Sunday, July 22, 2012

Syria updates -Assad battles back after the major bomb blast last week - Maher Assad still in the land of the living and playing a major role in defending Syria. Syria has counttered against Turkey by enabling Kurd rebels to move against Turkey - in revenge for Turkey's perceived role in the Damascus Bombing . Major fighting rages on in Damascus - Aleppo now a focus of fierce battles as well . Border operations by the rebels forces occurring.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/07/21/us-abandons-diplomatic-efforts-aims-to-forcibly-oust-syrian-govt/


US Abandons ‘Diplomatic’ Efforts, Aims to Forcibly Oust Syrian Govt

White House Holds Daily Meetings to Impose Regime Change

by Jason Ditz, July 21, 2012
The pretext of diplomacy is over, and the Obama Administration has now decided to be direct about its goal to oust the Assad regime from Syria militarily, according to top officials familiar with the situation.
According to those officials, the White House is now holding daily “high-level” meetings about ways to aid the various rebel factions in the Syrian Civil War, as well as contingency planning for their own military action to seize Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal.
The “chemical weapons” invasion talk, interestingly, comes just days after Pentagon officials were dispatched to Israel to try to talk them out of doing the exact same thing, warning that it would make Assad’s position stronger and foster sympathy domestically for the long-time dictator if Israel just randomly invaded and started looting their arsenal.
Likewise, the discussion of more overt aid to the rebels comes despite lobbyists for those same rebels claiming earlier in the week that President Obama had told them he wasn’t going to intervene directly until after the US election in November.
The narrative surrounding what the US is or isn’t going to do to impose a regime change in Syria isn’t necessarily following a straight line, but this endgame is largely in keeping with the Obama Administration’s recent strategy of feigning interest in a diplomatic solution while undermining it until it finally collapses, then insisting they are reluctantly moving toward unilateral action, a strategy Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been very open about using against Iran, bragging that the “negotiations” were only being used to forward sanctions, while other officials said that the sanctions were also going to eventually fail, leading to a full scale war.

and........

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/22/252222/turkey-deploys-missiles-on-syria-border/



Turkey deploys ground-to-air missiles on Syria border: Report
Turkey has deployed ground-to-air missiles on its border with Syria, a report says.


The Turkish Anadolu Agency reported the development on Sunday.

The report comes at a time when relations between Ankara and Damascus have deteriorated.

On June 22, Syria said its air defense forces shot down a Turkish F-4 Phantom in the Syrian airspace “according to the laws that govern such situations.” The aircraft crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. 







http://www.debka.com/article/22202/Assad-rebuilds-fighting-command-retaliates-against-Turkey


Assad rebuilds fighting command, retaliates against Turkey

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report July 22, 2012, 11:30 AM (GMT+02:00)
Tags:  Bashar Assad   Turkey   Kurdish PKK   Damascus 
Syrian tanks in Damascus
Syrian tanks in Damascus

President Bashar Assad quickly recovered from the blow he suffered with the loss of his four top allies last Wednesday, July 18. Within 24 hours, he had put in place a new command for fighting the rebels headed by his younger brother Gen. Maher Assad, commander of the 4th Division, DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources report exclusively. He also appointed Gen. Ali Mamloukh to head the General Security Service; Gen. Hafez Makhlouf, military commander of Damascus; and Gen. Ali Hassan, new chief of the Alawite Shabiha militia.
Gen. Fahad Jassim al-Freij was sworn in as Defense Minister Thursday.
Despite a wave of desertions, the Syrian army was soon back on the job, showing no signs of shock or wavering at the command level.
Within 48 hours the army had driven the rebels out of the Maidan district of Damascus. And while some media focused on the rebels’ capture of two Syrian-Iraqi crossings Saturday, our sources report that Assad and his new command had already moved on and were busy with a tactical move in retaliation against Turkey for the assassinations at the top of Assad’s inner circle: They opened the door to an influx of rebels of the Turkish PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) from Iraq into Syria’s northern Kurdish regions, with permission to set up bases of operation along the Turkish border.

This step had three immediate consequences:
1.  By giving the armed Turkish Kurds' separatist movement bases of attack against Ankara, the Assad regime was able to pacify Syria’s own 2-3 million-strong Kurdish minority (ten percent of the population) and make sure their towns in the north did not join the Syrian uprising.  2.  By guaranteeing his own Kurdish minority’s loyalty, Assad released the troops posted there to fight Syrian rebels on other fronts.

3.  While acting as hosts for the rebel Free Syrian Army commands which are campaigning against Damascus, Turkey is itself exposed to a new strategic threat from its southern border with Syria.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the flow of Turkish Kurdish fighters into northern Syria has advanced the local Kurdish separatist drive led by the Syrian Democratic Union Party. Friday, July 20, PYD and PKK fighters from Iraq joined forces to seize control of two Syrian-Turkish border towns, Afrin and Ayn-al Arab.
Assad calculated that semi-autonomous status achieved by Syrian Kurds in Syria would act as a shot in the arm for the PKK on the other side of the border and encourage their raids on Turkish government and military targets in support of their demand for like status in Turkey.
DEBKAfile update: The PKK were quick on the draw: Friday, they blew up the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline carrying about a quarter of Iraq’s oil exports at the southeastern Turkish town of Midyat near the Syrian border.
Assad has therefore begun exacting revenge on Turkey for the assassinations which cut down his inner circle.


and.....







http://www.juancole.com/2012/07/syrian-rebellion-enters-new-stage-with-aleppo-border-operations.html


Syrian Rebellion Enters new Stage with Aleppo, Border operations

Posted on 07/22/2012 by Juan
On Saturday and Sunday, the Free Syrian Army launched attacks on government facilities and personnel in Aleppo, with fighting raging in several districts of the country’s largest city. Fighting raged near a large government intelligence facility. If the rebels can take Aleppo, they would benefit from Turkish aid and trade, and could hope to build it up into a stronghold. They also have asserted control over two checkpoints on the border with Iraq that could help them supply the north. They have several checkpoints with Turkey, as well.

Agence France Presse reports that the Free Syrian Army has taken the second of three major border crossings from Iraq to Syria, at al-Ya`ribiya/ Qa’im. The Iraqi authorities in Ninevah Province promptly closed the crossing from their side except for Iraqi refugees who want to return home from Syria. (Several hundred thousand Iraqi refugees had been in Syria, fleeing sectarian and political violence at home).
Thousands of Iraqis are now fleeing Syria. I’ve seen it alleged on twitter that Iraqi Shiites in the Sitt Zainab district of Damascus have been threatened by Sunni rebels. Sunni clerics and activists have for some years complained of missionary work by Iraqi Shiite refugees in Syria, aimed at converting local populations to orthodox Twelver Shiism from Sunnism or the Alawite folk religion. I don’t know whether the allegation has any truth to it, but it is widely believed by Sunnis and may be one reason the more hard line Sunni rebels are eager to see the Iraqi Shiites leave. The rebels may also suspect the Iraqi Shiites of favoring the Alawite Shiite elite in the Baath Party, though I think any such fear must be overblown.
If the FSA can take the third crossing from Iraq, at Walid, they can control truck traffic into Syria from Iraq, starving the regime. The border is long and porous, but big trucks need metalled roads, which are few and go through the checkpoints. Some 70% of goods coming into Syria were coming from Iraq, because Europe cut off trade with the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad. The rebels are increasingly in a position to block that trade or direct it to their strongholds.

and.....

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/07/201272275230449605.html


Syria rebels face heavy shelling
Government forces deploy helicopter gunships in Damascus, witnesses say.
Last Modified: 22 Jul 2012 11:12
Government forces have deployed helicopter gunships as they battle rebels in the Syrian capital, witnesses say.
The besieged opposition stronghold of Barzeh was under heavy assault on Sunday, according to activists.
"This is the first time Damascus has witnessed such fierce shelling," Thabet Salem, a journalist in Damascus, told Al Jazeera. "There are very huge explosions."
The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, said "many individuals were injured" due to rocket and helicopter shelling of the Grand Mosque in Barzeh which set the mosque on fire.
Government forces reportedly also deployed in the outskirts of the Mezzeh district. Residents said rebels withdrew from the district after heavy aerial and ground bombardment.
Fighting also engulfed several district of Aleppo, Syria's main commercial hub, on Sunday. Residents reported clashes near the main intelligence base in the city.
An activist told the AFP news agency that government troops launched an assault on the Salaheddin district at dawn in a bid to reclaim it from rebel hands.
"Violent clashes have been taking place since the early morning," the activist said.
Rebels have stepped up operations in Damascus in the last week and have also launched a series of attacks on border crossings with neighbouring countries.
They captured the Bab al-Salam crossing with Turkey on Sunday morning, in addition to the Bab al-Hawa post seized earlier in the week.
Iraqi officials said, however, that Syrian forces had regained control of one of two border crossings seized by rebels on the frontier with Iraq.
'Beginning of the end'
Rami Khoury, a journalist and Middle East analyst in Beirut, said rebel forces have become more co-ordinated and better equipped in the last two months and predicted that their recent gains mark "the beginning of the end" for the regime.
"Clearly this is a regime that is being cornered and encircled," he told Al Jazeera. "While the regime has a lot of power which it uses to pound the rebels and attack them, politically, the regime is being confined to smaller and smaller areas."
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 19,000 people have been killed in violence in Syria since the uprising began.
"At least 19,106 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since March last year," the Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman told the AFP.
They included 13,296 civilians, 4,861 government troops and 949 defectors, he said, noting that the civilian toll included people who had taken up arms against the government.


"The toll does not include the thousands of people missing in detention," he said. "Nor does it include thousands of soldiers whose deaths the regime has concealed, in a bid to keep the army's morale high."
It is impossible to independently verify death toll accounts from Syria.
The Observatory said 164 people were killed in violence across Syria on Saturday, including 86 civilians, 49 soldiers and 29 rebels.
In Damascus, those killed included a senior army general and weapons expert, assassinated by "unidentified gunmen" alongside his wife and two children in the historic district of Bab Touma, according to the group.
The capital and its suburbs have been engulfed by intense fighting for a week, with government troops recapturing the Midan neighbourhood from rebels on Friday.

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