It is more and more difficult to get a clear picture of the situation in Syria. As a large part of the western media are obviously part of the military information operation against Syria one has to double check each and every detail. Here is the gist of what I read from various sources.
The raid-like assault on parts of Damascus failed after three days. The population of the raided quarters did not help the foreign supported insurgency but rather fled to safe quarters. The Syrian military then had little difficulty to fight the insurgents down. Today an assault attempt on a military hospital in Damascus failed after just one hour.
A similar raid-like assault is now ongoing in some quarters of Aleppo. The result will likely be the same than in Damascus.
There were many reports of successful insurgency attacks on Syrian border stations. Most of them turned out to not have happened at all or as having been defeated. One station on the border to Iraq was in insurgency hands. Two stations on the border to Turkey were also taken over. At one of them the insurgents looted 30 Turkish trucks that were taking food and medicine into Syria. They burned some of them. Another crossing at Bab al-Hawa was taken over by foreign Al Qaeda fighters:
[B]y Saturday evening, a group of some 150 foreign fighters calling themselves as Islamists were in control of the Bab al-Hawa post, an AFP photographer said.
Some of the fighters said they belonged to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), while others claimed allegiance to a group called Shura Taliban.
They were armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, rocket launchers and improvised mines.
The fighters identified themselves as coming from a number of countries: Algeria, France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and the Russian republic of Chechnya.
A video they produced shows some of them with an AlQaeda flag declaring the place to be an Islamic state. Arabic speakers told me that the accent in the video is not Syrian. These foreign fighters also looted and burned Turkish trucks.
And Turkey has even more problems with the guests it took in from Syria. At two refugee camps, or rather insurgency retreats, people protested over insufficient food and water supply and Turkish riot police intervened with batons and tear gas.
That are some friendly and thankful friends you have there, Mr. Erdogan. Here is more trouble for you.
The Kurds in the north-east of Syria have taken control over their area. They clashed with insurgents and shortly also with a few government troops. Their aim is to sit the situation out while keeping any trouble away from their hometowns. If the Syrian government falls they will try to unite with the Kurds in Iraq and in Turkey.
There are recently only few reports from insurgency strongholds like parts of Homs or Rastan. What is happening there?
All the above action is, from a military standpoint, unimportant. The insurgents can not win and hold. They can keep a few parts of the Syrian military busy but with each and every actions they also take significant casualties.
The whole point of these attack on the border stations and on Damascus and Aleppo seem to be to entice “Damascus is falling” headlines in western media and to induce panic into some Syrians. But the reports of the fall of Damascus are far from being true and the panic they induce seems to be of more help for the Syrian government than for the insurgency.
The U.S., Britain and the Gulf countries have announced more support for the – so far – failing insurgency. Especially in the case of the U.S. one is wondering to what end. Some U.S. financed so-called NGOs make cute preparations for calm after the fall of the Syrian government. But each and every expert says the reality after a fall of the Syrian government would look much different than what is planned for:
“Syria has become a convenient battlefield for everyone, a place to divide the Arab world, said Farid Khazan, a Lebanese lawmaker and a professor of political science at American University of Beirut. “You won’t be able to reshape that country without messing up the entire region.”
…
“The fall of the Assad regime doesn’t mean it is the end,” said Jihad Zein, editorial writer for Lebanon’s largest daily newspaper, An Nahar. “We will have a chaotic Syria and some kind of Islamist party dominating the street for a long time.”
Are State Department people like Killery Clinton really stupid enough to believe the can create a viable state out of the chaos they create in Syria? If that is not what the Obama administration wants why is it continuing its support for this regime change project?