Monday 23 January 2012

Syrian Uprising 2011 Information Centre:  SUMMARY (23/01/2012): At least 26 civilian martyrs have fallen today – in Homs, Idlib, Daraa, Damascus and Dayr az-Zawr. The Assad regime has already rejected the latest Arab League proposals, while signing a deal to purchase $550 million worth of Russian combat jets. Meanwhile the EU has announced an 11th round of sanctions on Syria. Be sure to check out Hama (Bab Qebli) and the large funeral in Duma today. Syria – Monday 23/01/2012

Mohammed Maddah from Duma, Damascus suburbs. He was killed on 20/01/2012 and his funeral was on 21/01/2012.
 Martyrs 2

DAMASCUS (23/01/2012): Much respect to the activists who hung the Independence and Kurdish flags on the President’s Bridge in the centre of Damascus today. How many of you recognise this place?
 Damascus (23/01/2012)

UPDATE (23/01/2012): At least 8 martyrs have fallen, including 2 defected soldiers. Meanwhile, security forces again attacked protesting students in Aleppo University – there are some injuries. The video shows the funeral of 12 martyrs in the Damascus suburb of Duma where there was fighting between elements of the Free Syrian Army and security forces for the last 2 days. 3 of the martyrs died under torture.
 Duma 23/01/2012

Foreign Secretary welcomes 11th round of EU sanctions against Syrian regime

Foreign Secretary William Hague has welcomed sanctions on Syria, which target individuals and entities supporting the Syrian regime’s violence and repression against its people.

Speaking after the EU Foreign Minister’s meeting in Brussels, the Foreign Secretary said:

“I welcome today’s EU agreement to an 11th round of EU sanctions on Syria, targeting 22 individuals and 8 entities supporting the Syrian regime’s appalling campaign of violence and repression against its own people.

“The UK has been a driving force behind these EU sanctions, working closely with other EU states. The sanctions demonstrate that the international community will identify and hold to account those responsible for abuses. Anyone involved in supporting the regime’s repression should carefully consider their actions.

“The UK supports the Arab League’s leadership in seeking to resolve the current crisis. We welcome its call for President Assad to leave power and allow a political transition. Assad’s brutal repression means he has lost all legitimacy and should step aside, opening the way to the freedom demanded by the Syrian people. We will continue to increase the pressure on the Syrian regime in support of this goal.”

http://supportkurds.org/reports/eu-council-tightens-restrictive-measures-on-syria

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NOW! Lebanon
[local time]  20:39 Syrian National Council leader Burhan Galioun told MTV television Monday evening that the Arab League has adopted decisions “that recognize the democratic right of the Syrian people.”
 20:37 Monday’s death toll in Syria has increased to 25 people, Al-Arabiya television quoted the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution as saying.
 20:00 Gunfire from Syria targeted the village of Al-Moushairfa in Wadi Khaled, northern Lebanon, Al-Jazeera television reported on Monday.
 18:18 The Arab League’s latest roadmap for an end to the crisis in Syria signals that regional states see Bashar al-Assad’s era drawing to a close, although it could yet be a slow process, analysts said Monday.
 18:11 Monday’s death toll in Syria has risen to 19 people, Al-Arabiya quoted the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution as saying.
 17:53 Security has tightened in Damascus, the city that until now had been spared the worst of the daily bloodshed that has marked the pro-democracy revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
 17:36 Germany on Monday led European demands for strong UN Security Council support for Arab League calls for Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad to hand over power.
 17:30 A YouTube video purportedly filmed on Monday in Douma near Damascus shows people attending a funeral. People are chanting “with blood and soul, we sacrifice for you martyrs.” They also chanted that they “will only kneel before God.” 
 14:56 Funerals in Douma near the Syrian capital drew more than 150,000 people on Monday, marking the largest expression of mourning in the protest hub since a pro-democracy uprising began in March, activists said.
 14:48 Syrian security forces’ gunfire killed 11 on Monday, Al-Arabiya television quoted activists a saying.
 14:27 At least 10 civilians and five Syrian soldiers were killed in fresh violence across Syria on Monday, activists said, also reporting a string of clashes between deserters and the army.
 12:57 Deserters killed five Syrian army soldiers in a clash on Monday in the flashpoint province of Homs in the center of the country, activists said.
 11:34 EU foreign ministers adopted fresh sanctions against Syria’s military brass on Monday, targeting a large number of security officials on a new list of people and firms hit by a travel ban and asset freeze.
 9:41 A new plan by the Arab League to end violence in Syria was “unattainable” and would allow President Bashar al-Assad’s regime more time to pursue its bloody crackdown, an opposition group said on Monday.
 8:09 The Arab League on Sunday asked the UN to support a new plan for resolving the crisis in Syria that sees President Bashar al-Assad transferring power to his deputy and a government of national unity within two months.

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Guardian: Syria rejects Arab League plan for Assad to step down

Syria has rejected an Arab League call for President Bashar al-Assad to hand over power to his deputy.

The league, meeting in Cairo, urged Syria to form a national unity government with the opposition within two months.

A government official called the plan “flagrant interference” in Syria’s internal affairs, state TV said.

The UN says more than 5,000 people have died as a result of the crackdown on protests since they began last March.

The league called on both sides to end the bloodshed.

The government in Damascus says it is fighting “terrorists and armed gangs” and claims that some 2,000 members of the security forces have been killed.

Meanwhile, Germany is pushing for the UN Security Council to back the Arab League in its efforts to get President Assad to hand over power.

The German ambassador to the UN, Peter Wittig called the Arab League plan a “game changer” for the Security Council which has been deadlocked over Syria.

Russia and China have already vetoed one resolution condemning the crackdown by the Syrian government.

Arab League split

“Syria rejects the decisions taken which are outside an Arab working plan, and considers them an attack on its national sovereignty and a flagrant interference in internal affairs,” the unnamed Syrian official said.

The official said the Arab League proposals were not in the interests of the Syrian people and would not prevent the country from “advancing its political reforms and bringing security and stability to its people”.

Saudi Arabia said it was pulling out of the league’s 165-strong monitoring mission in Syria because Damascus had broken promises on peace initiatives.

While the Arab League ministers said they were extending the controversial mission for another month, analysts say the Saudi decision has thrown its longer-term future into doubt.

Saudi Arabia is one of the key funders of the league’s projects, but the monitors have been criticised for failing to stop the violence.

Speaking in Cairo on Monday, the head of the monitors, Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, defended the mission.

He said the monitors were in Syria to observe implementation of an Arab League plan to end the violence, and indeed, despite some shootings and explosions, they had seen the situation improve while they were there.

The Arab League is now increasingly split over what could be done to resolve the Syrian crisis, BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen in Syria reports.

With the Syrians rejecting the conditions of the initiative, the Arab League’s roadmap is effectively in tatters, our correspondent says.

Funerals for 11 people said to have been killed by security forces were attended by tens of thousands in the Damascus suburb of Douma, activists said – a day after battles between government troops and army defectors were reported in the area.

Meanwhile, authorities in the city of Homs told our correspondent that 11 soldiers had been killed in an ambush on Sunday, while a doctor at a military hospital in the embattled city said five dead soldiers had been brought in on Monday.

Activists say almost 1,000 people have been killed since the monitoring mission began in December.

‘No military intervention’
At the Arab League meeting, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal urged the international community to step in and put pressure on Damascus.

The meeting of Arab League foreign ministers called on President Assad to delegate power to one of his vice-presidents and to engage in proper dialogue with the opposition within two weeks, and form a government of national unity in two months.

It was not clear which vice-president, Farouk al-Shara or Najah al-Attar, the Arab League had in mind to assume power.

The league said this should eventually lead to multi-party elections overseen by international observers.

Qatar’s Prime Minister, who is also foreign minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, said the league would seek the support of the UN Security Council for the changes.

But he added: “We’re not talking about military intervention.”

Speaking before an EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said a Security Council resolution on Syria was overdue and it had been a mistake for China and Russia to have blocked a previous attempt at one.

The EU foreign ministers called on President Assad to “step aside immediately to allow for a peaceful and democratic transition”.

They also agreed on new sanctions against 22 Syrian officials accused of human rights abuses and eight companies that financially support the Assad regime, hitting them with travel bans and a freeze of assets.

Existing EU sanctions include an arms embargo, a ban on the import of Syrian crude oil and a ban on new investment in the Syrian petroleum sector.

Russian business newspaper Kommersant reported that Syria signed a deal in December to buy 36 Yak-130 combat jets to Syria, despite international efforts to isolate the Syrian government.

Analysis

Jeremy Bowen BBC Middle East editor, Homs

I’ve spoken to protesters over the past few days who actually said they thought the monitors from the Arab League weren’t all bad. They felt that the volume of violence from the government side reduced when the monitors were around.

The word used to me by one man was “deterrent” – they were a deterrent, because it meant that there were witnesses to what the government side was doing. In fact, you could see when journalists were there, people would come out and demonstrate.

But clearly what the presence of the monitors does not do is sort out the conflict here, which is getting pretty fundamental: a regime that won’t go, against opponents that won’t give up. And neither side can beat the other at present.

To expect the observers to sort that out themselves is really asking a bit too much. What is absent is a meaningful diplomatic or political process, enabling some kind of settlement to be made, and if that’s not possible, then the rest of the outside world is bereft of ideas of what to do.

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Reuters: Syria denounces Arab League for telling Assad to quit

Syria on Monday rebuffed as a “conspiracy” an Arab League call for President Bashar al-Assad to step down in favour of a unity government to calm a 10-month-old revolt in which thousands of Syrians have been killed.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour criticised the League’s move, saying its ministers had taken an “unbalanced” approach to the crisis by disregarding violence perpetrated by Assad’s opponents.

Damascus has not rejected the League’s decision to keep Arab observers in Syria one month longer, Mansour said, even though critics say their presence has not stemmed the bloodshed and only bought more time for Assad to crush his opponents.

Many Syrians remain defiant, however. Tens of thousands turned out in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Monday under the protection of rebel Free Syrian Army fighters to mourn 11 people killed by the security forces, activists and a resident said.

Security forces, apparently keen to avoid a confrontation, stayed outside the area, where fighting had erupted overnight.

The Sudanese general who heads the monitoring mission said violence had dipped in the past month, contradicting accounts by Syrian activists who say at least 600 people were killed.

“After the arrival of the mission, the intensity of violence began to decrease,” Mohammed al-Dabi told a news conference at the Cairo-based Arab League, saying the monitors had logged only 136 deaths on both sides since they began work.

“Our job was to check what is happening on the ground and not investigate it,” said Dabi.

His role as chief monitor has displeased Assad’s critics given that he has held senior military and government posts in Sudan, including in Darfur, where the International Criminal Court prosecutor says the army carried out war crimes and the United Nations says 300,000 people may have died.

Saudi Arabia, an adversary of Syria’s ally Iran, undermined the mission’s credibility when it withdrew its own monitors on Sunday, accusing Damascus of defying an earlier Arab peace plan.

CONSPIRACY

Responding to the new League plan unveiled in Cairo on Sunday, an official Syrian source told the state news agency SANA that the initiative, which told Assad to hand power to a deputy pending elections, was a “conspiracy against Syria”.

“Syria rejects the decisions of the Arab League ministerial council … and considers them a violation of its national sovereignty and a flagrant interference in its internal affairs,” the source said.

Rami Khouri, a Beirut-based commentator, said the unusually bold Arab initiative was clearly “bad news” for Assad, one of a string of authoritarian Arab leaders to face popular uprisings in the past year. Three have been overthrown.

“The fact that Arab countries would propose such a clear intervention and essentially order him to step aside and give him a mechanism to do so is quite a dramatic sign of how much credibility and legitimacy he has lost in the region,” he said.

The United Nations says more than 5,000 people have been killed by the security forces since an anti-Assad revolt began in March. The authorities say they are fighting foreign-backed “terrorists” who have killed 2,000 soldiers and police.

EU foreign ministers tightened sanctions against Syria on Monday, adding 22 people and eight entities to a list of banned people and groups, and said Assad’s repression was unacceptable.

“The message from the European Union is clear,” said the EU’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton. “The crackdown must stop immediately.

Splits among the League’s 22 members have complicated its diplomacy on Syria, but in the end only Lebanon refused to approve the latest proposal, although Algeria objected to taking the plan to the United Nations Security Council.

“TYRANNICAL REGIME”

Burhan Ghalioun, head of the main opposition Syrian National Council, welcomed the initiative, saying it “confirms that all Arab countries today consider the tyrannical regime of Bashar al-Assad to be finished and that it must be replaced”.

The U.N. Security Council is also divided on how to respond, with Western powers demanding tougher sanctions and an arms embargo, measures opposed by Assad’s longstanding ally Russia.

A Western diplomat said the tough Arab League stance would put more pressure on Moscow to drop its objections to Security Council action against the Syrian leadership. “The Russians are not putting all their chips on Assad,” the diplomat said.

Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahama, said the Arab plan would extract no concessions from Assad and that the Security Council had no alternative strategy to offer.

“Without the credible threat of foreign intervention, Assad continues to feel confident that he can contain, if not beat, the opposition,” Landis said. “The United Nations is as divided over Syria as the Arab League is.”

Qatar has proposed sending Arab peacekeepers to Syria, but no other Arab country has shown any enthusiasm for this.

Syria, keen to avoid harsher foreign action, has made several moves to show it is complying with the initial Arab peace plan, which required an end to killings, a troop pullout from cities, release of detainees and a political dialogue.

The violence, however, has raged on unabated.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said seven civilians were killed on Monday and 12 the previous day.

Activists said an army deserter fighting for the Free Syrian Army had been killed in al-Quseir near the border with Lebanon.

SANA said three security personnel had been killed and 14 wounded in al-Quseir and one had died while trying to defuse a bomb in the eastern region of Deir al-Zor.

It said Brigadier-General Hassan al-Ibrahim and another officer were killed on Sunday when insurgents shot at their car in Damascus province. He was the third brigadier killed in a week. It said 11 people were also killed in an attack in Homs.

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 Reuters: Russia in deal to deliver Syria fighter jets: report

Russia has signed a deal to sell Syria nearly 40 fighter jet trainers for over half a billion dollars, a Russian newspaper reported on Monday, despite growing international criticism over its military trade with the violence-ridden country.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used troops and tanks to try to crush a 10-month-old popular revolt and thousands of people have been killed.

The daily Kommersant cited a source close to Russia’s state arms export monopoly, Rosoboronexport, as saying that the sides had signed a contract after holding talks in December, and that Damascus was to pay $550 million for 36 Yak-130 aircraft.

A spokesman for Rosoboronexport refused to comment. A Russian defense industry source indicated the planes had not been built, saying assembly could start after Syria makes a down payment, according to Kommersant.

“The creation of 36 new fighters for a foreign consumer is fully within the power of (manufacturing facilities),” the source was quoted as saying. “As soon as Syria sends Russia the down payment, the factory can get started on assembly.”

The advanced training jets could be used for air attacks on ground targets and to train pilots on the country’s more advanced fleet of Mi-29 jet fighters, which it ordered from Russia in 2007.

Moscow is one of Assad’s few remaining allies, still serving top arms customer Syria while joining China in an October veto of a Western-crafted U.N. Security Council resolution that threatened an arms embargo.

Syria makes up $700 million of arms sales in 2010, some 7 percent of Russia’s total of $10 billion in arms deliveries abroad, according to the Russian defense think tank CAST.

CAST director Ruslan Pukhov said he had previously been aware of the deal, but said the contract might be annulled by the Syrian side if Damascus suspected any international military action against his rule was in the works.

“It’s an expensive order and while these jet trainers may be good for specific missions … it’s no substitute for a supersonic (fighter) jet,” he said.

Russia has made strong gestures to reaffirm support for Assad recently, including sending its Navy flagship to a Russian base on the Mediterranean coast of Syria near Tartus.

Earlier this month a ship full of ammunition from Russia was detained in Cyprus. The ship was released the next day and sailed on to Tartus.

The United States said it had raised concerns about the ship with Russia, but Moscow has said it needs no justification for its defense trade with Syria without an internationally binding arms embargo in place.

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BBC: Syria crisis: Arab League fails to stem conflict

After more than 10 months and 5,000 deaths, an end to the crisis ravaging Syria remains a distant prospect.

The only sure thing is that in the coming months, many more people will die violent deaths as the conflict becomes increasingly desperate and ugly.

There is no visible way towards a resolution of the struggle between a regime determined to cling to power, and a revolt which long ago passed the point of no return.

The Arab League’s latest proposals have been rejected out of hand by Damascus, and dubbed “unachievable” by opposition activists.

The new Arab plan was modelled on the template fashioned for Yemen by the Gulf states, under which the embattled president Ali Abdullah Saleh left his country on Monday having devolved power to his deputy.

The League suggested President Bashar al-Assad should do the same in Syria.

Its plan called for a dialogue between regime and opposition, formation of a national unity government, election of a constituent assembly, a new constitution, a referendum, and free elections.

It was immediately dismissed by the Syrian authorities as part of the “ongoing conspiracy” against the country, and a “blatant interference” in its affairs.

Outside diktats

President Assad has long since launched what he calls a “comprehensive reform process” himself, involving the drafting of a new constitution and the holding of “free” multi-party elections in the coming months.

While his plans have no credibility with the opposition or its external supporters, there was no way he was going to abandon them and accept outside diktats.

The Arab plan also called for the regime and its opponents to begin a dialogue under League auspices within two weeks.

That seems unlikely to happen. Neither side wants it.

The regime is averse to holding talks other than under its own umbrella.

Most activists reject talking to a regime which they say has spilled too much blood for reconciliation to be possible.

The only part of the Arab League initiative that seems to have survived so far is the observer mission on the ground in Syria, whose mandate was renewed by the Arab foreign ministers for a second month on Sunday.

The monitors’ report has not been made public, though their commander, Sudanese General Mohammad al-Dabi, spoke about it at length at a news conference in which he attributed violence to both sides.

He argued that the mission had helped bring down the level of bloodshed, although activists say more than 800 people have been killed by security forces since the observers began deploying in late December.

The credibility of the mission – and the unity of purpose of the League effort – have already been diminished, certainly in the eyes of the Syrian regime, by Saudi Arabia’s withdrawal from the observer team.

The mission could be terminally jeopardised if the League were to refer the whole affair to the UN Security Council, a step which now seems likely.

The man leading the League campaign to end the Syrian crisis, the Prime Minister and Defence Minister of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, said that if Syria failed to adopt the new peace prescription, the League would hand the matter over to the Security Council.

In such a situation, Damascus would clearly be tempted to retaliate by asking the observer teams to leave, since the initiative on which their presence was based would have ended.

International divisions

Recourse to the UN is a scenario long espoused by much of the Syrian opposition and many activists on the ground, who want outside intervention to establish safe havens which they could use as launching-pads for “liberating” the rest of the country.

But there is no clear way forward in the international arena either.

Divisions there were neatly underlined on Monday, when the European Union announced another round of sanctions against Syrian individuals and companies, while Russia was reported to have agreed to supply Damascus with 36 military jets (which will, however, have to be paid for).

Russia has made it clear that it regards even condemnation of Syria at the UN Security Council, far less the imposition of sanctions or any form of military intervention, as a red line.

A Council resolution would be needed to cover anything approaching the kind of intervention many of the regime’s opponents would like to see.

With Russia and China poised to veto, that is simply not going to happen unless something changes radically.

So for the moment at least, Syria’s fate seems to be left largely to the internal dynamics of the conflict.

There, the trend in some areas has been increasingly towards an armed insurgency.

Whole army units have yet to break off, and by and large the capital Damascus and the second city Aleppo remain relatively untroubled, although many people there are reported to feel that the tide is coming in.

But in other areas, the impression is of a slow fraying of the regime’s authority and control.

In parts of the third city, Homs, and other places such as Idlib province to the north-west, Zabadani in the west near Lebanon, and even some of the townships around Damascus, the control of security forces appears to be nominal, patchy or even non-existent.

Whether this represents recognition of realities by the regime, or temporary restraint in deference to the presence of the Arab observers, is not clear.

Since the monitors deployed, the authorities have made some gestures towards implementing the agreement covering their presence.

They have released some detainees, allowed some foreign journalists in with constraints.

The mission commander, General al-Dabi, said that security forces had also stopped shooting at demonstrators, though activists dispute that.

But the Arab League resolution on Sunday reported that there had been only “partial and insufficient progress in implementing some of the commitments taken on by the Syrian government” when it signed the protocol.

It is hard to imagine that the monitors, if they stay, will be able, as per their mandate, to verify the regime’s complete compliance with the governing protocol which calls for all armed elements to be withdrawn, all detainees released, and all violence ended.

More likely, perhaps, the situation will simply grind on, with more armed attacks by rebels – three Syrian Army brigadiers have been killed in the past week alone – and further repression by regime forces and their militia auxiliaries, the shabbiha, drawn almost entirely from Mr Assad’s Alawite community.

It and other minorities such as the Christians have largely continued to support the regime against a revolt which is generally based among the poorer sections of the majority Sunnis.

Fearing a takeover by Islamist militants, some middle-class Sunnis and merchants favoured by the regime have also tended to stick with the regime.

As the situation has worsened, confessional sentiment has also risen, aggravating fears of a slide into sectarian civil strife and disintegration.

How solid the regime’s pillars of support really are, and how much they will be eroded as conditions deteriorate, is hard to predict, especially once economic factors kick in harder as sanctions are tightened.

But barring an unpredictable collapse or an internal coup of some kind, the regime seems to have enough hard-core support – and the determination – to defend its grip on power for months to come, if not longer.