Syrian rebels push advance into Assad heartland

Alawite cleric Ghazal in captivity (R) and earlier in military fatigue next to Ural 

Syrian rebels are pushing toward President Bashar al-Assad's hometown of Qardaha in Latakia province.

By Monday, the second day of their surprise offensive in the heartland of Assad's minority Alawite-cum-Shiite sect, the rebels had captured some 11 Alawite villages.

The villages include Aramo, 20 kilometers from Qardaha, and Baruda, where the rebels seized visiting Alawite cleric Badreddin Ghazal, a diehard Assad militant.

You can see above a photo of Sheikh Ghazal in military fatigue standing alongside Mihraç Ural aka Ali al-Kayyali, the man I dubbed in May “the ethnic cleanser of Banias,” who was also suspected of masterminding the twin Turkish bombings in Reyhanli.

There is already talk of a “prisoner swap” underway, which would see Ghazal released in exchange for setting free the women held by Assad’s shabiha in Latakia’s sports stadium.

"The rebels are not far from Qardaha, and the threat to Qardaha has moved from being conceivable to being a real one," Sheikh Anas Ayrout, a member of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) who is from the coastal city of Banias, told Reuters.

Monzer Makhous, the SNC representative to France and future Syrian ambassador in Paris who belongs to the Alawite community, tells the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, “The Free Syrian Army’s advance into the coastal region is vital, if only to prevent the regime from carving out a sectarian canton” there.

Saudi suicide Moaz (R) and the Minnigh explosion

Also Monday, the armed opposition captured the key Minnigh airbase in the northern province of Aleppo after an eight-month battle, seizing several tanks and other munitions and taking the base commander and soldiers prisoner.

Warplanes from the base had struck at villages across northern Syria.

Activists on Facebook today give credit for the Minnigh victory to a young Saudi suicide bomber who used an armored vehicle laden with explosives to breach the airbase defenses.

The Saudi suicide was named as “Moaz al-Abdelraheem.”

Egyptian military strategy analyst Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Safwat el-Zayyat last night described Syrian rebel gains in Latakia province as “very significant.”

He told Aljazeera TV’s Syria news anchor that when the armed opposition is able to move from Salma (a village northeast of Latakia) to within five kilometers of al-Haffah, which is the principal gateway to Latakia city, the questions become: Are the rebels planning to widen their bridgehead? Do they intend winning control of Jabal al-Akrad and the hills overlooking Latakia? Are they after cutting Latakia’s roads to Idlib or Aleppo or both?

“All this,” said Zayyat, “shows the regime has no military presence on the ground. It is unable to handle two battlefronts concurrently.”

Zayyat also took issue with yesterday’s report by Human Rights Watch, saying ballistic missiles used by the Syrian military is killing civilians and many children.

He said the HRW report “comes too late. The regime started using ballistic missiles in December 2012 – first against the rural areas in Idlib province.”

Ballistic missiles, said Zayyat, “are meant to leave what the military call ‘large footprints.’  So the regime using Scud missiles with a speed of mach 4, a payload of half a ton or more, and a lethal circuit of some 200 meters against village homes can only be described as a war crime of the first order.”

Syrian rebel tanks roll into the frontline

Syrian rebel tanks rolling into the field of battle yesterday

I have seen tank kills by Syrian rebels using anti-tank guided missiles.

I have also seen rebels driving away tanks captured from Syrian army facilities.

But it is the first time I see rebels in a tank formation rolling into Reef Dimashq (see above my screen grabs from a video posted on YouTube yesterday afternoon).

The formation included one or more of the following: T-72, BMP, Shilka and APC.

As I hinted in yesterday’s post, the Syrian rebels seem to have seized back the military initiative, launching major offensives against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad on several fronts.

They used tanks and heavy artillery to advance to within 12 miles of the Assad family’s mountain hometown of Qardaha in the province of Latakia, according to activists and human rights groups quoted by the Washington Post.

Videos posted by rebel groups on YouTube showed tanks firing on mountain villages and rebel groups raising their flags over captured government positions in four villages belonging to members of Assad’s minority Alawite-cum-Shiite sect.

The Latakia Coordination Committee said scores of Alawites had fled from the countryside into the city.

Charles Lister of IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Center said the scale of the offensive, which appeared to be the biggest yet in Assad’s heartland, would come as a blow to the recent confidence displayed by the regime.

Aleppo's central prison under fire

Rebels in the northern province of Aleppo are meanwhile pounding Aleppo’s central prison ahead of storming it to free some 4,000 men and women being held there.

They are also threatening to seize Nubl and Zahra, two Shiite villages loyal to Assad. Activists say Assad’s allies, among them fighters from Iran and Hezbollah, had reinforced both villages.

The rebels had earlier revealed a list of six demands, including the surrender of Assad forces and their weapons, followed by a power sharing deal between the villagers and the rebels.

Assad said yesterday the country's crisis can only be solved by using an “iron fist” to eradicate “terror.”

Speaking at an Iftar meal in the countdown to the end of Ramadan, he also dismissed the political opposition as a “flop” that could play no role in solving the country's brutal war.

“No solution can be reached with terror except by striking it with an iron fist,” Assad said.

“I don't think any sane human being would think terrorism can be dealt with via politics… There may be a role for politics in dealing with terrorism preemptively,” but as soon as “terrorism” rears its head, it has to be struck down.

Also yesterday, Assad got cheering words from Tehran, where his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rohani said the Islamic Republic’s strong support of the Syrian president is unflinching.

“No force on earth can destabilize or undermine the deep-rooted, historic and strategic relations between the two friendly peoples and countries," Rohani told Syrian Prime Minister Wael al-Halki, who was in Tehran for the Iranian president’s inauguration.

In New York, Human Rights Watch today said in a press release: “Ballistic missiles fired by the Syrian military are hitting populated areas, causing large numbers of civilian deaths, including many children.

“The most recent attack Human Rights Watch investigated, in Aleppo governorate on July 26, 2013, killed at least 33 civilians, including 17 children.



“Human Rights Watch has investigated nine apparent ballistic missile attacks on populated areas that killed at least 215 people that local residents identified as civilians, including 100 children, between February and July.

“It visited seven of the sites. There were no apparent military targets in the vicinity of seven of the nine attacks investigated by Human Rights Watch. In two cases there were nearby military objectives that may have been the government force’s intended targets, but were not struck in either attack…”

Why Geneva-2 on Syria is a dead duck

Obama arms Syrian rebels (www.hawaiireporter.com)

According to today’s Wall Street Journal, “The Central Intelligence Agency has begun moving weapons to Jordan from a network of secret warehouses and plans to start arming small groups of vetted Syrian rebels within a month, expanding U.S. support of moderate forces battling President Bashar al-Assad, according to diplomats and U.S. officials briefed on the plans.

“The shipments, related training and a parallel push to mobilize arms deliveries from European and Arab allies are being timed to allow a concerted push by the rebels starting by early August, the diplomats and officials said, revealing details of a new covert plan authorized by President Barack Obama and disclosed earlier this month.

“The CIA is expected to spend up to three weeks bringing light arms and possibly antitank missiles to Jordan. The agency plans to spend roughly two weeks more vetting an initial group of fighters and making sure they know how to use the weapons that they are given, clearing the way for the first U.S.-armed rebels to enter the fight, diplomats briefed on the CIA's plans said.

“Talks are under way with other countries, including France, about pre-positioning European-procured weapons in Jordan. Saudi Arabia is expected to provide shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles, known as MANPADs, to a small number of handpicked fighters, as few as 20 at first, officials and diplomats said. The U.S. would monitor this effort, too, to try to reduce the risk that the MANPADs could fall into the hands of Islamists.

“Up to a few hundred of the fighters will enter Syria under the program each month, starting in August, according to diplomats briefed on CIA plans.

“At that rate, U.S. and Saudi officials believe it would take four to five months before there are enough rearmed and trained moderate fighters to make a meaningful difference against Assad's forces and their Hezbollah allies, according to diplomats and U.S. officials…”

Writing today for the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat, Lebanese political analyst Abdelwahhab Badrakhan explains why talk of a political solution in Syria anytime soon is haywire:

At the dawn of the revolution, Syria-watchers expected the regime to propose a live-and-let-live compromise to weather the storm, if not to take the wind out of the sails of protesters.

The Syria-watchers were citing previous instances when the regime caved in and agreed terms set by previous adversaries such as Israel, Turkey’s military and Washington.

The regime will now do the same to live on and avoid a losing war against its people, they were saying.

The Syria-watchers were proven wrong when the regime refused to cede an inch to its opponents and chose to engage them in a do-or-die struggle.

A year-and-a-half later, some people thought Iran, which was backing the regime and milking Iraq to fund it, would use her pragmatism and realism to check Damascus’ recklessness, having failed to use backroom talks on her nuclear program to save it. She did not.

Iran chose not to build on Russia’s and some Western states’ amenability to Assad to thrash out a reasonable denouement to the crisis.

Instead, she dovetailed Assad’s plans and supplemented them with an undertaking to foil the “conspiracy against the Axis of Resistance.”

Iran’s fervor to “ignite the region” and stoke the fires of sectarianism now surpass the regime’s zeal. She had no qualms about turning Hezbollah forces into guns-for-hire and contract killers in Syria and Lebanon.

Until the past few weeks, there were also people who thought change would turn up in Moscow.

Russia is a Big Power carrying the responsibility to protect (R2P). She is aware that her and the others’ talk of external “interventions” is sheer manipulation of the crisis. Proof is that at no one stage did the regime truly and directly risk being overthrown.

Moreover, in their uninterrupted contacts, the Americans let the Russians know that the West did not intend to intervene in Syria and that a political solution was and remains the immutable goal of the Obama Administration.

The Russians refuse to play ball. It serves them well to let the crisis drag on and to persevere in rubbing the West’s nose so long as the regime holds out.

By insisting to manage the crisis, Russia finds herself adopting the policies of a rogue state with a mindset cloned from Iran and Syria.

All this to say that waiting for a political solution anytime soon is like waiting for Godot -- it is simply not on the regime or its two principal partners’ mind.

G7 leaders must have felt this from their Russian partner at the G7+1 summit in Northern Ireland.

They must have realized their Russian partner wants to use them as tools to continue the Syria war.

He is their partner in the war on the “terrorists” he uses against them.

He is the G7’s partner in figuring an end to the crisis. But he is also the partner of the Syrian and Iranian regimes in distancing that end pending their victory on the battleground.

He is the G7’s partner in the search for stability in the region. But he is also the partner of the Syrian and Iranian regimes in plans to overwhelm the G7’s Arab allies.

He is their partner in forestalling sectarian conflicts in and around Syria. But he is also the partner of the Syrian and Iranian regimes in stoking the fires of religious wars.

G7 leaders were made aware their Russian partner is not interested in Geneva-2 unless it upholds the regime in one way or another.

Washington’s decision to arm Syrian opposition forces and to re-balance their fight with the regime and bring about a diplomatic solution when none is in sight is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there.

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.