The morning after Qusayr

Qusayr's clock tower -- "still standing, but only just" (BBC News photo)

A BBC team led by chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet that visited Qusayr yesterday found that it was in ruins.

The rebels, she remarks, "say they're coming back but they'll come back to a city that's gone."

Doucet and the team she led were taken to Qusayr by the Syrian government. They were the first Western journalists to reach the city, and said they did not see a single building that had escaped damage.

The town where some 30,000 people once lived is now all but deserted by civilians.

Qusayr lies only 10 kilometers from the Lebanese border and is close to important supply routes for both the government and rebels.

It had been the focus of a three-week battle between rebels and government troops backed by fighters from Iran’s Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.

Doucet says both Syrian troops and Hezbollah fighters were everywhere - travelling in trucks and armored vehicles, firing guns in celebration and moving on foot through the streets.

Among her tweets:

• Clock tower still stands. Its face blown off, the tower damaged. The Syrian flag on top with image of Assad
• In Qusayr didn’t see a single building that escaped 3 weeks of battle
• Saw very few civilians in Qusayr – a few farmers on tractors, one family loading a pickup
• Clock tower – still standing, but only just
• Troops walk past, red & green ribbons tied to uniforms – fighters from Lebanon. One man shouts “Nasrallah!”

She also wrote this “At the Scene” comment for BBC News:

This battle for Qusayr is over. But now the fight begins to help the people who survived.

Thousands fled the violence; many were trapped inside. Aid agencies speak of alarming reports that large numbers of wounded need urgent care.

There's not enough food or water in Qusayr or for those displaced outside in schools, shelters and on the streets. In the last two days, the UN managed to send in a powerful generator to help restart the main pumping station for this entire region.

But now aid agencies are urging the government to give them greater access to the city. The fight for Qusayr was a strategic victory, but a humanitarian disaster.

Editorially, I have chosen snippets from five Arab media comments on “the day after Qusayr.”

Abdel-Rahman al-Rashed, head of Alarabiya TV news channel:

Offering sweets and waving Hezbollah flags in Beirut’s southern suburbs to celebrate the devastation of Qusayr and the displacement of the Syrian town’s people is no less ugly than the sight of women and children fleeing the siege and killings inferno.

After failing for 20 days to overrun the town of 40,000, most of them women and children, Hezbollah and the Syrian air force proceeded to raze Qusayr with mortars, Scuds and 80 airstrikes.

What Hezbollah invaders celebrated yesterday was their glorious capacity to “cleanse Qusayr.”

Hezbollah and Iran won Qusayr but lost the whole Arab world. The Arab street feels more determined today than ever before to rid Syria of its regime and its allied Iranian, Iraqi and Hezbollah forces.

Distributing sweets in the Beirut suburbs and banging drums of victory in Tehran deadened the feeble voices that may have supported the negotiation of a political solution at Geneva-2.

Does the fall of Qusayr mean Assad prevailing and the Syrian revolution ending? No, certainly not.

The insurgents in Syria are not U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan who are set to leave one day. They are an overwhelming majority of Syrians.

Where would more than 15 million Syrians go? How would Hezbollah kill them off, when it suffered scores of casualties and spent three weeks battling to capture a small township like Qusayr?

Syria’s war is a genuine popular war that can only be compared to the wars of the Algerians against the French and the Palestinians against the Israelis.

Do Hezbollah and Iran plan to occupy Syria, and if so for how long?

Tariq Alhomayed, in Saudi Asharq Alawsat:

To see the Syrian regime, Hezbollah and Iran celebrate “victory” against “Takfiris” in Qusayr is tragicomic at best.

Hezbollah falsely claims to be a resistance (to Israel) party. The Iraqi Shiite militias in turn pretend to come from under the cloak of Iraq, a state faking to be democratic.

Sponsored by Iran’s sate institutions, they all flocked to Syria to shore up its bloody, criminal and sectarian regime.

This is the opposite of what al-Qaeda and Jabhat al-Nusra are doing. The two groups intervened short of international backing and political party umbrellas.

The future looks bleak and warrants ample alertness and preparedness. Fighting under the banner of Imam Hussein puts paid to all false slogans in our region. It heralds a new chapter in which Assad’s survival is not a menace to the Syrians’ security only, but to social peace all through the region as well.

Assad and his allies are a bigger threat than al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and all the criminal regimes our modern history has known.

Rajeh el-Khoury in Beirut’s independent an-Nahar:

All regional and international stands seem detached from the tragic Syrian reality. This means the crisis will be long-drawn-out. Its savage episodes will continue until Syria and Syrians are bled to death.

America is detached from reality – not because John Kerry claims Washington was “late” coming to a political process, but because America deliberately chose to sit out the crisis until Syria was destroyed and additional extremists were killed.

Throughout 27 months of bloodshed, Barack Obama sat on the sidelines ruminating his calls for Assad to stand down simply to justify his ban on arming the rebels.

Iran is detached from reality when she imagines her chances, and those of her Lebanese and Iraqi proxies, in Syria will be better than America’s in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Arab League is detached from reality when it suffices with giving Syria’s seat to the opposition without threatening to sever ties with Russia for standing sentinel to protect the massacre of the century.

Areeb Arantawi, on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar news portal:

Whatever the case may be, and notwithstanding the importance of Qusayr in the open-ended Syria war, the regime’s drive to recapture areas under Syrian opposition control remains thorny and long.

It is most unlikely the regime would win a decisive military victory.

From BBC News

What the regime has done is push back the opposition and force it to scale down its expectations.

Today, the regime and its allies are on the offensive while the political and armed oppositions are on their back foot.

And that’s how it will be from hereon -- short of an upset in the quality, quantity, logistical support and training the opposition receives from its Arab, regional and international allies in the next phase.

Post-Qusayr, the regime and its Hezbollah allies are likely to try “mopping up” the Syria-Lebanon border areas. They would tighten their hold on them to cut off the opposition’s supply, reinforcement and smuggling routes to the Syrian interior. That’s easier done now.

Rebel-held Homs neighborhoods are next for regime and Hezbollah forces.

I trust a decisive Homs victory is much more likely after Qusayr.

Battles of s strategic nature will then take place in Aleppo province’s urban and rural areas. Clearing up the vital backup support arteries along Syria’s frontier with its northern neighbor, Turkey, would follow.

The regime is aware of the difficulty of tracking down the armed opposition in every village and township across Syria.

It would feel a conquistador once it succeeds in regaining control of the big cities, where the opposition maintains footholds such as in Aleppo and Homs, and of the international highways linking the major provinces with the coastline and Damascus.

The regime is out to achieve this as quickly as possible before Moscow and Washington stop splitting hairs over Geneva-2. But the regime is bent on doing just that whether Geneva-2 sees the light or not.

Hezbollah celebrates winning the battle for Qusayr

Hezbollah flags, placards and sweets in Beirut's southern suburbs to mark Qusayr's fall

The Qusayr boy with missing limbs

Hadi el-Abdullah (top right) and some of the injured trapped in Qusayr

Syria's army has overrun the strategic border town of Qusayr in Homs province after a blistering offensive spearheaded by thousands of fighters from Iran’s Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah movement.

Rebels said they had pulled out of Qusayr, which lies on a cross-border supply route with neighboring Lebanon and where they had fought fierce battles with government forces and Hezbollah guerrillas for some three weeks.

One Hezbollah fighter told Reuters they took the town in a rapid overnight offensive.

Hezbollah and Syrian forces fought hard to seize Qusayr, which had been in rebel hands for over a year, to reassert control of a corridor through the central province of Homs which links Damascus to the coastal heartland of President Bashar al-Assad's minority Alawite Shiites.

Hezbollah supporters in Beirut's southern suburbs celebrated the fall of Qusayr with gunfire, fireworks and placards and by handing out sweets and candy to passersby.

Iran, which is Hezbollah’s overlord and Assad’s key regional ally promptly congratulated Damascus on retaking Qusayr, according to Iran's Press TV.

A video uploaded to YouTube today by the Qusayr Media Center headed by citizen journalist Hadi el-Abdullah shows some of the hundreds of injured trapped in the town, including a boy with missing limbs.

Some are shown being moved from makeshift field clinics onto the back of pickup trucks.

Over the weekend the UN said it was “extremely alarmed” by reports there were as many as 1,500 wounded people in Qusayr.

Doctors had appealed for the Red Cross to be allowed in to treat the wounded, but Syrian officials said this would only be permitted once the rebels had been defeated.

Civilians who had managed to flee Qusayr described it as "a ghost town, heavily damaged and filled with the sound of bombs," the UN refugee agency UNHCR said yesterday.

Those who had escaped were mainly women and children, because men risked being killed at checkpoints, said spokeswoman Melissa Fleming.

“From the handful of interviews we have done so far, it appears that a new route for displaced people has opened up from the Qusayr area towards Arsal in Lebanon, about 100 kilometers away,” Ms. Fleming noted. She also said that some people flee to Lebanon while others are displaced internally.

The refugees -- mostly women and children -- said the difficult journey to the border has to be made by foot.

“Fighters are said to be targeting people as they try to flee. No route out of Qusayr is considered safe, and there are continued reports of between 700 and 1,500 injured civilians being trapped in Qusayr,” Ms. Fleming said.

“Those we have spoken to say it is unsafe to flee with men, who are at heightened risk of being arrested or killed at checkpoints along the way. None of the refugees was able or willing to identify those who are manning the checkpoints,” the spokesperson said.

She noted that one woman had told UNHCR staff that people in Qusayr were faced with a stark choice, “You leave and risk being killed . . . or you stay and face a certainty of being killed.”

NO GAME-CHANGER

The fall of Qusayr doesn’t change the strategic stalemate in Syria, according to Michael Hanna, senior fellow at Century Foundation think-tank

Speaking to The Guardian, he said:

It is obviously a big blow, not just tactically but psychologically, for the rebels. But we have seen these tactical ebbs and flows before ... People have made far-reaching conclusions that have assumed that these temporary shifts in momentum signify the beginning of the end for either side. I think that is simply premature.

There are still huge swaths of Syrian territory that, I think, are permanently out of control of central government. There are places in the country that are never going to be reclaimed. So I think it’s hard to think of a scenario whereby we can talk about Assad winning. These limitations are going to carry on into the foreseeable future.

It’s hard to see how this becomes a model for reclaiming control of the entire country.

Asked about Hezbollah's role in the battle, Hanna said:

Clearly having Hezbollah engaged in an open and dedicated fashion, not only infused new numbers into the fight, but also well-trained and disciplined fighters. Obviously they did make a very big difference in Qusayr, as has Iranian technical, logistical, and planning support.

Hanna was also pessimistic about the possibility of a diplomatic breakthrough at the Geneva-2 conference.

We are at a strategic stalemate and this is something that could go on for years. I imagine there is going to be a political settlement to this war at some point, but I don’t think that is in the near term ... There is not going to be any resolution or progress at Geneva, if the talks happen.

"Syria and her friends" in 138 seconds

Israel to sit out Syria war and U.S. “late” to peace

Cooking Syria cartoon by hassanbleibel.com

Israeli deputy premier and defense minister says President Bashar al-Assad’s forces currently hold only 40 percent of Syria’s territory and have lost their grip on four neighborhoods in the capital Damascus.

Speaking at the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday, Moshe Yaalon characterized the fighting in Syria as having reached a stalemate, whereby neither side “knows how to handle the other side in order to achieve victory.”

He said Iran’s Lebanese militia Hezbollah is moving “its best troops” into combat in Syria, which has become a battleground between Shiites and Sunnis with each side "massacring the other."

Yaalon reiterated Israel’s policy not to interfere in the Syria war “so long as Israel’s own interests are not being hurt.”

What Israel does not want to see, he said, includes the transfer of advanced weapons, missiles, or chemical weapons from the Damascus government to Hezbollah or a heating up of the frontier and a spillover.

Yaalon confirmed Israel is operating a field hospital on the Syrian border and transferring severely wounded Syrian nationals to Israeli hospitals for treatment.

“Our policy is to help in humanitarian cases, and to that end we are operating a field hospital along the Syrian border,” he said. “In cases where there are badly wounded, we transfer them to Israeli hospitals. We have no intention of opening refugee camps.”

Yaalon began his security briefing with Syria, saying the country had become “a sparring ground for the superpowers.”

The S-300, a state-of-the-art Russian-made missile system, he said, had not yet been delivered to Syria and, if it is eventually transferred, “that will only happen in 2014.”

Oops

In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday the United States came "late" to efforts to end the war in Syria and is trying to prevent the total collapse of the country.

"This is a very difficult process, which we come to late," Kerry said at a news conference, speaking of a U.S.-Russian effort to bring the warring parties to a peace conference, known as Geneva-2, which might lead to a transitional government.

The State Department’s spokeswoman, Jennifer R. Psaki, said Kerry’s remarks had not been intended as a rebuke of the administration’s policy thus far. “It’s not an implied criticism of anyone — more just a recognition that more needs to be done and that’s what we’re focused on,” she said.

Kerry said he spoke with his Russian counterpart on Friday and Sergei Lavrov is "deeply committed" to supporting the conference, but added the situation in Qusayr "could put this kind of thing at risk."

The secretary of state made no mention of Russia having blocked last Saturday a 109-word UN Security Council statement on Qusayr that would have read:

The members of the Security Council express their grave concern about the situation in Qusayr, Syria, and in particular the impact on civilians of the ongoing fighting.

The members of the Security Council strongly call upon all sides to do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties and for the Syrian Government to exercise its responsibility to protect civilians.  They emphasize that those responsible for atrocities or other violations or abuses of applicable international law will be held accountable.

The members of the Security Council call upon the Syrian Government to allow immediate, full and unimpeded access to impartial humanitarian actors, including UN agencies, to reach civilians trapped in Qusayr.

But here is what Kerry did say regarding Syria at yesterday’s news conference with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski:

…With respect to the Turks and the process for Syria, let me just begin by saying that what is happening in Syria is happening because one man, who has been in power with his family for years now, more than 40 years, will not consent to an appropriate process by which the people of Syria can protect minorities, be inclusive, and have the people of Syria decide their future.

He has decided to protect himself and his regime’s interests by reaching out across state lines and actually soliciting the help of Iran on the ground with foreign fighters as well as Hezbollah, a terrorist organization. A designated terrorist organization has now crossed over from Lebanon into Syria and is actively engaged in the fighting.

President Assad is not unwilling to use Scuds against women and children and students and doctors and hospitals. He’s not unwilling to wreak havoc on individual citizens. And today in Qusayr, which is under siege by his forces and the surrogate forces, you have an extraordinary number of civilians who are trapped, and he will not allow the Red Cross and humanitarian aid to go in until the military has finished what it intends to do.

So I think the world is seeing the actions of a person who has lost touch with any reality except his own and who is willing to wreak any kind of punishment on his own – on the people of his country simply so that he can maintain power. And so this situation is obviously intolerable, unacceptable by any standard, and I think all civilized countries would call on the Assad regime to pull back from that and to engage in a legitimate peace process.

Now, with respect to that, I’m confident that Turkey will continue to be a critical player in this. I’m confident Turkey will reach out and resolve these questions. It’s not the first time any government has faced this kind of challenge. And I do expect Foreign Minister Davutoglu and the Prime Minister (Erdogan) to remain engaged in the effort to try to resolve what is happening in Syria.

With respect to Geneva-2, we all understand – I have said from day one – this is a very difficult process, which we come to late. We are trying to prevent the sectarian violence from dragging Syria down into a complete and total implosion, where it has broken up into enclaves and the institutions of the state have been destroyed, with God knows how many additional refugees and how many innocent people killed.

That’s why the effort to try to have an implementation of Geneva 1 take place at a conference. Now, when that ripens, when that becomes a reality is going to be decided by events on the ground and the participants themselves. The United States can push and cajole, and President Obama has instructed all of us to try to take every step possible to protect the people and to provide a venue for this dialogue to take place. But in the end, the people on the ground are going to have to decide that that’s something they’re prepared to engage in.

I spoke with Foreign Minister Lavrov on Friday. We had a good conversation. He remains deeply committed to trying to make this conference happen, as do all of the support group of the people involved with the opposition. But I will say that the possibility of the transfer of S-300s, which will upset the balance of power with Israel as well as the prosecution of this lopsided military initiative in Qusayr and the trapping of civilians and the treatment of civilians, could put this kind of thing at risk. So we hope people will pull back and stay focused on the possibilities of implementing Geneva 1 and having a legitimate conference.

This week – tomorrow, in fact – Under Secretary Wendy Sherman will travel to Geneva. She will meet with Russian counterparts, and we will continue to lay the groundwork for the possibility of a negotiated resolution. And we will stay committed to that possibility notwithstanding the violence on the ground and the difficulties that we face.

Mixing Aleppo and Qusayr won’t win Assad the war

Salam Hindawi reporting & Safwat el-Zayyat analyzing

“Syrian army to storm Aleppo in next to no time” was the title of my post last Tuesday.

I am copying and pasting that May 28 post’s two opening paragraphs for the one today. Here goes:

As fierce fighting rages around the Syrian capital Damascus and the strategic border town of Qusayr, Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters are preparing to storm Aleppo in next to no time.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city of three million and a former commercial center, is now split between rebel and government control.

Ms Salam Hindawi, reporting for Aljazeera from Aleppo city last night, says a mass exodus from Aleppo governorate’s rural areas followed news yesterday that between 3,000 and 5,000 of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s troops and Hezbollah fighters were positioned in the northern rural sector, where they were torching fields and preparing to blitz the city.

Nasser Shadid, another Aljazeera reporter in the area, said at least nine people were killed and many others injured Sunday by a Scud missile on the Kfar Hamra area of Aleppo.

Loveday Morris, reporting for the Washington Post from Beirut, quotes an unnamed senior Hezbollah commander as saying there were about 2,000 Hezbollah fighters in Aleppo province, largely stationed in Shiite towns north of the city.

She writes in part:

The Aleppo battle has started on a very small scale; we’ve only just entered the game,” said the Hezbollah commander in an interview in Beirut on Saturday while on leave from fighting in Qusayr, where he oversees five units. “We are going to go after strongholds where they think they are safe. They are going to fall like dominoes.”

(…) Louay al-Mekdad, political and media coordinator for the Free Syrian Army, said Hezbollah militants had gathered at a military academy in Aleppo’s western district of Hamdaniyeh on Sunday. He put the number of the Shiite movement’s soldiers in the area at 4,000, quoting rebel intelligence.

“We think they are going to engage inside Aleppo and the province,” he said.

In what appeared to be preparation for that, pro-government forces began a push to secure supply lines to the city on Sunday, activists said.

(…) The Hezbollah commander boasted about gains in Qusayr, saying that when he left the battlefield for leave a week ago, the movement controlled 70 percent of the city at the cost of 72 of its men. He said 3,000 Hezbollah fighters are in the town, among “no more than 10,000” in the whole of Syria.

(…) In a sign that Hezbollah may be under more strain than expected, the commander said that seven-days-on, seven-days-off military rotations have been changed to 20 days on before a weeklong leave.

Egyptian military and strategy expert Safwat el-Zayyat is not impressed by the buildup of regime and Hezbollah forces in Aleppo province or anywhere else.

He does not think the Damascus government is making military advances or territorial gains so far.

Zayyat told Aljazeera TV last night:

Much as government troops and Hezbollah fighters are gathering in the northern sector (of Aleppo province), the rebels are confidently moving to the center of Qusayr town – as if to say that Qusayr is Aleppo or any other spot in Syria.

This shows the regime is totally unable to cut off the rebels’ supply routes.

Hundreds of rebels were able to move freely from the north to the south of the country without being challenged by regime forces either from the air or on the ground.

The floods of rebels streaming to Qusayr were not even ambushed once because the roads are wide open.

Do you think the regime, which failed to regain control of Jobar or Qaboun or Barza, has enough troops to try and control the road between Aleppo and A’zaz?

Hezbollah’s military support can’t change much. You need between 400,000 and 500,000 troops to control the whole of Syria and the regime has no more than 60,000 left. Had it had more men, it would not have asked Iran to order Hezbollah’s intervention to try and recapture Qusayr.

By massing troops in the Aleppo area, the regime is simply trying to divert rebels in the north from joining the battles in Hama, Homs and Qusayr.

Qusayr gets an FSA boost and a mean Russian blow

Col. Aqidi in Qusayr town center (top), checking trenches (left) and with Hani el-Abdallah

Col. Aqidi checking on wounded Dr. Fayez Matar and with Drs.Saleh (top right) and Qassem

Col. Abdul-Jabbar Aqidi, member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) Military Council headed by Gen. Salim Idriss, showed up on the frontlines and bombed streets of Qusayr yesterday, saying: “If there’s a will there’s a way” to come into the embattled town.

Aqidi, who is former chief of the Military Council of Aleppo, will presumably assume overall command of opposition forces defending Qusayr, which is under a bloody siege by Syrian troops and Hezbollah guerrillas.

Standing in the devastated town square, he told Hadi el-Abdullah, recognized spokesperson for Qusayr via Skype, he would be staying in the town to defend it.

Aqidi later visited some of the injured in makeshift facilities and talked to a skeleton of medical staff tending to hundreds of people wounded in the onslaught by government forces.

Dr. Fayez Matar is one of the wounded and the remaining medical staff includes Dr. Saleh and Dr. Qassem.

Activists counted 12 airstrikes and two surface-to-surface missiles against Qusayr today.

Russia yesterday blocked a UN Security Council declaration of alarm over the blockade of Qusayr, Security Council diplomats told Reuters.

Britain, president of the 15-nation council, had circulated a draft statement to fellow members voicing "grave concern about the situation in Qusayr, Syria, and in particular the impact on civilians of the ongoing fighting."

Qusayr, near the Syrian-Lebanese border, is usually home to an estimated 30,000 people. Fighting for control of the town has raged for two weeks.

Council statements must be agreed unanimously. Russia blocked the draft text, saying it was "not advisable to speak out as the UN Security Council didn't when Qusayr was taken by the opposition," a council diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Another diplomat confirmed the remarks.

Moscow's move to block the statement highlights the deep chasm between Russia and Western nations on how to deal with the Syria war. Russian diplomats in New York did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Dead children in Qusayr

The draft statement, obtained by Reuters, also urged forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and rebels trying to oust him "to do their utmost to avoid civilian casualties and for the Syrian Government to exercise its responsibility to protect civilians."

It appealed to Assad's government "to allow immediate, full and unimpeded access to impartial humanitarian actors, including UN agencies, to reach civilians trapped in Qusayr."

Diplomats said Russia told council members the best way to deal with Syria was through intensive diplomacy. However, one council diplomat noted that Russia continues to sell weapons to Assad's government.

Moscow and Washington are trying to organize a peace conference in Geneva this month that would involve the government and rebels. There has been wrangling over who should participate in the conference and no date has been set for it.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius suggested today that the conference could take place in July. He said the Syrian government and the opposition must attend what he called "the last chance" for a negotiated solution.

"It's not just about getting round the table and then asking what are we going to talk about. It needs to be prepared. That is why I say that the July date would be suitable," Fabius said.

Both the UN and the Red Cross have issued near simultaneous appeals for immediate access to be granted to Qusayr, where conditions are reported to be desperate.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos and UN human rights head Navi Pillay have all called for the protection of civilians and urged that thousands of trapped residents be allowed to flee the city.

Wounded children in Qusayr

Ban reminded the Damascus government of its responsibility to protect civilians who come under its control, including from the threat of militias. He also called on the warring parties to allow trapped civilians to flee.

In a separate statement later in Saturday, Ms. Amos and Ms. Pillay said they were “extremely alarmed” by reports that there are as many as 1,500 wounded people in the city in urgent need of immediate evacuation for emergency medical treatment.

“The general situation in Qusayr is desperate,” Ms. Amos and Ms. Pillay said based on information they are receiving.

This includes “reports that civilian neighborhoods continue to be indiscriminately attacked, and that other major violations of human rights and international humanitarian law are being committed,” according to the statement.

Activists say escape routes for civilians have become unsafe. They reported this week that Syrian forces attacked a convoy of civilians seeking to flee Qusayr.

In Geneva, the Red Cross expressed alarm over the situation in Qusayr, and appealed for immediate access to deliver aid.

"Civilians and the wounded are at risk of paying an even heavier price as the fighting continues," said the head of ICRC operations in the region, Robert Mardini.

The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the fact both the UN and ICRC have issued urgent statements at the same time is an indication of how desperate they believe the situation has become.

The Geneva-2 watchword is “ceasefire”

From top: Assad, Milosevic and the Chateau de Rambouillet 

By Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia’s analyst, author and kingpin of the impending Al Arab TV news channel, writing in Arabic today for the Saudi-owned pan-Arab daily al-Hayat

You can assume the endeavor to end the Syrian people’s tragedy is wholehearted once you hear them talking at Geneva-2 of a binding ceasefire under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

The watchword is “ceasefire.” After that, they can talk ad nauseam of the need for a shared transitional government with full powers or for national elections next year in which everyone can stand.

The Syrian opposition would overburden itself, disharmonize internally and bicker with allies if it carped too much about the immortality of Assad running for a third term, or about the irrationality of a transitional government that includes people with blood on their hands.

At Geneva-2 – if it convenes at all in mid-month – the spotlight won’t be on the government and opposition delegations.

The spotlight will be on the U.S. secretary of state and Russian foreign minister. They will be doing the hard bargaining.

More exactly, the public eye will be on an American-Saudi-driven international stab at goading the Russians to the UN Security Council.

The Russians have been resisting this for two years while the Syrian people were being butchered. They, and the Iranians in tow, kept repeating: a political solution is the only way forward in Syria. They also kept extolling the merits of the June 2012 Geneva Agreement, which provides for the immediate cessation of armed violence in all its forms and the establishment of a transitional government.

Everyone is now transfixed by the word “negotiations,” when and where they would take place and how a transitional government comprising regime and opposition representatives would be set up.

But the cardinal provision in the Geneva Agreement –i.e. “the immediate cessation of armed violence in all its forms” – is being overpassed.

The regime does not want a ceasefire. The Damascus government and its allies know they can only survive by armed violence.

The regime dithered when it was whispered that a binding ceasefire is in the cards, which is why the Russians had to literally tug Damascus to the negotiating table.

To underscore the importance of a ceasefire for the political solution, we need to trace the Syria crisis back to its roots.

The crisis is not between eastern Syria and western Syria, or between two sects. The opposition, for instance, is not after winning a bigger share in parliament for Aleppo.

At the same time, Damascus is not after specific ministerial portfolios for people to draw parallels between Geneva-2 – if it ever convenes – to the meeting of rival Lebanese leaders in Taef in 1989.

The Syrian revolution is fundamentally the revolution of a national and multi-sectarian population striving for freedom in all governorates.

The population is not making sectarian or provincial demands. Like the Egyptians who flooded Tahrir Square before Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, the overwhelming majority of Syrians forgot all their differences to clamor for regime change, freedom and dignity.

A Syria ceasefire does not mean a pause for talks and the demarcation of frontlines between the sides. What you now have is a Syrian majority wanting to get rid of an oppressive regime and build a new Syria on the same landmass and within unaltered borders.

At Geneva-2, the Syrian regime will try to avoid this.

Not to be overthrown, it would propose a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution that keeps it in power.

It would want to exclude the so-called Takfiri forces it lured into the conflict in the first place.

It could perhaps request the eviction of foreign volunteers from Syrian soil or claim legitimacy to commit this individual or that to justice.

In a show of humility, or in order to waste time, it might even propose a national reconciliation assembly.

What is certain though is the regime will do everything in its power to wriggle out of committing to a binding cessation of armed violence in all its forms.

Something similar happened in early 1999 at Rambouillet, a commune in north-central France, which hosted talks (between then-Yugoslavia and a delegation representing the ethnic-Albanian majority population of Kosovo) on the Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo.

The Americans, Russians and Europeans participated in the talks at Rambouillet, much as they would at Geneva-2. They all knew then what the workable solution was, but they needed to go through the “peace process.”

They were familiar with the brutality and intransigence of Serbian and Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic. They knew him from the earlier 1992-1995 Bosnian War. They were aware the only way to convince him is by force.

He was a prototype of today’s Bashar al-Assad, who represents a sect instead of a population and fights for sectarian instead of national interests.

Like Milosevic, the only way to convince him is by force. Only when cruise missiles and airstrikes reach his bedroom, instead of the Syrian people’s heads, would Assad yield and negotiate.

The Russians invariably clone themselves. They were the ones who obstructed a workable and quick fix solution in Kosovo. They are doing the same in Syria now.

The Americans and Europeans had no choice back in 1999 but to get the Russians to Rambouillet and sanction an interim agreement, which did not last long but opened the door for NATO to do what it should have done from the beginning: air bombardment.

That’s the thing to do after Geneva-2 if the Friends of Syria want to end in earnest the Syrians’ suffering.

Assad cannot put up with a strict and binding ceasefire. Given the carnage and bloodshed to date, peaceful protests against his rule will erupt in every Syrian city and town the moment he commits to one. And he wouldn’t swallow today the mass protests he could not tolerate two years back.

The regime will breach the ceasefire without any doubt, just like Milosevic.

Geneva-2 having bound all sides to the ceasefire under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, everyone would then have to go back to the Security Council.

I expect the opposition’s National Coalition and the head of the Free Syrian Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Salim Idriss, to commit to such an agreement.

Commanders of the FSA and rebel brigades, including Jabhat al-Nusra, would be put on notice that they too would be bombed if they breached the ceasefire agreement.

I doubt Geneva-2 will be held at all -- short of a genuine about-face by Moscow, not Iran or Syria.

But just in case Geneva-2 is held, make sure to eyeball the watchword “ceasefire.”