DAMASCUS—Syria’s military expanded its reach to a fourth border by deploying forces to the remote towns of Deir el-Zour province near the frontier with Iraq, a volatile tribal area, stretching the capacity of its military.
Tanks began heading toward al-Boukamal on the Iraqi border on Tuesday, activists and residents said, but hadn’t advanced into the province as of Thursday.
Protesters hold a child up during a demonstration against President Bashar al-Assad in Deir el-Zour, Syria, on Thursday.
Protesters hold a child up during a demonstration against President Bashar al-Assad in Deir el-Zour, Syria, on Thursday.
Unrest in Syria
Despite the rising death toll from weeks of unrest, people across Syria continue to protest the government of President Bashar al-Assad. See events by day.
Meanwhile, in a sign of the growing pressure on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to respond to protests, Rami Makhlouf—a first cousin of the president who is considered Syria’s wealthiest businessman—announced late Thursday he would sell his shares in the telecom company SyriaTel and relinquish his real-estate properties to the state.
Mr. Makhlouf, who monopolizes business life in Syria, has been a symbol of corruption for the anti-government protesters, who have chanted slogans against him. Mr. Makhlouf is among members of Mr. Assad’s regime sanctioned by the U.S. and European Union for his role in the protest crackdown.
“I will not allow myself to be a burden on Syria, its people, or its president,” Mr. Makhlouf said in a televised news conference. He said he was responding to rumors by “conspirators” aiming to spread chaos in Syria, maintaining the government’s line that the uprising is instigated by Islamists and foreign agents bent on destroying the country. The move, however, was widely seen as a means for the president to relieve himself of protest targets.
Syria’s military already is spread across the vast northwestern area bordering Turkey, and has remained deployed in its southern region, where protests started in Deraa in mid-April. A military campaign against the western town of Tal Kalakh last month sent thousands of Syrians fleeing into Lebanon. A similar scenario unfolded on the border with Turkey last week, which now hosts at least 8,900 Syrian refugees.
via Syrian Forces Spread to New Area Near Iraq Border – WSJ.com.
Syrian troops have extended operations to tighten their stranglehold on towns and villages that joined an uprising against the regime.
Additional forces were sent as an envoy of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad was to hold talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Human rights activists said security forces were sweeping through villages and towns near the flashpoint town of Jisr al-Shughour, in Idlib province, forcing refugees to flee across the border with Turkey.
“Soldiers are heading to Maaret al-Numan. They are coming from the cities of Aleppo and Hama,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Witnesses said security forces were preventing residents from leaving Idlib province, and reported they were shooting at people who attempted to elude military checkpoints.
Protesters have described the operation in the northern mountains as a scorched-earth campaign, while Syrian soldiers who deserted to Turkey have alleged they were forced to commit atrocities there.
Davutoglu will meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s special representative Hasan Turkmani in Ankara on Wednesday evening.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will travel to southern province of Hatay on Wednesday to observe the living conditions of Syrians who fled to Turkey escaping violence in Syria.
Sources told the AA that Davutoglu would depart for Hatay in the next hour.
Davutoglu will meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s special representative Hasan Turkmani in Ankara on Wednesday evening.
Davutoglu’s meeting with the Turkish ambassadors commissioned in the Middle East to discuss the latest developments in the region and in Syria is expected to be postponed to Thursday.
Fearing a massacre, thousands of Syrians flock to Turkey as protesters in the US demand the UN take action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Lindsey Parietti reports..
via Video: Syrians flee violence to Turkey | Gamut News.
By A WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER in Damascus and NOUR MALAS in Antalya, Turkey
Syrian forces using tanks and machine guns pressed into towns outside Homs, the country’s third-largest city, in an apparent effort to shut down the area’s broad-based opposition movement, as activists meeting in Turkey drafted a road map for their effort to oust President Bashar al-Assad.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images Activists chanted slogans against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad after a meeting of opposition groups in Antalya, Turkey on Thursday.
At least 25 people were killed by security forces Thursday in Rastan, north of Homs, according to activists and Homs residents with family members in the town, continuing what has been one of the deadliest crackdowns by the regime since the start of the uprising three months ago.
Rastan and the nearby town of Talbiseh have been scenes of large and sustained protests in recent weeks, as powerful tribal and merchant clans in the region have thrown their weight behind the opposition movement.
Residents have also reported incidents in which protesters in the region have fought back against security forces and members of Mr. Assad’s ruling Alawite ethnic minority, which has been the subject of growing resentment from the Sunni majority around Homs.
Many residents in the area own guns, which are easily smuggled over the border from Lebanon. The area is also home to tribal families with codes that dictate that the spilling of blood must be avenged, raising the potential that opponents of the regime will take up arms.
Ethnic tensions in the area were stirred in late April, when tanks belonging to predominantly Alawite army brigades moved into Sunni neighborhoods of Homs.
Unrest in Syria
Despite the rising death toll from weeks of unrest, people across Syria continue to protest the government of President Bashar al-Assad. See events by day.
Residents said armed Alawite gangs backing the Assad regime set up checkpoints in their neighborhoods, helped crack down on protests and ransacked houses in restive areas.
In one incident, on May 20—a day of nationwide protests in which at least 11 people were killed in Homs—a fight broke out between adjacent Alawite and Sunni neighborhoods, a resident said.
A resident of Deir Baalbe, a poor area close to the Alawite-majority district of al-Zahara, said tensions between the two groups were rising.
“We look next door and see people with jobs and decent services, whilst in our area we have nothing,” he said.
Homs residents say armed clashes with supporters of the Assad regime have been limited, and have grown out of opposition to the government, not to the dominant sect.
“The people on the streets of Homs don’t have a problem with spilled blood anymore,” a resident said. “In some cases they’re instigating the security forces because they’re tired and they’re angry and they’re fed up.”
Syria’s government—echoed by many Syrians and supporters of the regime—has often pointed to neighboring Iraq as an example of what they say is the kind of violent, sectarian power struggle that could break out if the Assad regime were to fall.
Tanks moved to surround several towns around Homs Saturday night, activists and residents said, in what has become the Syrian regime’s standard procedure for dealing with towns with large protest movements.
Communications, electricity and water were cut, before soldiers and security forces carried out shootings and ransacked houses, residents said.
The death toll since security forces began a siege in the area Sunday has risen to more than 70, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, a nationwide activist network that tallies only victims who have been identified by name.
Meanwhile, Syrian opposition groups meeting in Turkey drafted a statement calling on President Assad to step down and hand over power temporarily to the vice president until a transitional council is formed and a new constitution drafted.
They also laid the groundwork for a plan to support protesters working toward that goal.
At the conference, in the Turkish coastal town of Antalya, some 300 activists elected representatives who would name a nine-member committee to implement a support strategy for the protesters.
Attendees also committed more than $200,000 to finance the protests and pay compensation to families of those killed during the uprising.
Of the more 300 activists attending, almost all were supporting the movement from outside the country. Only one or two dozen attendees were Syria-based organizers.
The group has yet to bridge the divide between younger, street protesters and older, exiled opposition activists trying to create a political alternative to Mr. Assad, observers said.
A protester burns a picture of President Bashar al-Assad in Istanbul. According to one Syrian activist, fear is slowly dying as similar scenes are being witnessed inside Syria. (AFP/Bulent Kilic)
“Christians to Beirut and the Alawites to the coffin.”
This chant, which some Syrians say they’ve heard during demonstrations in their country, alludes to what many Syrian minorities fear might happen should the 40-year rule of the Baath regime come to an end.
Many experts agree that President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite ruling a majority-Sunni country, has managed to keep his grip on power in part thanks to mutual backing between his regime and the country’s other minorities, a number of which is made up of educated, middle-class Christians. As a result, it comes as no surprise that a number of them voice worry about the regime’s possible downfall.
At the same time, “The regime has an active interest in frightening the Christians. And if you want to frighten someone, it’s always good if you have some evidence,” argues Professor Volker Perthes, director of SWP, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, referring to the abovementioned chants.
The regime, some experts say, is making it seem that fanatical Muslims are prepared to take over should the president and his cronies be pushed out.
But should Syria’s Christian community, which is around 10 percent of the population, actually be afraid?
A number of upper-middle-class Christians are still undecided, Ahed Al Hendi, a Syrian political refugee currently working for CyberDissidents.org in Washington, DC, told NOW Lebanon.
Many who have their own businesses fear the instability, said Al Hendi, who describes himself as a non-practicing Christian. They are pro-Assad and scared of the ascent to power of the Muslim Brotherhood or Salafists should Assad fall. “But I think it’s paranoia – I don’t think it is possible to have an Islamic dominance. For many reasons,” he said, starting with the fact that the population in Syria is much more diverse than in the rest of the region.
Compared to Egypt’s estimated 94-6 Muslim-to-Christian ratio, “Syria has Kurds, Alawites, Christians, and an overall more secular vibe, so it’s different,” he said.
“Christians seem to avoid strife and tend to their own business,” said one Lebanese woman, who is married to a Syrian Christian and just returned from Damascus. “But if you scratch a bit beneath the surface, you know that in their hearts, they feel the regime is wrong, [that it is] a dictatorship,” she said. The woman, who asked that her name not be printed to protect her in-laws in Syria, also said that the number of Christians engaged in the demonstrations is beginning to climb.
According to Professor Perthes, Christians and Alawites have been taking part in the demonstrations all along.
“The opposition has always made it very clear that confessional belonging doesn’t count for them,” he said during a phone interview with NOW Lebanon, noting longtime Christian and Alawite opposition activists Michel Kilo and Aref Dalila, respectively.
Unlike traditional sectarian or class battles, “The uprising in Syria… is rather a question of marginalization in a country where wealth is very much concentrated in Damascus,” stressed Perthes, noting that outlying areas, such as Homs and Hama, were always a “revolutionary hotspot.”
“It’s true, people are seeing it as a Muslim thing, because people are coming out of the mosque, but it’s known about Syria that there is no place to gather people without looking suspicious except in the mosques, or in football matches,” noted Al Hendi.
A video titled “Christians are with the Syrian revolution” that was uploaded onto YouTube on May 16 features Mar Agnathious Joseph the Third, Patriarch of Antioch for Syrian Catholics, stressing that Christians in Syria seek civil rights for everyone and have long been united with all the Syrian people to make the country prosper.
“One thing I would say is that the Christian community in Syria are very much citizens of Syria. They are very well grounded, a substantial minority, that has played a role in history,” said Harry Hagopian, an international lawyer in London and Middle East advisor of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in England and Wales. But he stressed that there are tensions across all communities in Syria today, and that people should be wary of speculating too much on the situation from outside.
“My understanding is that many of those Christian communities would be happy and open to the sense of reform being requested for the past weeks,” he said, though he added it is hard to tell what the future holds, referring to the difficult plight of the Christians in Iraq and recent sectarian clashes in Egypt.
“But let me say another thing before we jump to conclusions: I have also been informed by many people that what is happening in Egypt,” Hagopian said in a reference to recent Muslim-Christian violence there, “has a lot to do with a sense of incitement that is being promoted, propagated and fed in by people from the former regime.”
Al Hendi stresses that the fear of sectarian strife in Syria is not realistic and stems from paranoia.
What’s more, things seem to be changing. “People are tearing photos of Assad out on the street,” he said. “We would have never even imagined this a few weeks ago. I think the fear is slowly starting to go.”
via Lebanon news – NOW Lebanon -Should Syrian Christians be afraid?.
