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Syria: Schwerpunkt Aleppo?
This is the Syrian opposition:
ADO, AKP, ASM, CAP, BSS, DASU, DBASP, DD, FSA, HCRS, KDP, KNC, LCC, MB, MJD, NCB, NCC, NDA, NSF, NPF, PFLC, PKK, PPW, PUK, PYD, SCP, SDP, SDPP, SNC, SNDB, SRGC, SSNP, SSNP/i, TYM, WRAP
This abbreviation soup is from a recent policy paper: DIVIDED THEY STAND – An Overview of Syria’s Political Opposition Factions by Aron Lund from the Swedish Palme Center. Each abbreviation stands for a group or coalition involved in the Syrian opposition.
The various splits between these groups was today again on display when two different spokesperson of the umbrella organization Syrian National Council had a public spat about a possible transitional government:
"There was never any question of a national unity government led by a member of the regime," Bassma Kodmani told AFP, hours after another SNC spokesman, George Sabra, said the council was ready to agree to a transfer of President Bashar al-Assad's powers to a regime figure who would take power for a transitional period.
Sabra said on Tuesday that the SNC "would agree to the departure of Assad and the transfer of his powers to a regime figure, who would lead a transitional period like what happened in Yemen."
"We accept this initiative because the priority today is to put an end to the massacres and protect Syrian civilians, not the trial of Assad," Sabra said.
George Sabra is a secular Christian who belongs to to the SDPP, the socialist Syrian Democratic People’s Party. He recently left Syria after he was released from prison. Bassma Kodami, who rejected his transition offer, is a long time exile and a western agent:
Kodmani is not some random "pro-democracy activist" who happens to have found herself in front of a microphone. She has impeccable international diplomacy credentials: she holds the position of research director at the Académie Diplomatique Internationale – "an independent and neutral institution dedicated to promoting modern diplomacy". The Académie is headed by Jean-Claude Cousseran, a former head of the DGSE – the French foreign intelligence service.
A picture is emerging of Kodmani as a trusted lieutenant of the Anglo-American democracy-promotion industry. Her "province of origin" (according to the SNC website) is Damascus, but she has close and long-standing professional relationships with precisely those powers she's calling upon to intervene in Syria.
So we again have a real Syrian who calls for a peaceful solution and a western tool arguing for more killing.
My bet is still that there will be no outside intervention in Syria other than foreign support for the insurgents. That probably means another Algeria like fight:
The opposition needs radical changes if it is to be able to bring down the regime, while the regime resorts to operations aimed at exterminating (there is no more fitting word for it, unfortunately) its armed opponents so as to keep its grip on the state by force.
The insurgents have now brought the war to Aleppo. Today several tweets from the insurgent side pointed to videos that claim to show insurgent reinforcement going to Aleppo. The Syrian government was also said to have reinforcement coming in and there is now unconfirmed reporting of its use of air force assets against the insurgency. That might all be the fog of this war or it might be the buildup to the Clausewitzian Schwerpunkt of this conflict. The place where both sides concentrate their forces for a decisive battle.
But with the full capabilities of the Syrian army intact a battle in Aleppo would be a rather lopsided and destructive one but still not the end of the insurgency or a solution for the countries bigger problems.
With the recent moral boost from its victory in Damascus the Syrian army is unlikely to fold. To achieve peace it is the other side that has to give way. For that the outside support for the insurgency has to stop. Something that seems currently out of reach though some people somewhere are certainly working to achieve that. (Inducing Turkey to use armored vehicles (video) against Syrian refugees in Turkey is part of such work.)
Only when the insurgency comes down to a tolerable level will any talk George Sabra and other moderates in the opposition abbreviation soup prefer become possible.
– from an article in le Temps 24.07.12 by Florence Aubenas (french journo, kidnapped in iraq, huge ransom paid), parts freely abstracted by me. (no link.)
Jibrine. About a year ago, the first demo took place.
Five masked men with one lit torch stood in a field for all of 6 minutes, at night, before scampering. At midnight news of the demo had flown around the village, and the inhabitants begged the fellows not to ever do anything like it again. Ppl were very divided, some shouting The Revolution Has Arrived. The next week, there were 8 of them.
To escape arrest, they hid, slept outside. One closed his shop and left, another fled to London.
The police reacted – badly. They beat up a man who was smoking in the street, threw a woman to the ground, and on one occasion shot into a crowd.
The first to die was a mason, during a march in Marea. In Marea 28 inhabitants have been killed. 50 in Tal Rifat, and almost 70 in Azzar. Mostly sunnites, as that is what they are; the few alawites left for Damascus or Aleppo when things started to turn ugly.
A witness: “Ppl became radicalised when they saw the police killing them simply because they were out in the street.” The inhabitants beat up some shabibas, kidnapped and killed a few.
In this northern region (1) today: there is very little petrol, electricity intermittent, prices of meat have tripled, the dollar has (roughly) doubled in value. There is no cell phone coverage at all. One third of houses are empty. Schools are closed, no trains, no administration, and no police.
3 helicopters turns in the sky. Last week, they shot a child, a man on a motorbike and destroyed some farming equipment.
Administrative buildings, the army recruitment center, the hospital (etc.) are bombed out or seriously damaged. Inhabitant: “They are afraid we would install ourselves in them, take them over.”
Ppl are on the move. Families departing, in trucks filled with furniture and children, cross families returning after 20, 30 years, from Yemen and KSA. The greet each other: “We will never return!” and the others reply “We will never leave!” They cry, salute, hug.
In Tal Rifat, the ppl have chosen a ‘mayor’ and 19 ‘deputies’ to administer and organize. These are local notables. They have opened up a law court, local services are working again, e.g. garbage collection. When asked what they think of the Syrian National Council, they laugh, some are angry, scornful.
The only checkpoints or army on the ground are the FSA. (Aubenas interviewed a commander, I leave that out.)
1. the article does not describe geography clearly.
I can’t see any ‘instituted’ Gvmt., here Assad, surviving something like this, independently of who exactly bombed the hospital and City Hall. The description may be slanted, in various ways, either by her or her informants, of course.
Others may know more re. this region, or disagree, I’d be happy to hear. I rarely view videos with violence, I miss a lot. These last two sentences should not be necessary….sigh.
So one outcome is moving towards regions / zones, a fractioning of the country, as I also can’t see the ‘insurgents’ taking over the Two Big Towns. Not that I’m predicting that. No. I think the Gvmt. will just collapse and some ‘transition’ will be set up.
@bevin 22. lenin’s tomb, richard seymour, is a regular, top!, brit ‘marxist’ leftist, that is imho a startingly odd special breed, i was banned on there after 3 very mild respectful comments. 😉
Posted by: Noirette | Jul 25 2012 14:51 utc | 56
b. Aubenas is a mainstream and so-called respected French journo, which is not a recommendation.
The F media are absolutely shameless. According to the Press Freedom Index, F is 38th, below Mali, Uruguay, the UK, Surinam, Cape Verde, Germany, etc. -wiki.
One can make appealing tales out of any scraps.
Facts, or ‘true’ observations on the ground can be spun this or that way, and journos take sides. Yes.
Nevertheless, if it it so that some regions are self organizing, which means also defending themselves, as best as they can, guess who they will turn to, bad news for Assad and his Gvmt.
if the location was important in any strategic way, i.e. to establish safe zones, there would be a fight, I guess there are many places in Syria that have never really been under government control …
No. The region – n of aleppo to azzaz, as far as I could make out from place names in that article I took time to type out – was very centrally controlled, as *everywhere* in Syria.
The schools, the hospitals, social assistance, the police, the courts, agri (stipends, land laws, inputs and outputs, etc.), the banks (loans) were run – or rigidly organized from the Center, by the Assad Gvmt.
A W example might be France, with its heavy centralization.
Children go to school, their teachs are paid by the Gvmt. and they follow a national Gvmt. program, with teachers being sent anywhere on the territory. (Many disagree w this policy.) The police, similar picture. Young men from the ‘regions’ – rural, small town – are sent to police Parisian sub or ex burbia, thrown into worlds they knownot facing ppl they ‘hate’…
When in Syria, – court clerk, nurse, policeman, janitor in the museum, judge, tax collector, army recruiter, top surgeon who has no patients, and on and on – decamp to Damascus or London, or quietly give up, retire, or ‘join the opposition’ to ‘stay close to the ppl’ you see the collapse of the State. The void is first filled with self-organization, as the article pointed out. What happens next is anybody’s guess.
Nothing like this took place in Tunisia or Egypt.
Posted by: Noirette | Jul 26 2012 14:22 utc | 96
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