BREAKING NEWS:
Syrian government resigns in attempt to appease protesters
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has accepted the resignation of the government. “President Assad accepts the government's resignation,” an announcement on Syrian state television said. Assad is expected to address the nation on Tuesday or Wednesday in a speech which may include a decision to abolish emergency laws, after two weeks of democracy protests gripped the country. (Reuters, March 29.)
THE TRUTH ABOUT SYRIA
Editorial
Jerusalem Post, March 27, 2011
The precise number of protesters killed to date in Syria in unknown. Amnesty International has estimated 55 dead in the past week in and around the southern town of Deraa alone. Syrian activists have posted graphic videos on YouTube documenting brutal murders at the hands of Bashar al-Assad’s security forces in additional cities, such as Sanamayn. One eyewitness told Al-Jazeera that more than 20 protesters had been shot dead there. One or more fatalities have also been reported in the coastal city of Latakia.
The sketchiness of the reports debunk the assumption that we all now live in a global village. A regime with the requisite wherewithal can, evidently, keep a fairly serious stranglehold on news, at least temporarily. American and European news anchors, so prominent in Libya these days, will not be heading to Damascus anytime soon. So long as Assad runs Syria, they simply won’t be allowed in.
Not only has Damascus managed to keep tight control over the goings on within its borders, and to maintain a “fear regime” that had deterred even the bravest malcontents from taking to the streets until very recently, it has even managed to win positive PR. USA Today featured a somewhat bizarre Syria supplement last month. But that was nothing compared to the puff piece carried by the fashion magazine Vogue, profiling Assad’s wife, entitled “Asma al-Assad: A Rose in the Desert.”
The “breezy, conspiratorial and fun” wife of the autocrat admits to readers that “it’s a tough neighborhood” she lives in. But not to worry. We are informed that the 35-year-old first lady’s “central mission” is to change the “mind-set” of six million Syrians under eighteen and encourage them to engage in “active citizenship.”
Demonstrations denigrating hubby as a “traitor who kills his people” seem active enough, though probably not the sort of thing the “glamorous, young, and very chic” Asma had in mind.
Yet what one French journalist has called the Vogue article’s “surrealism” is, unfortunately, a symptom of the kind of misguided mind-set that has led the US and Europeans to pursue what has become euphemistically known as “constructive engagement” with Damascus. This meant that as long as the Syrians made the most rudimentary ostensible gestures toward peace, consecutive US administrations, with strong European encouragement, were willing to overlook its many vices.
In the summer of 2005, just over a month after Syria was forced out of Lebanon by the Cedar Revolution following 29 years of occupation, Damascus renewed its campaign against Lebanese democracy, launching a series of assassinations that targeted civil society activists, government ministers, parliamentarians and journalists. Washington issued various condemnations but did nothing.
In the winter of 2007, former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a strong advocate of “engagement,” was in Damascus to meet with Assad while, on the other side of town, Imad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah commander responsible for the killings of some 250 American soldiers in the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, was killed.
That Mughniyeh had traveled freely to Damascus made it obvious that Syria was providing shelter to various terrorists—from insurgents making their way to Iraq to fight US troops, to Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, to members of Al Qaida and global jihad. And this “hosting” was being done under the nose of a visiting American dignitary.
In recent weeks, while the West has taken military action against Muammar Gaddafi, Syria has reportedly been helping the embattled despot. Libyan rebels last week brought down two Syrian fighter pilots; the Weekly Standard’s Lee Smith quoted sources stating that Syria had sent two dozen fighter jets to aid Gaddafi. Meanwhile, in the coming weeks, the special UN tribunal looking into the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri is slated to present findings which are expected to implicate both Hezbollah and Syria in the killing. Yet, inexplicably, as Damascus continues to strengthen its ties with terrorists, including Iran, the US recently reinstated its ambassador, who had been removed in 2005 after Hariri’s assassination. And on Sunday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear that presently America has no intention of intervening militarily in Syria.
While there is reason to be acutely concerned that whoever or whatever replaces the Assad regime is liable to be still more hostile to the West and to Israel, it is surely long overdue to scrap the decades-old policy of “constructive engagement” with a leadership that showed a particular ruthlessness in mowing down tens of thousands of its own people on the last occasion that they dared mount a challenge to the Assad dynasty, in 1982.
The only thing “constructive engagement” seems to have achieved is to encourage a brutal regime to believe that it can continue to rule through murder and intimidation, while giving that regime the leeway to gain positive international PR. The effort to depict Assad’s Syria as some kind of enlightened, humane, reform-minded regime has rarely looked as imbecilic as it does today, with the president’s security forces doing his bidding and gunning down his people, just as they did in his father’s time.
THE ASSAD REGIME TREMBLES
Ryan Mauro
FrontPage Blog, March 28, 2011
The Baathist Syrian regime is facing its greatest internal challenge since Hafez al-Assad destroyed Hama in 1982 to put down a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood. Bashar Assad’s violence against protesters has ignited further discontent and it shows no sign of dissipating. If the revolution in Syria succeeds, it will remove a state sponsor of terrorism and ally of Iran with the blood of American soldiers on its hands.
Up to 126 civilians have been killed by the Syrian security forces since the uprising began and the death toll continues to climb. The Assad regime had been one of the few that seemed stable in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution as a much-anticipated “Day of Rage” in February failed to materialize. The uprising had small beginnings as lonely voices calling for protests became louder and more numerous.
The turning point came on February 17, when about 1,500 spontaneously demonstrated in Damascus following the beating of a young man by security personnel.… On February 22, about 200 people held a sit-in near the Libyan embassy to express their anger with Muammar Qaddafi and 14 were arrested. In the second week of March, many Kurdish political prisoners began a hunger strike and a dozen Syrian human rights groups called for an end to discriminatory practices against the Kurdish minority.…
On March 15, about 200 protested for freedom in Damascus. The next day, about 150 people gathered in front of the Interior Ministry to silently protest for the release of political prisoners, of which there are about 4,000. At least 33 participants were subsequently arrested, but a psychological barrier had been broken and protests were sparked in four cities, most significantly in the southern city of Deraa. Like the rest of the country, the city was unsatisfied with the economic and political conditions, but it was particularly upset over the arrest of 15 children between the ages of 10 and 15 for writing pro-revolution slogans. The regime’s security forces attacked the crowd, killing six people on March 23.
The funerals for the victims in Deraa became a rallying point for tens of thousands of demonstrators, sparking further clashes in the city. A statue of Hafez al-Assad has been toppled. It didn’t take long for protests to spread to the surrounding area and elsewhere in the country in the following days. A map created by NOWLebanon shows how the protests have truly morphed into a nationwide uprising, spreading even to the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.
The situation is spiraling out of control for the Assad regime, which had to deploy the army to Latakia after a dozen died on Saturday, some of which is the result of sniper fire. There were deaths elsewhere in the country, including 20 in Sanamein.… There are also suspicions that some security forces are from Hezbollah as southern Lebanese accents have been reportedly heard.
About 4,000 people held a sit-in at Douma near Damascus, 200 of which were arrested after electricity was cut off and raids began. University dorms have been raided in Latakia. In Taurus and Deraa, the Baath Party offices have been set on fire.…
The Assad regime is coupling its aggressive posture with some concessions. It has released 260 political prisoners, including an activist from Deraa and says it will release the children that were detained. It also says that the state of emergency will be lifted. Concessions such as these have not proven adequate in the other Arab countries where violence caused a popular backlash, and there is no reason to believe Syria is any different. They also come with a catch. All but 14 of the released prisoners are Islamists, so the regime is likely trying to play on fears that the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic extremists will replace it. A presidential advisor is already trying to pin the blame on Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi. Counter-terrorism laws are reportedly being prepared to replace the emergency laws to ensure the regime’s grip on the country is not weakened.
There are two key factors to watch out for as the uprising continues. Firstly, the Kurdish minority and the Muslim Brotherhood have yet to hit the streets. Secondly, signs of dissention among the military and security forces must be looked for. The ambassador to India has resigned and there are reports of four soldiers going missing after refusing to open fire in Hassakeh in the northeast.
The Syrian regime’s violence has been widely condemned and Secretary of Defense Gates has rightly said that the army should take the side of the people, stating “…the Egyptian army stood on the sidelines and allowed people to demonstrate and in fact empowered a revolution. The Syrians might take a lesson from that.” However, Secretary of State Clinton condemned the violence but said, “Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he is a reformer.”
Bashar Assad is not a “reformer.” He is a dictator that should not be looked upon kindly or as someone the U.S. can win to its side. He is a close ally of Iran and is supporter of terrorism who is responsible for killing American soldiers in Iraq. The uprising in Syria is aimed at unseating an enemy of the West and this opportunity should not be missed as it was in Iran in 2009.
THE SYRIAN SPRING
Caroline B. Glick
Jerusalem Post, March 28, 2011
Amidst the many dangers posed by the political conflagration now engulfing the Arab world, we are presented with a unique opportunity in Syria. In Egypt, the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak has empowered the Muslim Brotherhood. The Sunni jihadist movement which spawned al-Qaeda and Hamas is expected to emerge as the strongest political force after the parliamentary elections in September.
Just a month after they demanded Mubarak’s ouster, an acute case of buyer’s remorse is now plaguing his Western detractors. As the Brotherhood’s stature rises higher by the day, Western media outlets as diverse as The New York Times and Commentary Magazine are belatedly admitting that Mubarak was better than the available alternatives.
Likewise in Libya, even as US-led NATO forces continue to bomb Muammar Gaddafi’s loyalists, there is a growing recognition that the NATO-supported rebels are not exactly the French Resistance. Last Friday’s Daily Telegraph report confirming that al-Qaeda-affiliated veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are now counted among the rebels the US is supporting against Gaddafi, struck a deep blow to public support for the war.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s admission Sunday that Gaddafi posed no threat to the US and that its military intervention against Gaddafi does not serve any vital interest similarly served to sour the American public on the war effort.…
The anti-regime protests in Syria are a welcome departure from the grim choices posed by Egypt and Libya because supporting the protesters in Syria is actually a good idea.
Assad is an unadulterated rogue. He is an illicit nuclear proliferator. Israel’s reported bombing of Assad’s North Korean-built, Iranian-financed nuclear reactor at Deir al-Zour in September 2007 did not end Assad’s nuclear adventures. Not only has he refused repeated requests from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the site, commercial satellite imagery has exposed four other illicit nuclear sites in the country. The latest one, reportedly for the production of uranium yellowcake tetroflouride at Marj as Sultan near Damascus, was exposed last month by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.
Assad has a large stockpile of chemical weapons including Sarin gas and blister agents. In February 2009 Jane’s Intelligence Review reported that the Syrians were working intensively to expand their chemical arsenal. Based on commercial satellite imagery, Jane’s’ analysts concluded that Syria was expending significant efforts to update its chemical weapons facilities. Analysts claimed that Syria began its work upgrading its chemical weapons program in 2005 largely as a result of Saddam Hussein’s reported transfer of his chemical weapons arsenal to Syria ahead of the US-led invasion in 2003.
The Jane’s report also claimed that Assad’s men had built new missile bays for specially adapted Scud missiles equipped to hold chemical warheads at the updated chemical weapons sites.
As for missiles, with North Korean, Iranian, Russian, Chinese and other third-party assistance, Syria has developed a massive arsenal of ballistic missile and advanced artillery capable of hitting every spot in Israel and wreaking havoc on IDF troop formations and bases.
Beyond its burgeoning unconventional arsenals, Assad is a major sponsor of terrorism. He has allowed Syria to be used as a transit point for al-Qaida terrorists en route to Iraq. Assad’s Syria is second only to Iran’s ayatollahs in its sponsorship of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Palestinian Authority.…
If the Assad regime is overthrown, it will constitute a major blow to both the Iranian regime and Hezbollah. In turn, Lebanon’s March 14 democracy movement and the Iranian Green Movement will be empowered by the defeat. Obviously aware of the dangers, Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces and Hezbollah operatives have reportedly been deeply involved in the violent repression of protesters in Syria. Their involvement is apparently so widespread that among the various chants adopted by the protesters is a call for the eradication of Hezbollah.…
Like Gaddafi today, seven years ago Assad deployed his air force against the Kurds. Scores were killed and thousands were arrested. Many of those arrested were tortured by Assad’s forces.
The discrimination that Kurds have faced under Assad and his father is appalling. Since the 1970s, more than 300,000 Kurds have been stripped of their Syrian citizenship. They have been forcibly ejected from their homes and villages in the north and resettled in squalid refugee camps in the south. The expressed purpose of these racist policies has been to prevent territorial contiguity between Syrian, Iraqi and Turkish Kurds and to “Arabize” Syrian Kurdistan where most of Syria’s oil deposits are located.
The Kurds make up around 10 percent of Syria’s population. They oppose not only the Baathist regime, but also the Muslim Brotherhood. Represented in exile by the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, since 2004 they have sought the overthrow of the Assad regime and its replacement by democratic, decentralized federal government.…
This week the KNA released a statement to the world community. Speaking for Syria’s Kurds and for their Arab, Druse, Alevi and Christian allies in Syria, it asked for the “US, France, UK and international organizations to seek [a] UN resolution condemning [the] Syrian regime for using violence against [the Syrian] people.…”
Opponents of regime change in Syria argue that if Assad is overthrown, the Muslim Brotherhood will take over. This may be true, although the presence of a well-organized Kurdish opposition means it may be more difficult for the Brotherhood to take charge than it has been in Egypt.
Aside from that, whereas the Brotherhood is clearly a worse alternative in Egypt than Mubarak was, it is far from clear that it would be worse for Syria to be led by the Brotherhood than by Assad. What would a Muslim Brotherhood regime do that Assad isn’t already doing? At a minimum, a successor regime will be weaker than the current one. Consequently, even if Syria is taken over by jihadists, they will pose less of an immediate threat to the region than Assad. They will be much more vulnerable to domestic opposition and subversion.
Even if Assad is not overthrown, and is merely forced to contain the opposition over the long haul, this too would be an improvement.…
[And] now, in a bid to quell the anti-regime protests, Assad has been forced to deploy his military to his own towns and villages. Compelled to devote his energies to staying in power, Assad has little time to stir up fires elsewhere. The first beneficiary of his weakness will be Jordan’s King Abdullah who now needs to worry less about Assad enabling a Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood-instigated civil war in Jordan.
Depressingly, under the Obama administration the US will not lift a finger to support Syrian regime opponents. In media interviews Sunday, not only did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rule out the use of force to overthrow Assad, as his troops were killing anti-regime protesters, Clinton went so far as to praise Assad as “a reformer.”
The US retreat from strategic rationality is tragic. But just because President Barack Obama limits American intervention in the Middle East to the places it can do the most harm such as Egypt, Libya and the Palestinian conflict with Israel, there is no reason for Israel not to act independently to help Assad’s domestic opponents.
Israel should arm the Kurds…[and] speak out on [their] behalf.…
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should ask the UN to speed up the release of the indictments in the investigation of the late Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman should call on the UN to behave honestly and indict Assad for ordering Hariri’s murder.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak should release information about Syria’s transfer of weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah. The government should release information about Syria’s use of terror against the Druse. Netanyahu must also state publicly that in light of the turbulence of the Arab world generally, and Assad’s murderous aggression against his own people and his neighbors specifically, Israel is committed to maintaining perpetual sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
We are living through dangerous times. But even now there is much we can do to emerge stronger from the political storm raging around us. Syria’s revolt is a rare opportunity. We’d better not squander it.
WHY HAS THE U.S. BEEN SO SOFT ON BASHAR ASSAD?
Martin Peretz
New Republic, March 29, 2011
I don’t know where to begin. So let me start with Bashar Al Assad—whose father, Hafez, Jimmy Carter wrote he had higher regard for than any other leader in the Middle East. Barack Obama never said anything quite that hagiographic about the son. But Hillary Clinton, his pliant chief diplomat, told “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the Syrian president was considered by members of Congress from both parties to be a “reformer.” How many senators and representatives will own up to Hillary’s characterization? It is hokum. The hokum started long ago. One can locate it in time: June 14, 2000, in a New York Times article by Susan Sachs headlined, “The Shy Young Doctor at Syria’s Helm.” Doctor this and doctor that. And, of course, “Dr. Bashar.” There is nothing like a first name to humanize a tyrant. “Fidel,” for example. And more: general practitioner, ophthalmologist, director of the Syrian Society for Information Technology.…
Thanks to an orchestrated campaign in the state news media to credit him with fighting corruption and promoting a more open economy, Dr. Assad also is seen as a beacon of hope for a new, more relaxed Syria. He recently told The Washington Post that he personally favored lifting all of hidebound Syria’s restrictions on what people read, watch on television or discover on the Internet. “As a point of principle, I would like everybody to be able to see everything,” he was quoted as saying. “The more you see, the more you improve.” But others, Dr. Assad added, have their reservations.
It went on more or less like this for maybe seven or eight years when the reality purveyors suddenly caught on that the dictator’s boy was a dictator himself. Until, that is, this last weekend with the aforementioned discovery of the secretary of state that he was a “reformer.”
The president must have felt similarly because he constantly pressed on Israel the view that Assad was a reasonable and trustworthy man.… Having forced both Israel and the Palestinian Authority into the cul de sac of settlements as the pivotal issue among the parties (a matter already implicitly but not definitively resolved between the two antagonists), the president needed another key to unlock and unblock the conflict.… So, rather than pressing Syria to stop its arms deliveries to Hezbollah, it began to press Israel on the Golan.
Why Obama thought the Golan Heights could be the big opener in the peace process is anybody’s guess. The fact is that the Palestinians do not care a fig for the Golan, and an Israeli concession on it would not be seen as—and would not be—a concession to anyone but the Ba’athists. Who, of course, cannot be trusted on anything. Which is one reason why Jerusalem was not inclined to experiment on a big swath of high ground that had been the source of death and destruction for first two decades of statehood.… Here the principle must be, like the principle from all just wars, that to the aggressed-upon victor belongs the spoils.
In any case, Assad’s always shaky rule over Syria is now exposed as just that. And just that because it is not based on anyone’s consent but on coercion and domestic terror. The governing 12 percent minority of the Alawite sect is Syria’s equivalent to Saddam Hussein’s clan of Tikriti Sunnis, both having ruled cruelly and bloodily. Indeed, the Assads have nursed a particular grudge against the Palestinians, almost all of them. They had little truck with Arafat and sided in the intra-Palestinian wars with the secular “socialist” schismatics who’d headquartered themselves in Syria’s capital.…
In a tangled Sunday dispatch from Washington, Mark Landler reports that the “deepening chaos in Syria … could dash any remaining hopes for a Middle East peace agreement, several analysts said.” In truth, however, there was almost no hope for such an agreement even before the challenge in the streets. Anyway, which seasoned analysts? The one he quotes is Martin Indyk, who almost always believes that tout va bien, but especially when things are going horridly.
Well, we don’t really know how badly or, for that matter, how well things are going. Still, there is something exhilarating in the Libyan rising against one of the two or three leading political crackpots of the age. And the support of that rising by Western democracies through NATO. That Obama was less than resolute in this enterprise is something we have come to expect. Of course, liberal Democrats have tried to make a virtue of the failing. The National Security Network issued an exemplary statement: “The effective handoff to NATO command and growing Arab state participation show that the United States can lead by letting others out in front.” This is double talk … or maybe agitprop….
As for Egypt, I cling to the hope that its people will realize social and economic progress with some political and legal justice. But if the new government is overwhelmed by the Muslim Brotherhood, neither of these (in any case) dicey hopes will be realized.… The Shia revolution in Iran is the very model for its Sunni enemy on the Nile. If Cairo reneges on its treaty with Israel, Egypt will find itself in another drama out of which it will not emerge either victorious or prosperous. An article by Barry Rubin in Monday’s Jerusalem Post argues that “another Israel-Hamas war is inevitable” precisely because the theology of Egypt itself will be transformed under Islamist rule.…
[I]n Syria…the Muslim Brotherhood has deep and broad rooting. Take your choice: Assad is allied with Hezbollah and Iran, militant Shi’ism on the march. Assad’s embittered enemies are soldiers of the Sunni sword. Obama tried his luck with Assad as, forgive the recollection, he also did with Dr. Ahmadinejad. The president then followed the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, in his royal bankrolling effort to lure the eye doctor away from Nasrallah. Even the dynast’s billions couldn’t do the trick. Barack Obama will not reflect on how in just a bit over two years he got himself and America into this fix.
(Martin Peretz is the editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic.)
