http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/OA05Ak04.html
A race to the bottom in Syria
By Victor Kotsev
The past few weeks have seen a dramatic shift in reports coming out of Syria. Whereas a month ago the government appeared to be losing the battle on all fronts, the civil war now seems to have entered a new stage - that of a race to the bottom in which victory hinges on endurance rather than strength.
Both the regime and the rebels are facing major challenges which threaten gravely their ability to function, and this explains in part the vastly divergent prognoses of different analysts. Meanwhile, as winter sets in and the death toll climbs (the latest United Nations report sets it at 60,000), civilians are paying the heaviest price.
Many observers continue to insist that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is on its last legs. Jeffrey White of theWashington Institute for Near East Policy predicted recently that it "appears to have only a few weeks left before it collapses." [1] Others set the time frame for its demise at several months, pointing out, among other issues, the deep financial trouble it is in.
"The economy is the basis of everything," a Syrian economist in exile told Time Magazine, estimating that Assad would go broke some time between three and six months in the future (previously, Jordan's King Abdullah II offered a similar estimate). "Without services, boots, money, you cannot do anything. If the government cannot finance the army, they [soldiers] will simply go away." [2]
The rebels have advanced significantly in the last months, taking control of, according to different reports, between 40% and 75% of the country's territory. They have even captured some of the suburbs surrounding the capital Damascus and on several occasions have been able to shut down the county's main international airports.
The regime's weakness is no illusion, but all of this amounts to only half of the story. If Assad is about to go broke, most of the rebels are already there - and have been in this state for months. This is hardly propitious to administering half of Syria - something which alone costs them, according to the same Time article, about US$500 million a month. Moreover, it is not their worst problem.
A number of reports indicate that the government forces purposefully surrendered territories with little to no resistance. They would have done this in order to shorten their communication lines and to cut some expenses - but also in order to let the population taste a nightmare version of freedom which would conceivably lead many people to choose Assad's rule as the lesser evil. With millions homeless in the middle of winter, most of them in rebel-held areas, and food, running water and cooking oil sparse, such a scenario is not altogether out of question. Even more importantly, recent reports indicate that the rebels themselves may actively contribute to such an outcome. In-fighting, looting and random abductions have become the order of the day in many places. Aleppo, an affluent city of merchants where insurgents from the poorer countryside have flocked, may be an extreme example, but it is by far not the only one. Two recent accounts by Guardian reporter Ghaith Abdul-Ahad provide graphic details.
In a story dated December 28, the reporter described a brutal rebel commander, Abu Ali, who, in his own words, faced "two enemies now - the [rival rebel] battalions and the government." Abdul-Ahad documented an attempt by several civilians whose homes had come under Abu Ali's control to salvage some of their possessions, as well as the treatment they received: "'Every single house has been looted,' shouts Abu Ali. 'And the [government] army has never been to this area. It is us who looted them!'" [3]
In a separate article dated December 27, Abdul-Ahad described more generally how the unprecedented levels of chaos and in-fighting - which he considers a recent new phase in the war - had halted rebel progress in Aleppo. "The problem is us," a young fighter exclaimed during a meeting. "We have battalions sitting in liberated areas who man checkpoints and detain people … They have become worse than the regime." [4]
The rebels face a further challenge which the former US Special Advisor for Syria Frederic Hof termed "the poison pill of sectarianism". Hof wrote:
By raising and unleashing shabiha auxiliaries (largely poor Alawite youth supplemented by active duty military personnel), the regime of Bashar al-Assad injected the poison pill into the national bloodstream…. Assad and his cohort are, after all, eager to tell minorities (especially Alawites and Christians) that the current regime alone stands between them and a Sunni Arab successor that might choose among options ranging from explicit sectarian rule to the application of Islamic law to expulsion and slaughter. The eagerness with which highly visible elements of the opposition have taken the regime's sectarian bait suggests two possibilities: either that the 65-year evolution toward Syrian citizenship and national unity has been entirely illusory or Syria's revolutionary leaders have given no thought to immunizing themselves and their followers against the inevitable implementation of a crudely provocative sectarian strategy by the regime. [5]
Not only has the opposition failed to break the unity of the Alawites and other minorities supporting the regime, but it seems that, despite the sectarian nature of the war and his savage tactics, Assad has effectively prevented the full unification of the Sunnis against him. According to different reports, up to a third of the Sunni population, particularly in the large cities, still supports him. While their precise number and motivation is very difficult to determine, a Syrian rebel who recently spoke to Asia Times Online confirmed that he and his comrades were frequently fighting against other Sunnis.
Such considerations motivated the prominent Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, Joshua Landis, to predict that "absent some dramatic increase in external intervention, Assad could still be there in 2014". He is not alone: UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has also recently suggested that 2013 could be extremely bloody but not decisive.
Only the future will tell who is right. For now, there is no sign of the violence abating - and millions of ordinary Syrians continue to suffer inhumanely.
Notes:
1. Is the End Near in Damascus?, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, December 21, 2012.
2. Assad's Cash Problem: Will Syria's Dwindling Reserves Bring Down the Regime?, Time, December 21, 2012.
3. 'The people of Aleppo needed someone to drag them into the revolution', Guardian, December 28, 2012.
4. Syrian rebels sidetracked by scramble for spoils of war, Guardian, December 27, 2012.
5. Syria 2013: Will The Poison Pill of Sectarianism Work?, Atlantic Council, January 3, 2013.
Such considerations motivated the prominent Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, Joshua Landis, to predict that "absent some dramatic increase in external intervention, Assad could still be there in 2014". He is not alone: UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has also recently suggested that 2013 could be extremely bloody but not decisive.
Only the future will tell who is right. For now, there is no sign of the violence abating - and millions of ordinary Syrians continue to suffer inhumanely.
Notes:
1. Is the End Near in Damascus?, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, December 21, 2012.
2. Assad's Cash Problem: Will Syria's Dwindling Reserves Bring Down the Regime?, Time, December 21, 2012.
3. 'The people of Aleppo needed someone to drag them into the revolution', Guardian, December 28, 2012.
4. Syrian rebels sidetracked by scramble for spoils of war, Guardian, December 27, 2012.
5. Syria 2013: Will The Poison Pill of Sectarianism Work?, Atlantic Council, January 3, 2013.
and......
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/01/03/car-bomb-hits-damascus-gas-station-11-killed-40-wounded/
Car Bomb Hits Damascus Gas Station: 11 Killed, 40 Wounded
Crowded Station Had Just Received Supply of Fuel
by Jason Ditz, January 03, 2013
It is a dangerous time to be looking for gasoline in Metro Damascus. For the second day in a row, a gas station that just got a fresh shipment of gasoline, packed with motorists, was destroyed, this time by a car bomb detonated remotely.
Red Crescent workers were shown at the site, in the religiously mixed Barzeh al-Balad District, in the wake of the attack, helping badly wounded people away from the area. At least 11 people were killed, 40 others wounded, and several vehicles were destroyed.
The attack comes as Damascus residents are still reeling from a missile strike against a gas station in the suburb of Mulelhayesterday, which killed at least 30 people and wounded a large number of others. That station too was hit just after getting a shipment of petrol. No one claimed credit for today’s attack.
As the civil war has ground on in Syria, oil and gas shipments have arrived irregularly,leading to hording and shortages. This has led to crowding at stations that have a supply, which has unfortunately also made them targets.
and......
Nusra Front Takes Lead in Rebel Fight in Damascus
The US designated the Nusra group terrorists last month, but their prominence among rebels is growing
by John Glaser, January 03, 2013
A Sunni extremist group that the US declared an officially recognized terrorist organization has taken the lead in the rebel fight to control the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Residents of Damascus who recently fled due to violence claim that the Nusra Front, which the Obama administration considers to be an affiliate of al-Qaeda, is at the forefront of fighting in the capital, which was until recently relatively insulated from Syria’s violent civil war.
After a year of providing limited aid to the Syrian rebels, the State Department last monthdesignated the Nusra group terrorists, officially acknowledging the significant rise of Islamic jihadists in the Syrian opposition.
The new designation illustrated the Obama administration’s attempt to “marginalize extremists who have become an increasingly powerful military force within the opposition,” according to the Washington Post. But their prominence in the politically important Syrian capital raises serious concerns.
“Supporters of rebels fighting to topple the government of President Bashar Assad say that groups like Nusra make up only a small minority of the anti-Assad fighting force,” McClatchy News reports.
But in response to news of the State Department’s designation of al-Nusra, more than 100 separate battalions of Syrian rebels signed a petition expressing solidarity with the al-Qaeda-linked group and denouncing the US’s decision, in a reflection of how radicalized the Syrian opposition has become.
Recent reports have established that Jabhat al-Nusra, and other al-Qaeda-linked jihadist factions like it, have become a key element in the Syrian opposition, despite repeated attempts by some in Washington to paint the rebels as freedom fighters.
In October, The New York Times published an article confirming that “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists,” despite the fact that those weapons were being sent with US approval and coordination.
“Nusra increasingly is leading the fighting across Syria,” McClatchy adds, which has resulted in sectarian bloodletting as extremist Sunni rebels march through Shiite, Christian, and other ethnic and religious minority areas.
Last month, rebels burned down a Shiite mosque, and reports of attacks on local Christian and Allawite civilians have cropped up over the course of the last few months.
Some in Washington continue to argue for a US military intervention to topple the Assad regime, or to further aid the rebel fighters. But the prospect of bolstering Islamic jihadists in such a way has forced the Obama administration to table such reckless interventionist demands.
and......
http://www.timesofisrael.com/seventeen-idf-soldiers-abandon-base-along-syrian-border/
Citing humiliating treatment by their commanders, 17 infantry soldiers mutinied and abandoned their post on Mount Hermon, near Israel’s border with Syria, on Wednesday night.
The soldiers, all members of the 12th Battalion of the Golani Brigade, were protesting the fact that their commanding officers weren’t dispatching new recruits to the base. They claimed that they were forced to carry out tasks that are often considered beneath experienced soldiers, including guard duty and cleaning.
Colonel Yaniv Asor, the commander of the Golani Brigade, came to the area and convinced the soldiers to return to their base.
On Thursday morning, the battalion commander sentenced the members of the group to between a week and 20 days of imprisonment.
The IDF Spokesman’s Office said in a statement that the soldiers regretted their actions.
“The incident was investigated by the brigade commander, who considered it very grave, and instructed that the soldiers be given prison sentences,” the army’s statements said. “The soldiers returned to the position a short while later and expressed remorse for their actions. At no point was the IDF’s operational readiness at the position harmed. In the IDF, as is customary, all operational and administrative tasks are distributed equally among soldiers. The IDF categorically condemns every incidence of insubordination.”
It wasn’t the first time in the past year that IDF fighters abandoned their positions on Mount Hermon.
In May, five soldiers from an anti-aircraft unit abandoned their post at a remote guard tower on the mountain and surrendered their weapons to their commander, saying they feared they might turn them on themselves.
The five had been punished by being sent to the position, which was meant to be manned by only two soldiers, and left there for nine hours, at which point one of them began to lose his cool. His comrades abandoned the post and handed their rifles over to their commander; he returned them, but only after removing the firing pin from them. Those soldiers, likewise, complained of humiliating treatment from their platoon commander as well as a critical lack of sleep.
and........
http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/desperate-syrian-rebels-use-diy-weapons
ALEPPO PROVINCE // At a converted warehouse in the midst of a block of residential homes in a northern Syrian town, men are hard at work at giant lathes, shavings of metal gathering around them.
Sacks of potassium nitrate and sugar lie nearby.
In a neat row against the wall is the finished product - homemade mortars. Syrian rebels say they have been forced to make them because their calls for heavy weapons and ammunition to fight President Bashar Al Assad have gone unanswered.
"No one's giving us any support. So we're working on our own to strike Bashar," said a bearded man spinning the metal to create the warhead.
Using information on the internet for guidance, the workshop of about seven men work together to try to perfect the crude weapons.
For explosives, they pick out TNT from unexploded rockets that Assad's forces have fired towards them and repackage them into their own weapons.
Each gave different estimates of the mortars' range.
"We're volunteers, we were workers, we were never soldiers. They're locally made. They don't have the strength of the regime's rockets, but they are having good effects," said Abu Mohammed, who said the mortars created a crater that exceeded 3 metres.
Another worker said the mortars, which take about a day to make, could reach a distance of 6 kilometres.
Although the rebels, who are mostly Sunni Muslim fighters, have made big gains in the northern and eastern parts of Syria in the 22-month conflict, they are outgunned by government forces.
Some rebel groups are receiving supplies from Arabian Gulf states, and western countries say they are providing non-lethal aid. But many rebels say they have not received anything.
Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, said that his forces have been fighting without any help from the western and Arab governments that want Mr Al Assad removed from power.
"We aren't able to get any weapons from abroad. We have nothing except for the rifle to fight with," said another man at the workshop.
The success rate of the weapons is questionable. Two men said the mortars hit 80 to 90 per cent of the targets, but there have been problems. Sometimes the mortars do not detonate, other times they explode prematurely.
"The more we practise, the more experience we get," said one of the men, explaining how they discovered that if they let the propelling agent mixture set for too long it absorbed humidity, which in turn stopped the mortar from detonating.
At one of the Aleppo frontline positions, rebels fired the mortars from a homemade tube, fashioned from piping on a mount made from a car axle.
The rebels have also been working on refurbishing weaponry acquired during takeovers of Mr Al Assad's military bases.
Parked in a residential street, a group of men have been working on fixing a T-72 tank whose gear box was blown.
Abu Jumaa, one of the mechanics working on the 1970s tank, said fighters had taken it from an infantry college in north Syria that had recently fallen to rebel forces.
"We have no tanks, no planes, no artillery. All we have is what we get in spoils and we go to war against him with what we get. That's the reality. We're forced to do this," he said.
"These tanks are useless in the first place. It can't be called a tank, It's a lump of scrap iron," he said gesturing at the chipped army green metal.
Rebel fighters on the frontline consistently complain of shortages of weapons and ammunition that have forced them to stop advances and focus on keeping the ground they have gained.
"We get 3,000 bullets a month. No anti-aircraft missiles ... everything is from the military bases [we take over]," said one young rebel fighter from the Supporters of Mohammed Brigade.
Even though the rebels have managed to seize large quantities of weapons from military bases, they struggle with a chronic shortage of ammunition and weapons to target Assad's fighter jets.
"You see how the planes are striking all of us, not differentiating between old and young ... God has helped us, we've made these rockets and we're using them to hit back at them all over again," said Abu Mohammed.
One-page article
ALEPPO PROVINCE // At a converted warehouse in the midst of a block of residential homes in a northern Syrian town, men are hard at work at giant lathes, shavings of metal gathering around them.
Sacks of potassium nitrate and sugar lie nearby.
In a neat row against the wall is the finished product - homemade mortars. Syrian rebels say they have been forced to make them because their calls for heavy weapons and ammunition to fight President Bashar Al Assad have gone unanswered.
"No one's giving us any support. So we're working on our own to strike Bashar," said a bearded man spinning the metal to create the warhead.
Using information on the internet for guidance, the workshop of about seven men work together to try to perfect the crude weapons.
For explosives, they pick out TNT from unexploded rockets that Assad's forces have fired towards them and repackage them into their own weapons.
Each gave different estimates of the mortars' range.
"We're volunteers, we were workers, we were never soldiers. They're locally made. They don't have the strength of the regime's rockets, but they are having good effects," said Abu Mohammed, who said the mortars created a crater that exceeded 3 metres.
Another worker said the mortars, which take about a day to make, could reach a distance of 6 kilometres.
Although the rebels, who are mostly Sunni Muslim fighters, have made big gains in the northern and eastern parts of Syria in the 22-month conflict, they are outgunned by government forces.
Some rebel groups are receiving supplies from Arabian Gulf states, and western countries say they are providing non-lethal aid. But many rebels say they have not received anything.
Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, said that his forces have been fighting without any help from the western and Arab governments that want Mr Al Assad removed from power.
"We aren't able to get any weapons from abroad. We have nothing except for the rifle to fight with," said another man at the workshop.
The success rate of the weapons is questionable. Two men said the mortars hit 80 to 90 per cent of the targets, but there have been problems. Sometimes the mortars do not detonate, other times they explode prematurely.
"The more we practise, the more experience we get," said one of the men, explaining how they discovered that if they let the propelling agent mixture set for too long it absorbed humidity, which in turn stopped the mortar from detonating.
At one of the Aleppo frontline positions, rebels fired the mortars from a homemade tube, fashioned from piping on a mount made from a car axle.
The rebels have also been working on refurbishing weaponry acquired during takeovers of Mr Al Assad's military bases.
Parked in a residential street, a group of men have been working on fixing a T-72 tank whose gear box was blown.
Abu Jumaa, one of the mechanics working on the 1970s tank, said fighters had taken it from an infantry college in north Syria that had recently fallen to rebel forces.
"We have no tanks, no planes, no artillery. All we have is what we get in spoils and we go to war against him with what we get. That's the reality. We're forced to do this," he said.
"These tanks are useless in the first place. It can't be called a tank, It's a lump of scrap iron," he said gesturing at the chipped army green metal.
Rebel fighters on the frontline consistently complain of shortages of weapons and ammunition that have forced them to stop advances and focus on keeping the ground they have gained.
"We get 3,000 bullets a month. No anti-aircraft missiles ... everything is from the military bases [we take over]," said one young rebel fighter from the Supporters of Mohammed Brigade.
Even though the rebels have managed to seize large quantities of weapons from military bases, they struggle with a chronic shortage of ammunition and weapons to target Assad's fighter jets.
"You see how the planes are striking all of us, not differentiating between old and young ... God has helped us, we've made these rockets and we're using them to hit back at them all over again," said Abu Mohammed.
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