Syria’s Sharaa: Now you see him. Now you don’t

Missing: Farouk al-Sharaa (left) and Abdullah al-Ahmar

Syrian armed forces deployed near the borders with Jordan and Turkey have reportedly been put on high alert.

The $64,000 question is whether the measure is meant to block or slow the torrent of Syrian refugees flooding the two countries or seal escape routes for defectors, chiefly Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in remarks published today his country cannot handle more than 100,000 Syrian refugees and instead proposes a UN buffer zone inside Syria to shelter them.

“If the number of refugees increases to 100,000, we will not be able to shelter them in Turkey. We have to welcome them in Syrian territory” under UN auspices, Davutoglu told the Turkish daily Hurriyet.

Davutoglu urged the UN to set up refugee camps “within the borders of Syria” in order to contain the number of Syrians fleeing their country.

The exodus of refugees to Turkey has intensified in the past week as a result of the battle for Aleppo, reaching a total of 70,000.

Jordan’s government spokesman has meanwhile sternly criticized Damascus for artillery shelling on its northern border that wounded a Jordanian girl and panicked other civilians.

Sameeh Ma’aytah says the government summoned the Syrian ambassador in Amman to hand him a letter of protest late yesterday. Amman is awaiting a formal response from Syria.

Four shells landed in Jordan on Sunday during clashes between the Syrian military and rebel forces on the Syrian side of the border.

Ma’aytah said Jordan protests what took place and “will ensure this does not happen again.”

Last month, Syrian troops killed a six-year-old Syrian boy fleeing to Jordan.

From April to August, the number of Syrians registered with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq nearly quadrupled, from 40,000 to more than 155,000. About 75 percent are believed to be women and children.

Community-based organizations say there are many more Syrians who have not registered, either because they are afraid, they are far from the registration centers, or they do not see any benefit to doing so.

The numbers have been a point of contention. The Jordanian government, for example, says 150,000 Syrians are on its territory, but observers question whether they are all refugees or if some are simply migrants or businessmen who regularly cross the border. In Lebanon, observers say the opposite, that the Beirut government is downplaying the numbers to avoid upsetting the unstable political balance in the country.

Syrians are increasingly seeking refuge beyond the region. Sources close to the Algerian Ministry of Interior have estimated that 12,000 Syrians have entered the country, with other estimates as high as 25,000.

Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, reported that an average of 1,000 Syrian asylum seekers have arrived in Europe per month so far this year.

Barak, Clinton & Sharaa (syrianhistory.com photos)

Meanwhile, I suspect Sharaa, the Syrian vice president, has effectively jumped ship and is now holed up in a bordertown. I hear he is in the safe hands of members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) who are trying to secure his safe exit to a neighboring country.

Sharaa exiting Syria via Iraq or Lebanon would be foolhardy as both countries’ governments are allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and under Iran’s thumb. His escape through the occupied Golan being implausible leaves Jordan and Turkey as his two viable options.

The intense media focus on Sharaa can be explained by the fact he is the highest-ranking Sunnite Muslim figure in Assad’s minority Alawite-led regime.

He has been vice president since February 2006 and previously served as foreign minister for some 21 years both under the current Assad and his father Hafez.

He was Syria’s chief peace negotiator with Israel’s Ehud Barak at December1999 and January 2000 talks brokered by then U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Sharaa was last seen in public last month for the state funeral of leading regime security chiefs killed in a July 18 bomb attack in Damascus.

His elevation to the vice presidency followed the June 2005 resignation of veteran incumbent Abdul Halim Khaddam, who broke with the regime soon afterwards and went into self-exile in France.

Sharaa was born in December 1938 and hails from Deraa, the cradle of the uprising,

A married father of two, he served on the ruling Baath Party’s central committee for decades.

Ahmar (left) with Hafez and Bashar Assad (1994). Inset, at Hafez's 1971 inauguration (syrianhistory.com photos) 

Interestingly, opposition activists are claiming that Abdullah al-Ahmar, who heads the regional (pan-Arab) command of the Baath Party and is the highest ranked Baathist in Syria has been placed under house arrest after trying unsuccessfully to defect but this has not been confirmed.

Like Sharaa, Ahmar is a Sunnite Muslim. Born in 1936 at al-Tal, near Damascus, he was elected with Hafez Assad to the Baath Party regional command in 1970.

Saudi Arabia stepping up a gear against Assad

Tlass on al-Arabiya, the tweet on his Saudi trip and the envoy who jumped ship

With fierce battles now raging for control of Syria’s two largest cities – Aleppo and the capital, Damascus – Saudi Arabia is stepping up a gear to oust the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass -- the highest-level defector from the Syrian regime now tipped to lead a political transition in Syria should Assad fall -- was said overnight to have arrived in Riyadh. (See the tweet in the collage above, as well my July 18 post, “Would Gen. Manaf Tlass ease Assad’s way out”).

Later in the day, he reportedly travelled on to Mecca to perform the Umrah (or lesser Hajj pilgrimage).

If confirmed, his trip to Saudi Arabia would have come hours after he went on the kingdom’s al-Arabiya TV news channel to call on Syrians to unite and start building a democratic post-Assad Syria.

Reading a prepared statement in his televised address, Tlass called on Syrians to “unite... to serve a post-Assad Syria... and do the impossible, to ensure the unity of Syria, and to be sure to start building a new Syria.”

Tlass, a Sunnite member of Assad’s inner circle and commander of one of Syria’s elite Republic Guard units who moved to France earlier this month, said he was “reaching out to (Syrians) in these difficult times for the country, as the blood of its innocents is being shed, when their only crime was to call for freedom.”

He said the “new Syria ... should not be built on revenge, exclusion or monopoly.”

He said he was speaking as “one of the sons of the Syrian Arab army, who has rejected this regime's criminal and corrupt ways ... and who cannot accept its crimes against our country...

“Whatever mistakes made by some members of the Syrian Arab army ... those honorable troops who have not partaken in the killing ... are the add-on to the (opposition) Free Syrian Army.”

Tlass, son of Mustafa Tlass who served as defense minister for 30-odd years under Assad’s father Hafez, said it was “the duty of Syrians to unite, to build a free, democratic Syria.”

The report about Tlass’ trip to Saudi Arabia comes hot on the heels of news that:

(1) Saudi Arabia is drafting a resolution on the situation in Syria for a UN General Assembly meeting next Monday (July 30). The kingdom’s permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Abdullah Y. al- Mouallimi, called for the General Assembly meeting and is penning the draft resolution in his capacity as chairman of the Arab League caucus at the world body. The draft resolution would restate the position of the Arab League Council of Foreign Ministers offering Assad a safe exit, warning him against using chemical weapons, and pressing for humanitarian corridors and security zones in Syria.

(2) Two more Syrian ambassadors have crossed the aisle to the opposition. They include Lamia al-Hariri, a niece of Syria’s Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa who headed the embassy in Cyprus, and her husband Abdullatif Dabbagh, who was ambassador to the UAE. Syria’s ambassador to Iraq, Nawwaf Faris, was the first to join the opposition this month. All three have now relocated to Qatar.

(3) The equivalent of some $50 million were raised across Saudi Arabia in the first 48 hours of a five-day public campaign for Syrian humanitarian aid ending early Friday. King Abdullah ordered the nationwide campaign on Monday -- the day he also called for a summit of Muslim nations in mid-August possibly linked to the Syria crisis. The monarch had days earlier appointed Assad’s nemesis Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States for 22 years, as the new chief of General Intelligence.

Mohammed Ballout, in his column this morning for the Beirut daily as-Safir, says whereas France is pressing the Syrian opposition to set up a coalition government for the political transition, the United States “prefers to see a military council” lead the transition in Syria (much as Egypt’s SCAF, or Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, oversaw the transition from Hosni Mubarak to Mohamed Morsy).

Ballout says Manaf Tlass is Washington’s preferred candidate to head the proposed military council. The Americans “believe he is best suited to convince senior officers in the president’s immediate circle to depose him.”

Separately, Mustafa al-Sheikh, one of the first generals to jump ship, eventually taking charge of the Free Syrian Army's military council, told al-Arabiya, “Tlass does not have Syrian blood on his hands… He will link up with the revolution and play a role.”

Russia and Syria at a crossroads

Russia's flag (via Wikipedia)

With top Kremlin aide Mikhail Margelov now saying Russia can do little more for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and with the Arab League tabling a “game changer” plan for Assad’s peaceable exit, two political analysts suggest in today’s Arab press the Syria crisis cards have been randomized.

Abdelbari Atwan, publisher/editor of the London-based pan-Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi, believes “the noose has tightened around Assad’s neck.”

But in her daily column for Beirut’s an-Nahar, Rosanna Boumounsef says it’s Russia’s stance ultimately that will prove “pivotal in determining the regime’s fate.”

In the words of Abdelbari Atwan:

President Assad stands almost alone in the face of an Arab League where his country lost its clout, its decision-making sway and its seat. Above all, the Gulf heavyweights alongside whom his father fought to evict Iraq from Kuwait now want him out. They had earlier turned their back on Saddam Hussein after his role in defeating Iran and shielding their regimes drew to a close.

In saying Assad stands alone, I also refer to the latest Arab League vote on its Syria plan. Algeria abstained, and so did Iraq. Lebanon was the only state choosing to “shun” the ballot altogether.

The Russians, who supported Assad to the hilt in recent months, sending a naval task force to Tartus and blocking a Syria resolution at the UN Security Council, seem to be opening the door to a shift in their position. They sufficed so far to leak remarks by President Dmitry Medvedev's protégé Mikhail Margelov saying, “we can do no more” for Assad. The shift can be justified by the similitude between the new Arab plan and the three-month-old Russian proposals encouraging Assad to hand over power to his deputy, Farouk al-Sharaa, form a national unity government to oversee parliamentary and presidential elections and initiate serious political reform.

Syria’s rejection of the Arab League roadmap mirrors Ali Abdullah Saleh’s initial rejection of the GCC’s Yemen initiative. Saleh ended endorsing it and enplaning for Oman on his way to the United States. I can envisage a replay of the Yemen scenario in Syria… and maybe later in Algeria.

An added thorn in Assad’s flesh is Saudi Arabia deciding to take charge of the Syria file. The Saudi role to bring down Assad may be decisive. The massively oil-rich kingdom has a strong following in Lebanon and Syria, is the Islamic world’s powerhouse and America’s closest regional ally.

In the opinion of Rosanna Boumounsef:

The Russians used the “Yemen scenario” expression in recent months and appeared ready to embrace it to help find a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis. Hence their 2011 invitation to Syrian Vice-President Farouk al-Sharaa to visit Moscow for talks. The visit did not take place, purportedly because the Syrian command prevented it.

The question at this point is if Russia, which has long favored the Arab League route to a solution in Syria over the Security Council’s, would eat from the new Arab League meal cooked in Cairo.

Russia’s decision is crucial for two reasons. One, it would break with Arab majority ranks if it shied away from the Arab League platter. Two, it would deal the Syrian command a body blow and restrict its room for maneuver to a hair’s breadth if it gobbled it down.

Russia’s comportment at the UN Security Council once the Arab League presents its Syria plan for endorsement is eagerly anticipated.