Blame Assad first for ISIS' rise

[Originally posted at NOW]

The regime has abetted Sunni extremists to influence Western public opinion.

In the week since Al-Qaeda spinoff the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) brought Iraq back into international headlines by seizing around a third of the country in a matter of hours, there has understandably been a great deal of soul-searching and hair-pulling as to how a group that was supposed to have been “decimated,” in a country that was supposed to be last decade’s headache, has once again managed with just a few hundred men to humiliate an army many times its size and generally outfox the entire world.

Fingers have been hastily pointed in every direction, with culprits found ranging from the timeless “conspiracy” (in the Iraqi prime minister’s words) to Tony Blair (who took to his website Saturday to cantankerously declare his complete innocence of all charges). An increasingly widespread claim – appealing perhaps because of its ring of an ironic morality tale about imperial folly – has it that ISIS’ growth is in fact the doing of the West’s closest but most duplicitous Arab allies, the oleaginous Gulf dictatorships, who have done to us once again what they’ve been doing since they backed the Afghan Mujahideen that nurtured Bin Laden in the 1980s. Will we ever learn?

Lost in this din, driven more by the grinding of old axes than dispassionate consideration of the evidence, is the obvious fact that one man has contributed vastly more than anyone else to getting ISIS where it is today: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

First, though, it’s worth exploring the Gulf hypothesis, because like any popular misconception, it does contain elements of truth. It’s unquestionably the case, as Josh Rogin argued in The Daily Beast on Saturday, that the Gulf monarchs make little if any real effort to prevent their more pious subjects from sending considerable sums of money to extremist outfits, including ISIS. That a Kuwaiti man named Ghanim al-Mteiri had no objection to going on the record to the New York Times in November about his financing of Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria’s official Al-Qaeda franchise, says everything that needs to be said about the Al-Sabah regime’s commitment to what Rogin still calls the “war on terror.”

But this is not the same as saying – as Rogin’s title (“America’s Allies Are Funding ISIS”) does, and as others such as Simon Henderson in Foreign Policy and Robert Fisk in The Independent have – that ISIS is actively and deliberately sponsored as a matter of policy by the Saudis and other Gulf rulers and should be thought of as no more than a proxy created to advance Riyadh’s regional ambitions. Quite to the contrary: ISIS has long been at war with Saudi’s actual clients in Syria, the Islamic Front and what is loosely called the Free Syrian Army (FSA), who have successfully driven it out of much of its former turf in the north. Indeed, among the many sources of hostility between ISIS and the other brigades is precisely the former’s rejection of Saudi intervention. While FSA leaders openly express gratitude for Riyadh’s help, ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani mocks the Kingdom as a “state which claims to be Islamic,” and denounces as traitors all factions “supported by the Saudis, America, and the infidels of the West.”

Another cause of friction is the FSA’s frequent accusations of ISIS collaboration with the regime. Though this line of argument, too, can take irrational and conspiratorial forms, there are a number of incontrovertible facts that, taken in aggregate, suggest the “Assad-or-the-terrorists” dichotomy that so much guides (or misguides) Western policy toward Syria is not nearly as straightforward as we’re led to believe:

● For long periods of time, the regime largely spared ISIS’ bases from the kinds of aerial and other attacks it daily visits upon the rest of the country. A government adviser told the New York Times’ Anne Barnard this was indeed a deliberate policy, designed to “tar” the broader opposition and “frame [the] choice” as either Assad or the extremists. As one ISIS defector told The Daily Telegraph, “We were confident that the regime would not bomb us. We always slept soundly in our bases.” He added, in a quote that didn’t make the final text, that ISIS had even been infiltrated by regime agents. “I know men who were officers in the police and Syrian intelligence branches who are now in ISIS. They grew long beards and joined.” Another good reason for Assad not to drop barrel bombs on them.

● According to the same Daily Telegraph report, both ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra have raised millions of dollars through sales of crude oil from fields under their control to the regime, a unique case of overt partnership between ISIS and a state actor.

● Although ISIS only officially formed in April 2013, its roots lie in Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the same group Assad paid and equipped in the mid-2000s to fight the Americans in precisely the region of Iraq now occupied by ISIS. In 2003, on the regime’s orders, Syria’s ordinarily mild-mannered Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro issued a gladiatorial fatwa calling for attacks, including suicide bombings, against the Americans in Iraq. Those who came back alive after making the trip over the border – following training and funding from the regime – were promptly thrown into Damascus’ notorious Sednaya prison upon their return. Years later, on May 31, 2011, Assad suddenly pardoned and released dozens of Sednaya’s most dangerous inmates, who predictably went on to become leaders in Islamist rebel brigades, including extremist ones. This was at the same time the regime was imprisoning, torturing, and indeed murdering the secular and nonviolent democracy activists out in the streets. What was going on? As Aron Lund, editor of the Carnegie Endowment’s "Syria in Crisis" page, put it, “There are no random acts of kindness from this regime.”

● Nawaf al-Fares, the defected former Syrian ambassador to Iraq, has claimed the regime ordered a series of suicide bombings in Syria in 2012, carried out by the very jihadists he himself had sent to Iraq years previously. Again, the idea was to discredit the opposition, thereby duping the world into preferring Assad. “The Syrian government would like to use Al-Qaeda as a bargaining chip with the West,” he said, “to say: ‘it is either them or us.’” Another defector, former intelligence officer Afaq Ahmad, similarly recalls how “the jihadist groups and brigades” were “very useful for the regime,” which infiltrated them and even brokered non-aggression pacts with some of them.

To be clear, nobody is suggesting ISIS fighters are pure agents provocateurs, or that the regime doesn’t also kill them as and when expedient. Indeed, presumably realizing (or being told by “brotherly” Iran) after the fall of Iraq’s Mosul last week that ISIS had been allowed to grow stronger than intended, on Sunday Assad’s air force began bombing the group’s strongholds across northeastern Syria.

But that, if anything, only underlines the point that the regime knew the locations of those strongholds all this time. There simply is no other actor, not even the roundly assailed Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki, who has done so much for so long to directly facilitate ISIS’ rise. So far from facing a choice between “Assad and the terrorists,” in other words, Syrians – and now Iraqis too – suffer the latter precisely because they have for so long been plagued with the former.

Why did al-Qaeda turn on the FSA?

[Originally posted at NOW]

Months of mistrust, power politics, and disagreement over prospective Western intervention have driven recent violence between opposition brigades.

In his address marking the twelfth anniversary of the 11 September, 2001, World Trade Center attacks, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri made a conspicuous addition to his organization’s lengthy list of foes. For the first time, formally included in the “enemies of Islam” umbrella category was the loose alliance of militant Syrian opposition brigades commonly known as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), whom Zawahiri denounced as treacherous tools of America akin to the ‘Sahwa [Awakening]’ militias financed by the US to combat al-Qaeda in Iraq. The fugitive warlord vowed to “destroy” the FSA factions with whom al-Qaeda’s fighters in Syria have hitherto tended to cooperate against the Bashar al-Assad regime.

This policy shift coincided with last week’s launch of a so-called “Purification of Filth” (naqi al-khabath) campaign by al-Qaeda’s primary Syrian franchise, the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), which the group said would comprise military attacks in eastern Aleppo against rival factions including the al-Farouq and al-Nasr brigades, both of which nominally fall under the command of the Western-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC) led by General Salim Idris. On Tuesday, photos circulated on social media appearing to show ISIS executing a man in public on charges of belonging to a “Sahwa” (i.e. SMC) group. And for more than a week prior to that, ISIS had engaged in fatal clashes with SMC fighters in Deir az-Zour and al-Raqqa provinces.

Hostilities then reached uncharted territory when on Wednesday ISIS violently seized the northern town of Azaz from the SMC’s Northern Storm Brigade, prompting fellow SMC faction Liwa al-Tawheed to send its fighters to “liberate” the town from the jihadists. A ceasefire deal was later negotiated, and the three groups have now divided the territory between themselves for the time being.

Syrian media activists told NOW that while the pretext for the Azaz clashes was ISIS’ objection to a foreign doctor’s presence in the town, it also appeared to be a plain power grab by the al-Qaeda affiliate.

“ISIS members stormed the Azaz civil hospital during a visit by a German doctor from Doctors without Borders, and demanded that the doctor leave the hospital and leave town immediately,” Aleppo-based activist Naqaa Sadeq told NOW. When the Northern Storm Brigade refused this demand, “the takfiris [ISIS] deemed it permissible for them to control all headquarters in Azaz and began invading houses.”

Much the same rationale was behind the al-Raqqa clashes, according to a local activist who would only give his name as Wael. “The first clash between extremist battalions and the FSA occurred in the Tel Abyad area, which controls the border crossing. Since then, ISIS has spread its influence by controlling vital positions in the liberated areas,” he told NOW.

Beyond mere power politics, however, distrust between jihadists and more moderate opposition forces – which has been reported since at least July, when ISIS killed a number of SMC fighters, including a senior commander, in Latakia and Idlib provinces – has recently been aggravated by the prospect of Western military intervention in Syria following the chemical weapons attack in Damascus in August. As the Guardian’s Martin Chulov reported from Aleppo earlier this month, while ISIS fighters vehemently oppose a US-led strike, believing it to be a plot to target them, the SMC’s rebels welcome the idea, with one even adding that he “hope[s] the Americans know where [ISIS’] headquarters are” too.

Accordingly, when the US backed away from its militant posture in favor of a Russian-sponsored compromise, ISIS may have sensed an opportunity to score a hit against their SMC rivals, according to Charles Lister, analyst at IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre.

“The perceived decline in forceful Western pressure on Assad over the last [ten] days has bolstered jihadist confidence and weakened the image of the core moderates […] by combating moderates currently hostile to them, jihadists may be hoping to nip the problem in the bud,” Lister told NOW.

There is also growing resentment at ISIS and its fellow al-Qaeda surrogate, Jabhat al-Nusra, for their increasingly authoritarian rule over the territories they hold, said Lister.

“Both ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra have exerted increasingly public levels of social control in northern and eastern Syria in recent weeks and there is no doubt that this has generated frustration within some locally-based moderate groups.”

Among local civilians, too, dissatisfaction with the jihadists has frequently been on display. At a demonstration in Aleppo Friday, residents chanted familiar anti-Assad songs, but with da’ish [the Arabic acronym for ISIS] in place of the president’s name. And on the Twitter social media network, pro-opposition Syrian users widely circulated the slogan “Da’ish does not represent me”.

With rebels now dedicating time and resources to battles against fellow rebels, the question arises as to whether the Assad regime stands to gain militarily. Certainly that is the view of some opposition fighters, who see the descent into rebel-on-rebel killing as handing Assad victory, according to Chulov. Yet Lister told NOW the reality may be more complex.

“So far, incidents of infighting have remained isolated to less active military zones, so the impact on the overall battle against the government has been minimal. However, if this situation expands further, then yes, the military could feasibly benefit, but likely still only on a localized level.”

Doha Hassan contributed reporting.

The fall of Homs in context

[Originally posted at NOW]

Rebels had not posed a real threat to the Syrian regime in Homs since the summer of 2012.

The reclaiming by the Syrian regime and allied forces of one of the last remaining rebel-held neighborhoods in the central city of Homs on Monday marked a second territorial defeat for the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in two months, coming on the heels of the fall of the nearby town of Qusayr in June.

The Khalidiyeh neighborhood, which regime forces battered for weeks with air strikes and surface-to-surface missiles in coordination with Lebanese Hezbollah units, was a key link in the rebels’ chain between the Old City and the few remaining adjacent ‘liberated’ neighborhoods of the city once known to the opposition as the “capital of revolution,” or the “citadel of the terrorists” to the regime.

Its fall prompted speculation that regime forces would soon sweep the entire city, and then turn their attention northwards to Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and now the only major one in which the rebels have a sizeable and comparatively secure presence. However, as of Saturday the fighting in Homs is continuing, and according to both activists on the ground and foreign analysts NOW spoke with, the regime is unlikely to be in a position to advance on Aleppo any time soon.

“In Homs, the opposition is still holding on in Jurat al-Shiyah, al-Qusur, al-Qarabis, Bab al-Dreb, Bab Turkman, Bab Houd, and Wadi al-Sayeh,” said Muhammad Radwan Raad, a Homs-based activist. He added, however, that “it is very unlikely that they will be able to keep hold of these neighborhoods because they only have AK-47s and RPGs.” Asked to estimate the number of rebels remaining in the city, Raad said it was in the hundreds, although “it is very hard to determine [because] many [have been] killed after the battles.”

As for what would likely follow the complete fall of Homs, Raad was in agreement with analysts NOW spoke to that it is the roads and countryside between Homs and Damascus, rather than Aleppo, that will be the next targets, although preparations for an eventual showdown in Aleppo will also be made wherever possible.

“The regime recently took control of the strategic village of Abel, on the Homs-Tartous highway. Now, it is seeking to take control of another road leading to Aleppo and a third one that links Homs with Damascus. Clashes are ongoing and once the regime takes control of these roads, it will move on to Homs’ northern fringes.”

There are several reasons the regime will likely avoid a substantial Aleppo offensive in the near term, according to Elizabeth O’Bagy, senior research analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

“The interesting demographic balance in Homs actually favored the regime because you had so many Shiite – specifically Lebanese Shiite – and Alawite villages in the surrounding countryside,” O’Bagy told NOW. “You don’t see that in and around Aleppo so I think it’ll be much more difficult for the regime to find the right areas to launch operations from. This is exactly what we saw with some of the defeats that the opposition was able to inflict on Hezbollah.”

“I think after the regime won Qusayr it made the mistake of trying to advance onto Aleppo too quickly without consolidating its gains and so the recent offensive in Homs was actually their realization that they’d overplayed their hand. I think that for some time you’ll see them continuing to consolidate in and around Homs. They’re going to have to send significant reinforcements from Homs back to Damascus because of the rebel offensive going on there right now.”

Indeed, O’Bagy argues that recent rebel accomplishments in Damascus – such as the seizure of an anti-tank and ground-to-ground missiles depot Saturday – defy an increasingly current media narrative of the regime being close to military victory over the opposition.

“Momentum is clearly in favor of the regime right now, and there has been a shift in the tide of battles because of Hezbollah’s involvement [and] assistance from Iran and Russia, but what is often ignored is the fact that when the regime makes significant gains in one area they often lose territory in others. There is a major [rebel] offensive going on in Damascus right now. The opposition is able to enter neighborhoods that it has never been able to enter before. And they’ve also had some significant victories in and around Aleppo.”

Moreover, argues O’Bagy, many observers exaggerate the tangible significance of rebel defeat in Homs.

“The opposition hasn’t really had a strong presence in Homs since the summer of 2012. It’s important psychologically because it’s seen as an essential part of the resistance front but strategically the opposition hasn’t really been able to do much from Homs and they’ve never been able to effectively combat regime forces in and around that area.”

Christine Sleiman contributed reporting.

Dahiyeh residents mostly unfazed by blast

[Originally posted at NOW]

Damaged cars across the street from the blast site (NOW/Alex Rowell)

The flames that had engulfed over a dozen cars in an outdoor parking lot as a result of Tuesday morning’s explosion in the Bir al-Abid neighborhood of Haret Hreik, in Beirut’s southern suburbs, had been doused by the time NOW arrived at the scene, but the damage wrought by the reported 35kg bomb planted under a car was extensive.

For at least a hundred meters down the adjacent residential and commercial street, the sidewalks were smothered in glass shards blown out of the now-bare window frames of shops, parked cars, and multi-story apartments. The awnings of a bakery and an accessories shop across the street from the blast site sat mangled like collapsed construction girders, while the wall of the car park itself had been punched in with a meter-wide crater.

As hundreds of local residents flooded the streets, snapping camera-phone photos and straining to get a view of the charred car park, a team of private security officials carrying walkie-talkies and wearing red baseball caps – presumably members of Hezbollah, the preeminent party in the southern suburbs – deployed on the scene, urging the crowd over megaphones to disperse. Meanwhile, the team of security officials prevented non-Hezbollah-affiliated journalists from entering or even photographing the blast site. “Only take pictures in that direction,” said one to NOW, pointing away from the car park. “Stay here,” said another, motioning in vain for a colleague to come over, before getting distracted elsewhere and forgetting.

According to eyewitnesses NOW spoke to at an electronics store near the blast, a man driving a red Nissan 4x4 had parked in the lot that morning. When asked by the concierge how long he planned to park, adding that more money would be required for a lengthy stay, the man apparently paid the extra without specifying a time. Minutes later, said the eyewitnesses, the same Nissan car exploded.

Others nearby were more preoccupied with personal trauma. A middle-aged woman sitting in an adjacent shop breathed heavily as she recalled her fears for her niece, who had suffered minor injuries from the blast. “Thank God she’s all right,” she repeated as NOW moved onward.

However, despite injuring over 50 people, the bomb did not appear to have dampened local spirits in general. “Wait a second,” said one resident as NOW was preparing to take a photo of a smashed store façade. “Let the Sayyid [Hassan Nasrallah] be there first,” he said with a grin as he placed a photo of the Hezbollah Secretary-General on a shelf. In adjacent Dahiyeh neighborhoods, residents appeared entirely unfazed by the bomb, with men, women, and children walking around as though nothing unusual had happened.

Indeed, the only tangible ill-will from the crowd at the blast site was directed at Caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel, who arrived at around 1pm to heckles from Hezbollah supporters, from whom he took refuge in a nearby building for around twenty minutes. Video footage later emerged showing him being escorted to safety by police under cover fire from Hezbollah gunmen. The reason for this hostile reception is unclear.

Nor, as of Tuesday evening, have the perpetrators of the attack been established. The Free Syrian Army (FSA), which has previously claimed responsibility for rocket attacks on pro-Hezbollah towns in the Beqaa Valley, denied responsibility for Tuesday’s car bomb, saying the blame fell “directly or indirectly” on Hezbollah and the Syrian regime. Though rebel brigades have threatened in the past to attack Dahiyeh, the FSA also denied involvement in a dual rocket attack on the area in May.

Meanwhile, politicians on both sides of the Lebanese divide accused Israel of involvement, with Hezbollah MP Ali Ammar saying the attack “bears the fingerprint of the Israeli enemy and its tools,” and Future Movement leader Saad Hariri describing it as an “[attempt] by the Israeli enemy to push [Lebanon] to strife by organizing terrorist attacks.”

Yara Chehayed and Vivianne El Khawly contributed reporting.

When resistances collide

[Originally posted at NOW]

While reports last week of Hamas members in Lebanon being ordered by Hezbollah security officials to leave the country have since proven false, they have nonetheless revived questions about the state of relations between the Palestinian Sunni Islamist militia-cum-party and its Lebanese Shiite Islamist counterpart.

Having both firmly sided with opposing camps in the Syrian conflict raging next door, the two nominal allies appear to be straining to preserve what they can of a relationship increasingly challenged by political and sectarian differences.

The official line was summed up by former Hezbollah MP Hassan Hoballah, who said Friday that, “What brings us together, in terms of our hostility towards the Zionist entity, is greater than a dispute over the […] situation in Syria.” This was echoed by Hamas’ spokesperson in Lebanon, Ali Baraka, in a phone call to NOW.

However, Baraka also admitted to NOW that, “Of course, relations are not like they were in previous years.” Moreover, he explicitly condemned Hezbollah’s now-publicly acknowledged military intervention in Syria on behalf of the Assad regime, saying, “We are against [it], just as we are against any foreign intervention in the Syrian conflict.”

That includes intervention by Hamas, Baraka added, responding to allegations that the group is training and even fighting alongside the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Damascus and Aleppo. While no hard evidence has surfaced to support the accusations, they appear to be believed by some Hezbollah fighters themselves. Upon returning from the recent battle for Qusayr in Homs province, one such militant told a newspaper, “There’s a kind of irritating familiarity [in the rebels’ tactics]. Hezbollah taught Hamas all those tactics to fight the Israelis. Hamas apparently decided to transfer their experience to takfiri groups [Hezbollah parlance for the FSA].”

Whether true or not, there are certainly other indications of a deepening divorce between Hamas and its fellow members of the so-called ‘Resistance Axis’ – Hezbollah, and the Syrian and Iranian regimes. The London Telegraph reported last Friday that Iran has almost entirely ceased its financial support to Hamas – said to total some £15m ($23m USD) per month – as well as all military cooperation, in retaliation for the latter’s opposition to the Assad regime. (A subsequent article denying this was in turn denied by Hamas’ official website, a website which, significantly, describes the Syrian uprising as a “revolution” and has issued condemnations of regime “massacres” of Palestinian refugees.)

Such developments follow the broader pattern that has emerged since the Syrian uprising began. One month after Hamas’ politburo chairman Khaled Mashaal quietly left his Damascus headquarters in January 2012, the group’s Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah “saluted” the Syrian opposition in a Cairo speech. Mashaal has since based himself in Qatar, whose Emir Hamad al-Thani later paid a visit to Gaza in what was widely interpreted as a message that the Gulf state would henceforth be Hamas’s primary patron.

This new bond with Qatar – which is also among the most forthright sponsors of the Syrian opposition – is likely one reason why Hamas’ relations with the ‘Resistance Axis’ continue to deterioriate, according to Dr. Yezid Sayigh, senior associate at the Carnegie Middle East Center and former negotiator with Palestinian delegations in peace talks with Israel in the 1990s.

“Clearly Qatar has pledged lots of assistance [to Hamas],” Sayigh told NOW. “It’s possible that there’s been some sort of quid pro quo.”

However, Sayigh said equally significant are domestic pressures on the group in Gaza from friends and rivals alike, most of whom have welcomed the Syrian uprising.

“Having supported the Arab Spring in other countries, especially Egypt, I guess [Hamas] just found it awkward to be supporting the Assad regime, [especially] given that they’re trying to meet challenges in Gaza from people like the Salafists who are more openly supportive of the rebels in Syria.”

Ultimately, beyond Syria, perhaps the larger question is what will become of the ‘Resistance Axis’ now that it appears to have fragmented along political and sectarian lines.

“It’s certainly been weakened,” said Sayigh. “And it’ll be weakened further if the perception grows that this is basically a Shiite axis, or Shiite crescent, connecting the Shiites of Lebanon, Iraq and Iran with the Alawite regime in Syria. If Hamas is the odd one out, that would be very uncomfortable, because they really can’t afford anything that would undermine their [alliances,] with Egypt in particular, but also with the Saudis, who are [still] upset about their takeover of Gaza in 2007. I guess they just don’t have the choice of staying in the Axis of Resistance when almost everyone else sees that in a sectarian way.”

Or, as Dr. Nadim Shehadi, associate fellow at Chatham House, put it to NOW more bluntly:

“Without Hamas, the Axis of Resistance is reduced to a mere sectarian alliance.”

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

Speaking on Monocle 24 radio

I spoke on Monocle 24 radio last night about rocket attacks on Lebanon from Syria. The episode is available online here (I come on at 8:20).

Qusayr families flee to new Lebanon camp

[Originally posted at NOW]

Syrian children play at a new refugee camp in north Lebanon (NOW/Alex Rowell)

Hidden from view behind rows of dark green trees in the verdant farmland surrounding the town of Halba, just 10km from the Syrian border in Lebanon’s far north, dwell the country’s latest refugees from the unrelenting war raging next door. The eighty or so arrivals – mostly women and children – who have sought shelter here in the last four weeks are all residents of Qusayr, fleeing clashes that took an especially fierce turn when regime forces, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah units, launched a major (and ongoing) attempt to conquer the town on May 19. Unusually for Syrian refugees in Lebanon, who typically stay in relatives’ or friends’ homes, these families are housed in tents, comprising an unofficial refugee camp.

Locating the remote camp Thursday with the help of volunteer aid workers, NOW spent an afternoon interviewing the residents, who spoke of violence so horrific that merely surviving the escape to Lebanon was an ordeal.

“We came any way that we could; in cars, trucks, tractors. Accompanied by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), naturally,” said Abdullah, a young man sitting on a thin sponge mattress inside his tent who left Qusayr twenty days ago. “We were under fire from the shabbiha [pro-government militiamen] and Hezbollah.”

Despite living within plain sight of the northeastern Lebanese border, refugees said the presence of Hezbollah forces in the area forced them to make a 40km detour south to the anti-regime town of Arsal, whence they began the longer drive to Halba.

“It took about seven hours on the road,” said Hind, a mother from the village of Zeiteh in another tent sitting with her sister, her mother, and five children. “We were told if the Shiites saw us, they’d either arrest or kill us.”

Having endured two years of warfare – often by relocating to different villages as circumstances required – refugees said it was the unprecedented and terrifying level of violence in recent weeks that compelled them to take flight.

“The destruction there is massive,” said Abdullah. “They’re hitting us with everything; mortars, tanks, MiG fighter jets. There are 100 explosions every minute. They have bombs which can destroy seven houses at a time. Qusayr is just a normal town, what can we do against this?” Air strikes on residential quarters have been frequently captured on video by Qusayr-based activists in recent weeks.

“They’re even using chemical weapons,” says Malik, an elder relative of Abdullah who arrived five days ago. “We’ve seen different colors of smoke – white, yellow, red – with bad smells, and people suffocating.” This echoes a claim made earlier this month by FSA spokesman Louay Almokdad, though no hard evidence has yet emerged to support it.

Despite the regime’s use of such heavy firepower, refugees told NOW the rebels were still holding on to areas of the town and the surrounding countryside.

“It’s back-and-forth,” said Abdullah. “The FSA loses something one day, re-takes it the next.” Relatives still inside the town told him the regime had recently captured a key water station and parts of the al-Dabaa air base. “But the fight is continuing,” he proudly insisted.

Asked what he thought would happen if the town fell entirely to the regime, Abdullah predicted a “humanitarian catastrophe. There are over 30,000 people there, mostly women and children. It’ll be like what happened in Bayda, Baniyas and Houla,” referring to the sites of notorious massacres of civilians. Indeed, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has herself voiced fears of a Bayda-style slaughter in the town if rebel forces are overrun.

Even here in the comparative safety of Lebanon, however, the refugees remain afraid – chiefly of the Hezbollah forces for whom they appear to reserve especial hatred.

“[Syrian President] Bashar [al-Assad] is a pig, but [Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah is a bigger one!” exclaimed Ayesha, a sister of Hind who had been silent until that point. As she spoke, her voice rose to a shout, drawing tears from the leathery eyes of her elderly mother next to her.

“We were living in peace, why did the Party of Satan [a play on Hezbollah’s name, the ‘Party of God’] interfere? We are women and children, what do they want with us? Even the regime left us alone in our homes. Bashar is better than them. Even Israel is more merciful than them.”

Security aside, the refugees naturally face humanitarian difficulties as well. Though the camp infrastructure is quickly improving – a concrete toilet with running water and a kitchen unit have sprung up in the last few days – residents have little besides the tents, mattresses and kitchen utensils that have been donated thus far. And with the heat already reaching baking levels, many complained of sickness. There is even a risk of snake attacks – one two-year-old boy’s forearm bore a deep wound from a venomous bite.

Unaware of the procedure and often without the requisite documentation, not a single refugee has registered with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). As such, a small, student-led team of volunteers called Kilna Labaad (‘We’re all for each other’) runs the camp, with funds coming primarily from a wealthy Lebanese individual in Aley.

“We do fundraising events here in Beirut [to supplement the Aley donations],” said Diana Rifai, a Syrian student volunteering with the organization. “We host events for which every ticket bought will provide a monthly food basket for a family, for example, or a children’s box with diapers and baby milk. We also do clothes drives where people can drop off clothes in Beirut.”

The group hopes to have a Facebook page up and running next week. In the meantime, said Rifai, anyone interested in making a donation can contact her via her personal Facebook account.

Some of the above names have been changed at the interviewees’ requests.

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

In Dahiyeh, fear breeds loathing

[Originally posted at NOW]

Driving through the gridlocked traffic of Beirut’s southern suburbs Tuesday afternoon, two days after a pair of 107mm Grad rockets struck the neighborhood wounding four Syrian workers, not much looked different except perhaps an increase in the number of “martyr” posters. Despite reports of local Hezbollah militants deploying on street corners and setting up checkpoints following the attacks, NOW saw no evidence during a comprehensive tour of the so-called Dahiyeh (“suburb”) – the sole gunman in sight was a plain-clothed security guard outside the Bahman Hospital in Haret Hreik.

However, there was one novel phenomenon detectable in the minds of Dahiyeh residents – suspicion of, and even bigotry against Syrians.

At a red traffic light in Ghobeiry, a young boy around the age of 10 approached the driver’s window trying to sell some goods. “Where are you from?” asked NOW’s guide, Hussein, a forty-something former Amal militant now employed at the Council for the South. “Syria,” replied the boy. “F*** your sister!” grunted Hussein, turning away in disgust.

“They’re dirty people,” he explained as we drove off. “If I could, I would run them all over with my car.”

Dislike for Syrians – which has been on the rise in Dahiyeh ever since the armed conflict began next door – appears to have reached new levels after Sunday’s rockets, widely believed to have been launched by Syrian rebel brigades. According to civil society activist and Dahiyeh resident Lokman Slim, Syrians were subject to various forms of harassment in the hours following the attacks.

“Youngsters took to the streets with their walkie-talkies and accosted those suspected to be Syrian. They checked their phones, checked their IDs, and asked them where they were living,” Slim told NOW.

Hussein said much the same, adding that Hezbollah was keeping a very close watch on Dahiyeh’s Syrian residents, even asking them if they were for or against the Assad regime.

In part, these measures are being undertaken out of fear. Syrian rebel brigades have already launched multiple rocket strikes on pro-Hezbollah areas in the northeastern Beqaa Valley, one of which killed a teenage girl on Monday. The rebels have also repeatedly threatened to extend these strikes to Dahiyeh.

“People support these security measures, because if we’re targeted again, we might die,” said Hussein. “Syrians here are going in and out of Syria all the time. You never know who could be with the opposition.”

Hussein insisted that locals were not spooked by Sunday’s attacks, though he admitted there were quiet worries of something more major to come.

“Two rockets is not a big deal for us, we survived much worse from the Israelis. The feeling in the area is no different today than it was before the rockets. But, of course, if something bigger happens, like car bombs or gunmen in the streets, that’s another matter.”

Security concerns aside, the mounting ill-will against Syrians has evidently taken on a sectarian dimension as well.

“Alawite Syrians are obviously fine. It’s only the Sunnis we have a problem with,” said Abbas, a young resident whose house was just one block from where one of the rockets fell.

This sectarianism, in turn, appears to be fuelled by recent battles in the Syrian town of Qusayr, where Hezbollah has been in open conflict with Syrian rebels, the latter of whom are largely seen in Dahiyeh as Sunni extremists. Indeed, the Qusayr fighting seems to be at the forefront of the community’s attention, dominating café chatter and online discourse. As we drove through Dahiyeh, passing the countless “martyr” photos plastered on lampposts and balconies, Hussein would note each one that was killed in Qusayr.

“There’s no such thing as the Syrian ‘revolutionaries,’ they’re terrorists,” he told NOW. “They have problems in their brains. It’s not Islam, what they think. They behead people with no political agenda, killing and terrorism are their only goals. The fighter who eats the heart of a dead person is not a revolutionary, in Islam we cannot touch the body of a dead person. It’s haram [forbidden].”

The conversation turned distinctly theological when Hussein defended Hezbollah’s fighting in Qusayr.

“A big majority of Shiites think what Hezbollah is doing is a religious duty. It prepares the return of the Mahdi and the signs of his return, and this is the core of Hezbollah’s ideology. So the jihad in Qusayr is a duty.”

Such rhetoric is perhaps illustrative of what Slim described as Hezbollah’s steering of Syria-related events to its own political advantage.

“[The Sunday attacks] led people in Dahiyeh to swing between fear, questioning, and seeking a protector. And, of course, the protector can’t be any other entity but Hezbollah. But [hostility toward Syrians] is not only caused by the shelling of Dahiyeh, it’s caused by [Hezbollah’s] propaganda machine which is focusing on the wrong deeds of some FSA elements.”

In the longer run, when the Syrian war is over, Slim believes, the Shiite community may come to resent the relatively high death toll incurred as a result of the Qusayr fighting. “People are mourning the boys,” he said.

Hussein, indeed, lamented the “mistakes” he said were made by the Party on the military front.

“The fighters being sent to Qusayr are too young, they’re too ill-prepared. The Syrians have dug trenches and are using them well, sniping the Hezbollah fighters first in the legs and then in the head.”

“Hezbollah sent them to war as if it was just a football game.”

Some of the above names have been changed at the interviewees’ requests.

Racha El-Amin and Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

Speaking on BBC World Service: 'Can supplying weapons [in Syria] lead to peace?'

I spoke on the BBC World Service's 'World Have Your Say' programme last night, on the topic: 'Can supplying weapons [in Syria] lead to peace?' You can listen here (I come on at around 40:40). 

Israel: Against Hezbollah in Lebanon, with them in Syria

[Originally posted at NOW]

Terrorism can be so complicated sometimes.

When it comes to Syria, the number one question on the Israeli hawk’s mind today, anxiously debated on the opinion pages of establishment papers, goes something like this: Everybody knows that both the Free Syrian Army rebels and their Hezbollah antagonists are abominable terrorists, the very antithesis of civilization as we understand it. But what is a respectable non-terrorist actor like Israel to do when these two groups of terrorists are battling one another on their doorstep? Are all Muslims carrying guns equally considered terrorists, or are there varying degrees of terrorism to be assessed?

The conclusion, judging by an already substantial and daily-growing body of evidence, appears to be the latter, with the Syrian opposition just pipping the Party of God to the pinnacle of the terrorist pyramid. Take, for instance, Friday’s article in the London Times, "Islamist fears drive Israel to support Assad survival," wherein “senior Israeli intelligence officials” presented the following argument for the Baath regime’s survival: “Better the devil we know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos, and the extremists from across the Arab world gain a foothold there.” The best-case scenario, the officials further opined, was (in Haaretz’ summary) “a weakened but stable Syria under Assad.”

That report prompted a carefully-worded half-denial from Netanyahu, who asserted it did “not represent the Israeli government’s position,” but only on the technical grounds that Israel did not in fact have a position on who should govern Syria – hardly an endorsement of the opposition, and indeed an implied suggestion that Assad – along with his Lebanese Islamist allies - were no less preferable candidates than any of the alternatives.

Not that this was the only conciliatory signal Tel Aviv has sent in Assad’s direction of late. Following the most recent air strike on an alleged Hezbollah weapons convoy near Damascus at the start of this month, Israeli officials rushed to assure Assad they meant no harm to his regime per se. They were just there to prevent terror – if Assad chose to SCUD-missile, cluster-bomb, and air-strike Syrian civilians, well, that was another matter entirely.

Nor does the de facto support for Assad end with merely enabling his war crimes to continue. Last month, Netanyahu announced Israel reserved the right to physically obstruct the opposition’s armed struggle against the dictatorship by blocking weapons transfers to rebel brigades.

Incompatible as all this may seem with Assad and Hezbollah’s bellowings about confronting the grand Zionist conspiracy, Tel Aviv’s under-the-table camaraderie with Damascus has long been the Middle East’s worst-kept secret. An excellent explanation of this decades-long relationship appeared recently in Foreign Affairs under the candid title, ‘Israel’s Man in Damascus: Why Jerusalem [sic] Doesn’t Want the Assad Regime to Fall.’ The author, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, runs down the key bullet points: 40 years of calm on the border, fears of Islamism among the opposition, and enduring hopes for a peace treaty that has been on the table since the 1990s. The article concluded that “[Israel] ultimately has little interest in actively hastening the fall of Bashar al-Assad.”

In other words, Israel watches – presumably with some satisfaction – as a kind of umpire in the sky, as Assad and his proxy militias (foremost among them Hezbollah) rain rockets upon rebel “terrorists” just kilometers from Lebanese territory, only stepping in to interrupt the fun when those rockets venture west of the border. So long as Hezbollah plays by the rules – keeping the guns pointed east rather than south – they’re doing more good than harm in Israel’s eyes, and so they can even be given indirect nudges of assistance. It’s tough to say which is the greater of the ironies – that Israel is making common cause of a kind with the chief proxies of its supposed arch-enemy Iran, or that so many ground troops of the ‘Islamic Resistance’ are giving their lives to facilitate precisely the Zionist “project” they set out to thwart.

Qusayr resisting all-out attack

[Originally posted at NOW]

The streets of the western Syrian town of Al-Qusayr were enveloped in clouds of grey cement powder on Sunday as President Bashar al-Assad's air and ground forces, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militiamen, commenced a long-awaited major assault on the lynchpin rebel-held town and its surrounding villages. Humanitarian observers including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, have warned that this may lead to massacres reminiscent of those in the coastal towns of al-Bayda and Banias earlier in the month.

At least 58 Qusayr residents were killed Sunday – many of them civilians – and over 600 wounded in continuous air and artillery strikes, according to local opposition spokesman Hadi al-Abdallah. He also claimed some 30 Hezbollah fighters had been killed by rebel forces. Syrian state TV reported 100 opposition militants dead, with no mention of regime casualties. NOW was unable to reach the Hezbollah press office for confirmation of the Party's losses.

Regime fighter jets continued to pound residential quarters of the town center Monday, according to Al-Abdallah, as contradictory reports emerged regarding the territorial gains made by Assad loyalists. While regime soldiers claimed Sunday to have conquered the central town square, raising the Syrian flag over the municipality building, numerous opposition sources asserted that no territory had been lost by the rebels whatsoever.

"It's not true what the regime is claiming," said Qusayr-based activist, Ahmad al-Qusayr. "They're saying this to raise the morale of the fighters, because the rebels are giving them a beating."

Indeed, Al-Qusayr was confident that the rebels could and would withstand the attack. "The Free Syrian Army is still there on every corner and they have increased their defenses to face any invasion. They will fight until the last drop of blood," he told NOW.

Though such claims are impossible to verify, there is evidence that rebels have put up stiff resistance thus far. A video purportedly filmed Sunday night shows a number of destroyed regime tanks and the corpse of an apparent Hezbollah fighter – one of a number of similar videos uploaded by the opposition in recent days.

Indeed, the past few weeks have seen a significant escalation in the comparatively low-intensity war of attrition that has been underway in Qusayr since it fell to rebel brigades in February 2012. Meeting with Lebanese allies one month ago, Assad reportedly described the fighting in Qusayr as the "main battle" in all of Syria, one that must be won "at any cost." On 11 May, regime sources said they warned civilians to leave the town (a claim denied by the opposition) as an attack was imminent, and on 13 May, Abdallah reported the arrival of 30 regime tanks in the Qusayr countryside, sparking "very violent battles." The following day, AFP reported the fall of three rebel-held villages to loyal Assad forces – Dameina al-Gharbiyah, Eish al-Warwar and Haidariyeh – situated between Qusayr town and the allied neighborhoods of Homs, with sights set next on the rebels' captured military base at al-Dabaa.

The town and its surroundings are deemed strategic for two key reasons. First, lying just 10km from the Lebanese border, it acts as the major buffer between the Hezbollah-controlled northeast Beqaa Valley and the rebel-held areas of Homs. In the words of Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman, "If the army manages to take control of Al-Qusayr, the whole province of Homs will fall."

Second, it flanks the main highway linking Damascus to the coastal Alawite heartland north of Lebanon, the principal bastion of support for the regime to which some analysts believe Assad may flee in the event that Damascus falls to the rebels.

Given this strategic importance, the town has also been a magnet for Lebanese militants opposed to the regime. As fighting intensified last month, prominent Salafist clerics Ahmad al-Assir and Salem al-Rafei issued calls for "jihad" against Assad loyalists in Qusayr, with several hundred reportedly signing on to assist their allies across the border. Yet long before these calls, anti-Assad Lebanese were known to be fighting in Qusayr. NOW met and interviewed one last October who had battled regime and Hezbollah forces there as early as May 2012.

As the indiscriminate loyalist assault continues, however, the stakes are not only strategic but humanitarian, according to local opposition sources.

"There are 40,000 civilians in the Qusayr town," said Muhammad Radwan Raad, a Homs-based activist. "They have no water, no electricity, and no safe passage to escape. Already, some families have been bombarded while trying to flee. We don't know what to do with them," he told NOW.

"If the situation continues as it is, there will be no Qusayr in the future."

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

BBC peddles the Assad line

[Originally posted at NOW]

As much as people like As’ad AbuKhalil want (and need) to believe that “Western media” are leagued in a barely-concealed conspiracy to indoctrinate the masses with anti-Assad propaganda, to any neutral observer it’s become increasingly apparent that the “line,” to the extent that there ever was one, is drifting markedly in the opposite direction.

Today’s diatribe in the BBC is a sterling example. Paul Danahar is a journalist I have often read and admired. During Israel’s most recent assault on Gaza last November, he was on the ground, courageously challenging the government line, exposing injustice and generally, as they say, ‘speaking truth to power.’

In his dispatch from Damascus today, however, Danahar has taken something of a reverse approach. When I read via Twitter yesterday of the “lots of meetings with lots of government officials in Damascus” he had lined up for the day, I trusted he would proceed with the hard-nosed skepticism expected of a BBC Middle East bureau chief. Instead, the muck flung at the wall by his companions seems largely to have stayed in place, and congealed.

The alarm bell first rings when he refers sarcastically to those who “[try] to boil it down to good versus evil: the FSA versus President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.” To imagine there is any moral difference between the rebels and the regime, you see, is deeply mistaken. “The situation in Syria,” he explains, is far too “complicated” for such infantile reductions.

So what’s really going on? Who’s truly responsible for the more than 70,000 killed? Well, “the regime has played its part,” he concedes. But no less dangerous; indeed the true cause of the enduring misery; is the “meddling” of Saudi Arabia and Qatar – two “sorely undemocratic states […] the cavalry from the very un-free Gulf […] not champions of democracy either at home or abroad.”

Of course! What fools we were to think that regime air strikes, SCUD missiles, cluster bombs, helicopters, tank units, death squads, and maybe now even chemical weapons were primarily to blame for the conflict being so damned “intractable.” All this time, it was bastard “Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia [which] hates Shiite Iran [and] is using the war in Syria to try and weaken it.”

There’s no need to mention, evidently, that Iran also “hates” Saudi Arabia, and has sent untold numbers of its own military personnel to Syria to optimize the regime’s killing machine. And why bring up Hezbollah, the foreign Islamist militia for whose military assistance Assad expressed his “great gratitude” today? Surely no reader needs to know that Russia, which maintains an entire naval base in the country, has supplied the regime with over a billion dollars’ worth of arms since the uprising began? And, really, who cares about the massacre of entire families, including toddlers, in al-Bayda and Baniyas last week when a Salafist once told some Christian women to cover their hair?

It’s one thing to quote the claims of a blood-drenched dictatorship that SCUD-missiles its own people, but quite another to actually believe them. Danahar’s extraordinary credulity in the face of one of the most reprehensible regimes in modern Arab history does the BBC’s readers an enormous disservice. Much more importantly, though, it insults the memories of that regime’s literally innumerable innocent victims, and shields the killers of those continuing to perish at this very moment.

Zaatari's mukhabarrat wars

[Originally posted at NOW]

Graffiti in the camp of the 'Free Syria' flag, with text reading, "Syria, don't worry, we're returning" (NOW/Alex Rowell)

This article is the first in a two-part series based on NOW’s visit to Jordan’s Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees on Sunday, May 5, 2013.

ZAATARI CAMP, Jordan – When the refugees climbed on top of the portable cabin office of the Jordan Health Aid Society and began stamping their feet, the frail walls shaking with each loud bang, the aid workers cooped inside did little but grin in sheepish embarrassment. “Everything’s fine,” one said to NOW with apparent confidence. “It’s always like this.”

Outside, however, the refugees themselves were decidedly less placid, drenched with sweat from the punishing heat and shouting incoherently at the window of the neighboring office, that of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). “You’re a journalist? Take photos!” shouted one at NOW. Moments later, a man clinging onto the metal bars of the window saw NOW and yelled, “No photos, no photos!” Hands then pulled NOW back to the fringes of the hundred-strong-crowd, which continued to swarm the cabin for over two hours.

The riot was but one of the increasing number now taking place in the Syrian refugee camp every week, fuelled by the combination of chronic underfunding and ballooning overpopulation (built for 60,000 inhabitants, Zaatari now houses over 160,000, with hundreds of new arrivals every night). While Sunday’s demonstration was essentially peaceful, some in the past have turned violent – on April 19, ten Jordanian policemen were reportedly injured in clashes with 100 refugees, eight of whom were arrested and charged with “unlawful assembly.” Leaked video footage appears to show Jordanian security forces attacking refugee homes with projectiles and batons.

Pretexts for such demonstrations vary by the day, from the perceived underperformance of aid organizations to sheer street gossip – one in February, for example, was sparked by rumors of Jordanian police sexually harassing refugee women.

“It can be about anything,” said an aid worker who requested anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic. “I could point to a random person in the street and shout, ‘Shabbih [Syrian regime agent]!’ and it could cause a riot.” For some, it seems, the protests are just something to do; a bit of excitement in an otherwise hard daily grind.

Yet refugees also told NOW of another source of the unrest – the infiltration of Syrian regime mukhabarrat [secret police], sent into the camp to keep tabs on Free Syrian Army (FSA) opponents, disrupt Jordanian efforts to maintain security, and foment disorder in general.

“The mukhabarrat have bases here in the camp,” said Ahmad, a refugee from Daraa in his mid-twenties. “Mostly they just collect information, but sometimes they attack people. There was an FSA general living in the camp, for example, who they assassinated.” They are also believed to have started some, though not all, of the tent fires that have claimed a handful of lives.

Not that refugees’ woes end there. “We actually have three kinds of mukhabarrat here,” said Ahmad. “There is the regime one, which we call shabbiha; there is the Jordanian one; and now we even have an FSA one too. We definitely didn’t need that,” he laughs bitterly.

Camp residents are visibly and apparently uniformly anti-regime – the “Free Syria” flag flies on every street, covers the walls of shops and is spray-painted on blank surfaces. Yet Ahmad told NOW the behavior of some “FSA mukhabarrat” has bred resentment.

“We are all with the revolution. But some [of the FSA] are stealing from other refugees, and turning corrupt. It’s as if they forgot about the revolution and are just interested in themselves. They became like the regime,” he told NOW.

Facilitating these practices is an improvised system of government within the camp that sees each street controlled by an unofficial leader, or za’eem. According to the aid worker quoted earlier, these leaders are notoriously corrupt – charging commission from residents of ‘their’ street who find employment, and buying influence with confiscated aid vouchers. Perhaps inevitably, there is a degree of overlap between these leaders and the competing mukhabarrat outfits.

Nor is the Jordanian gendarmerie particularly popular, as stories abound of its heavy-handed rule. “The other day, they accused a boy of stealing a caravan, and they beat him up,” said Ahmad. “Imagine – one boy stealing an entire caravan! Where would he hide it? Would he put it in his pocket?”

At the police station near the camp’s main entrance, the gendarmerie loiter by a couple of APCs, carrying meter-long batons. Though they were friendly with most refugees walking past, NOW witnessed one being manhandled into an office, the gendarme swearing at him and telling him to “shut up” when he spoke. He had been accused, NOW learned, of assaulting a Jordanian national.

In spite of these frictions, Ahmad said there was a degree of cooperation between the gendarmerie and the FSA. For example, when the FSA general was assassinated by the regime mukhabarrat, he says, the Jordanians caught the perpetrators and handed them over to the FSA. What, NOW asked, did the FSA do with them?

“Oh, they killed them.”

Interviewees’ names have been changed at their request, in the interests of their safety.

There *is* a US-Zionist conspiracy - in Assad's favor

[Originally posted at NOW]

If I were the sort of person who opposed the Free Syrian Army for its treacherous subservience to American imperialism, I imagine things like this lede from the Wall Street Journal yesterday would make for rather perplexing reading:

“Senior Obama administration officials have caught some lawmakers and allies by surprise in recent weeks with an amended approach to Syria: They don't want an outright rebel military victory right now because they believe, in the words of one senior official, that the "good guys" may not come out on top.”

Nor would my confusion be any the slighter were I the kind of provincial Western reactionary who places the blame for Syria’s appalling humanitarian emergency on my own government’s excessive support for the opposition (Exhibit A: Peter Hitchens).

Yet, for those who have monitored the signs carefully, this is not in fact an “amended approach” of any kind, still less a “surprise.” In a depressingly excellent piece of analysis for Syria Deeply last week, Thanassis Cambanis made the observation that:

“A handful of voices in the Western foreign policy world are quietly starting to acknowledge that a long, drawn-out conflict in Syria doesn’t threaten American interests; to put it coldly, it might even serve them. Assad might be a monster and a despot, they point out, but there is a good chance that whoever replaces him will be worse for the United States. And as long as the war continues, it has some clear benefits for America: It distracts Iran, Hezbollah, and Assad’s government, traditional American antagonists in the region. In the most purely pragmatic policy calculus, they point out, the best solution to Syria’s problems, as far as US interests go, might be no solution at all.”

This view, he added, is one that “several diplomats, policy makers, and foreign policy thinkers have expressed to me in private.” It also happens to be the one espoused by Daniel Pipes, who has taken it to its logical conclusion by saying outright that, “Western governments should support the malign dictatorship of Bashar Assad.” Yes, that Daniel Pipes, the man who was Bush’s pick to head the Institute of Peace, who calls for bombing Iran “now” and annexing the remains of Palestine to Egypt and Jordan.

Indeed, where does Israel stand on this question? Though Assad and his groupies have naturally smeared the opposition as Zionist proxies from the outset, this has always been a transparent pantomime. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the October 1973 war, which is another way of saying it’s been four decades since the Assads have flung so much as a pebble across the Golan. It’s become standard practice for IDF top brass to refer to the rebels as “terrorists,” and if a Haaretz article today is to be believed, Netanyahu is about to tell David Cameron “to be extremely cautious about arming the Syrian rebels.”

From here it’s not a very great leap at all to Obama actually droning the FSA, something for which the CIA has reportedly already made plans (no talk whatsoever, you notice, of droning the shabbiha, let alone the regime). The best the rebels can expect is an ice-cold shoulder from Washington for the foreseeable future – a policy which, if nothing else, has the merit of consistency. This, sadly, truly is pernicious “imperialism,” though not the sort that gets condemned by those who define their politics as the negation thereof.

FSA turns guns on Lebanese village

[Originally posted at NOW, with Yara Chehayed]

The blood of Ali Hassan Qataya where an FSA rocket killed him on Sunday (NOW/Alex Rowell) 

The road from the northeastern Beqaa town of Hermel to the border village of al-Qasr doesn’t feel like one leading to a bloody war zone. Lined on both sides with neatly cultivated olive groves, the green plains of the distant Homs basin gleaming under a pastel blue sky, the scene Tuesday morning was positively serene. Even the Bashar al-Assad posters and Hezbollah flags that tile the route from the central Beqaa to Hermel grew increasingly sparse as NOW neared the village.

Nor did al-Qasr itself feel like a place hit by lethal rocket fire just two days ago. Despite an army statement Sunday declaring its increased presence in the area, there wasn’t so much as a routine checkpoint impeding our entrance. In the village center, all shops were open; adults and children alike going about their business as usual. It could have been anywhere in the Beqaa.

Except, of course, for the two crumbled walls near the main mosque, results of an unprecedented series of rockets fired Sunday by Syrian rebels that, for the first time, left one resident dead and up to nine injured (another was killed by the same attack in Hosh al-Sayyid Ali, a nearby village on the Syrian side of the border). The blood of 23-year-old Ali Hassan Qataya, light brown by now, still spans the width of the street where he died.

“He was just visiting,” said a local resident who did not give his name. “He lived in Beirut, and came here to visit his fiancée.”

Why, then, was Qataya killed? The Syrian National Coalition, the opposition body recognized by over a dozen countries as the representative government-in-exile, said Monday that “the Free Syrian Army was forced to respond to [the] repeated aggressions” of Hezbollah, whom it accused of carrying out “military operations on Syrian territory.” Reports have long suggested fierce clashes between Hezbollah and the Free Syrian Army in the Homs province, with five Hezbollah fighters killed in Syria being buried just Monday. As a result, the Free Syrian Army has been threatening to attack Hezbollah positions inside Lebanon since February.

However, NOW saw no evidence of a Hezbollah military presence in al-Qasr itself, and indeed, the area where the rockets fell appeared entirely residential – a few modest breeze block homes surrounded by others under construction.

“They call this a military area? Show me the military area!” demanded another resident scornfully.

A clue also lies in the particular weapons used by the rebels. NOW sent a video purporting to show the rockets being launched to Eliot Higgins, the Syria analyst who gained international renown after uncovering, among other things, the use of cluster bombs by the Assad regime and a Croatian arms supply channel to the rebels (as first reported by NOW’s Michael Weiss). Higgins told NOW the weapons included 107mm and S-5 rockets (both launched from a homemade device), a 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled howitzer, and a mortar. That the Lebanese army confirmed Qataya’s death was the result of a 107mm rocket would seem to attest to the video’s veracity (as does the rebel excitedly shouting, “To Qasr, to Qasr!” after one launch). Higgins further unearthed similarities in the equipment used in other videos by the “Omar Farouq Brigade,” a possible relative of the Independent Farouq Division (IFD).

Significantly, Higgins described the weapons as “pretty indiscriminate” and “of questionable accuracy,” suggesting that the rebels ran the risk of hitting civilians even if they were aiming at military targets. And there is in any case reason to doubt that they were, given what the IFD commander told AFP: “If we have to, we will target civilians just like [Hezbollah] do. Our civilians are not less valuable than theirs.” Another rebel vowed to strike Lebanon again if the government did not “take practical steps to put a stop to [Hezbollah’s] shelling.”

Such a course of action could potentially take border clashes to levels yet unseen. The mayor of al-Qasr, Hassan Zeaiter, has publicly said essentially the same thing in reverse; namely, that if the government did not prevent rebels from attacking Lebanese villages, the villagers would “take matters into our [own] hands.” In an attempt to calm the situation, the government has declared it will file a complaint about the strikes to the Arab League.

NOW met Zeaiter after leaving al-Qasr in his Hermel dentistry, where he complained of a government “absence” from the area.

“Look at all the kidnappings,” he said. “Look at the pilgrims held in Aazaz. If we’re going to wait for the state to help us, we’ll be waiting forever.”

A fast and charismatic talker, Zeaiter’s photo of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on his shelf proved a sound indicator of his political views.

“The people who fired these rockets are not from Qusayr. I lived in Qusayr, I know all the young guys there. These ones aren’t even Syrians! I saw them on video, they’re all Chechens, Afghans, Pakistanis. The people of al-Qasr and Qusayr are one; it’s only the Jabhat al-Nusra foreigners who want to drive us apart.”

Nevertheless, when NOW asked Zeaiter if he expected further rockets from Syria, his reply was optimistic.

“I don’t think they’ll do it again. The government sent a letter of protest to the Arab League, who are financing Jabhat al-Nusra. I think President [Michel] Suleiman is negotiating under the table with the Arab League so as to ensure there will be no more attacks like this.”

Journalist deportation violates 'dissociation', press freedom

[Originally posted at NOW]

For journalists risking their lives to cover the war in Syria under indiscriminate aerial and artillery fire, as well as the ubiquitous threat of kidnapping, the moment of touching down at Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri airport ought to be one of relief.

Yet, for one European reporter last weekend, the ordeal was not to conclude so soon. Arriving from Amman after a stint in Aleppo Province, the journalist – who requested anonymity – was detained and questioned for twelve hours by airport authorities (known as General Security) before being denied entry and deported.

His offense, he was told, was having a stamp on his passport issued by the Free Syrian Army – stamping passports being an increasingly common practice for journalists traveling through rebel-held territory. A “political decision” had been made, General Security informed him, to refuse him entry. He was given no further explanation.

According to General Security media affairs director General Munir Aqiqi, the journalist was denied entry for reasons of “higher state interests” (in Arabic: “المصلحة العليا للدولة”) – a broad and sometimes controversial legal principle, analogous to the French raison d’État, that was also recently used to reject a draft law allowing women to pass their nationality on to their children.

Aqiqi would not confirm to NOW whether there was any specific policy to deny all entrants with such stamps, though he argued the stamps were invalid because, “There is no state called ‘Free Syrian Army’.” He also claimed the journalist had no available press credentials or other evidence of his profession – a claim denied by the journalist, who told NOW, “They did not question my profession. They actually have a copy of my press card.”

In either case, General Security’s decision constitutes a clear violation of press freedom, according to Ayman Mhanna, director of the Samir Kassir Eyes (SKEyes) Center for Media and Cultural Freedom

“As long as there is no printed legal text that is published in the official gazette, decisions like this are illegal,” he told NOW. “It’s not like a discretionary decision. A law has to exist.”

Mhanna also took issue with the application of the ‘higher state interests’ principle. “The mere fact that [General Security] says this is for the ‘higher interests of the state’ is ridiculous. Are [they] saying that journalists pose a threat to this?”

“Unfortunately, we’re back to these very vague, very elastic expressions that can have so many different meanings, and the point is there is absolutely no legal document that justifies or sanctions such a decision.” Mhanna added that SKEyes would be following up the case with General Security and issuing a statement of condemnation.

Lawyer and constitutional expert Marwan Saqr also told NOW the “higher state interests” principle, which he described as “very vague and very broad,” had likely been misused in this case. “This law has to be used under the control of the courts. If the government enforces it, the court must decide afterward whether the higher interests of the state were truly at risk.”

Accordingly, Saqr even suggested that the journalist might have a valid legal case against the government. “This is the type of situation where I think he could go to the courts. Legally I think he might win the case, because in view of the circumstances, the Free Syrian Army is a de facto authority now on the border checkpoints that are under its control. If he can justify that he has suffered damages, and he sued the state for that, he might win. But this would take many years, of course.”

The legal pretext was further derided by political analysts. “National security is not at stake here,” said Dr. Imad Salamey, professor of political science at the Lebanese American University. “If the presence of an opposition figure or someone who has links to the opposition in one way or another is a breach of the sovereignty and security of Lebanon, then definitely somebody must look into the activities of the Syrian ambassador and the regime itself,” he told NOW.

As such, Salamey argues the decision calls into question the government’s declared policy of dissociation from the Syrian conflict. “This tells us that the government of Lebanon is not neutral in the Syrian conflict. It’s obviously taking sides by recognizing the stamp of the Assad regime and not the stamp of the Free Syrian Army. Neutrality means being equally distant from both sides, which is obviously not the case here.”

To the extent NOW has been able to ascertain, this journalist’s case is the first of its kind. NOW spoke to several foreign journalists based in Beirut who have also had their passports stamped by the Free Syrian Army, and none reported facing any problems returning to the country.

Nevertheless, given the experience of the journalist in this case, those planning to work in Syria may be advised to take new precautions. NOW learned from other reporters that the Free Syrian Army will agree to stamp a slip of paper instead of a passport if requested. Others have opted to use multiple passports, where available.

And if more such cases occur, others still will inevitably begin to avoid Lebanon as a place of work.

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

How to cover Syria from Stanislaus County, California

[Originally posted at NOW]

[A humble contribution to the recent offerings of helpful tips for fellow journalists covering Syria]

1. Maintain a diverse list of credible sources. Publish the testimonies of a couple of strangers who email you from time to time, saying they live in Syria. An obscure blogger here and there can also prove handy, regardless of where they live. Remember that the more your sources’ accounts differ from those of the hundreds of professional journalists inside Syria, the more accurate they’re likely to be.

2. See through the propaganda. Understand that every Sunni Muslim is a member of al-Qaeda, bent on slaughtering infidels and reinstating the Caliphate. There was a time when this kind of presumption was called Islamophobia, but nowadays it’s common sense. Difficult as it may seem to believe that over 70% of Syrians have actually been zealous Bin Ladenists all these years, that’s the only explanation for the situation in Syria today. Ignorant Western journalists in Beirut will argue that the bulk of the Syrian opposition is nationalist, fed up with their unelected and unwanted dictator. But you know that these “journalists” are in turn mere agents of al-Qaeda’s notorious proxy, the Hariri press office.

3. (NB: Palestinian Sunni Muslims are the exception to the above rule. Sure, some Palestinian groups might go on about “jihad” from time to time. Some might even be armed and funded by Islamist regimes. But in no way can they be compared to the Syrian opposition. Palestinians fighting Israel and Syrians fighting Assad quite simply have nothing in common.)

4. Take a courageous stand. Hezbollah is getting a lot of heat these days for its staunch support of Assad. Counter this by posting glamorous old photos of Hassan Nasrallah aiming rifles toward Israel.

5. Be objective. Though the Syrian opposition is certainly among the most infamous terrorist groups of all time, the regime is not entirely without fault. When Assad air-strikes a Palestinian refugee camp, for example, condemn him with forceful words like “lousy”.

6. Finally, when in doubt, fall back on the Golden Rule of Independent Thinking: Always disagree with US foreign policy. Now, sometimes, US foreign policy might start to look dangerously similar to your own position – e.g., when it classifies a powerful opposition brigade as al-Qaeda, or when it repeatedly rejects even indirect military intervention in Syria. In this case, change the subject to al-Qaeda’s alarming and growing infiltration of Human Rights Watch.

'Spillover' to remain limited, for now

[Originally posted at NOW]

Though the prospect of Syria’s war ‘spilling over’ into Lebanon is often presented as a mere hypothetical, in actual fact the phenomenon has for some time been a fait accompli. On more than a dozen occasions in recent years, events next door have prompted Tripoli’s mostly Sunni, anti-Assad Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood to go to war with its chiefly Alawite, pro-regime Jabal Mohsen neighbors. Yet when a Free Syrian Army (FSA) official in Homs called on Lebanese Sunnis to undertake military operations against Hezbollah on Lebanese soil last week, he fuelled concerns that a hitherto localized Sunni-Alawite feud could grow into nationwide Sunni-Shiite clashes.

Such fears were only compounded when the FSA claimed Tuesday to have killed several Hezbollah militants near Damascus, adding to the three Lebanese Shiites reported killed earlier in the month, that rebels claim were also members of the pro-Assad party. Only a day before, a gathering of Sunni and Shiite notables in the Baalbek-Hermel district had called on Hezbollah to stop fighting in Syria in order to avoid “dragging Lebanon to war.” Hezbollah denies it is sending fighters into Syria.

However, analysts argue there are good reasons to expect ‘spillover’ from Syria to remain limited for the time being. For one thing, it is in the interest of both the regime and the opposition to keep the fight on Syrian soil, according to Riad Kahwaji, founder of the Institute for Near East & Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA).

“Anything is possible, because you cannot control the flow of events in times of war. But I think so far there’s been a strong effort to keep it contained within Syria,” he told NOW. “We’ve seen Hezbollah and other Lebanese [opposition] parties resist doing anything that could put [them] in a war situation inside Lebanon.”

This dynamic, said Kahwaji, is reinforced by the control exerted by each side’s regional backers – Syria and Iran, in Hezbollah’s case, and Gulf monarchies in the opposition’s. “With Lebanese Sunnis trying to lend a hand [by passing] on supplies to the rebels, and Hezbollah working for the regime, it might appear as if it is the Lebanese fighting a war by proxy in Syria. But the truth is both the Sunni parties and Hezbollah are themselves proxies to regional powers, which are using Lebanese tools to fight their proxy war in Syria.”

Syrian opposition activist Maher al-Esber concurred, telling NOW that Lebanese Sunnis and the FSA in general had “no interest in fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon.” Esber also cast doubt on the authenticity of last week’s call for Lebanese Sunnis to fight Hezbollah, saying the group issuing the statement was not authorized to speak on behalf of the FSA.

Others argue the likely terrible consequences of an all-out Sunni-Shiite war in Lebanon suffice to dissuade parties from launching one. “The fact that Syrian refugees in Lebanon have been spread out throughout the country – among Shiite populations in the south and in Dahiyeh, in the [mainly Druze-populated] Shouf, in [largely Christian] Mount Lebanon, and in the [mostly Sunni] north – tells you that a Sunni-Shiite armed fight in Lebanon would be devastating for all sides, and this acts as a preventative factor against such a sectarian outbreak,” said Dr. Imad Salamey, professor of political science at the Lebanese American University.

Salamey added that sectarian incitement would ultimately be of limited efficacy in what he argues is still principally a political, not religious conflict. “The struggle in Syria remains primarily one between a ruling government with different sectarian composition – mostly Alawite but with different groups, including Sunnis – and an opposition that is cross-sectarian, even if most armed groups on the ground may have Sunni religious affiliation. The struggle has not gone fully sectarian, and this to a large extent helps prevent a sectarian spillover into Lebanon.”

Nevertheless, Salamey believes, “the longer this conflict goes on, the more sectarian polarization it will entail. Therefore […] the Syrian crisis has serious potential to spill over into Lebanon.”

Kahwaji, too, cautioned that sectarianism could yet overcome the factors that have thus far insulated most of Lebanon from the carnage raging next door. “Sectarian wars can easily be started. The historical differences and cracks within the region are still very much there,” he told NOW.

“It would not take much effort to reignite these old flames.”

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

Syrian defector in Lebanon faces uncertain fate

[Originally posted at NOW]

A 30-year-old Syrian army defector in Lebanon faces possible torture and even death after being sentenced Monday by a Lebanese military tribunal to two months’ imprisonment and a 100,000LL ($67) fine followed by deportation, for the crime of entering the country illegally.

Muhammad Tlas, a former officer from Al-Rastan who had joined the rebel Free Syrian Army, was arrested on 6 December 2012, while taking an injured comrade to a Lebanese hospital, according to Nabil al-Halabi, laywer and executive director of the Lebanese Foundation for Democracy and Human rights (“Life”), who publicized Tlas’ case in a press release Tuesday.

When the military tribunal delivered its sentence Monday, preparations were quickly made to deport Tlas on the grounds that his two month detention had already been served, said Halabi. “He is now being kept in a General Security prison in the Beqaa Valley,” he told NOW. General Security could not be reached for comment.

In spite of these steps, the Lebanese government has hinted it may not enforce the deportation order. Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said Wednesday that though he had “not examined this case […] such extraditions are generally not carried out.” And on Thursday, President Michel Suleiman said on Twitter that, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, no Syrians would be deported to Syria.

Indeed, according to Marie Daunay, president of the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH), the organization that assigned a lawyer to Tlas’ case, he has not yet been deported and probably will not be.

“It seems to have been the policy of the Lebanese authorities in the past few months not to implement deportation orders for Syrians, due to the policy of dissociation from the Syrian conflict,” she told NOW.

Nadim Houry, deputy director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) for the Middle East and North Africa, also told NOW that while Tlas’ fate remains uncertain, “most deportation orders in Lebanon against Syrians are not carried out. The last one we are aware of was…in August.” On that occasion, Lebanon deported 14 Syrians – some of them believed to be opposition activists – earning criticism from HRW and a number of foreign embassies.

Regardless, Daunay condemned the decision to sentence Tlas to any punishment in the first place. “The decision…made by the military tribunal is in contravention of Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture. This violation happened even though this point was raised in court by the defense lawyer.” Article 3 of the Convention, to which Lebanon is a party, states that “No State Party shall expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.”

Moreover, Daunay criticized the continued detention of Tlas, in spite of Charbel’s and Suleiman’s statements. “He is still pending deportation, even though he should already have been released.”

Houry agreed, telling NOW that “From [HRW’s] end, the first key principle here is no deportations for anyone fearing persecution or torture in Syria. That obviously includes someone who defected or decided not to do his military service. That’s a clear obligation; these deportations cannot take place.

“The second key principle is no detention of any Syrian, or person from Syria such as a Palestinian refugee, merely for being in the country illegally.”

Indeed, Halabi told NOW that, in the majority of cases, defecting Syrian officers and refugees alike had no choice but to enter Lebanon illegally.

“Whenever there is conflict in some area, it is impossible for rebels to pass through checkpoints and passport control; they have to escape and take illegal ways to a safe place. One cannot condemn refugees as illegal immigrants.”

“The Turkish and Jordanian governments acknowledge the impossibility of refugees passing through legal check points, and they establish refugee camps in many places. Yet the Lebanese government is still following and arresting refugees for illegal entry. This is unacceptable, on a legal and humanitarian level.”

Moreover, “the Syrian embassy stopped renewing passports, so now we have a situation where refugees cannot go back to Syria, don’t have the freedom of mobility in Lebanon and cannot travel with expired passports. Something has to be done.”

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.