Is Assad next?

[cbirch2]

Now that gadhafi is dead, do you think assad is rattled a little bit?

Think about it. When we captured saddam, gadhafi gave up his chemical weapons six days later. He was scared, he thought he could be next.

Now syria is descending into a civil war. Civilians are arming themselves. Libya has proved, so far, to be a huge success. A proof of concept, if you will. Do you think NATO is thinking of repeating the process in syria? And what do you think assad is thinking.

 

[Sunni Man]

Syria has no oil.

So the people there won't get any International or UN help.

Yes, Assad is a terrible dictator and needs to go.

But the Syrian people will have to do it themselves.

 

[cbirch2]

Syria has no oil.

So the people there won't get any International or UN help.

Yes, Assad is a terrible dictator and needs to go.

But the Syrian people will have to do it themselves.

Ah but i feel like that approach doesnt fully take a lot of things into account. Turkey has a lot of interest in syria. Its also a vital part of the iran-israel situation.

 

[waltky]

Looks like the beginnings of a civil war...

Report: Syrian army defectors attack military compound
Nov 16, 2011 - Syrian activists say army defectors have attacked a military intelligence complex in the Damascus suburbs, Al-Jazeera reports.

Update at 11:35 a.m. ET: The Free Syrian Army said in a statement that its pre-dawn attack targeted a compound run by Air Force Intelligence in the Damascus suburb of Harasta, the Associated Press reports. Defectors also hit military checkpoints in the Damascus suburbs of Douma, Qaboun and Arabeen and Saqba. A Syrian opposition figure says the operation in Harasta was carried out by defectors who attacked the compound from three sides with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, the AP reports.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said defectors also killed eight Syrian soldiers and security forces in an attack on a checkpoint in a village in Hama province. The human rights group said 11 people were killed in the country on Wednesday, including three defectors ambushed by troops loyal to President Bashar Assad.

Original post: Al-Jazeera quotes a spokesperson for the Syrian Revolution General Commission as saying the defectors, members of the so-called Free Syrian Army, fired heavy weaponry and machine guns at a large air force intelligence complex in Harasta. "This is probably not the first attack on [a] security headquarters," said Al-Jazeera's Rula Amin, reporting from Lebanon. "But what is significant about this attack is that it is in Damascus, the capital. This shows how much trouble there is for the regime." It is not clear how many soldiers have defected, but the spokesperson says they are carefully coordinated to enable former soldiers to flee with their weapons.

Al-Jazeera quotes one defector, identified as Mohammad Ahmad Harmous, as saying the former soldiers are engaged in "massive operations." Video footage shows a purported attack on a bus carrying Syrian soldiers on a mission to crackdown on the opposition uprising that has left more than 3,500 people dead since March. Syria's military is controlled by Assad's brother, Maher, and members of the minority Alawite faith, a sect of Shia Islam, Al-Jazeera notes. The army, however, is made up mostly of Sunni Muslims.

Source

 

[waltky]

Granny rootin' fer the rebels...

Observers predict Syria is headed for civil war
18 Nov.`11 – As the situation in Syria gets bloodier and Syrian leader Bashar Assad becomes increasingly isolated internationally, some observers say the country is on the verge of a civil war instigated by the regime.

"I think we've now reached the stage where we are getting a militarization of the uprising," said Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, a think tank in Qatar. "I think shutting down the violence will become progressively more difficult, and I don't see it ending any time soon. I believe this regime will fight to the end." On Thursday, rebels attacked the offices of Assad's ruling party near the Turkish border. That followed attacks Wednesday on Syrian intelligence bases and checkpoints just outside Damascus - where rebel activity has been very limited during the eight-month uprising - as well as a deadly raid on a checkpoint near Hama in which eight Syrian soldiers were killed.

That raid was led by the so-called Free Syrian Army, made up of army defectors, which has attacked the military in recent months. Although the group issued a statement, the attacks could not be independently confirmed. More than 3,500 Syrians have been killed since the uprising began eight months ago, according to the United Nations. On Wednesday, the 22-member Arab League confirmed its suspension of Syria over its crackdown on protesters and for violating a peace plan agreed to Nov. 2. In Istanbul, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the world must urgently "hear screams" from Syria and do something to stop the bloodshed. "The lack of reaction to massacres in Syria was causing irreparable wounds in the conscience of humanity," said Erdogan, whose country has imposed an arms embargo on Damascus and shelters 7,700 Syrian refugees.

Activists say the increasing international isolation of Assad has led to the growing violence. "It is unbelievable how violent it has been" since the Arab League became involved, said Hozan Ibrahim of the Local Coordination Committee of Syria based in Germany. "The killings started escalating, the violence and the sieges of cities and towns. People can't accept the regime anymore and are looking for some way to protect themselves now."

Soiurce

 

[RiskAssessment]

All of this unrest over there at the same time doesn't smell good to me, lots of questions come up and besides the major media streams and statements from our “Leadership” it seems a very different story is starting to come from that area and it is not what we have been thinking.
Regardless of that, my main discomfort is the Russian response to NATO over Syria & Iran and their response to the US – Europe Missile Shield. This really is starting to look and feel like something else entirely especially when Obama's sending a message to China at the same time sending troops to Australia. I do not like where we are going at all.

 

[waltky]

Daddy's boy who never had it hard...

5 Key Things to Know About Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
Aug. 18, 2011 - President Obama has called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step aside and allow Syria's future to be determined by its people. Obama said Assad's "calls for dialogue and reform have run hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing and slaughtering his own people."

But who is the tall, blue-eyed, English-speaking man who has ruled Syria since 2000. Here are five key things to now about the president of Syria.

1. Assad Was Never Supposed to Be President

Assad became his father's chosen successor only after his brother, Basel, was killed in a car accident in 1994. Immediately following Basel's death, Assad left London, where he was studying ophthalmology, and returned home. Khaled Mahjoub, who said he has known the Assads since he attended kindergarten with Basel, told Time that Basel's death changed Assad. "He felt responsibility," said Mahjoub. "He was always responsible in his actions, but after Basel passed away, he had responsibility."

Upon his return to Syria, he was put in charge of Lebanon policy, according to Joshua Landis, director of the Center of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. "The idea was that anybody who could learn to rule this unruly place of Lebanon ... could deal with Syria," said Landis. In 2000, Assad became president at the age of 34 when his father died. In order to take office, the constitution had to be changed to allow an executive under 40 to hold power.

2. 'Brought Up With a Silver Spoon'

"Bashar was brought up with a silver spoon in his mouth," said Landis. "He wasn't brought up in the countryside in a small village in poverty. He was brought up in the best schools Damascus has to offer, in the lap of luxury in the city. He identified with the city elites." Assad did not have to fight his way to power. Because of the easy path, Landis said, he "really didn't have a taste for the isolation and the toughness his father brought to bear on government." Although many thought he was ill-equipped and unprepared to rule the country, Landis believes he grew into the position.

"He was much savvier than most people believed he was and he was a fairly competent ruler within the very narrow constraints of this bad system," Landis told ABC News. "This is a fairly nice guy who was well brought up, who had the best education Syria could offer. ... He tried to do what he could, but he was handed a jail. The regime as it was constructed by the father was a giant prison and he became the prison guard." The problem is that the authoritarian government in Syria is run by a small group of corrupt people at the top, Landis said, and Assad perpetuates the system in order to keep power. Landis estimated that if the government were to fall, about a million people would lose their jobs.

3. The President

Unlike other leaders in the region, Assad has few eccentricities and is not a sociopath, said Landis. Ayman Abdel-Nour, a college friend of Assad and now a political enemy, told Time that there is Assad the man -- who he describes as respectful, engaging and warm -- and then there is Assad the president. Assad the president "is not Bashar any more. Even his wife, his children, his brother mean nothing to him. He becomes the president of the Syrian Republic with all of this heritage of 7,000 years," he said. "Whatever measures are necessary for him to take, he will take them with no emotion. He has no heart."

MORE

See also:

Not my army: Assad fronts US TV with 'ludicrous' bloodshed denials
December 8, 2011 - Assad: 'Only Crazy Person' Would Kill His Own People

In a rare interview, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied ordering the deaths of thousands of protesters, saying "only a crazy person" would target his own people. With global pressure mounting on his regime after the Arab Spring, Mr Assad chose a prime-time chat with US television journalist Barbara Walters as the platform for his defence after months of near-silence on reports of mass killings and mass torture. Mr Assad said he was not responsible for the nine months of bloodshed and drew a distinction between himself and the military - an assertion that the United States called "ludicrous". "We don't kill our people," Mr Assad told ABC News veteran Walters. "No government in the world kills its people, unless it's led by a crazy person." "There was no command to kill or be brutal."

Mr Assad said security forces belonged to "the government", not him personally. "I don't own them. I'm president. I don't own the country. So they are not my forces," he said. Mr Assad's family has ruled Syria with an iron fist for four decades. Mr Assad's brother, Lieutenant Colonel Maher al-Assad, heads the army's Fourth Division, which oversees the capital as well as the elite Republican Guard. The United Nations estimates more than 4000 people have died in Syria's crackdown on protesters, who have mounted the greatest challenge yet to Mr Assad amid a wave of uprisings in the Arab world that have toppled authoritarian leaders in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Mr Assad shrugged off the figures, saying: "Who said that the United Nations is a credible institution?" "Most of the people that have been killed are supporters of the government, not the vice versa," said Mr Assad, speaking in English, giving a figure of 1100 dead soldiers and police.

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner sharply criticised Mr Assad for denying responsibility. "I find it ludicrous that he is attempting to hide behind some sort of shell game but also some sort of claim that he doesn't exercise authority in his own country," Mr Toner said. "There's just no indication that he's doing anything other than cracking down in the most brutal fashion on a peaceful opposition movement." Syria has come under growing international pressure, with Arab nations and neighbouring Turkey joining Western powers in pursuing sanctions against Assad. Alistair Burt, the British Foreign Office minister for the Middle East, hailed the efforts by the Arab League and voiced hope for greater action by Russia, the key ally of the Assads since the Soviet era. "The isolation of Syria will continue and intensify," Mr Burt told AFP as he visited Libya in the wake of the overthrow and killing of leader Muammar Gaddafi. Syria's official news agency, SANA, said its border forces late on Monday thwarted an attempt by 35 gunmen from "armed terrorist groups" to infiltrate from Turkey.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/not-my-...hed-denials-20111208-1oju6.html#ixzz1fv5EEgID

 

[waltky]

Send in the troops!...

Qatari ruler says troops should enter Syria
Saturday 14th January, 2012 - The Emir of Qatar has called for Arab troops to enter Syria in order to put a stop to killings.

Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has blamed the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, for deadly violence that has claimed the lives of more than 5,000 people in a popular uprising. The emir, in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview, was asked whether Qatar would be in favour of intervention in Syria by Arab nations.

Sheikh Hamad said: "For such a situation to stop the killing, some troops should go." Arab observers, currently in Syria as observers of the situation, have not been able to persuade the Syrian government to end the killings.

Qatar once had close relations with Damascus, but has recently been highly critical of the 10-month crackdown by President Bashar Assad's regime. The influential Gulf state has withdrawn its ambassador to Syria to protest the fighting.

Source

See also:

Syrian opposition, rebel group join forces
Friday 13th January, 2012 - Joining their ranks opposition party Syrian National Council and the rebel Free Syrian Army have decided to come together under the latter's umbrella in the fight against President Bashar al-Assad's security forces.

"The parties agreed to formulate a detailed plan, to include the reorganization of FSA units and brigades," as well as make room for more senior army deserters to join their ranks, the opposition party said in a statement Friday. The decision to form an alliance follows a meeting Thursday between SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun and Free Syrian Army leader Colonel Riad al-Asaad. Through a "direct channel of communications", the SNC hopes to deepen ties with the armed rebels. The statement did not give much details.

In recent weeks army deserters and gunmen have stepped up attacks on Assad's forces, including ambushes on military convoys and bases, killing scores of soldiers. SNC leader Ghalioun has in the recent past expressed fears that increase in rebel attacks could push Syria towards civil war. But rebel fighters have continued with their activities from their bases across the border in Turkey. The new alliance is expected see FSA striving to unite the rebels leaders, and coordinate with SNC "on the political situation and on regional and international positions".

Analysts are however not very optimistic about FSA leader Asaad being able to hold the rebels together. Assad who took charge last year is seen largely as a figurehead. "The council is moving toward not only (deepening) the relationship with the Free Army, but also to help it re-organize its military issues," said Ghalioun's adviser Ausama Monajed, reports Reuters. The most senior commander to desert Assad's army, General Mostafa al-Sheikh, told Reuters this week that he had started helping reorganize the FSA. "The Free Syrian Army needs to remain under control for fear that the regime may suddenly collapse," said Sheikh, who fled to Turkey earlier this month.

Source

 

[zzzz]

All it takes is a little drone and ....

 

[waltky]

Not likely now, AL pullin' its observers outta Syria...

Arab League halts observer mission in Syria
Sat Jan 28,`12 – The Arab League halted its observer mission in Syria on Saturday because of escalating violence that killed nearly 100 people the past three days, as pro-Assad forces battled dissident soldiers in a belt of suburbs on the eastern edge of Damascus in the most intense fighting yet so close to the capital.

The rising bloodshed has added urgency to new attempts by Arab and Western countries to find a resolution to the 10 months of violence that according to the United Nations has killed at least 5,400 people as Assad seeks to crush persistent protests demanding an end to his rule. The United Nations is holding talks on a new resolution on Syria and next week will discuss an Arab peace plan aimed at ending the crisis. But the initiatives face two major obstacles: Damascus' rejection of an Arab peace plan which it says impinges on its sovereignty, and Russia's willingness to use its U.N. Security Council veto to protect Syria from sanctions.

Syria's Interior Minister Mohammed Shaar vowed the crackdown would go on, telling families of security members killed in the past months that security forces "will continue their struggle to clean Syria's soil of the outlaws." Government forces launched a heavy assault on a string of suburbs and villages on the eastern outskirts of Damascus, aiming to uproot protesters and dissident soldiers who have joined the opposition, activists said.

Troops in tanks and armored personnel carriers attacked the suburbs of Kfar Batna, Saqba, Jisreen and Arbeen, the closest of which lie only a few miles from downtown Damascus, said the Local Coordination Committees activist network and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Dissident troops were fighting back against the attackers, they said.

More Arab League halts observer mission in Syria - Yahoo! News