Is Syria headed for all out civil war? Hard to tell, but there are ominous signs that a tipping point is not too far away.
The total media blockade imposed by the 41-year old Assad family dynasty has made it virtually impossible to get a clear picture what is actually taking place inside the country because journalists have been denied entry. However, this much is known from what little hard information has made its way out.
Syrian human rights groups collectively agree that since the uprising began 3 months ago, over 1,400 civilians have been killed, over 3,000 wounded, 11,000 detained in makeshift prison camps, and over 7,000 (with maybe twice that number still waiting to escape) have fled over Syria's border into Turkey.
Refugees unable to reach the Turkish border are facing increasingly dire, life-threatening conditions since the government refuses to permit the United Nations or other international relief organizations into the country to deal with the growing humanitarian crisis. Consequently, the death toll is mounting daily.
Based on smuggled reports and videos out of Syria reaching Beirut and other Arab media outlets virtually every Syrian town and city, including Homs, Syria's third largest city and Hama, its fourth largest city (and site of the infamous 1982 massacre of 20,000 Syrians by Assad's father, Hafez) are encircled by Syrian tanks which are firing indiscriminately into these towns in a bloody, but increasingly futile onslaught to silence opponents of the regime into submission.
But the two largest Syrian cities - Aleppo and Damascus - where the majority of Syria's Sunnis live, are restive, but not in open revolt.
There are enough substantiated reports indicating that Syrian helicopter gunships are machine-gunning civilians who courageously defy curfew orders to disperse, and Syrian intelligence snipers and elite Iran Revolutionary Guard members are shooting deserting Syrian soldiers who refuse to turn their weapons on their fellow citizens.
Additionally, after each targeted city or town is surrounded, Syrian forces are engaging in a scorched earth policy of isolating them, burning crops, cutting communications, electricity, food supplies, water, and then rounding up or shooting entire families. Mass graves have been found, and there are unconfirmed reports that Syrian military forces are actually cremating bodies to conceal evidence of torture.
It is evident that the younger Assad is trying to replicate a multi-city version of his tyrannical father's Hama massacre in what one observer asserted is a "calibrated bloodbath."
More ominously, reports are surfacing from many northern towns of defections among lower ranking Syrian Sunni soldiers, whom the Syrian government alleges may have committed the killing of 120 police and security officers in the besieged northern town of Jisr al-Shoghour. Of course, these reports of alleged "armed rebel" mutinies could be nothing more than fabrications by the regime designed to bolster popular support against the uprising. However, no one really knows with certainty who was responsible for the killings of the security officers, yet conspiracy theories abound.
It is increasingly clear that the sheer brutality of the regime's crackdown in rural Sunni populated regions has opened up dangerous fissures within Syria's military -- the glue that maintains the minority Alawite regime's fragile grip on power.
The Syrian army's lower ranks are drawn mostly from Syria's majority Sunni population (75% of Syria's citizens are Sunni), who report to the Alawite officer corps controlled by the Assad regime itself. If reports from several northern towns under siege are accurate, increasing numbers of Sunni soldiers are defecting in protest against ordered attacks on their own home regions and then turning their guns on forces loyal to the regime.
The broad-based revolt may be soon reaching a tipping point. As each day passes, the regime's military cohesion is being stretched to the breaking point as it furiously deploys increasingly demoralized military units from city to city and civilian leaders, including religious leaders, are beginning to defiantly speak out against Assad.
To buttress his overstretched forces, Assad has turned for help to mercenary imports from Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Unconfirmed reports indicate that Iran is resupplying Syrian forces and Tehran has deployed 2,500 members of the Guard's Al Quds Force to provide intelligence and logistics support.
There are also reports that elite members of the Guard's Quds Force have been deployed with Assad's brother Maher, who commands Syria's elite 4th Division and its Revolutionary Guards Corp which is spearheading the regime's counteroffensive against the protestors.
As refugees flow into Turkey, Syrian opposition forces are organizing in the Turkish seaside town of Antalya. In recent days, the newly proclaimed 300 member Syrian Transitional Council has drafted a communiqué demanding that Assad cede power to his Vice President until a transitional government is formed and a new constitution is prepared.
Is this nascent exiled opposition yet a credible force capable of bringing down the regime? Not yet and not likely. Most of the Council's members are long-time exiles and have not participated in the uprising.
What may really determine Assad's fate and mark a tipping point in the uprising is what Syria's Sunni, Christian and Palestinian populations decide to do against the regime. None of these groups are fiercely loyal to the Assad dynasty. Rather each group has been a grudging participant in a marriage of ethnic and religious convenience to the minority Alawites who control the much reviled and greatly feared state security apparatus of repression. If the army disintegrates their respective marriages with the regime are gone with the wind.
While his internal situation deteriorates, Assad has twice tried to stir up trouble with Israel by authorizing Palestinian refugees to march on the Golan Heights frontier with Israel. The ensuing violence resulted in scores of Palestinian deaths - all instigated by a regime determined to prove that its existence is vital to the region's stability. Assad is desperately trying to prove he is "too big to fail."
Even more ominously, I have been told by reliable intelligence sources in Jordan that Assad has secretly approved reopening Damascus Airport as a transit point to any Iraq-bound Al Qaeda member bent on stirring up trouble inside Iraq against departing American troops and Iraqi forces - as he did during since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. Secretary of Defense Nominee Leon Panetta disclosed at his Senate confirmation hearing that over 1,000 members of Al Qaeda are now operating in Iraq. They all did not enter Iraq courtesy of Assad, but some have and more will.
By reopening Al Qaeda's Underground Railroad to the Iraqi border since the uprising began, Assad is also calculating that the U.S. will refrain from taking any overt action against him in exchange for shutting down Al Qaeda's Iraq assembly line. Once again, Assad is trying to prove he is "too big to fail" to the Americans in addition to the Israelis by playing his typical double cross against the U.S.
One thing is clear, the regime appears to be losing internal legitimacy among vast swaths of Syria's population as reports of intra-communal clashes escalate even if the U.S. still can't reconcile itself yet to this inevitability.
Syrians, however, are realists. They have first-hand knowledge of the communal strife and civil wars that have afflicted their neighbor to the west (Lebanon) and their neighbor to the east (Iraq). No one wants Syria to confront these same histories and Syria's opposition fully understands that threat is no idle proposition . If the regime does implode will it become the Middle East nightmarish version of a disintegrating Yugoslavia?
There is a real danger that the minority Alawites would become the target of majority Sunni retribution. Christians could face similar discriminatory acts akin to what their Coptic brethren are now facing in post-revolutionary Egypt. There could be major population migrations affecting Palestinians, Christians, Alawites, Kurds and Sunnis affecting Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.
Clearly, this is why Washington is holding out realpolitik hope that Assad will hold on to power
But hope is not a policy in today's volatile Middle East.
The troika of regional players who were once determined to stand by the regime (Turkey, Israel and Saudi Arabia) are now down to but one (Saudi Arabia). Both Israel and Turkey have come to realize for their own reasons that Assad is incapable of putting the genie back in the bottle and they are quietly exchanging views on a "Plan B-Post Assad Era."
If both Turkey and Israel are reconciling themselves to Assad's demise, it is incumbent on Syria's other neighbors to collectively attempt to contain any communal and regional fallout.
The U.S. can demonstrate some sorely needed far-sighted leadership by working with Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and other nations to put a contingency plan in place to prepare for a potential implosion, and begin reaching out to the Syrian opposition to promote a peaceful transition which reconciles each of Syria's ethnic groups with their post- Assad aspirations.
Based on all of its rhetoric and conduct to date, the White House remains straight-jacketed in the mistaken belief that Assad can hold on for the long run. OK, even if the Obama team is holding out against Assad's downfall, what prevents it from undertaking any contingency planning?
With military intervention rightfully off the table against Assad, a realistic assessment of who may pick up the pieces after he goes and under what conditions is exactly what we should be doing now before it is too late to affect any dire outcome.
Michael Hughes: UN Fiddles While Syria Burns
James Denselow: Assad Looks to Syria's Silent Majority
Armed groups have crossed the border from Turkey into Jisr al Shughour ith the backing of Turkish intelligence and now U.S. support.
U.S. State Department official Victoria Nuland. "We started to expand contacts with the Syrians, those who are calling for change, both inside and outside the country," with that said the U.S. is most likely arming these thugs through Turkish contacts!
Let's also not forget in Damascus, their is LITTLE if any protests. They are mostly in support of the regime which begs of some media misinformation about the situation in Syria!
With allowing armed thugs to cross the border from Turkey shows this is being orchestrated by the U.S., Turkey and Israel in the rural areas where Damascus is solid with the regime in power in the hopes to do a Libyan style attack soon where the thugs take control of the vast rural areas so NATO could then only have to focus on bombing civilian infrastructure around Damascus to punish those in support of the regime...
Should we expect anything less from the west?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt87mXL_ftg
No one in the West is about to get involved. Syria is not a tourist hotspot, it's not a financial mecca and it has no oil. All it has are frightened, angry people gearing up to kill each other.
There are three countries that might stir the pot.
1. Saudi Arabia - the Saudis are working hard to detach Syria from its Iran/Hizbollah alliance.
2. Turkey - the Turks' nightmare is 100,000 Syrian refugees pouring across the border.
3. Iran - the Mullahs in Teheran are sending crowd control technology to prop up the Syrian dictator
Unlike the Egyptian military, the Syrian military has no qualms about killing EVERYONE to keep Bashar Assad in power. How nasty are the Syrians? Here's an episode in Syria's recent past::
"In February 1982, the Muslim Brotherhood ambushed Syrian soldiers in the city of Hama. In response, Syrian troops using armor, artillery, and bulldozers leveled the city. First they bombed all the roads so no one could escape. Then they shelled the city. Then, to make sure everyone was dead, they went from district to district, robbing, raping, and killing everyone in sight even going into mosques, shooting everyone and then setting the mosques on fire. As many as 40,000 died..."
Nice people.....
Equally easy to see you read the msm and swallow it whole.
BTW Syria was quite succesfull in stoping mostly Saudis from entering Iraq. Would you please provide confirmed source about Assad sending Al Qaida to Iraq nowdays. From all serious sources that is not the case yet (BTW Israeli and US sources are not serious).
Syria has the tacit approval form Russia to maintain the status quo, and active help from Iran and Hezbollah, both of which want Syria to remain a part of the Iranian axis of power.
The alawites are a minority but one with well placed assets in the military. It has also been reported that it is the Iranians and hezbollah that have been charged with executing any of the disloyal in the Syrian forces.
I'm not seeing a good ending here.
It's about Power and Oil... not about Democracy or Freedom... if you care enough, watch the series of interviews Paul Jay has with former Colin Powell's Chief of Staff and Vietnam Vet. Col. Larry Wilkerson on youtube, which I found very enlightening indeed.
If only there was someone like a Syrian Bradley Manning, on the inside. To make all their dirty little secrets public to the world.
"To buttress his overstretched forces, Assad has turned for help to mercenary imports from Iran's Revolutionary Guards."
So, who’s keeping the people of Iran under the yoke while they’re away enjoying themselves?
"If the army disintegrates"
Apparently we’re dropping leaflets in Libya. What are the drones showering on Syria? Why not use their "eyes" to show the world what’s going on?
"Washington is holding out realpolitik hope that Assad will hold on to power"
Better to be killed by the devil you know, than the devil you don’t?
Rooting for a Civil War in Syria.
How grotesquely predictable.
I think the Huffington Post ought to add a tag "manufacturing consent for War with Iran"
Exactly correct.
Marc has been on this mission for a couple months or so.
In all seriousness though, we shouldn't be getting involved...