While diplomats argue, Syrians die…

Last Tuesday, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov went to Damascus for talks with Syrian president Assad.
A few days earlier, Russia, along with China, had vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning human rights abuses committed by the regime, and endorsing an Arab League plan to resolve the crisis peacefully.
Mr. Lavrov characterized his meeting with Assad as very useful.
In particular, President Assad assured us that he is fully committed to the task of a cessation of violence from whatever source it comes, he added.
An yet, Homs is in its second week of continuous shelling, casting doubt on the effectiveness of Russian diplomacy, the wisdom of its veto, and Assad’s willingness to resolve the conflict peacefully.
Indeed, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon himself concluded that the Russian veto encouraged the Syrian government to step up its war on its own people.
I fear that the appalling brutality we are witnessing in Homs, with heavy weapons firing into civilian neighborhoods, is a grim harbinger of worse to come, he added.
I am appalled by the Syrian government’s willful assault on Homs and its use of artillery and other heavy weaponry in what appear to be indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas, declared Navi Pillay, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She believes Syria should be referred to the International Criminal Court for war crimes, and will address the General Assembly on Monday.
We believe, and we’ve said it and we’ll keep repeating it, that the case of Syria belongs in the International Criminal Court. This would give a very, very strong message to those running the show, Ms. Pillay’s spokesman, Rupert Colville told The Guardian.
Human rights groups are currently compiling evidence, should the UN request the ICC’s involvement, which is highly unlikely at this stage due to Russian and Chinese opposition…
Since the onslaught began in Homs ten days ago, 400 civilians have been killed.
The Syrian army is shelling the town, and particularly the rebellious Baba Amr district, using tanks and artillery from three different positions, the university and the police and air force academies, out of reach of the Free Syrian Army, which is devoid of heavy weaponry.
The regime hopes that this strategy of indiscriminate bombing will drive the inhabitants of Homs to repudiate the resistance in exchange for peace.
They are trying to weaken the social cradle that has embraced the Free Syrian Army in those neighborhoods and to turn the residents against them, Omar Idilbi, a member of the opposition group Local Coordination Committees, and living in Lebanon, told the NYT.
The indiscriminate shelling is killing mostly civilians. Assad cannot push his troops into street fighting so he is content with shelling Homs to bits until civilian losses pressure the Free Syrian Army to withdraw and regime troops can enter these neighborhoods without taking any serious losses, Fawaz Tello, a member of the Syrian National Council who lives in Egypt, told Reuters.
In areas of the city that harbor few Free Syrian Army members, security forces move from house to house and arrest all those considered suspect.
Predictably, living conditions in Homs have sharply deteriorated.
We are seriously dying here. It isn’t war between two armies. It’s between the army and civilians. You hear the rockets and explosions. You feel you are at the front… The situation for civilians is pitiful, Waleed Farah, an inhabitant of Homs, told The Guardian.
Al-Khaldiyeh, the neighborhood through which supplies reach Baba Amr, has been sealed off.
We can’t go out into the street because of snipers. So we have to knock down the walls in between buildings or dig tunnels to move between homes without going outside. We’re mainly looking for bread and medicine. We’re hungry, we’re cold and we’re forced to scavenge for food scraps in rubbish bins. Most of the stores have been destroyed…It‘s impossible to leave the neighborhood-we are surrounded by troops, Abou Rami, who lives in Khaldiyeh, told France24.
It’s impossible to transfer the injured to the hospitals. And there is no more basic medicine left, just a few painkillers. Almost no bread either, so we’re sharing what little remains in the neighborhood. But we’re reaching the end of it, Rami H., also from Khaldiyeh, told the French network.
Violence has also spread to Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city and commercial capital.
Last Friday, two car bombs targeting military and police facilities exploded, killing 28 and wounding 235, according to the Syrian health ministry.
Syrian television repeatedly broadcast grim images of the carnage.
The regime quickly blamed the attacks on what it called armed terrorist gangs.
Yet, residents indicated that these facilities were well protected and under constant surveillance.
This has led some in the opposition to speculate that the Assad regime itself organized the attack to deflect attention form the siege of Homs.
Intelligence analysts in Washington did some speculating of their own, and laid the blame on al-Qaeda in Iraq Jihadists.
In any case, the attack buttressed the regime’s case.
It has been arguing from the outset of the uprising that it is confronting terrorist fanatics bent on overthrowing the regime and persecuting the nation’s religious minorities (Alawite and Christian in particular), and not peaceful pro-democracy activists.
The latter were dismayed by the Aleppo attack.
We are trying to win over Aleppo. Why would we attack it? There is no benefit for us in attacking the city, an activist in Homs told the LAT.
Regardless of who is ultimately responsible for the attack, violence is escalating in the country and may now be impossible to quell.
On Saturday, and for the first time since the uprising erupted last March, a member of the Alawite ruling elite was assassinated in Damascus.
Three individuals gunned down Dr. Issa al-Khouli, a brigadier general and head of the Hameish military hospital, as he was leaving his house.
His uncle had been an adviser to the current president’s father, President Hafez al-Assad, who ran the country from 1971 until his death in 2000.
In the next few months, Syria will transition from civil conflict into civil war. Assad’s power and control over the country will diminish and civilian casualties on both sides are expected to rise, Kamal Ayham, an analyst at Eurasia Group, told Reuters.
International efforts to try to resolve the crisis continue however, notwithstanding last week’s United Nations Security Council setback.
The Arab League is to meet on Sunday in Cairo to discuss the Syria issue.
Whether or not to recognize officially the Syrian National Council may be on the agenda.
Turkey is attempting to assemble a group of Friends of Syria, pointedly excluding both Russia and China, to promote the Arab League’s peace efforts.
Furthermore, Saudi Arabia will be presenting to the General Assembly (since the Security Council is paralyzed thanks to the Russian and Chinese veto) a resolution closely resembling the one that was vetoed last week, and supporting the Arab League’s January peace plan, calling for Assad to cede his powers to the Syrian vice-president, and the formation of a unity government to oversee fair elections.
Although honorable, there efforts seem unlikely to modify Assad’s strategy, which, in essence, boils down to this: survival, whatever the cost…
This is a doomed regime as well as a murdering one.
There is no way it can recover it’s credibility internationally, British foreign secretary William Hague told the House of Commons last week.
Nothing however, will change unless and until the Russians and Chinese share this point of view.
Meanwhile, the Syrian people’s prospects look grim.
Violence will prevail until Assad leaves, for it is now unlikely that the Syrians can be cowed into submission after all they have already endured.
More than 6,000 have already died (although the UN, as of last month, ceased compiling casualty figures since it is now too dangerous to do so), and over 400 children, according to UNICEF.
There are reports of children arbitrarily arrested, tortured and sexually abused while in detention, the organization stated.
What now?
What is going to happen is more killing and more brutality, this I am sure of. He (Assad) will not leave unless we kick him out by force. Protests are necessary but not enough. I see no other choice.
Negotiation, sharing, politics are useless with such a regime.
He came to power by force and won’t leave it any other way, an inhabitant of Homs called Omar told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
How many Syrians will have to die until what seems now inevitable, Assad’s fall, actually occurs?
(the photograph above of a young Syrian refugee is by Joseph Eida AFP/Getty Images)

Yet another betrayal of the Syrian people…

The shelling of Homs began sometime after 8pm last Friday.
Earlier that evening, the Free Syrian Army had attacked two military checkpoints, killing around ten regular Syrian army soldiers, and capturing thirteen others.
In apparent retaliation, the Syrian army launched shells and rockets on the Khaldiya neighborhood, as well as  five others.
At least four buildings have collapsed. There are still people under the rubble. It’s the middle of the night. They can’t get to them, Dima Moussa, a Syrian-American member of the Syrian National Council, living in the US, told the WP.
Witnesses report that 36 houses, occupied by entire families, were destroyed.
We were sitting inside our house when we started hearing the shells. We felt shells were falling on our heads, a resident named Waleed told The Guardian.
It’s a real massacre in every sense of the word. I saw bodies of women and children lying on roads, beheaded. It’s horrible and inhuman. It was a long night helping people get to hospitals, a resident of Khaldiya told the NYT.
I’ve been told that the main public hospital is completely overwhelmed and people have set up makeshift clinics in mosques. They are running low on supplies of blood. Several buildings have been destroyed, Mysa Khalaf of Aljazeera reported.
After this, no one in the world can blame us for fighting, even if we have to use kitchen knives, Abu Omar, a Homs resident, told the NYT…
The attack  ceased around 1am Saturday.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in London, 217 people were killed. Some 700 others were injured.
From the 19 of March until now, this is the bloodiest day in Syria, declared Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Observatory.
The onslaught also occurred on the day the United Nations Security Council was to vote on a resolution seeking to resolve the political crisis in Syria, and thirty years after the elder Assad shelled the rebellious city of Hama, killing at least 10,000 Syrian civilians.
As the French ambassador to the UN told the Council, l’horreur est héréditaire à Damas (« horrific acts run in the family in Damascus »).
The proposed UN Security Council resolution on Syria emphasizes the Council’s commitment to resolving the Syrian crisis peacefully and that nothing in this resolution authorizes measures under Article 42 of the Charter.
In other words, foreign military intervention to resolve the crisis is out of the question.
The resolution also condemns gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities, and calls for an end to such abuses; condemns the use of force against civilians, and all violence in general, irrespective of where it comes from.
It also demands that Syria honor its commitment to apply the Arab League peace plan of November 2, 2011, that is to say:
End the military assault against the Syrian people; release all prisoners detained since the beginning of the uprising; withdraw all military forces from the country’s cities and villages; guarantee the right to demonstrate peacefully; allow monitors and journalists to operate freely inside Syria and initiate a free and open dialogue with all Syrian opposition forces.
In order to forestall Russian opposition, therefore, the resolution does not specifically call for regime change and dismisses any notion of foreign military intervention in Syria.
The political process is to be led by the Syrians themselves.
Finally, the resolution refrains from calling for an arms embargo on the country.
Syria is a major client for Russian weaponry…
The resolution however, also fully supports in this regard the League of Arab States’ 22 January 2012 decision to facilitate a Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system.
This proposal moreover, entailed the resignation of Assad.
We ask that the Syrian regime leave and hand over power. We are one with the Syrian people, with the will and with their aspirations, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, the Qatari foreign minister told Reuters on January 22.
Did the UN resolution hence, demand Assad’s departure?
Not explicitly…
In addition, the Russians were demanding that the resolution hold the Syrian opposition equally responsible for the violence wracking the country.
This was rejected as unacceptable by other members of the Council.
In the end however, the Russians refused to approve even this watered -down version of the resolution. Nor did it see fit to abstain during the vote.
The Russians, meekly followed by the Chinese, voted no, thereby vetoing the resolution.
Incidentally, the final tally was 13 in favor and 2 against, Russia and China…
Why did the Russians vote no, considering that many of their objections had been addressed?
They considered that the resolution was one-sided, designed to favor the opposition.
Russian foreign minister Lavrov objected to the imposition of the terms and conditions of the dialogue, which must be started without prejudging the results…Measures must be taken to influence not only the government but also the armed groups, because unless you do it both ways, you are taking sides in a civil war.
Lavrov knows that the Syrian National Council, for one, will not negotiate with Assad, considering he has far too much blood on his hands, and thus morally disqualified to lead, a point President Obama highlighted as well (Assad has no right to lead Syria, and has lost all legitimacy with his people and the international community, he said., accusing Assad of having murdered hundreds of Syrian citizens, including women and children).
The Syrian National Council notified the Russian authorities accordingly when the latter invited them to negotiate with the Syrian regime in Moscow.
Furthermore, the Russians are deliberately attempting to attenuate the responsibility of the Assad regime in the current crisis.
An armed opposition would never have emerged had the Assad regime not responded to peaceful demonstrations with brutal military force.
The Russians, naturally, are fully aware of this, but are loath to publicly support a brutal tyranny, and thereby hope to shift at least part of the responsibility for the atrocious violence to the opposition, the initial victims of it…
Russia would like to portray itself as an impartial observer, and potential peace broker…
Yet, what is a Syrian opposition activist to do if the simple act of marching in the streets, chanting slogans and holding placards transforms him or her into a legitimate military target?
We have not heard Mr. Lavrov on this subject…
The people have the right to defend themselves.
The Russians clearly intend to do whatever it takes to prevent their client Assad from being overthrown.
Paradoxically, the absence of a credible political process that the resolution was hoping to initiate makes that prospect more likely.
The Russians would presumably support a process of democratization in Syria, provided that Assad dictate its terms…
Vitaly Churkin, Russian ambassador to the UN, defended the veto, arguing that the resolution sent an unbalanced signal to the Syrian parties.
He criticized the sponsors of the resolution (Morocco, France, the UK, the US, Germany, Portugal, Colombia, Togo, Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Turkey), claiming that they were calling for regime change, pushing the opposition towards power.
The Russians, much like the Chinese, do not want to see the UN Security Council’s jurisdiction extend to internal conflicts.
As far as they are concerned, such meddling is a gross violation of national sovereignty.
The autocrats in power in Moscow (no one has forgotten how they dealt with the aspirations of the Chechens…) and the tyrants in Beijing (who killed thousands in Tiananmen, rather than loosen their grip on power) fear that, one day, the UN Security Council may examine how they treat their citizens, and espouse regime change in their homelands!
Hence, their current obtuse refusal to entertain the notion of condemning the savagery of the Assad regime.
We are not friends or allies of President Assad, Lavrov was brazen enough to claim. We try to stick to our responsibilities as a permanent member of the Security Council and the Security Council by definition does not engage in domestic affairs of member states.
What of his responsibility towards the beleaguered Syrian people?
The sponsors of the resolution were clearly angered by the veto.
There is nothing in this text that should have triggered a veto. We removed every possible excuse. The reality is that Russia and China have today taken a choice: to turn their backs on the Arab world and to support tyranny rather than the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people, Mark Lyall Grant, UK ambassador to the UN, said.
It’s a sad day for the council. It’s a sad day for Syria…History has compounded our shame, Gerard Araud, the French ambassador, declared.
The US is disgusted by the veto.
A couple of members of this council remain steadfast in their willingness to sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant, fumed Susan E. Rice, the US ambassador.
By ostentatiously refusing to take sides and thus vetoing the resolution (thereby preserving the status quo), the Russians were in fact endorsing the Assad regime’s strategy for handling the crisis: brutal military repression.
With the UN Security Council divided and thus powerless, Assad has no incentive to refrain from killing en masse his own people…
It’s quite clear-this is a license to do more of the same and worse.
The regime will take it for granted that it can escalate further. We’re entering a new phase that will be far more violent still than what we’ve seen now, Peter Harling a Syria expert at the International Crisis Group, told the NYT.
It seems that the regime has read the stalling by the Russians as a license to stomp this out very quickly and then try to dictate the process of dialogue with the opposition, Andrew Tabler, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the WP.
Assad, rescued yet again by the Russians and Chinese, wasted no time in seizing the opportunity afforded by the defeat of the UN Security Council resolution to escalate his military campaign, particularly in Homs.
It’s a massive attack-a new massacre is happening here. Nobody can go out, we don’t know how many homes have been hit or how many people died, Abu Abdo Alhomsy, a Homs activist, told Aljazeera Monday morning (as of noon, around 50. A further 31 were killed throughout the country on Sunday).
It has been terrible. There is non-stop bombing with rockets, mortar bombs and tank shells. There are more than 50 people injured in Bab Amr (a rebellious Homs neighborhood). I saw with my own eyes kids with no legs, and a kid who lost his whole bottom jaw. It is terrible, Danny Abdul Dayem, another Homs resident, told Aljazeera.
What happens now?
Civil war seems inevitable…
Things are slipping out of control on the ground so much that I’m not sure that (the resolution) could have stopped the killing, Andrew Tabler, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told the WP.
Europe intends to do what it can to increase the pressure on the regime, and support the opposition. Europe will again harden sanctions imposed on the Syrian regime. We will try to increase this international pressure and there will come a time when the regime will have to realize that it is completely isolated and cannot continue, French foreign minister Alain Juppé said on Sunday.
Juppé added that French president Sarkozy will strive to bring together all those who consider the current situation absolutely intolerable.
Russian foreign minister Lavrov is to fly to Damascus on Tuesday for talks with Assad.
Yet, since a credible, political solution to this crisis is nowhere in sight, the military option seems to be the sole remaining one.
We were hoping they would change their opinion. Unfortunately they used their veto. The people here are not so much disappointed. We will rely on Allah, the Holy God, and after Allah, we will rely on the Free Syrian Army, Abu Rami, a Homs activist, told the WP.
The commander of the Free Syrian Army, Col. Riad al-Assad, also believes that armed resistance is the only way to prevail.
Only military options are on the table. The political options have failed. This regime won’t end except through force, he told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
In the end, Assad is wasting his time. His regime is doomed, for he has spilled far too much blood to play a prominent role in the country’s future.
It does not seem that they get it. Even if they kill 10 million of us, the people will not stop until we topple him, an activist from Khaldiya told The Guardian.
Perhaps this shall give even Mr. Lavrov food for thought…
(the photograph of the young demonstrator in al-Qsair, south-west of Homs, is by  Alessio Romenzi AFP/Getty)

People are so angry..

Is Damascus under siege?
We are surrounded. We can’t drive north. We can’t drive south. We can only go west, to Lebanon, a Syrian journalist told Liz Sly, of The WP.
Yabrud, Douma, Saqba, Hamuriyeh, Irbin, Al-Ghouta, Daraya, Ein Tarma, and Kfar Batna: the Syrian army launched a counterattack last weekend in order to wrest control of those suburbs of Damascus from the Free Syrian Army and its armed supporters.
The number of tanks is unimaginable. They are shelling the street randomly, one Yabrud resident told the NYT.
We are scared. We hear loud explosions and shooting. We don’t know what is going to happen, a resident of Daraya told the NYT.
The Free Syrian Army has made a tactical withdrawal. Regime forces have reoccupied the suburbs and started making house to house arrests, an activist from al-Ghouta told Aljazeera.
Regular Syrian army troops are also fighting the Free Syrian Army and other armed activists for control of Homs, Hama and Idlib.
The town of Rankous, near the Lebanese border, and home to 25,000 residents, has been under siege by the Syrian army (led by the Fourth Division, headed by Bashar Assad’s brother, Maher) since last Wednesday, in an attempt to drive out armed defectors.
At least 33 people were killed in that assault and more than 160 in Syria over the weekend. A further 100 died on Monday.
Clearly, the violence in Syria is escalating as more and more opponents of the government take up arms to defend themselves and their cause against a ruthless regime, which will stop at nothing to remain in power.
Case in point, twelve members (including four children) of a Sunni family, the Bahadours, were gunned down by Syrian army troops last Sunday in Homs, according to Le Monde (see photographs here).
Also in Homs, a family of six, including four children, suffered a similar fate in the Karm el-Zeitoun district.
In Hama, the bodies of dozens of executed prisoners were found on Thursday, according to the NYT.
We have the right to defend ourselves, activists chanted at last Friday’s national anti-Assad demonstrations. In addition, they are determined to do so, with or without your help, an activist told Aljazeera.
The Assad regime has resorted to brutal repression in order to crush the uprising.
That attempt however, has clearly failed, as more and more Syrians refuse to be cowed into submission.
Free Syrian Army branches are being created across the country, as well as military councils consisting of both civilians and defectors.
Yes, civilians who want to hold weapons are joining our struggle…Even if it requires us to smuggle weapons into the country we will do this. We are being killed. Whatever action we take to defend ourselves is justifiable, an activist named Omar told Aljazeera.
This is our right. It is our right to take up arms and we are not going to shy away from this any longer. We are being killed. We waited for any action from the Arab League and the United Nations and none was forthcoming. All they have been doing is stalling and that has given the regime time to crush the revolution, Omar said.
Defectors are joining the ranks of the armed resistance at a brisker pace than previously thought.
Each time they bring new forces here, some of them defect, Khaled Abou Salah, of the Homs Revolution Council, told the NYT.
Syria’s immediate prospects are dim at best.
What is happening is obvious. You can see it. It’s civil war. Everyone is trying to deny it but you can’t hide from it, a Syrian journalist told Liz Sly.
The Syrian resistance moreover, has been left to its own devices as the Arab’s League observer mission was suspended last Saturday
The observers had been sent to Syria last December to monitor the regime’s compliance with the Arab League peace plan it had approved.
The regime had agreed to pull back its troops; release all prisoners detained since the beginning of the uprising; allow the media to report on events in Syria and begin a dialogue with opposition groups.
Needless to say, the Assad regime failed to comply with any of these demands.
Given the critical deterioration of the situation in Syria and the continued use of violence…it has been decided to immediately stop the work of the Arab League‘s mission to Syria pending presentation of the issue to the League’s council, Nabil el-Araby, the Arab League’s secretary general declared last Saturday.
The Russians deplored the decision.
We would like to know why they are treating such a useful instrument in this way. I would support an increased number of observers. We are surprised that after a decision was taken on prolonging the observers’ mission for another month, some countries, particularly Persian Gulf countries, recalled their observers from the mission, Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister said on Sunday.
Syria was disappointed as well.
This will have a negative impact and put pressure on Security Council deliberations with the aim of calling for foreign intervention and encouraging armed groups to increase violence, a statement on Syrian television indicated.
The Arab League however, has not abandoned its efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis.
Its secretary general, accompanied by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, in charge of the Syrian issue at the Arab League, are to present today a new peace plan at the UN Security Council in New York.
It calls for Assad to transfer his powers to the Syrian Vice-President, and the creation of a unity government, followed by elections.
Syria denounced the plan as a violation of its sovereignty.
Russian foreign minister Lavrov characterized the plan’s demand that Assad step down as absolutely unforgivable.
Yet, the new UN draft resolution under discussion in New York and sponsored by Morocco, calls for such a political transition.
By suspending the mission of the observers and seeking the backing of the UN Security Council for its new peace plan, the Arab League clearly seeks to increase the pressure on Assad and his principle supporter, Russia.
Why is Russia so keen on backing the brutal Assad regime?
Firstly, Syria is a major client of the Russian arms industry.
Recently, Syria signed a contract worth $550 million to purchase Russian jet fighters.
Secondly, the Russians are still seething over the West’s successful military campaign to oust the Qaddafi regime.
The Russians consider that they were deceived; as far as they were concerned, they had approved a UN Security Council resolution creating a no-fly zone in Libya, and not authorizing regime change!
We were naïve and stupid. The Chinese were the same. Trust this: that was the last mistake of such type, Yevgeny Y. Satanovky, president of the Institute of the Middle East in Moscow, told the NYT.
Russian support however, has encouraged the Assad regime to pursue obstinately its preferred, yet failing strategy: the brutal military repression of its own people.
It is central to the regime’s narrative and key to the cohesiveness of the regime’s ranks.
They believe that the international community is divided. So Russians are providing cover for the regime to push forward with their approach. There is a belief that all doors are not closed, Peter Harling, of the International Crisis Group, and an expert on Syria, told the NYT.
Syria doesn’t yet seem to feel that it’s sufficiently isolated, that it needs to change the course of action. It certainly won’t feel that as long as Russia is telling it that it still backs it, Aljazeera’s Anita McNaught said.
Hence, Russian support is encouraging Assad to seek a military solution to what is fundamentally a political problem, thereby radicalizing the opposition, and encouraging more and more Syrians to take up arms, if only to defend themselves.
The Russians, in order to alleviate the growing political pressure exerted by the Arab League and the UN Security Council, and portray itself not as the supporter of a pariah regime but as a responsible world power, invited representatives of both the opposition and the Syrian government to hold  informal talks in Moscow to resolve the crisis.
In an attempt to contribute with the Syrians to a peaceful settlement without foreign intervention and with respect to the sovereignty of Syria, we have appealed to the Syrian government and to all opposition groups to send their representatives to Moscow at a mutually acceptable time for informal contacts without prior conditions, the Russian foreign ministry announced yesterday.
Although the Syrian regime responded favorably, the Syrian National Council declared that negotiations with the Assad regime were no longer possible.
The resignation of Assad is the condition for any negotiation on the transition to a democratic government in Syria, Burhan Ghalioun, leader of the Council, told AFP.
What then, will happen Tuesday in New York?
That the session is bound to be an important one is underscored by the list of attendees, which includes Hillary Clinton, and the foreign ministers of France and Great Britain, Alain Juppé and William Hague.
We have seen the consequences of neglect and inaction by this Council over the course of the last ten months, not because the majority of the Council isn’t eager to act-it has been. There have been a couple of very powerful members who have not been willing to see that action take place, declared Susan E. Rice, American ambassador to the UN, referring to Russia and China.
Failure to approve the resolution would lead to more violence and intensified chaos, she added.
What will the Russians do?
The western draft Security Council resolution in Syria will not lead to a search for compromise. Pushing it is a path to civil war, claimed Russian deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov.
As we have seen however, it is the current regime’s obstinate insistence on resolving the crisis militarily that is pushing the country towards civil war.
As such, with civil war looming, the West seems intent on accelerating a process that can only lead to Assad’s ouster.
Assad’s fall is inevitable, Jim Carney, the White House spokesman said yesterday.
Since it is inevitable, the sooner he leaves the better.
That is the prerequisite to resolving the crisis, and allowing meaningful negotiations between the parties to take place.
Russia’s behavior will thus be crucial. Only they can nudge Assad towards the door…
Will they have the wisdom and decency to do it?
The violence has now reached the hitherto peaceful cities of Aleppo, Syria’s second largest and commercial capital, and Damascus, thereby demonstrating that the regime’s strength is ebbing.
In Syria, looking weak is a dangerous thing, and if they can’t control the Damascus suburbs, they do look weak, a Western diplomat told Liz Sly.
Resistance against the regime is thus steadily spreading.
People are so angry, one a man selling headscarves in a Damascus souk told Liz Sly.
The brutal Assad regime has to go.
The Western powers in the UN Security Council seem keen on compelling both China and Russia to either abstain when the resolution comes to a vote, or take the very public responsibility of vetoing it.
Their allegiances would be crystal clear for the entire planet to see: support for a bloody and repressive regime intent on killing its own people if that is the price for remaining in power.
They can’t continue to defend an unsustainable status quo, one US official told the NYT.
Let us see if China and Russia have the nerve to rebuff the entire international community…
(thre photograph of the Free Syria Army soldier was found here)

Who will help the Syrians get rid of Assad?

The first suicide car bomb struck the office of a Syrian security agency in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood of Damascus early this morning.
Then, the driver of a four-wheel drive vehicle rammed the latter into the building of the General Security Directorate (the loathed, repressive Syrian secret service), when guards inside ran into the street after hearing the first blast, according to a state-owned Syrian channel, al-lkhbariya al -Suriya.
The explosions shook the house. It was frightful, Nidal Hamidi, a journalist residing in Kafr Sousa, told AP.
Gunfire was also heard in the Malki district, in central Damascus.
Initial reports indicated that 40 people had been killed in the blasts, and over 100 injured.
Several soldiers and a large number of civilians were killed in the two attacks carried out by suicide bombers in vehicles packed with explosives against bases of State Security and another branch of the security services, state television reported.
Initial inquiries hold al-Qaeda responsibility, the network added.
Some reports indicated that a suspect had been arrested.
The Assad regime has been claiming from the outset of the uprising that it is not being challenged by peaceful pro-democracy activists, but by terrorists and armed gangs supported by foreigners.
Today’s attacks did seem to confirm this thesis.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem has said he expects the Arab observers to vindicate his government’s contention that the unrest is the work of « armed terrorists», not overwhelmingly peaceful protesters as maintained by Western governments and human rights watchdogs, wrote AFP.
Yet, the nature and timing of the attacks fuels suspicion that the Assad regime may itself have instigated them.
A terrorist attack conducted by al-Qaeda (already identified as the culprit in its immediate aftermath) neatly corroborated the Assad’ regime’s allegation that it is being targeted by the most formidable of Islamic terrorist organizations.
Secondly, the attacks took place the day after the arrival of a delegation of Arab League logistics experts. They are in Damascus to organize the mission of the hundreds of monitors expected as soon as Sunday to ascertain Syrian compliance with the Arab League peace plan that Assad signed in early November.
One article stipulates that the regime must cease resorting to violent means.
The authorities will undoubtedly (and expeditiously) provide the delegates with all the necessary evidence to confirm that its allegations concerning the origin of the violence were indeed accurate and thus always had been…The delegation was taken to a blast site this afternoon, according to The Guardian...
The regime will thus be in a position to demand sufficient leeway from the Arab League to confront this terrorist menace accordingly.
Furthermore, Damascus has been virtually spared the violence wracking other parts of the country.
In addition, no attacks of this nature, suicide bomb attacks, have been launched by the resistance movements, not even by armed groups.
Other elements also suggest the Assad regime was complicit in the attacks.
Omar al-Khani, of the Syrian Revolution General Commission opposition group, said that he lived three miles from the site of the explosions. Although the blasts rattled the windows of his house and woke him up with the noise, he said, he did not see any smoke rising from the area.
Khani said residents of Kafr Sousa reported that intelligence agents stationed near the building did not move when the explosions detonated. Instead, they continued to drink tea. Snipers and guards at the building also did nothing, he said, wrote Alice Fordham of the WP.
Half an hour before the bombing took place, there was a significantly high security presence. One side of the road was cut off 10 minutes before the explosion itself. As soon as the road was opened an explosion was heard, and then another one followed about 5 minutes later, a witness declared, according to enduringamerica.
Syria doesn’t really have a record of this. The security forces have not lost control of the situation to such an extent that this would seem likely, Salman Shaikh, of the Brookings Institute in Doha, told Alice Fordham.
The blasts occurred hours before a demonstration called to protest the Arab League mission was to have taken place.
On their Facebook page, activists condemned the Arab League’s plan to send monitors, fearing their presence will only legitimize the killing of protesters by the regime.
Protocol of death, license to kill was one slogan featuring on the page, according to al-Jazeera.
The activists demand that the United Nations Security Council, and not the Arab League, lead the international campaign against the Assad regime.
Omar Edelbi, of the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition movement inside Syria, denounced the Arab League mission as another attempt by the regime to bypass the Arab initiative and empty it of its contents, according to al-Jazeera.
The pro-democracy activists fear that the Assad regime will do its utmost to prevent the monitors from effectively fulfilling their mission (and first and foremost monitoring an end to the violence) all the while postponing the involvement of the UN Security Council.
In short, Assad will simply try to buy enough time to crush the uprising…
Skeptics also emphasize the fact that the full list of monitors has not yet been set, nor has the exact contours of their mission been finalized.
Lastly, the areas to be monitored will be negotiated with the Assad government…
The man chosen to lead the mission moreover, the Sudanese General Mohammed  Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi lacks the necessary credibility to pursue it successfully.
Indeed, he was the head of military intelligence in Darfur where, according to the ICC, Sudanese troops committed war crimes, including genocide!
The Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir was charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by the ICC in 2008...
Is he truly the most suitable candidate to lead a mission the goal of which is the cessation of all violence?
In this context, it is quite possible that the Assad regime believes it can manipulate the monitors, if not obtain the tacit support of the mission’s leader, to continue its bloody repression of the Syrian uprising.
The Assad regime has repeatedly shown it will stop at nothing to retain power.
It has arrested, tortured shot and killed thousands of men, women and children…
More than 6,200 have died, including hundreds of children, according to a human rights organization.
As such, it is perfectly capable of having orchestrated these terrorist attacks in order to bolster its position before the arrival of the Arab League monitors.
These latest tragic events clearly demonstrate that Assad must go, and go now…
Who will help the Syrian people get rid of him?
(the photograph above of the Arab League delegation inspecting the blast site was found here)

"The army should kill all of us to stop the anti-Assad uprising"

The Assad regime’s attempts to crush the Syrian resistance movement intensified this week.
Last Monday, some sixty to seventy defectors were gunned down by army troops near a military base in the Jebel Zawiyah area, near Idlib, in northwestern Syria, close to the Turkish border.
The next day, Syrian security forces continued their bloody assault,  targeting villages in the area, believed to be providing support and a haven to defectors and armed anti-government insurgents.
Scores took to the hills in order to flee the advancing troops…
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in London, 111 were killed, victims of bombardments and heavy machine gun fire…
As the troops were passing through all the cities and towns in the area, they were firing artillery and tank shells and heavy machine guns, randomly and continuously. Daily, we live with the voices of missiles and explosions. The word « massacre» seems like too small to describe what happened, an activist hiding in the woods told the LAT.
One victim in the village of Kfar Owaid was Ahmed al-Dhaher, an imam.
According to witnesses, he was decapitated, and his severed head hung on a mosque door…
Concomitantly, the Syrian army attacked a group of soldiers fleeing their barracks in Idlib.
Some one hundred deserters were killed or wounded.
Activists said the Syrian military, using helicopters, tanks and artillery, continued the assaults on Wednesday, wrote the NYT.
France referred to the killings as an unprecedented massacre.
Everything must be put in motion to end this murderous spiral into which Bashar al-Assad is dragging his people, Bernard Valero, the French foreign ministry spokesman said.
The US government also condemned the violence.
While Syrian security forces have also taken casualties, the overwhelming majority of the violence and loss of life in Syria stems from the actions of the Assad regime, and we call on all parties to put an end to the violence, the White House declared.
The Syrian National Council demanded that the United Nations Security Council be urgently convened and that safe zones be established under international supervision in order to protect the Syrian people.
The Assad regime’s escalation of violence occurred, non-coincidentally, mere days before the arrival of an Arab League delegation sent to Damascus in order to prepare the mission of some 150 Arab League monitors.
Due in Syria before the end of the year, their mission is to assess the Assad regime’s compliance with the Arab League plan its subscribed to last month.
According to this plan, the regime agreed to a cessation of all violence; the return of all Syrian troops to their barracks; the release of all prisoners arrested since the beginning of the uprising in March, and the launching of talks with the opposition.
Once the monitors are on the ground, the security forces should no longer have a free hand to crush the uprising. How much freedom and autonmy will the regime allow them?
That remains to be seen...
The latest onslaught however, clearly evinces the regime’s desire to avoid at all cost the creation of a buffer zone on the Syrian-Turkish border that could provide a safe haven to defectors and armed militants.
Such a base would then allow them to plan and launch attacks against Assad’s security apparatus.
It is unlikely that Assad’s latest campaign will succeed.
Bashar al-Assad should have no doubt that the world is watching, and neither the international community nor the Syrian people accept his legitimacy, a White House spokesman said.
And yet, it is about time that the world did more than simply watch Assad massacre his own people.
Earlier this month, Assad told ABC News the following:
We don’t kill our people. No government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by a crazy person. There was no command to kill or be brutal.
Assad’s daily actions since last March have made a mockery of this feeble and preposterous attempt at self-justification.
His scurrilous regime is under siege, from both within and without.
It is high time that the UN Security Council muster the courage to condemn firmly and unequivocally the regime’s criminal behavior towards its own people…
(the title of this post is a quote of an activist, Abu Omar, and extracted from a NYT article;
the photograh above of Syrian demonstrators was found here))

"The regime wants the city to kneel..."

Six days…
For six days, Syrian army tanks pounded Bab Amr, a residential neighborhood of Homs, Syria’s third largest city, home to 1.5 million people.
Then, in the early hours of Monday morning, soldiers and shabbiha (a pro-Assad militia) entered the city.
I didn’t want to turn on the lights of the stairs because there are snipers everywhere, and they will shoot whenever they see lights. I felt that the air was being sucked out of the room by the intensity and frequency of the explosions, a woman living in an adjacent neighborhood, told Anthony Shadid of the NYT.
The city is an open wound, Mohammed Saleh, who fled to Damascus on Sunday, added.
Bab Amr had become a haven for many of those who deserted Assad’s army, refusing to use their weapons against their own people.
The defectors could not withstand the Syrian army onslaught, however.
Many fled or were arrested.
Over thirty died in what was a brutal confrontation.
Some Syrian soldiers, apparently exhausted, went door-to-door, requesting water, food and blankets, one Homs resident told Shadid.
On Monday morning, once the fighting had subsided, Syrian security forces arrested scores of young men, including some who had been wounded and hospitalized.
They are now storming houses and arresting people. The shabbiha have brought pick-up trucks and are looting buildings, Raed Ahmad, an activist from Homs, told Reuters.
I sneaked in to see my father today, who was hit by shrapnel. The number of troops and shabbiha in Bab Amr is now in the thousands and the looting is rampant, Sami, a Homs resident told Reuters.
Some of those arrested were detained in schools transformed into jails
For the residents of Bab Amr, living conditions were particularly harsh.
According to information the UN human rights office has received, the neighborhood has remained under siege for seven days, with residents deprived of food, water and medical supplies, Ravina Shamdasani, UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman told Reuters.
This is an extreme humanitarian crisis, Ausama Monajed, of the Syrian National Council, told the LAT.
More than 110 people were killed during the siege and assault, six of them on Monday, including two women, and an eight-year-old child.
What was the significance of the siege of Homs and the crushing of the military resistance led by the defectors?
The latter are too weak to pose a serious challenge to the Assad regime’s security apparatus.
The defectors and the people don’t have enough weapons or strength to wage a war against a professional and disciplined army. We cannot talk about a war between them because they’re not equal powers. It’s impossible for defectors to keep the city, Fayez Sara, an opponent of the regime based in Damascus, told the NYT.
What is clear is the following: months of bloody yet ineffectual peaceful protests have led some to resort to violence in order to topple a brutal and nihilistic regime that will stop at nothing to remain in power.
Not only defectors have drawn this conclusion, however.
In Homs, which some refer to as the capital of the Syrian revolution, the city population is a heterogeneous one, composed of not only Sunnis, but also Christians, Shiites and Alawites.
The upper echelons of the Assad regime are dominated by the Alawites.
As a result, the violence has become sectarian in nature, with Sunnis killing Alawites, and regime supporters gunning down Sunnis.
Christians have largely refrained form joining the uprising, no doubt preferring the devil they know…
The killing is sectarian, and it is being perpetuated by revenge without moral limits or rules. The situation is out of hand, and there is nothing that can hold it in check, Mohammed Saleh, the Homs activist, told Liz Sly of the WP.
The violence has also become particularly gruesome, as the conflict endures with no resolution in sight…
Some of the bodies have been stabbed from their heads to their feet, some have had their eyes taken out and the burned bodies cannot be recognized. Gunmen who are extremists are touring the city in cars kidnapping people and killing them, a doctor working at the Homs National Hospital told the WP.
Last week, more than 70 bodies bearing gunshot wounds were brought to the hospital in a twenty-four hour period, numbers reminiscent of the darkest days of the Iraqi civil war…
Sectarian violence, a budding insurgency, is the conflict in Syria changing in nature?
Eight months of demonstrations having failed to dislodge a regime willing to kill its own citizens to retain its privileges, is an armed struggle in the offing?
Homs is a turning  point for now. It’s a successful model for self-defense, if you will, at a time when you really can’t expect people to take any more. They’ve seen too many corpses come back, too many people arrested, disappeared or returned after abominable treatment. It’s too much. And everybody seems to be losing control of the street, an analyst told Shadid.
If the analyst is correct, is civil war, at least in certain parts of the country, and particularly in Homs, around the corner?
That, surely, cannot be in anyone’s interest…
Yet, is not the looming threat of civil war the regime’s best and last hope of retaining the support of those minorities fearful of a post-Assad Syria, while justifying its brutal repression?
In any case, the Arab League’s plan to restore peace in Syria, and which the Assad regime had ratified on November 2, is now in tatters.
According to this plan, the Syrian troops were to return to their barracks; the regime was to cease all violence against its citizens, liberate all political prisoners; allow journalists access to the country and launch talks with the opposition.
The regime did release 553 detainees last Saturday and proposed an amnesty to those holding weapons if they turned themselves in…There are thousands and thousands of political prisoners currently detained in Assad's jails.
This was clearly insufficient to convince even the Arab League that Assad was serious about complying with the terms of the agreement.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, overseeing the issue for the Arab League, called for a further meeting on Saturday, due to the continuation of violence and because the Syrian government did not implement its commitments in the Arab plan to resolve the crisis, he said.
The Syrian Revolution General Commission, an umbrella organization within Syria representing several opposition groups, urged the League to meet sooner, so as not to give the regime another opportunity to bombard, strike and burn.
The Arab peace plan died on arrival. There has been no let-up in the violence. The Assad regime is in complete defiance mode, Murhaf Jouejati, a Syrian scholar in Washington, told Reuters.
I don’t think anyone in his right mind was expecting Assad to pull his troops out of the streets and allow peaceful protests. Lack of even a threat of international intervention is viewed by the authorities as a license to kill, Walid al-Bunni, a lawyer and dissident exiled in Paris, told Reuters.
That seems to be the crux of the matter.
Without international pressure, Assad will pursue unabashed his vicious repression of the Syrian People.
Many, too many are apparently satisfied with the status quo, no matter how many Syrians die defending those values we in the West profess to embody.
The Syrians however, have paid too onerous a price to abandon the struggle now…
The people who are protesting in Syria seem to have crossed the barrier of fear, but the international community hasn’t, Nadim Shehadi, of Chatham House, a London think-tank, told Reuters.
Why should we fear to support without reservation those demanding justice, freedom and democracy?
They are our natural allies in the region (and everywhere else, for that matter), and certainly not those thugs and despots who still rule (and misrule) in too many Middle Eastern nations, in the name of stability and the purported defense of western strategic interests in the region.
French foreign minister Alain Juppé denounced on Sunday the Assad regime’s behavior as absolutely unacceptable.
Furthermore, he declared that the regime could no longer be trusted.
Its acceptance of the Arab League Plan was followed in the immediate hours by a new round of repression and new massacres, he added.
Why then not simply officially repudiate this odious regime (responsible for the deaths of over 3,500 Syrians since last March, according to the UN), and recognize instead the Syrian National Council as the legitimate government of the Syrian people?
(the photograph above was found here)

The beginning of a citizens' movement?

Xu was on his way to Dongshigu, a village near Linyi (located in the vicinity of the east coast, north of Shanghai) when he was arrested by the police at the bus station.
Although not a militant or human rights activist, the forty-five-year-old Xu sought to visit Chen Guangcheng, a lawyer currently under house arrest.
I knew it was going to be dangerous, but I didn’t think it would be this dangerous, he told AP.
He was held for questioning, suspected of drug dealing, the police informed him.
He was eventually released and driven back home.
Gao Xinbo, a Chen supporter, managed to enter the village, but then was seized, beaten and robbed.
He was then thrown out of the car that had taken him away, forty miles from the village.
All those who have tried to see Chen have suffered a similar fate.
He is a legal citizen, not a criminal; we should have the right to visit him, Xu told AP.
Yet, some Chinese citizens are held incommunicado, although they have not been charged or convicted of any offense.
This policy is known as ruanjin, or soft detention. It is reserved for those Chinese such as lawyers, human rights activists and the like who have refused to be intimidated and submit to the will of the authorities, and yet have committed no crime.
Such rebels are also sometimes held in black jails (prisons that do not officially exist) or psychiatric wards (where Soviet dissidents were also held indefinitely).
In Chen Guangcheng’s case, soft detention began soon after his release following a four-year prison sentence for disturbing the peace and destroying public property.
Born in 1971, Chen lost his eyesight as a child due to illness.
Illiterate until his twenties, Chen attended a school for the blind, then studied medicine, before attending law classes.
A masseur at the Yunan county hospital, Chen began granting legal assistance to farmers threatened with the illegal seizure of their land.
In 2005, he defended the victims of a coercive abortion and sterilization program (even unlawful by Chinese standards) imposed in Shandong.
The authorities could not tolerate these revelations of abuse of power by local officials.
Chen was arrested, tried and jailed on bogus charges.
Upon his release in September 2010, he was placed under house arrest, a victim of soft detention.
I have come out of a small jail and walked into a bigger jail. What they are doing is thuggery…Why are they afraid of my talking to the outside world? Because they know full well that they are wrong. They know what they are doing is illegal, Chen proclaimed in a video that  found its way to the West, and which denounced his living conditions.
Chen, as well as his wife, Yuan Weijing, was severely beaten in retaliation for the video’s release.
Many of their belongings (computers, cameras) were confiscated, and the electricity cut off.
They had already been deprived of a telephone line.
Video cameras monitor their every move; sheets of metal cover their windows, while roads leading to their village are under constant surveillance by armed thugs.
Their six-year old daughter has also been compelled to remain indoors, and thus, is also under house arrest…
Yet, Chen’s fate has attracted the attention of Chinese citizens not previously active in the human rights movement.
The fundamental unfairness of that really strikes a chord with Chinese citizens, Phelim Kine, of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, told the WSJ.
Indeed, the ruanjin policy, because blatantly illegal, does not officially exist.
The authorities deny that the family is under any restrictions. Confronted by European diplomats, Chinese officials have insisted there is no such thing as house arrest in China. Reached by telephone on Wednesday, Xue Jie, the director of the Yinan County propaganda bureau, suggested that a reporter could simply call Mr. Chen or just drop by, wrote Andrew Jacobs and Jonathan Ansfield of the NYT last February. The NYT reporters tried to do just that but were harassed and compelled to leave...
Soft detention is simply one more expedient in China’s extra-legal arsenal to harass those rebels the authorities consider likely to undermine their authority should they be allowed to pursue their activities.
Moreover, if it can goad one such misfit into committing an illegal act liable to prosecution, conviction and incarceration, so much the better…
There are too many people doing too many different things, and the authorities know if they use so-called legal methods, it will only provoke a greater domestic backlash and more international pressure, Teng Biao, a lecturer at China University of Political Science and Law, told the NYT.
Discrete repression is, therefore, the preferred tactic of the regime.
But, their zeal to remain firmly in control of a population now adept at using the web to communicate and share information has led to an ever-harsher crackdown on those who refuse to submit.
The police are progressively trying new techniques, and it seems that Beijing is ready to go along.
We used to worry about people getting arrested and losing their jobs. Now we have to worry about them losing their lives, Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the NYT last February.
The authorities may be fighting a losing battle.
Activists have launched an internet campaign on behalf of Chen, particularly on Weibo, the popular Chinese microblogging site with over 200 million users.
The campaign, called Operation Free Chen Guangcheng has awakened the civic consciousness of even ordinary Chinese.
I couldn’t believe something so dark and evil could happen in my country, so I had to see for myself, a young computer salesman told the NYT.
Along with five other citizens, he attempted to visit Chen. Their vehicle was set upon even before they had reached the village.
Earlier this month, some twenty other citizens made similar attempts.
It was unexpected that there would be so many spontaneous responses to the calls to visit him, especially from so many ordinary people with no previous experience in rights defense work...If they continue to do this, it will soon become a citizens' movement, He Peirong, a Chinese activist told AP earlier this month.
He tried on four occasions to see Chen, but was rebuffed and assaulted each time…
I think the campaign has entered an important new phase.
This time the social elite and the media are standing up for him, he told the NYT.
Indeed, a Chinese newspaper suggested that the authorities make a more earnest effort to explain Chen’s status.
Yesterday, the WSJ reported that the authorities had at last allowed Chen’s daughter to go to school…
This first victory should encourage the nascent citizen’s movement to intensify its campaign on behalf of Chen and all the others in a similar predicament.
The authorities are obviously listening and may be more vulnerable then many thought…
(the photograph of Chen Guangcheng above was found here)

*In May 2010, I wrote this post about the disappearance of Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human rights lawyer, no doubt secretly arrested and detained by the regime…
Unfortunately, there has been absolutely no word since about his fate or whereabouts…