Reports
Just
How Blind Are We In Syria? If Syria and the rest of the Middle East
continue to deteriorate as they are, it’s time for a change up in American
intelligence. Rather than parking thousands of intelligence officers in front
of flat panel screens watching drone feeds, it’s time we to go back to old
fashion intelligence collection: Go recruit a source to bring us a dozen car
air filters from Aleppo. It could mean the difference between war and peace.
As
Syria Bleeds, Lebanon Reels As the civil war in Syria has carried on,
it has dragged more and more of Lebanon along with it. Terrified that it will
lose its supply lines, Hezbollah has not been content to sit on the sidelines
and watch Assad fall; its leaders have been sending fighters into Syria to
fight for the Assad regime, actions that are supposed to be secret but that are
widely known in Lebanon. That, in turn, has severely strained Hezbollah’s
relations with other Lebanese, especially its Sunnis, who accuse Hezbollah of
killing their brethren across the border. At least four hundred thousand Syrian
refugees, most of them Sunnis, have gathered in Lebanon. The peace has held in
Lebanon, but the Sunni anger is swelling.
Syria's
descent: the agony of Aleppo's children For Aleppo's children
"blood has become like water". Filmmaker Marcel Mettelsiefen has
spent several weeks meeting children facing unimaginable horror as they work in
a city hospital.
Syria's
ruined rebel city: Children play in smoking rubble of first liberated township
as Assad vows to 'cleanse' country in civil war Raqqa is shaping up to
be the best test case yet for how opposition fighters will administer territory
amid western concerns over who will fill the vacuum if President Assad is
ousted. But while the city's new rulers try to govern, they are struggling with
the same divisions that have hampered the rebel movement's effectiveness
throughout the fighting.
Karl
Sharro: A Human Flood from the Baath State Despite the large numbers of
refugees that have sought shelter in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey, the
“human flood” tag isn’t innocent: the arrival of the refugees has been
cynically exploited by local politicians keen to benefit from the resentment
towards displaced Syrians. But there’s more behind this attitude than
nationalism and xenophobia. There’s a traditional aversion in Levantine cities
towards the rural hinterland and its inhabitants that is now feeding this
misanthropic view of Syrian refugees. The Arab Times recently described fleeing
Syrians as “rural mercenaries [who have been] recruited to fight against their
country.”
If
We Won't Save Syria, Save the Syrians The most immediate problem is
money—lots more to care for the increasing flow of internally displaced and
refugees. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees told me he needs another $300
million to take care of the expected problem through June. But other UN humanitarian
agencies dealing with the Syrian problem also need significant amounts of money
to continue their activities.
Syria's
Shiites offer different picture of war The predominant narrative of the
Syrian war is that of a tyrannical government largely run by members of a
Shiite sect, the Alawites, brutalizing a people yearning for freedom. However,
in the largely Shiite towns and villages of Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, people who
have fled Syria tell a different story. They speak of an "ethnic
cleansing" campaign carried out by rebels intent on creating an Islamic
state run by Syria's Sunni majority. In the face of rebel attacks, Shiites in
dozens of villages just inside Syria have fled here to a part of Lebanon
dominated by the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, the villagers and Hezbollah
representatives say. Those who have been displaced credit Hezbollah, which is
considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., with providing shelter and
security.
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.”
In the paragraphs below, Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi takes issue with my reference
to “Alawite
Jihadism,”:
Before proceeding
further, one should dispense of Ammar Abdulhamid’s misleading term “Alawite
Jihadism.” While Abdulhamid does explain that “Alawite Jihadism” did not
develop as a “strictly religious phenomenon,” it implies that there is some
kind of specific religious struggle behind the efforts of Alawites fighting for
the Assad regime.
On the contrary, to
the extent that pro-Assad Alawite fighters express any sentiment about
religion, it is normally in the form of a non-religious bloodline identity,
which often includes opposition to Islam, and not merely the Sunni form of it
as Abdulhamid implies, though the anti-Sunni rhetoric is undeniable
In the most extreme
manifestation, this can give rise to statements like ‘F— you and your prophet
[Mohammed].’ A more subtle variation on the anti-Islamic hostility is to ask
rhetorically, ‘Who is your God? Isn’t Bashar your God?’ The latter, as I have
argued before, does not so much reflect actual worship of Assad (as Abdulhamid
seems to think) as simple mockery of the fact that the deity the detainees
worship is not saving them from torture and death.
Actually, the evidence for religious motivations on part of some
Alawites is pretty evident. All one has to do is examine the words of the late Col.
Ali Khuzzam, an Alawite officer who led the charge against protesters in Daraa
in the early days of the revolution and took part in the attack on the
neighborhood of Baba Amr less than a year later, to realize that for some
Alawite, the religious dimension of this conflict is all too real. According to the Colonel, the current conflict is but another episode of a religious war
that has been going on for 1400 years.
But the Alawites for whom this conflict is religious are not the ones
who fill the pages of Facebook with their views and complaints, but the
ones who are often dismissed and disdained by their fellow educated, urbanized
and secular Alawites who loathe everything about the old ways, except for an
occasional song by the likes of Ali Deek, and an occasional visit to relatives
in some village desolate enough to appear “charming” and “idyllic,” at least for the few
days that they are willing to spend there.
Curses against “Allah” per se are not necessarily too sacrilegious for
this multiply exploited segment of the Alawite community providing fodder to Assad’s
war, nor is it an indication of a lack of piety on their part. An utterance against “Amir
Al-Moumineen Ali,” on the other hand, now that’s where blasphemy lies. After all, “Allah” is the façade, while “Ali” is the “essence,” according to what we know of Alawite beliefs. To many of them, the cult of Assad is only a tad
removed from being an official formal religion. The only reason it is not comes
as a reflection of the Assads’ own disdain of traditional Alawite piety. Hafiz
Al-Assad wanted to Sunnify the Alawites, his old brother Jamil sought a further
integration with Twelver Shiism. Eventually, and after the showdown with opposition
groups in the 1970s and 1980s, the benefits of traditional Alawite piety dawned
upon them. Indeed, the 1990s witnessed a revival of traditional Alawite piety
in rural areas and among these very susceptible segments from whose ranks the bulk of Alawite
recruits for army and security services are derived. Few decades earlier,
Salman Al-Murshid had a different attitude regarding traditional Alawite piety,
and the result was a cult that survives to this very day: the breakaway Murshidi
sect whose members play an active part in the current crackdown. After all, to
them, the Sunnis literally killed their god on accusation of treason and blasphemy
in 1946.
Of course, as I noted in my analysis, the struggle is not all about religion,
it’s mostly about identity. A young Alawite militiaman needs not be religious in
any sense to look at this conflict as a way of asserting his identity, defending
it, and defending his existence, while voicing his disdaining Sunnis, and professing his faith in the superiority of
current Alawite worldview based at it is on resistance ideology, secularism,
and, with the arrival of Bashar Al-Assad, an alleged embrace of modernity. Hence,
and while I do assert the religious dimension of the struggle for a growing
number of Alawites, and I do assert the existence of an Assad cult as a phenomenon
that has religious dimension to some Alawites, I described the prevalent
general ethos among Alawite as an Alawite pride movement that combines secular
and religious dimensions. Moreover, I do not believe that this will be an ephemeral phenomenon.
It is, in fact, just beginning.
As for Assad, should he indeed meet a violent death, I would not
discount the possibility of witnessing an actual formal sect emerging down the road where he and
his father play central roles. But even without such development, the Assads
will continue to play important roles in the Alawite pride phenomenon for
decades to come. Assad’s “martyrdom,” even if viewed in secular terms, will add
much depth and oomph to this phenomenon.
On a related note, should the current rumors regarding the
assassination or attempted assassination of Assad prove true, then, the “prophecy”
I made back in January would have been validated:
He [Bashar
Al-Assad] seemed more like a placeholder of sorts, a person whose presence was
necessary only until a new leadership structure has been quietly built in the
background, most definitely under Iranian supervision, involving rising stars
from within the Alawite community, be they members of military and security
apparatuses, or leaders of various pro-Assad militias. The end result will be a
new organization, building on elements from the Alawite Pride phenomenon – Shia
beliefs, resistance ideology and the Assad cult of personality – and directly
linked to and funded by Iran. Once this is accomplished, it would not matter
how long it would take to drive the regime out of Damascus and into coastal
holdouts. For one way or another, Iran will remain relevant and will have a
sway over unfolding events. Once the new structure is consolidated, or is
close to consolidation, Assad himself and perhaps some of his close advisers,
might be seen as liabilities, and Assad as a martyr might just prove more
relevant and useful to the cause of Alawite Pride than his continued survival.
With his martyrdom, there will be no risk of him doing or saying anything that
can jeopardize the movement and the new power structure.
So, the question is: are we there yet?
Video Highlights
Col. Riad Al-Ass’aad hours after his surgery and the removal of his
right leg following the failed assassination attempt. Still under sedation, he
keeps saying: “I want to die, I want to die.” The video and the pictures caused
much dismay in opposition circles and generated much sympathy for the man who
is no longer playing any pivoting role in the conduct of operation. This is not
a blow to the rebel movement, by means, and it is not yet clear who was behind
the attempt http://youtu.be/FWZkgvelC80
, http://youtu.be/MYwwSAaIj1E the
attempt took place in the town of Mayadin, in Deir Ezzor Province, a town
currently under the control of Jabhat Al-Nusra and her affiliates, as is much
of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa provinces. But just recently the Colonel voiced his adamant
support of Al-Nusra, it is not likely that its members will target him.
Meanwhile, the Military Revolutionary Council of Deir Ezzor conducted
elections as part of its restructuring efforts: the new council is made up of
defectors with Colonel rank as well as a number of civilian Jihadi leaders. The
leader is Colonel Samer Sultan http://youtu.be/tn4HnpHEMXg
Rebels in northern parts of Damascus city target a building along the
main highway connecting Damascus and Homs cities that they claim is used by
pro-regime snipers http://youtu.be/gIBaE0v-7M8
, http://youtu.be/yEeIGaCz97M
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