Pressure grows on Syria to stop violence

Latest amateur video from Syria appears to show violent clashes continuing in the city of Deraa, amidst growing international pressure on President Assad to end the crackdown on demonstrators.




Last week Assad lifted a 48 year-old emergency law, but since then human rights' groups say 400 people have been killed and five hundred arrested.




The government crackdown in Deraa started on Friday and has gone on all weekend.




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Wickileaks US Cable Confirms Syria Went Nuclear

From a new Wikileaks cable, dated April 25, 2008:

- You will recall reports that the Israeli air force conducted a mission over Syria on September 6, 2007.

- I want to inform you that the purpose of that Israeli mission was to destroy a clandestine nuclear reactor that Syria was constructing in its eastern desert near a place we call al-Kibar.

- The Israeli mission was successful - the reactor was damaged beyond repair. Syria has completed efforts to clean up the site and destroy evidence of what was really there, constructing a new building on the old site.

- We have delayed sharing this information with you, because our first concern was to prevent conflict.

- We believe - based on strong evidence - that North Korea assisted Syria with the reactor at al-Kibar.
...
- Our intelligence experts are confident that the facility the Israelis targeted was in fact a nuclear reactor of the same type North Korea built indigenously at its Yongbyon nuclear facility. The U.S. intelligence community conducted an intensive, months- long effort to confirm and corroborate the information Israel provided us on the reactor and to gather more
details from our own sources and methods.

- We have good reason to believe this reactor was not intended for peaceful purposes.


- First, we assess this reactor was configured to produce plutonium: it was not configured for power production, was isolated from any civilian population, and was ill-suited for research.

- Second, Syria went to great pains to keep this secret by taking very careful steps to conceal the true nature of the site.

- Third, by maintaining secrecy and not declaring the site to the IAEA and providing design information, as Syria's NPT-mandated IAEA safeguards agreement requires, Syria undermined the very purpose of IAEA safeguards - to provide the international community with the necessary assurance/verification that the reactor was part of a peaceful program.

- Finally, Syria's concealment and lies about what happened for months now after the Israeli air strike is compelling proof that it has something to hide. In fact, after the attack on the site, Syria went to great lengths to clean up the site and destroy evidence of what was really there. If there were nothing to hide, Syria presumably would have invited IAEA inspectors, other experts, and the news media to the site to prove that.

...- The existence of this reactor was dangerous and destabilizing for the region, and we judged that it could have been only weeks away from becoming operational at the time it was destroyed by the Israeli air force.

- Specifically, we assessed that once the pumphouse and pipe system were complete in early August, the reactor could begin operation at any time. Once operations began, certainly a military option would have been much more problematic with radioactive material present.

...
- We discussed policy options with the Israelis, but in the end Israel made its own decision to destroy the reactor. This decision was made by Israel alone - they did not seek our consent. Nonetheless, we understand Israel's decision.

- <> saw this reactor, and what Syria may have intended to do with it, as an existential threat that required it to act to defend itself.

- Syria's secret construction of this nuclear reactor is the latest in a series of unacceptable actions by the Asad regime.

- Syria is a state that supports terrorism, destabilizes Lebanon, and is the largest conduit for foreign fighters and suicide bombers entering Iraq to kill Iraqis, Americans, and Coalition forces.

- The Syrian Government supports terrorist groups such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, and others, including by playing host to leaders of some of these groups.

- Syria is a proliferator in every sense - of terrorism, of instability to its neighbors, including Lebanon, and now as a recipient and developer of dangerous nuclear technology.

- The Syrian regime, in going down this path, has shown a disregard for the security of the region and of its own people.

- We call upon the Syrian regime to reveal the full extent of its nuclear activities, as it is required to do under the NPT and its safeguards agreement, and verify that its covert nuclear-related activities have stopped.

- For better relations with the international community, in addition to full disclosure and
cooperation regarding its covert nuclear program, Syria needs to end support for insurgents and foreign fighters in Iraq, support for Palestinian terrorists, and interference in Lebanon. If willing to do so, Syria can expect to be welcomed by the international community.

I wonder what happened between 2008 and 2009 that prompted the US to ignore all this known information about the country and reward it with a new ambassador.

Or, as David Shenker notes in TNR,

Support for the regime goes beyond the standard “devil you know” rationale. To wit, one commentator in The National Interest recently opined that “Washington knows [Syrian President] Bashar well and it knows how rational and predictable he is in foreign affairs.” No doubt, Assad hasn’t killed millions like Stalin. But he has spent his first decade in power recklessly dedicated to undermining stability—and U.S. interests—in the Middle East.

Here’s the devil we know: Since 2006 alone, Assad’s Syria has exponentially increased the capabilities of the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah, providing the organization with advanced anti-ship and highly accurate M-600 missiles, top of the line anti-tank weapons, and has allowed the organization to establish a SCUD base on Syrian soil. At the same time, Assad continues to meddle (and murder) in Lebanon, harbor and support Hamas, and subvert Iraq. Damascus remains a strategic ally of otherwise isolated Tehran. And in 2007, it was revealed that Assad’s Syria was progressing toward building a nuclear weapon. Given the pernicious effect of Assad’s policies on U.S. interests and the region, it’s difficult to imagine that a successor or replacement regime could be worse.

Bashar Al Assad: Syrian Stability

Bashar al-Assad believes that Syria is different than any other country in the region, and because it is 'stable' it will not be swept up by the revolutionary winds that are blowing. But that apparently is not so. This New York Times op-ed is from a Syrian dissident whose name has been disguised.

The Syrian government now seemed to understand that it had to take this surge of unrest seriously. So last week a counselor to Mr. Assad affirmed the right to peaceful protest, assuring Syrians that government troops had been ordered not to open fire on demonstrators.

The next day, a Friday, I went out with one of my friends to join a small protest in the Hamidiyah Market in the Old City section of central Damascus. We were, all in all, just a few dozen people chanting slogans for freedom, and yet we were surrounded by hundreds of members of the security forces, who responded with chants in support of President Assad. The security forces then began to beat and arrest protesters. My friend and I slipped away from the market and headed to Marja Square, just outside the Old City, where — it turned out — even more security forces were waiting for us.

First, they went after those photographing and recording the demonstration with their mobile phones. Then they began to hit the rest of us with batons and sticks. Dozens were arrested. (They are still in police custody, but we don’t know where.)

After that, the security forces were joined by other young men, apparently civilians, who formed themselves into a march for President Assad. This demonstration the guards allowed to be photographed and recorded. And, in the evening, state television reported on the marches all over Damascus in support of Mr. Assad.

That same day, the situation worsened elsewhere in Syria, when security forces violently oppressed protests in the cities of Homs and Latakia. Dozens of peaceful protesters were killed in Dara’a.

When the international community condemned the violence, the Syrian regime began to blame “armed groups,” from inside and outside the country, for killing the civilians in Dara’a as well as members of the security forces. The official Syrian position on the motives and nationality of the armed men changes often: sometimes they are Palestinian or Jordanian; sometimes they are working at the behest of foreign operatives from Israel or the United States. An Egyptian-American was even arrested on charges of espionage and, on state television, made a transparently false confession to inciting the protests and to being paid 100 Egyptian pounds ($17) for each photo he took.

This conspiracy theory, to which the regime continues to cling and of which many Syrians have been convinced, means that there are conflicting reports of the violence in places like Latakia. Eyewitness reports of what happened there last weekend vary: some say security forces opened fire on a peaceful protest; others spoke of snipers on the rooftops shooting civilians and security forces alike; still others of cars using loudspeakers to stir up the residents of different neighborhoods of the city against one another on sectarian grounds. What is certain is that people are now dead.

And it is also clear that these “armed groups” attacked only those protesters asking for freedom and reform, those who rally for those killed in Dara’a and elsewhere, who call out “peaceful, peaceful.” One can’t help but wonder why the police did nothing to protect these small groups of demonstrators. Some commentators close to the Syrian regime have justified this lack of action by saying that the security forces could not defend civilians because of President Assad’s orders not to fire.

Read the whole thing.

Stability? At what price? And did Barack Obama go after the wrong dictator?

Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Syrian regime change

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:37 AM

Bashar Assad is in It for Long Haul

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad gave a defiant speech in Damascus on Wednesday that should make clear to everyone that he has no intention of stepping down - peacefully or otherwise.

The reference to sects is perhaps evidence of Assad’s sense of irony, since his own regime rests on the support of the minority Alawi sect, who comprise 12% of the population.

The protesters, meanwhile, hail overwhelmingly from Syria’s 75% Sunni Muslim majority.

But Assad’s irony is no laughing matter. This reference, and the remark about an attempt to “divide” Syria, signal that the regime is accusing the protesters of two of the cardinal sins in the professed Arab nationalist viewpoint of the Baathist regime in Syria.

It matters little whether Assad himself takes seriously his own rhetoric. The point is that this type of terminology has the sound of a regime preparing for a long and ruthless fight against an internal enemy which it is seeking to characterize in the most negative terms at its disposal.

The reference to 2005 is instructive in another way. In that year, the Syrian regime was on the ropes, with some commentators predicting its imminent demise. By citing it, Assad is also reminding his listeners and the world of his staying power. By its favored methods of clandestine violence and intimidation, the Assad family dictatorship bounced back hard from the doldrums in the subsequent years. Bashar believes it can do so again.

Hence the tone of defiance that summed up the speech.

Here the dictator’s feline sense of humor was on display again. “We don’t seek battles,” said Bashar (an assertion which would come as news to the peoples of Israel, Lebanon and Iraq, frequent targets of the myriad proxy military groups maintained by the Syrian regime).

“But if a battle is imposed on us today – ahlan wasahlan – welcome.” Syria would fight the “domino project,” and make it fall.

So there it all was. Israeli plots, domino projects for fragmentation and division.

Armed gangs, chaos, and a welcoming of the battle by the Syrian dictator, casting himself in the nationalist-tragic mode which is the style of stifling rhetoric that he and other regional leaders of his stripe prefer. All by way of a not-soveiled threat.

This time against his own people.

This was the authentic voice of the Arab old order – or at least the military dictatorial part of it. Intoning its old certainties.

No mention of reform or change. “Stability” said Assad, was the number one interest.

And Hillary Clinton continues to fool herself that Assad is a 'reformer' and claims that the Congress agrees with her. If I were a Republican in Congress, I'd be all over that.

Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Hillary Clinton, reformer

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:55 AM

Assad Learns Repug Secret Policy: Do Nothing

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, faced with perilous unrest, is reaching farther into the Arab despot bag of tricks, saying in his first major statement since protests began that “conspirators” are behind the tumult. "I belong to the Syrian people, and whoever belongs to the Syrian people will always keep his head high," Assad said Wednesday. But although the government has promised reforms, there was no mention of the country’s emergency law, which has been in place since 1963 and which Assad is expected to lift. Reporters on the ground say there’s widespread demand for reform but little of the fervor for removing the leader that protesters in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya have shown.
Read it at Al-Jazeera

Why Does Arab League Protect Assad?

Can you guess why the Arab League hasn't denounced Bashar al-Assad for firing on his people? Really, this is the official reason.

Al-Ahram notes that the Arab League hasn't denounced the Syrian regime's violence against protesters. Why? "Syria is different from any other Arab country," says an Arab League official, because—wait for it—Syria is "a country under Israeli occupation." That's right, the Golan Heights—0.65% of Syria's land mass—is in Israel's usurping hands. So fire away at those protesters! Asad has a license.

Have you ever heard a lamer excuse?

Labels: Bashar al-Assad, Golan Heights, occupation

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:38 AM