The Wall Street Journal, 21 Nov 2011 – An attack in Syria’s capital on Sunday that appeared to target the ruling Baath Party’s Damascus headquarters raised fears that an increasingly militarized conflict could move beyond the control of Syria’s political opposition, forcing them to eventually choose sides in a civil war between the government and its armed opponents, analysts and diplomats said.
Reports of the attack, whose details remain murky and which Syria’s government denies, are the first in the heart of the capital, after a peaceful protest movement began to see people take up arms over the summer. The Free Syrian Army, a group of defected soldiers that formed in July, stepped up its operations last week, claiming two attacks against government buildings around Damascus.
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Close European Pressphoto Agency A Syrian who lives in Lebanon saluted a portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Beirut Sunday.
‘The Free Syrian Army should work on keeping track of its dissident soldiers, that is what we are trying to do: unite the opposition, peaceful protests and any armed elements, under one political platform,’ said Omar Idlibi, a spokesman for the Local Coordination Committees, an activist network.
‘They are under a lot of constraints to do that, including major threats for their safety, so at the same time we appreciate and are greatly indebted to their work,’ said Mr. Idlibi, who is also a member of the opposition coalition Syrian National Council.
As activists sought to track down the source of Sunday’s blasts, with Free Syrian Army members alternately claiming and disputing responsibility, Syria’s government and the Arab League wrangled over a plan to send in a delegation to monitor the violence. Damascus said it needed time to study the proposal, after the pan-Arab body rejected some changes Syria had requested.
In Damascus, residents of the Mazra’a neighborhood reported waking up to the sound of two explosions at dawn, and said that security sealed off several streets in the area for hours while ambulances drove to the scene. Details beyond that, including if and what kind of weapons struck the building, what damage was incurred, and who claimed responsibility; varied throughout the day, capping a week of conflicting reports of attacks on government buildings around the capital. Some activists reported rocket-propelled grenades struck the building, or its outer wall.
The disorder reflects an escalation in the battle against President Bashar al-Assad that risks fueling his government’s fight against what it calls armed terrorist groups, while pushing protesters to seek arms as they continue to face a military and security apparatus vastly more capable of crushing them.
‘I think it’s important not to overstate the military capabilities of these attacks,’ British Ambassador to Syria Simon Collis said in an interview from Damascus. ‘The fact that people have popped off a couple of RPGs at nighttime against symbolic targets, that by itself only means that something is happening in Damascus that wasn’t happening before,’ Mr. Collis said. The U.K. Embassy in Damascus doesn’t have independent verification of the attack, or ones last week.
Mr. Collis said while these incidents were heightening fears over the prospect of a more organized, militarized civil conflict, arguably already partly under way between the Sunni and Alawite communities in Homs, with revenge killings and reported assassinations, Syria’s protesters say they are still primarily seeking to remain peaceful. And they are squaring off against government forces with far greater capabilities than the ranks of the Free Syrian Army, which is mostly armed with light weapons.
‘You have armed forces that are 200,000-plus strength, with security and intelligence services on top of that. Unless something happens to those organizations in terms of their cohesion, regardless of what we’ve seen so far in terms of the latest defections, it doesn’t seem likely that it’s going to change the balance of things in military terms anytime soon,’ he said.
High-ranking officials in Syria’s military and security apparatus draw from the same Alawite minority sect to which Mr. Assad’s family belongs. The Free Syrian Army has yet to draw in a high-ranking Alawite defection, which analysts say, though unlikely, could alleviate some fears among Syria’s Alawite and other minority communities.
Diplomats and analysts said they have little idea of the actual size of the Free Syrian Army, which claimed two attacks on state intelligence centers last week.
Col. Riad As’ad, the dissident army’s commander, said tens of thousands of soldiers are grouped in 22 battalions with their light weapons, including rifles and RPGs, which have proved effective at destroying tanks in fights with the army.
He said the group hasn’t received any financial or political support from any Arab state, nor Turkey, where Col As’ad lives under protection after fleeing Syria, and hasn’t been able to seek weapons in any organized or sustained way.
‘Until now, this has not been available to us,’ Col As’ad said in an interview on Thursday. ‘There is no country supporting us or showing willingness to do this.’
Some members of the opposition say arms smuggling into Syria through Jordan and Lebanon, a traditional smuggling route, has been rampant, giving both defected soldiers and protesters seeking arms for defense easy access to light weapons. Col As’ad said the dissident army coordinates with ‘civilian leaders’ in different cities on its operations to protect civilians.
But those attacks, and the Free Syrian Army’s growing public role, have reinforced the government’s argument that it is facing a militant uprising.
‘We have to prevent militants from doing what they are doing now: killing civilians, doing massacres in different places in Syria,’ President Assad said in an interview with the Sunday Times.
‘We have to stop the smuggling of armaments from outside Syria, from the borders of neighboring countries. We have to stop having the money coming in to support those militants again across the borders,’ he said.
President Assad showed no signs of reversing course on the military and security deployment, and said the number of civilians killed in the eight-month-long conflict, which the United Nations estimates at more than 3,500, was exaggerated. ‘My role as president, this is my daily obsession now, is to know how to stop this bloodshed caused by armed terrorist acts that are hitting some areas,’ he said.
He put the civilian death toll at 619, identifying these as people killed in ‘crossfire’ between security forces and armed gangs, victims of sectarian killings, or government supporters killed for backing him.
The Local Coordination Committees said 10 people were killed during protests on Sunday, following the deaths of at least 35 others earlier in the weekend.
Meanwhile, the Arab League said Syria’s government had proposed amendments and additions to a so-called protocol to allow in observers that would ‘radically change the nature of the mission’ and which the league didn’t accept. Syria’s deadline to sign the plan was Saturday night.
Responding to the Arab League’s decision, Syria’s foreign minister said the protocol was also unacceptable to the government and infringed on its sovereignty. ‘It has total disregard for the role of the Syrian state,’ Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said in a televised news conference from Damascus, calling the terms of the proposal ‘hollow’ and accusing the Arab League of threatening economic sanctions against Damascus at the request of the U.S. and other Western powers.
A Nov. 2 plan agreed between the league and Syria had requested an end to violence from all sides in the country, starting with a withdrawal of military from cities. The organization decided at a meeting 10 days later to suspend Syria’s membership after continued killings across the country amounted to a violation of the plan. At another meeting last Wednesday, the league asked Syria to recommit to a cease fire while signing off on a plan to deploy a delegation of hundreds of observers as monitors. Arab media reports suggest one point of contention has been the size of the mission, reduced from some 500 in the original plan to 40, and whether non-Arab observers can take part.
The Arab diplomacy, unprecedented in the host of measures, including economic sanctions, being considered against Syria, surprised Mr. Assad’s supporters and opponents alike. But some opposition members have grown impatient with the diplomatic deliberations and believe the government’s protracted negotiations are a ploy to buy time, allowing sectarian tensions across Syria to spiral, the dissident army to step up attacks, and the regime to, in turn, strike harder.
Aiming to fill a gap while the negotiations continued, the Syrian National Council announced a program in which it would form a transitional government to manage the state after Mr. Assad’s government fell. The SNC said the interim government would organize free elections within a year of the regime’s collapse for a constitutional assembly that would draft a new constitution, followed by parliamentary elections within six months of that.
The political platform recognized the deep religious and social splits Syria’s crisis has created, calling for the formation of a ‘national reconciliation commission…to cleanse all residue from the era of corruption and tyranny.’
Mohammed Saleh, a resident of Homs, an epicenter of those sectarian tensions between Sunni Muslims, from Syria’s majority sect, and Alawites, from Mr. Assad’s minority Shiite Muslim sect, said that although kidnapping and killings between the two sects continued, Syria wouldn’t be pushed into civil war. That would be playing into Mr. Assad’s hands and reinforce his rule as the only guarantor of stability for the country, said Mr. Saleh, a Alawite who opposes Mr. Assad.
‘There are some crazies who are killing here and there, but I do not fear civil war,’ he said. ‘I still think we are more aware than that, than those who are pushing us into civil war. We are waiting for a breath of life back into the Arab League initiative.’