Syria's Shell Game

Bashar al-Assad knows one thing quite well - how to remain in power and to preserve his military assets. The UN and Arab League have been trying to get Assad to stop his brutal crackdown against opposition groups looking for social and political reform, and UN Envoy Kofi Annan claimed to have a deal in place that would bring about a ceasefire.

The only problem is that Assad has no interest in a ceasefire. He's looking to crush the opposition and eliminate an existential threat to his regime.

So, he's giving some signals that he's complying, all while accelerating and intensifying the crackdown elsewhere. He's moving tanks and artillery from one place to another as though that will somehow mean his regime is complying with the terms of the ceasefire.

He can move tanks and artillery from one town to a neighboring town, but those tanks and artillery can still rain down death and mayhem - and they are.

US Ambassador Robert Ford released commercial satellite photos of different areas of Syria to show the shell game underway.

It's nothing I haven't expected to see. After all, Assad is working under the same rules his father did - when your regime is under threat, crush the opposition and make it an object lesson on never to question the authority of the regime. It's the Hama rules in action.

So, despite the fact that the opposition has more technology and the Internet at its disposal to show the world Assad's brutalization in action, Assad can thumb his nose as the world because the world simply can't act.

Assad's Brutal Crackdown Continues; US Ambassador Posts Photos Showing Assad's Forces In Action

For months, Bashar al-Assad has been claiming that the violence racking his country has been due to terrorists and outside forces conspiring against his regime, and that he's been dedicated to reforming but for the ongoing violence.

Just today, Assad's regime has claimed that terrorist forces were responsible for the shelling in the city of Homs, which has resulted in significant numbers of civilian casualties.

I know that's complete nonsense. Everyone else knows it's complete nonsense, but now we appear to have photographic proof that this is nonsense.

US Ambassador Robert Ford posted photos to Facebook indicating military units deployed against Homs, including artillery units arrayed for an assault. The photo on top was released by the US State Department and indicates artillery units arranged for a barrage against a target. You can tell that it's artillery because of the shadows extending from the vehicles.

The U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, on Friday said he posted satellite imagery on Facebook to show proof of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces attacking residential neighborhoods.

Ford, speaking to NBC News from Paris days after the Feb. 6 closing of the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, said shelling by Syrian forces was “just horrific and we want that government violence to stop.”

Ford called Syrian government claims that terrorists are shelling Homs “ridiculous.” (The city sometimes is referred to as Hims in English.)

The commercial satellite image on Facebook, titled "Security Operations Escalate in Hims," is dated Feb. 6 and has labels pointing out burning buildings, smoke, impact craters, military vehicles and armored vehicles.

The western Syrian city of Homs, where opposition to Assad is strong, has endured a week of bombardments that have killed dozens of civilians and drawn condemnation from world leaders.

"I hear the devastating stories about newborns in Homs dying in hospitals where electricity has been cut and when we see disturbing photos offering proof that the regime is using mortars and artillery against residential neighborhoods, all of us become even more concerned about the tragic outcome for Syrian civilians," Ambassador Robert Ford wrote in a note accompanying the satellite image on Facebook.

At least 300 people are believed to have been killed in Assad's assault on Homs in the past week, and the body count continues rising as his loyalists dig in for the long haul.

The violence continues across the country, and it appears that rebel forces managed to kill a Syrian general.

Meanwhile, another UN Draft Resolution was heading for consideration at the Security Council, but one has to wonder whether it's futile given Russian and Chinese obstinacy and protection of Assad's brutal regime. Saudi Arabia is circulating this draft, and it's very much like the one that Russia and China vetoed last week.

Syria's Army Continues Occupation of ... Syria

There's perhaps no better way to describe the situation in Syria other than calling it the Syrian army's occupation of the country.

Military forces are everywhere, particularly in and around cities that have continued to field protesters on a regular basis in opposition to Bashar al Assad. Yet, Assad's forces have backed out of Hama for the moment, ceding control to the protesters themselves:

We saw a country that’s very much in revolt. We saw the army deployment inside Syria, which looked like an army occupation of a country.

In Hama, the revolt has begun to help Syrians imagine life after the father-and-son dictatorship.

We went into the city of Hama. It’s the fourth-largest city in Syria. It was interesting to us because it’s the only city where the security forces decided to withdraw after several deadly clashes with antigovernment protesters. Now, they’re basically outside the city. Inside, there’s no police, no army. It’s under the control of the protesters.

It was very tense — to be honest — and very, very difficult to work. We were taken in by some of the leaders of the protest movement. They were very nervous, especially of us getting seen by people who might be informers.

I mostly had to work at night and mostly from cars. I wasn’t allowed to roam around very much. The only thing I was able to do on the ground was join this protest that happened past midnight, which I hear happened every day. I was able to join the protesters for a half hour. Then I was whisked away in a car. The idea was to not get seen. There are a lot of informers for the regime still in the city. That could have created a huge problem for us and for the people who were taking care of us.

Journalists are unable to freely roam the country, and the reporters/photographers who provided the New York Times with this report put their lives in the hands of strangers and had to constantly worry about informers revealing their whereabouts to Syrian authorities.

Syria continues warning US and French diplomats not to leave Damascus to view the scenes of protests themselves.

Up to 50 people have died in Homs this week alone.



Despite the bloodletting and increased carnage, the US has softened its rhetoric towards Assad's regime and has stopped short of calling for regime change after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ramped up the rhetoric last week following the kerfuffle over Ambassador Robert Ford's visit to Hama.

But Clinton backed off on Saturday, saying the administration still hopes that Assad's regime will stop the violence and work with protesters to carry out political reforms. On Monday, European Union ministers also called on Assad to implement reforms and made it clear they still hoped he would do so.

The change in tone reflects the continuing debate over whether Syria's ruler is likely to survive the current turmoil, and how best to use the limited diplomatic tools available to pressure him.

For now, a State Department official said, it's unclear whether the administration will ramp up the rhetoric and officially call for Assad's departure.

"Whether we take it farther will depend on events on the ground," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. "We need to think through carefully what we say."

The administration has struggled to send a consistent message since antigovernment protests exploded across the Arab world in January.

I see this as a fundamental mistake as expect Assad to use this opportunity to further engage and eliminate opposition groups and protesters.

Assad's Two-Faced Statements

Bashar al Assad is no different than your typical dictator or despot. When confronted with overwhelming evidence that Syria is in the wrong, he's lashing out at the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for provocations.

Both the U.S. and France strongly criticized Syria after pro-government mobs attacked the American and French embassies in Damascus on Monday, smashing windows and spray-painting obscenities and graffiti on the walls.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned Clinton's statement as "a provocative reaction."

"Syria stresses that the legitimacy of its political leadership is based neither on the United States nor on others, it is exclusively from the will of the Syrian people," the statement said.

President Bashar Assad is facing a four-month-old uprising that has posed the gravest challenge to his family's 40-year dynasty in Syria, one of the most tightly controlled countries in the Middle East.

He has tried to crush the unrest using a mixture of deadly force and promises of reform, but the revolt has only grown more defiant. Enraged by a government crackdown that activists say has killed some 1,600 people, the protest movement is now calling for nothing less than the downfall of the regime.

Syria's deadly government crackdown has led to international condemnation and sanctions.

The US didn't provoke hundreds of thousands of Syrians to take to the streets to protest Assad's brutal regime. Assad's brutality brought that about on its own. Failed economic policies brought about the massive protests. The US had nothing to do with any of that.

What Assad did do was condone the rioters aimed at the US and French embassies where rioters vandalized and attempted to overrun the security posts and cause unspecified damage to the US ambassador's home. Those riots would not have occurred unless Assad bused them in and told security to be elsewhere when it happened.



This is far from the first time that Syrian security has looked the other way when rioters have attacked embassies. During the cartoon jihad, Danish and Norwegian embassies were torched by crowds in Damascus protesting the free speech rights to post cartoons depicting Mohammad. Those were well-planned riots with a death toll, but they were also acts of war against the countries whose embassies were damaged or destroyed.

Just as those were acts of war so too were the attacks against the embassies of the United States and France yesterday. International law provides protections for embassies and diplomatic property as though they were land of the foreign country. An attack on the US embassy is the same as an attack on the United States.

Now, Assad may claim that his regime didn't condone the rioting, but in a country where his regime is brutally cracking down against protests on a daily basis, that they've managed to overlook rioters hell-bent on attacking foreign embassies seems to be a stretch. He might have just enough plausible deniability to avoid direct and immediate consequences, but the war of words has been ratcheted up quite a bit since US Ambassador Ford went to Hama to witness the protests first-hand.

Since then, Assad has been waging an ever louder war of words with the US and sought to intimidate protesters in the US in addition to the actions within Syria. Some might argue that the Syrian ambassador to the US was put in that position by his masters in Damascus, but if he's as truly Westernized as claimed or believed, then he would have known that those actions would have resulted in serious repercussions. Syria Ambassador to the US Imad Moustapha, if those claims are to be believed, would appear to be the kind of individual that the US should be trying to turn against his masters in Damascus, just as other ministers and high ranking officials have fled and turned against the Libyian regime of Mumar Khadafi.

Let's not forget that Syria has been trying to influence the outcome in Lebanon for years, has been caught receiving arms shipments from Iran (and one such shipment that was intercepted and being stored in Cyprus pending a disposition exploded with deadly consequences earlier this week). They've been arming and sheltering terrorist groups throughout the region, including Hamas and Hizbullah.

This is not a regime interested in anything other than remaining in power and using whatever means at its disposal to do so. Assad's following the Hama rules, and it's the only playbook that his regime knows.

War of Words Continues Over Syrian Crackdown Against Protests

The war of words between the diplomatic corps of the US, France and Syria continues. Syria has called the US ambassador Robert Ford and his French counterpart to protest their visits to Hama to witness the protests.

That comes a day after the Syrian ambassador was called to the US State Department in Washington DC to protest Syrian diplomats photographing and videotaping American protesters outside the Syrian embassy as a means to intimidate protesters.

It comes as no surprise that Iran is backing Syria's view on US Ambassador Robert Ford's visit to Hama to witness first hand the protests against the regime of Bashar Assad.

Note the key difference here - Syrian diplomats are attempting to intimidate legitimate protesters and the American and French diplomats were simply attempting to witness protesters in Hama demonstrate against the autocratic and brutal regime of Bashar al Assad.

Assad's regime simply cannot tolerate dissent and anything that even comes close to backing the protests is seen as a threat to be dealt with accordingly.

Meanwhile, I don't consider calls by the Syrian Vice President for a transition to democracy to be credible or trust-worthy. After all, Assad has gone on various media outlets claiming he was reforming or providing amnesty or otherwise giving in to various demands by the protesters, but then turns around to brutally suppress protests and continues murdering, torturing, and detaining thousands.

The Syrian regime has used a mix of brute force and tentative promises of reform to try to quell the uprising, which was inspired by the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. Some 1,600 civilians and 350 members of security forces have been killed since demonstrations began, activists say.

Al-Sharaa acknowledged that the promise of reforms would not have come without the uprising.

"It must be recognized, that without the blood sacrifices that was shed by civilians and soldiers ... that this national dialogue would not have been held, at this high level of supervision, under the lens of cameras," he said.

But at the same time, he condemned some protesters as tools of foreign agents seeking to enflame sectarian tensions and divide the country — echoing Assad's position.

The government accuses foreign conspirators and thugs for the unrest, not true reform-seekers.

The conference was a rare step in a country where people rarely criticize the regime publicly or directly, fearing retribution by the pervasive security forces. Though the main opposition boycotted the dialogue, some opposition figures, intellectuals and members of parliament were on the other side of the table.

On live Syrian television — which usually is a tightly controlled medium for the regime — a series of intellectuals slammed the government for using force against protesters.

Still, leading opposition figures and some of the coordinators of the anti-government uprising said they would not participate in the dialogue, saying it sought to whitewash the regime's brutal crackdown.

"They are blockading (restive) cities, and killing demonstrators, arresting people and torturing people to death," said Omar Idilbi, a spokesman for a loose network of anti-government activists. "That cannot create a good environment for dialogue."

At the same time, Syrian businessmen linked with Assad are attempting to evade sanctions imposed on the regime. This includes Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf

Syria Continues Crackdown, Even Begins Intimidating Protesting Crowds In US

Syria continues its brutal crackdown against Syrian opposition groups and the war of words between the US and Syria is escalating. US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford was in Hama yesterday to witness the demonstrations and the Syrian regime claimed that Ford was meeting with saboteurs of the Syrian regime.

Now comes word that Syrian diplomats in the US were filming and photographing protesters in the US.

The Syrian ambassador was summoned on Wednesday by Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Eric Boswell after reports emerged that employees of the Syrian Embassy videotaped and still-photographed demonstrators in front of the embassy.

"We received reports that Syrian mission personnel under Ambassador Mustapha’s authority have been conducting video and photographic surveillance of people participating in peaceful demonstrations in the United States," said State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland.

"The United States Government takes very seriously reports of any foreign government actions attempting to intimidate individuals in the United States who are exercising their lawful right to freedom of speech as protected by the U.S. Constitution," she said.

"We are also investigating reports that the Syrian government has sought retribution against Syrian family members for the actions of their relatives in the United States exercising their lawful rights in this country and will respond accordingly," Nuland added.

U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford also made waves in recent days when he decided to visit the city of Hama in Syria, this time without being accompanied by any Syrian officials, who registered a complaint over the incident.

Bashar al Assad is stopping at nothing to try and retain power, and will go so far as to intimidate protesters in the US to do so.

Ambassador Ford was apparently well received by the residents of Hama:



The video further shows that the crowds continue massing in protest against Assad's regime and shows no sign of letting up despite the brutal crackdown that has left more than 1,500 dead and thousands injured and tens of thousands detained.

Security forces have killed at least 15 people and arrested more than 200 people in Syria, activists say, as Human Rights Watch denounced a "deliberate policy" to disperse protesters with deadly force.

The deaths came as Damascus accused the US envoy of inciting violence in Hama - where nearly half a million people protested on Friday - a charge roundly denied by Washington, which accused the Syrian embassy of spying on demonstrators in the United States.

Opposition activists reported five deaths on Friday in the central city of Homs, two in the capital's commercial neighbourhood Medan, and six in the Dmeir area, east of Damascus.
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Security forces machine-gunned protesters at Maaret al-Numan in the northwest, killing one and wounding five, an activist said.

Soldiers also fired at a family car on the Hama-Aleppo road near Maaret al-Numan, killing a man and wounding his wife and two daughters, the activist added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces had also arrested more than 200 people across the country on Friday, more than half of them in Homs.

Assad has got to go, and it is well past time for the UN to refer the matter to the ICC for crimes against humanity.