Syria Disintegrating: Part 2

[jimmy olsen]

Long article about the rebels fighting in Aleppo. Doesn't look good for the post-war situation.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/18/14529598-revolt-of-the-underclass-syria-rebels-carry-fury-born-of-marginalization?lite

[Razgovory]

The Pre-war situation wasn't exactly great.

[derspiess]

During-war ain't so hot itself.

[Razgovory]

So the article can be summed up with the sentence, "Syria sucks, will suck, and had sucked.

[jimmy olsen]

Human rights groups say 28,000 people have been disappeared by the government. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19986806

[jimmy olsen]

Got no mortars, use a giant sling shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9HiEy-g9Z4

[jimmy olsen]

Syrian rebels seem to be gaining ground in the north.

And to no one's surprising, the drawn out and bloody warfare is hardening and radicalizing them.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/02/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE88J0X720121102

By Dominic Evans

BEIRUT | Fri Nov 2, 2012 5:29pm EDT

(Reuters) - The Syrian army abandoned its last base near the northern town of Saraqeb after a fierce assault by rebels, further isolating the strategically important second city Aleppo from the capital.

But in a political setback to forces battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations said the rebels appeared to have committed a war crime after seizing the base.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday government troops had retreated from a post northwest of Saraqeb, leaving the town and surrounding areas "completely outside the control of regime forces".

It was not immediately possible to verify the reported army withdrawal. Authorities restrict journalists' access in Syria and state media made no reference to Saraqeb.

The pullout followed coordinated rebel attacks on Thursday against three military posts around Saraqeb, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Aleppo, in which 28 soldiers were killed.

Several were shown in video footage being shot after they had surrendered.

"The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants. And therefore, at this point it looks very likely that this is a war crime, another one," U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in Geneva.

"Unfortunately this could be just the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces and groups affiliated with them, such as the shabbiha (pro-government militia)," he said.

Video footage of the killings showed rebels berating the captured men, calling them "Assad's dogs", before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.

Rights groups and the United Nations say rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have committed war crimes during the 19-month-old conflict. It began with protests against Assad and has spiraled into a civil war which has killed 32,000 people and threatens to drag in regional powers.

The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are supported by Sunni states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and neighboring Turkey. Shi'ite Iran remains the strongest regional supporter of Assad, who is from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

STRATEGIC BLOW

Saraqeb lies at the meeting point of Syria's main north-south highway, linking Aleppo with Damascus, and another road connecting Aleppo to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

With areas of rural Aleppo and border crossings to Turkey already under rebel control, the loss of Saraqeb would leave Aleppo city further cut off from Assad's Damascus powerbase.

Any convoys using the highways from Damascus or the Mediterranean city of Latakia would be vulnerable to rebel attack. This would force the army to use smaller rural roads or send supplies on a dangerous route from Al-Raqqa in the east, according to the Observatory's director, Rami Abdelrahman.

In response to the rebels' territorial gains, Assad has stepped up air strikes against opposition strongholds, launching some of the heaviest raids so far against working class suburbs east of Damascus over the last week.

The bloodshed has continued unabated despite an attempted ceasefire, proposed by join U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to mark last month's Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

In the latest in a string of fruitless international initiatives, China called on Thursday for a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body - an idea which opposition leaders hope to flesh out at a meeting in Qatar next week.

Veteran opposition leader Riad Seif has proposed a structure bringing together the rebel Free Syrian Army, regional military councils and other rebel forces alongside local civilian bodies and prominent opposition figures.

His plan, called the Syrian National Initiative, calls for four bodies to be established: the Initiative Body, including political groups, local councils, national figures and rebel forces; a Supreme Military Council; a Judicial Committee and a transitional government made up of technocrats.

The initiative has the support of Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Wednesday for an overhaul of the opposition, saying it was time to move beyond the troubled Syrian National Council.

The SNC has failed to win recognition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and Clinton said it was time to bring in "those on the front lines fighting and dying".

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Jon Boyle)

[Viking]

Syrian rebels seem to be gaining ground in the north.

And to one's surprising, the drawn out and bloody warfare is hardening and radicalizing them.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/02/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE88J0X720121102

Orwell and Hemingway could have told you that... 75 years ago.

The first thing Fredrick the Great did when he came to power was to publish his Anti-Machiavel, a critique of applying logic and reason to policy. He then proceeded to ignore it and then marched off to war to conquer silesia from the hapsburgs. If we don't arm and support the good guys then the good guys cannot win. I'm always baffled that the arguments from the spanish civil war about not arming the parties in the conflict still have any purchase. Like with guns, if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns. If you outlaw arms sales only outlaws will get arms. If the liberal democracies outlaw arms sales only fascists and communists will get arms.

Daniel Pipes admonition to always support our friends in the region keeps tugging at my conscience. In Libya we did just that. Found friends (Chris Stevens did that) and supplied them with arms, training and drone strikes. We did that in Bosnia, found friends (or at least people who wanted to be on our side) armed and trained them and then gave them air support for their offensive and forced Milosevic to accept Holbrooke's terms at Dayton.

One of our fundamental problems in the middle east is that our "friends" find themselves forced to go along with the anti-western bigotry because they have no power. US logistical support (partially through the serbian group Otpor and a "W" Bush era coaching and mentoring project) helped build the organization and structure that launched the Tahrir Square. We then watched as the elections were arranged so that the Muslim Brothers managed to get the president with 25% of the first round vote.

I'd like to add to Daniel Pipes admonition my own, always oppose our enemies. Islamists, Salafists and Arab Nationalists are our enemies, they always have been. 

[jimmy olsen]

Rebel tank attacking govt. tank
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhfZliWeLmM

Rebel arty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGRaY5CvjJ8

Unexploded FAE

[CountDeMoney]

Lt. Col. Henry Blake: [reading a set of instructions] And carefully cut the wires leading to the clockwork fuse at the head.
[Trapper cuts the wires]
Lt. Col. Henry Blake: But first, remove the fuse.

[Tamas]

Allah u Ackbar!

I just can't get enough of that line. I wish they were saying it more often.

[CountDeMoney]

Washington has not finalized any deal with NATO to provide advanced Patriot missile interceptors to Turkey despite recent claims by senior officials in Ankara, according to a U.S. official.

"My understanding is ... we haven't had a formal request of NATO" for the U.S.-built missile system for Turkey, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters on Tuesday.

While the United States has sent Patriots to Turkey and elsewhere in the region in the past, most recently in 2003 during the Iraq war, Nuland said Washington would not make any weapon shipments until alliance officials give the go ahead.

"We will await a formal request, and then NATO will deliver aid. But, we're obviously looking at the full range of things to ensure that Turkey remains safe and secure," she added.

Nuland's comments run contrary to reports out of Ankara claiming a weapons request is being drafted by the Turkish Foreign Ministry for NATO, according to reports in the region.

"Everything will be considered within the framework of possible preparations," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told state-run Anatolian news agency regarding the request.

Negotiations between Brussels and Ankara over potential military support has ramped up in recent months, as the growing civil war in Syria has already begun to boil over into Turkey.

For nearly a year, government troops and paramilitary forces loyal to Assad have battled their way to a bloody stalemate with rebel fighters looking to oust the longtime leader.

In October, Turkish lawmakers took the controversial step of authorizing military action inside Syria after forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar Assad launched a mortar attack against targets inside Turkey.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay told the Associated Press that Ankara's decision should not be interpreted as an act of war against Syria.

Shortly after the cross border attack, Turkey Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan met with NATO leaders to discuss possible action by the alliance against Assad's forces under Article 4 of the NATO charter.

Article 4 requires consultations with all NATO members when a partner nation feels its "territorial integrity, political independence or security" is being threatened by an outside country.

Since those talks, the United States, NATO and Turkey have continued "to look at what other defenses [or] support Turkey might require," according to Nuland. Options which may include deployments of Patriot systems.

To that end, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that members of the Free Syria Army (FSA), the largest rebel faction in the country, had upwards of 50 American-made Stinger surface-to-air missiles in their arsenal.

The Stingers, which have reportedly been used to take out Syrian fighter jets above the rebel stronghold of Aleppo, could also be used to take out civilian aircraft, Lavrov told reporters during a press conference in Jordan on Tuesday.

"The leaders of the [FSA] have repeatedly said that civilian planes will be a legitimate target," according to Lavrov.

Russia has been one of the strongest international supporters of the Assad regime during the conflict, sending troops and weapons to Damascus since the early days of the civil war.

[CountDeMoney]

Oooooh, a dare!

Syrian President Warns Against Foreign Intervention in Syria
By HANIA MOURTADA and ALAN COWELL

BEIRUT, Lebanon — With battles flaring from the north to the south of his country, President Bashar al-Assad was quoted on Thursday as warning outside powers not to intervene militarily, saying the price of an invasion would be "more than the world can afford."

He also indicated that he would not heed Western proposals to leave Syria.

"I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country," he said. "I am Syrian, I was made in Syria, I have to live in Syria and die in Syria."

A transcript of excerpts from an interview with Mr. Assad was posted in English on the Russia Today television news channel's Web site on Thursday in advance of the conversation's broadcast on Friday.

Mr. Assad's defiance — familiar throughout the months of uprising that have turned to civil war affecting all of Syria's major cities — came a day after the regional consequences of the fighting seemed to assume ever more ominous tones.

For the first time on Wednesday, Turkey, a NATO member, publicly raised the idea of stationing Patriot missile batteries along its southern border with Syria. The move would effectively create a no-flight zone that could help safeguard refugees and give rebel fighters a portion of Syrian territory without fear of airstrikes by Syrian forces.

Within Syria, insurgents escalated attacks on targets within earshot of Mr. Assad's Damascus palace on Wednesday, killing a prominent judge with a car bomb and lobbing mortar shells at a neighborhood that houses central government offices and a military airfield. The assassination of the judge, reported by the official news agency, SANA, was the second high-profile killing of a top Assad loyalist in the Syrian capital this week and added to the impression of an intensifying insurgency in the 20-month-old conflict.

It was not clear when Russia Today recorded the interview with Mr. Assad, who was shown speaking to an interviewer, Sophie Shevardnadze, sitting in a high-backed chair against the background of a carved wooden doorway.

Asked about possible armed intervention, Mr. Assad said: "We are the last stronghold of secularism and stability in the region and coexistence, let's say, it will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific and you know the implication on the rest of the world."

He said he did not believe the West planned to intervene "but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next," Mr. Assad said. The price of an "invasion if it happened is going to be more than the whole world can afford," he said, without elaborating.

The interview coincided with efforts in Doha, Qatar, to unify the fragmented opposition seeking Mr. Assad's overthrow. It also came two days after Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain suggested that Mr. Assad could be given safe passage out of Syria as part of a peace settlement.

On Thursday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the fighting, said clashes erupted between rebel and government forces in the northern town of Ras al-Ain along the 550-mile border with Turkey.

The rebels had infiltrated the town from two directions and, after hours of fighting, government forces stormed the town and killed 10 insurgents in a battle for the security headquarters in Ras al-Ain. Turkey's semiofficial Anatolian News Agency said two Turkish civilians were injured by stray rounds from the fighting, prompting the Turkish military to send reinforcements to the area.

Anti-government activists also reported fighting in the southern city of Daraa, where the uprising began with peaceful demonstrations in March, 2011. Government troops were said to be shelling southern neighborhoods of Damascus, the capital, while, in the Old City, troops broke into homes to search for opponents.

[Malthus]

Send him this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcODE_V-dao&bpctr=1352391098

[Ed Anger]

Lt. Col. Henry Blake: [reading a set of instructions] And carefully cut the wires leading to the clockwork fuse at the head.
[Trapper cuts the wires]
Lt. Col. Henry Blake: But first, remove the fuse.