SYRIA PROTEST LARGEST YET:
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS DEMONSTRATE, 17 KILLED
Zeina Karam & Elizabeth A. Kennedy
Huffington Post, July 15, 2011
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians mounted the largest protests Friday since the uprising began more than four months ago, pouring into areas where the government crackdown has been most intense in a sign that security forces cannot break the revolt.
Syrian authorities fired on the crowds, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 100, activists said. In a significant show of the uprising’s strength, thousands turned out in the capital, Damascus, which had seen only scattered protests. Until now, much of the dissent against President Bashar Assad has been in impoverished, remote areas. “This is the heart of the regime,” said David Schenker, director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “So I think if these protests (in Damascus) continue and gain strength, it will be the beginning of the end of the regime.…”
Friday’s protests stretched from Damascus and its suburbs to Hasakeh and Idlib provinces in the north, Daraa in the south and Latakia on the coast. Thousands converged on the flashpoint cities of Homs and Hama in central Syria, among other areas across the nation of 22 million. Crowds chanted “We don’t love you Bashar!” and “Leave Bashar!” before security forces and pro-regime gunmen opened fire with bullets and tear gas.…
One of the largest protests Friday took place in Hama, Syria’s fourth-largest city and an opposition stronghold that has a history of dissent. Assad’s late father and predecessor, Hafez, crushed a Sunni uprising in 1982 by shelling the town in a massacre that has been seared into the minds of Syrians, contributing to the pervasive sense of fear that silenced nearly every rumbling of dissent for decades. Amnesty International has claimed that Hafez Assad’s siege on Hama killed 10,000-25,000 people, although conflicting figures exist and the Syrian government has made no official estimate.…
Friday’s death toll included 11 people in Damascus, three in the northwestern city of Idlib, one in the central city of Homs and two in Daraa in the south, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, which have a network of sources on the ground.…
SYRIA’S DESCENT INTO DARKNESS
Rick Moran
FrontPage, July 19, 2011
Violence erupted in three Syrian cities over the weekend as President Bashar Assad continues his efforts to put down incipient revolts against his 11-year rule. But while protests against the regime appeared to be spreading, the government mounted a number of massive demonstrations in support of the dictator in Damascus, as well as Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo.
Most troubling for Assad is the specter of sectarian violence in the city of Homs that raised its head for the first time in the revolt, and the defection of a significant military force in the Iraqi border town of Abu Kamal. This may be a signal that the conscripts that have been ordered to shoot down civilians in the streets are weakening in their allegiance to the regime despite brutal methods to keep them in line.
And in another sign that the rebellion isn’t going to be put down easily, Syrian activists met in Istanbul over the weekend and formed a 25-man “National Salvation Council” made up of all segments of the opposition to challenge President Assad’s hold on the country.…
In the four months of protests and revolt, there have been a few reports of Syrian troops defecting but nothing as large as what appears to have occurred in Abu Kamal. The Syrian army, about 200,000 strong, is made up largely of Sunni conscripts, officered by members of the ruling minority sect of Alawites. There is also a group of Alawite irregulars greatly feared by the population for their brutality. The shabbiha, black-clad loyalists about 10,000 strong, have been deployed in several trouble spots and have enforced army discipline by shooting soldiers who refuse to fire on civilians. They have also been accused of atrocities against protesters.
Mahar Assad commands Syria’s best combat unit, the 4th Armored Division, and the Republican Guard—each about 10,000 men. They are better paid and trained than the conscripts and can be counted on to follow orders if told to shoot down civilians.
The Alawites make up only about 7% of Syria’s population, but hold most of the important positions in government and the military, and dominate the economy. If Assad were to fall, the probability of a Sunni takeover would mean an end to favored treatment of officers and government employees. It is this base of support that Assad is calling upon as the protests against his rule mount.…
It isn’t only Alawites who are loyal to the Syrian president, but also members of other minorities including Christians, Druze and Shias who see Assad as their “protector” against rampant sectarianism represented by the 85% Sunni majority. As if to hammer that point home, sectarian violence broke out for the first time in the embattled city of Homs when the bodies of three Alawites who had been kidnapped turned up dead. This set off a reaction against Sunnis when Alawites stormed through a Sunni neighborhood taking their revenge. Up to 30 people were killed in the violence over the weekend.…
As in most Muslim countries, the possibility of violence between the sects is ever present. In Lebanon, Bahrain, and Iraq, domestic unrest brings long standing rivalries to the surface. A strongman like Assad or Saddam Hussein, or the draconian policies of the mullahs in Iran against minorities can usually keep the lid on by brutal repression. But let slip the bonds of civil society and the end result has been shown to be killings, which beget revenge murders, which lead to more deaths, until the spiraling violence engulfs the nation.…
(Rick Moran is blog editor of The American Thinker, and Chicago editor of Pajamas Media.)
THE SYRIAN CHALLENGE
Reuel Marc GerechtWeekly Standard, July 18, 2011
The administration’s policy toward Syria is shaping up to be the greatest missed opportunity of Barack Obama’s presidency. His failure of vision and nerve…has allowed Syria to drop off Washington’s radar screen. But if Syria were to break the right way and the regime in Damascus were to fall, the most tenacious state-sponsor of terrorism in the Arab world—Tehran’s strongest ally and the lifeline to the terrorism-loving Lebanese Hezbollah—would be taken out. Alas, an administration that came into office only a little less eager to engage Damascus than Tehran seems stuck in its stillborn Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the turmoil of the Great Arab Revolt.…
The uncertainties of the Arab Spring and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war in Libya have spooked the administration. Its “realist” tendencies are well known, and “realism” powerfully comes to the fore when a president doesn’t know what to do—or believes that the United States can do little. The safest and easiest bet then is to do nothing—the essence of most “realist” policy.
Such “prudence,” “restraint,” and “patience”—the administration is fond of these words—can be commendable when a situation is messy or murky. But neither applies in Syria. This is an easy call: We have a chance to eliminate one of America’s worst enemies in the region—the linchpin of Iran’s alliances and terrorist apparatus. We have a chance to traumatize Tehran: The world will look a lot more precarious to supreme leader Ali Khamenei and a lot more hopeful to the millions behind Iran’s pro-democracy Green Movement if Bashar al-Assad goes down. The importance of Syria to Iranian foreign policy and internal politics cannot be overstated.
Through Syria, we have a chance to convulse the politics of Lebanon, where Hezbollah, revolutionary Iran’s only Arab offspring, now reigns supreme. The organization does not own the majority Shia community of Lebanon; the potential political diversity of the Shia has been stymied by Hezbollah’s military and economic power, which depend on its ties to Damascus and Tehran.…
If Assad falls, Hezbollah will have no choice but to hunker down and avoid any conflict with Israel. If even the most rudimentary, morally repugnant, Islamist-felicitous, Israeli-cursing democracy arose in Damascus, we still might see the Arab world realign decisively toward representative government. Egypt, Iraq, and Syria have been the engines of modern Arab thought; if they all embrace popularly elected governments, Middle Eastern Muslims may evolve in a direction that will make both state-sponsored terrorism and al Qaeda-type extremist movements unsustainable. The most modern Arab societies—Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Algeria—have been brutalized so badly by secular Arab police states that this process will not be quick or easy.…
In Syria, most protesters have probably come from the average Sunni faithful, the non-college-educated men and women of the smaller towns who have no commercial ties to the regime, as do the Sunni elite of Aleppo and Damascus. The protesters have proven astonishingly brave. And their calls for self-government have been crystal clear. They have—so far—been amazingly resistant to calls for attacks on the ruling Alawite community. It’s hard to believe that this moderation will last, however, if the regime’s savage reprisals against the Sunni demonstrators continue.
It is sad that the American ambassador in Syria, Robert Ford, has been trying to encourage the protesters to engage the regime. It beggars the imagination that Thomas E. Donilon, Obama’s über-realist national security adviser, thinks Bashar has any intention of liberalizing, let alone democratizing, his rule. If Assad survives, he’ll most likely turn his draconian police state into an Orwellian one. And if Assad survives, Obama loses. Iran, Hezbollah, and all the bad actors in the Middle East (most of whom have offices in Damascus) are going to rejoice.…
Syria is the most important state to be convulsed by the Great Arab Revolt. It offers the prospect of a devastating setback to America’s worst enemies. And the Obama administration hasn’t yet blown it. Time remains, thanks to the courage of ordinary Syrians.… American power cannot effectively be deployed unless Washington senses that a great victory can be won. Does President Obama have this strategic sense? Does he know how to marry power politics to idealism?
(Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)
FIVE STEPS TO HASTEN ASSAD’S EXIT
Editorial
Foreign Policy Initiative, July 14, 2011
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces have killed as many 1,600 civilians since protests began in March. Human rights organizations also estimate that at least 12,000 Syrians have been arrested or detained. In response, the White House has publicly condemned the Assad regime’s violent and lethal suppression of Syrian protestors, and imposed U.S. sanctions on certain Syrian government officials and entities for human rights abuses.
But until recently, the Obama administration had avoided calling for the Syrian dictator to step down—and instead appeared to hold out hope that Assad would yet prove himself to be a “reformer.” That began to change on July 11, 2011, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States has “absolutely nothing invested in him remaining in power.…”
In the long term, a democratic and moderate Syria is in America’s interest and would benefit regional stability. As the Executive Branch and Congress mull changes to U.S. policy towards Syria, this FPI Fact Sheet outlines five steps that the United States can take to hasten Assad’s exit.
(1) Unequivocally call for Bashar al-Assad to step down
The United States should leave no doubt that it sides with the Syrian people by demanding that President Bashar al-Assad immediately step down. It is worth noting that France has already done this. For example, as French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé said: “The situation is now very clear. In Syria, the process of reform is dead and we think that Bashar has lost his legitimacy to rule the country. And so we are in exactly the same position as we are in Libya.…”
(2) Further sanction the Assad regime for human rights abuses
The United States should work to impose further unilateral and multilateral sanctions on the Assad regime for its ongoing human rights abuses.
First, the White House should get other countries—especially in Europe—to impose sanctions similar to those that the United States has already imposed on the Syrian government, such as:
* The Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 (Public Law 108-175), which already forbids a wide range of U.S. exports to Syria.
* Executive Order 13572, signed by President Obama on April 29, 2011, which targets the property and interests not only of several high-ranking Syrian officials and entities, but also of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—Qods Force, which is believed to be aiding Syria’s crackdown on protestors.
* Executive Order 13573, signed by President Obama on May 18, 2011, which expands the list of Syrian officials sanctioned by the United States for human rights abuses to include Bashar al-Assad himself, as well as Syria’s vice president, prime minister, defense and interior ministers, and head of military intelligence.
Second, the Executive Branch and Congress should push for multilateral sanctions on Syria’s energy industry and other sectors that fund the Assad regime. The petroleum sector alone provides as much as a third of the Syrian government’s revenue.…
Third, the Obama administration should redouble efforts to get the United Nations Security Council to pass measures in response to the Syrian government’s human rights abuses.…
(3) Withdraw the U.S. Ambassador to Syria and expel Syria’s Ambassador to the United States
President Obama should recall the U.S. Ambassador to Syria—unless the administration is willing to use him as a proactive and public advocate for the Syrian people in their struggle against Assad. Notwithstanding Ambassador Robert Ford’s praiseworthy visit to Hama on July 8, 2011, the continued presence of a U.S. envoy in Damascus lends legitimacy to the Assad regime.…
Moreover, the United States, on principle, should immediately expel Syria’s Ambassador to the United States, Imad Mustapha, for the provocative actions of Syrian officials against American citizens on U.S. soil.…
(4) Pressure the Assad regime over its secret nuclear program
The continuing controversy over Syria’s covert nuclear program gives the United States another lever to pressure the Assad regime internationally.
In September 2007, an Israeli airstrike destroyed the plutonium-producing nuclear reactor that Syria had secretly built, with North Korean assistance, near the town of al-Kibar—a reactor that the Assad regime could have used to acquire fissile material for use in nuclear weapons. As a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Syria was obligated to declare the existence of the al-Kibar reactor to the world’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
In response, IAEA inspectors tried to investigate Syria’s nuclear program to make sure that no other undeclared nuclear sites or weapons-related nuclear activities exist. Syria, however, repeatedly stonewalled the IAEA’s investigation. As a result, the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors voted on June 9, 2011, to find Syria in “noncompliance” with its international obligations, and send its case to the U.N. Security Council for further action.
The United States should use Syria’s referral to the U.N. Security Council to pursue sanctions and pressure the Assad regime to come clean about the complete scope and history of its secret nuclear activities.…
(5) Get Turkey to exert pressure on the Assad regime
Finally, the United States should encourage Turkey to pressure President Assad to step down. Although Ankara has tried to pursue a so-called “No Problems” foreign policy to increase its regional influence, the Syrian government’s continuing crackdown on protestors has led thousands of refugees to flee into Turkey.…
Conclusion
Unless President Obama gets serious about the Assad regime, the world will face a slow-motion human rights disaster in Syria. In addition to those on the Syrian street who look to Washington for leadership, other dictators are paying attention. The United States therefore must do all it can to side with the Syrian people and hasten Assad’s exit.