Which really makes it part of WWIII when you think about it (before the thing becomes official with the attack on Iran).
"Troops in Syria storm defiant town" September 28, 2011|By Zeina Karam, Associated Press
BEIRUT - Syrian troops firing machine guns mounted on tanks stormed a rebellious town in central Syria before dawn yesterday as part of military operations aimed at crushing the six-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad, activists said.
The offensive in Rastan, just north of the central city of Homs and on the highway to Turkey, continued through yesterday morning, leaving at least 20 people wounded, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Rastan has emerged as a hotbed of dissent against Assad’s autocratic regime during six months of antigovernment protests, and alleged army deserters have frequently clashed there with the military and security forces in the past.
The Local Coordination Committees activist network, the Observatory, and other groups reported yesterday’s attacks in Rastan. They said the tanks and armored vehicles entered Rastan early yesterday and dozens of troops were deployed.
The United Nations estimates that more than 2,700 civilians have been killed in the government’s crackdown on the uprising that began in mid-March, inspired by the Arab revolutions that have toppled autocratic rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.
The Syrian government’s bloody crackdown has prompted the international community, including the United States and European nations, to impose stiff sanctions on the regime.
Assad insists the unrest is being driven by terrorists and Islamic extremists acting out a foreign conspiracy to fracture Syria.
Ignoring the mounting death toll from his government’s bloody crackdown, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem of Syria told the United Nations on Monday that external critics were to blame for the violence and for causing delays in Assad’s plans for democratic reforms.
In a speech to the UN General Assembly, he sought to paint the Assad regime as having been on the brink of wide-ranging democratic reforms when foreign-inspired religious radicals and armed groups forced the Assad regime to put down the rebellion to hold the country together.
Moallem said reforms “had to take a back seat to other priorities. Our overriding priority was facing the external pressures which were at times tantamount to blatant conspiracies.’’
The longtime foreign minister said that internal desires for reform “have been manipulated to future objectives which are alien to the interests and express desires of the Syrian people.’’
--more--"
Want confirmation of a conspiracy?
"Killings of Syrian intellectuals continue with nuclear expert; Engineer is fourth man assassinated since Sunday" September 29, 2011|By Zeina Karam, Associated Press
BEIRUT - A Syrian nuclear engineer was assassinated in a hail of bullets in central Syria yesterday, the latest casualty in a string of killings this week of academics and scientists, Syria’s state-run news agency and activists said....
Smells like Mossad to me. Did it in Iraq, doing it in Iran.
The dead men came from different religious backgrounds - Shi’ite, Alawite, and Christian - and it unclear whether the killings had any sectarian motives. None of those killed were Sunni, Saleh said.
It's not unclear to me when the media basically confirm it with their newspeak.
Syria, like Iraq, has a volatile sectarian divide, making civil unrest a frightening prospect. The Assad regime is dominated by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, but the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.
The agenda-pushing agitators always use that wedge and I'm no longer buying it. Problem is you can always find a few assholes on a local level.
--more--"
"Angry Syrians pelt US envoy with tomatoes; Assad backers attack diplomat critical of regime" September 30, 2011|By Bassem Mroue, Associated Press
BEIRUT - Angry supporters of President Bashar Assad’s regime hurled tomatoes and eggs at the US ambassador to Syria yesterday as he entered the office of a leading opposition figure, then trapped him inside the building for three hours.
Truthfully, our politicians deserve it. Heck, they deserve a tar-and-feathering and swim in the harbor. I'm nonviolent, but I will not stop and will step aside and submit to the mob if it is their wish. Then I will be a spectator and witness, right?
The Obama administration blamed the Syrian government for the attack in Damascus, saying it was part of an ongoing orchestrated campaign to intimidate American diplomats in the country. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the attack as wholly unjustified....
Such incidents are usually not spontaneous in Syria, and the attack yesterday came amid accusations by Damascus that Washington is inciting violence in the country.
Oh, I firmly believe this is a CIA-inspired effort with regional help from our Saudi partners. The agenda-pushing media's focus on it is all I needed to be convinced.
The protesters, who were waiting with eggs and tomatoes when Ford’s delegation arrived, launched the attack as the Americans entered the building.
We drop missiles, bombs, and artillery on people, American.
In Washington, the State Department said that a rowdy, violent mob tried to attack Ford and several American embassy workers in Damascus. Spokesman Mark Toner said Ford and his colleagues were unharmed and are now safe.
However, several heavily armored embassy vehicles sent to help extricate the embassy workers from the situation were badly damaged when the same crowd hurled rocks, White House and State Department officials said.
“This inexcusable assault is clearly part of ongoing campaign of intimidation aimed at diplomats … who are raising questions about what is going on inside Syria,’’ Clinton said. “It reflects an intolerance on the part of the regime and its supporters.’’
Sort of like your Iran and Pakistan war rhetoric of late, right?
--more--"
"Syrian troops battle renegades; 11 protesters killed as army defectors fight with loyalists" by Bassem Mroue, Associated Press / October 1, 2011
BEIRUT - Syrian troops fought intense battles yesterday with hundreds of fellow soldiers who have turned their weapons against the regime of President Bashar Assad, revealing the increasingly militarized nature of an uprising started months ago by peaceful protesters.
Across the country, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets as they do each Friday, braving gunfire by government forces who have waged a relentless crackdown....
The army defections as well as reports that once-peaceful protesters are increasingly taking up arms to fight the government crackdown have raised concerns of the risk of civil war in a country with a deep sectarian divide....
There they go again.
Syria has a volatile sectarian divide, making this kind of civil unrest one of the most dire scenarios....
Yeah, yeah, I got the point the first time.
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"Syrian troops reclaim most of central rebel town" by Bassem Mroue Associated Press / October 2, 2011
BEIRUT - Syrian troops retook most of a rebellious central town yesterday after five days of intense fighting with army defectors who sided with protesters in one of the worst clashes of the 6-month-old antigovernment uprising, a rights group said.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the troops spread out across Rastan after defectors pulled out of the town.
The army defections as well as reports that once-peaceful protesters are increasingly taking up arms to fight the government crackdown have raised concerns of the risk of civil war in a country with a deep sectarian divide.
The outpouring against President Bashar Assad’s regime began in mid-March with rallies by peaceful, unarmed protesters. Attacks by proregime gunmen and Syrian military forces have failed to stop the demonstrators from continuing to take to the streets....
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"Syrian opposition introduces new national council; Accuses Assad of working to start civil war" by Zeina Karam Associated Press / October 3, 2011
BEIRUT - Syrian dissidents formally established a broad-based national council yesterday designed to overthrow President Bashar Assad’s regime, which they accused of pushing the country to the brink of civil war. Syrians took to the streets in celebration, singing and dancing.
Yes, at bottom it is ONCE AGAIN about REGIME CHANGE!
And get this:
Meanwhile, in a restive northern area, gunmen killed the 21-year-old son of Syria’s top Sunni Muslim cleric in an ambush, the state-run news agency reported. The cleric, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, is considered a close supporter of Assad’s regime and has echoed its claims that the unrest in Syria is the result of a foreign conspiracy....
Gee, WHO would have wanted to DO THAT?
Syria’s volatile sectarian divide means that an armed conflict could rapidly escalate in scale and brutality....
Until now, the opposition movement has focused on peaceful demonstrations, although recently some protesters have been reported to have taken up arms to defend themselves against military attacks. Army defectors have also been fighting government troops.
I've noticed the defectors in Yemen are not accorded the same attention or sympathy in regard to the U.S. butcher Saleh, but that's just me.
Yesterday’s killing of the mufti’s son took place in the Saraqeb region of the restive northern Idlib Province as he left the university where he studied. He was shot in the chest and kidney and died later of his injuries. The news report gave no details on who might have been behind the killing.
In forming a national council, the Syrians are following in the footsteps of Libyan rebels....
And thus you know it is a western intelligence overthrow.
That's not good news for Syria. Are you guys prepared to be smashed by NATO?
Although the mass demonstrations in Syria have shaken one of the most authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, the opposition has made no major gains in recent months. It holds no territory and still has no clear leadership.
The Syrian opposition consists of a variety of groups with differing ideologies, including Islamists and secularists, and there have been many meetings of dissidents claiming to represent Syria’s popular uprising since it erupted seven months ago. But the new council is the broadest umbrella movement of revolutionary forces formed so far....
The council’s statement said it categorically rejects any foreign intervention or military operations to bring down Assad’s regime but called on the international community to protect the Syrian people from “the declared war and massacres being committed against them by the regime.’’
Libya.
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"Syrian troops detaining thousands; Violence in town of Rastan raises fear of civil war" by Zeina Karam Associated Press / October 4, 2011
BEIRUT - Syrian troops going house to house have detained more than 3,000 people in the past three days in the rebellious town of Rastan, which saw some of the worst fighting of the six-month-old uprising recently, activists said yesterday.
Over the past week, the military fought hundreds of army defectors who sided with anti-regime protesters in Rastan. The fighting demonstrated the increasingly militarized nature of the uprising and heightened fears that Syria may be sliding toward civil war....
Syria’s opposition movement has until now focused on peaceful demonstrations, although recently there have been reports of protesters taking up arms to defend themselves against military attacks. Army defectors have also been fighting government troops, particularly in Rastan, which government forces retook on Saturday.
The fears of civil war, possibly along sectarian lines, were heightened by the assassination Sunday of the 21-year-old son of Syria’s top Sunni Muslim cleric - the latest in a string of targeted killings.
The state-appointed cleric, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, is considered a loyal supporter of President Bashar Assad’s regime, heading a host of Sunni clergymen who have been a base of support for the president’s ruling Alawite sect.
Say what? So much for sectarian divide s***, sigh.
Hassoun, who has echoed regime claims that the unrest in Syria is the result of a foreign conspiracy, accused the opposition of creating the climate for his son’s killing and blamed anti-Assad Sunni clerics for allegedly issuing fatwas (religious edicts) inciting violence against him.
“My brothers who were misguided and carried arms, you should have assassinated me because some clerics issued such fatwas. Why did you kill a young man who did nothing and harmed no one,’’ Hassoun, holding back tears, said in a sermon at his son’s funeral in the northeastern city of Aleppo, aired on Syrian television stations.
Saria Hassoun’s killing was the latest in a series of targeted executions that included a nuclear engineer, university professors, and physicians.
And who would want to kill Syria's brains, huh? Who benefits?
The other men, a mixture of Alawites, Christians, and Shi’ites, were all killed in the past week, most of them in central Homs province - one of the hotbeds of antigovernment protests.
The regime has accused “terrorist gunmen’’ of carrying out the killings, while the opposition accused the regime of trying to foment sectarian strife to maintain its grip on power.
Syria’s volatile sectarian divide means that an armed conflict could rapidly escalate in scale and brutality.
Yeah, except a bunch of Sunnis support the Shi'ite Assad, wah-wah-wah.
The Assad regime is dominated by the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, but the country is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim.
Alawite dominance has bred resentments, which Assad has worked to tamp down by pushing a strictly secular identity for the state. He has exploited fears of a civil war by portraying himself as the only power who can keep the peace.
Yeah, whatever, AmeriKan media.
--more--"
What do you mean you were duped?
"Syrian raises doubts about killing" October 06, 2011|By Zeina Karam, Associated Press
BEIRUT - A woman appeared on Syrian state television yesterday saying that she is the young Syrian who was widely reported to have been beheaded and mutilated by security agents while in custody last month. The station said the interview was intended to discredit foreign “media fabrications.’’
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, and Syrian activists reported last month that 18-year-old Zainab al-Hosni was found dead and mutilated after she was detained in her hometown of Homs. The young woman quickly became a symbol of the 6-month-old uprising against authoritarian President Bashar Assad, with protesters hailing her as the “flower of Syria.’’
I am tired of war propaganda and demonization of official enemies from a mass-murdering, war-criminal accomplice of a media.
Last month, Amnesty said the mutilated teenager had reportedly been detained by security agents to pressure her activist brother to turn himself in. Activists said she was the first woman to die in custody since the uprising began in March and it reinforced what witnesses and the UN human rights office said was a fearsome new tactic of retaliating against protesters’ families.
You can just smell the stink, can't you?
But in the state television interview, a black-clad young woman who identified herself as Zainab al-Hosni said she had run away from her family home in late July because her brothers abused her. She said her family did not know that she was alive and she asked her mother for forgiveness.
“I am very much alive and I have opted to tell the truth because I am planning to get married in the future and have kids who I want to be registered,’’ she said.
There is a hint in there for AmeriKa's media.
She said she decided to speak out after hearing on TV that she had been arrested and beheaded. Her appearance was similar to the woman whose photos were carried by protesters in Homs, but her identity could not be independently verified, as all media are severely restricted from reporting on events in Syria.
Amnesty International issued a statement after the interview saying it raised questions about the information the group received that led to its initial report on the death.
The rights group said its initial statement on the death was “based on information provided by sources close to the incident itself, who passed Amnesty International video footage of a dismembered body.’’ It was not immediately clear who those sources were.
I think I know.
The statement went on to say: “If the body was not that of Zainab al-Hosni, then clearly the Syrian authorities need to disclose whose it was, the cause and circumstances of the death, and why Zainab al-Hosni’s family were informed that she was the victim.’’
The episode, and Amnesty’s statement raised the prospect that the story may have been a hoax planted by Syrian authorities, possibly in an effort to embarrass the media and human rights group who have been reporting critically on the government’s brutal crackdown on protesters that has killed nearly 3,000 people in six months.
First of all, the media doesn't need any help embarrassing itself. And this laughable notion that it was a Syrian hoax is a scream!
--more--"
Now back to the regularly-scheduled propaganda:
"7 killed as Syrian troops hunt defectors" October 07, 2011|Associated Press
BEIRUT - Syrian troops stormed villages close to the border with Turkey yesterday, hunting armed military defectors in clashes that left at least four soldiers and three others dead, activists said.
The fighting in the country’s restive northern region of Jabal al-Zawiya, where Syrian military defectors are active, was the latest sign of a trend toward growing militarization of the seven-month-old uprising.
The Syrian opposition had until recently focused on nonviolent resistance. But since late July, a group calling itself the Free Syrian Army has claimed attacks across the country and emerged as the first significant armed challenge to President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian regime.
The soft coup technique didn't work, so....
The opposition has mostly welcomed the armed group’s formation, and the movement could propel the Syrian revolt by encouraging senior officers to desert the regime. But the escalation could also backfire horribly, giving the regime a new pretext to crack down even harder than it already has. The sectarian divide in Syria, where a regime composed mostly of the Alawite offshoot of Shi’ite Islam rules over Sunnis and others, also means that any insurgency could escalate quickly into civil war.
I guess you can SEE WHAT IS COMING given my agenda-pushing articles, 'eh?
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"Leading opposition figure, 8 others killed amid widespread protests in Syria" October 08, 2011|By Associated Press
BEIRUT - Syrian security forces opened fire on protesters in several parts of the country yesterday, killing at least eight people and wounding scores, while masked gunmen burst into an apartment in the predominantly Kurdish northeast and shot dead one of Syria’s most prominent opposition figures.
Another leading opposition figure was beaten up by progovernment gunmen and rushed to a hospital in Damascus, activists said.
The slaying of Mashaal Tammo, a 53-year-old former political prisoner and a spokesman for the Kurdish Future Party, was the latest in a string of targeted killings in Syria as the country slides further into disorder, seven months into the uprising against President Bashar Assad.
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I think we are in it. Can it be any clearer, folks?
Tammo, killed by unknown gunmen in the city of Qamishli, was a member of the executive committee of the newly formed Syrian National Council, a broad-based front bringing together opposition figures inside and outside the country in an attempt to unify the deeply fragmented dissident movement.
Qamishli erupted in protests as thousands of outraged people took to the streets and swarmed the hospital were Tammo was taken, many of them shouting “Azadi,’’ the Kurdish word for freedom, said Mustafa Osso, a Kurdish lawyer and activist from the city.
Tammo, a vocal regime opponent, had been instrumental in organizing antigovernment protests in Qamishli in recent months.
The killing could spark violent protests in the Kurdish region at a time when Syria’s security forces have their hands full in trying to stamp out dissent across much of the rest of the country. Kurds, the largest ethnic minority in Syria, make up 15 percent of the country’s 23 million people and have long complained of neglect and discrimination.
Yeah, so who would want to get the Kurds upset? Cui bono?
Since mid-March, the Syrian government crackdown has left at least 2,900 people dead.
--more--"
"Funeral for Kurdish activist draws thousands to Syrian city" October 09, 2011|By Anthony Shadid, New York Times
BEIRUT - Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of a Syrian city yesterday for the funeral of a celebrated Kurdish opposition leader whose assassination the day before unleashed fury in the country’s Kurdish regions and prompted condemnations from the United States and the European Union....
It is truly beginning to smell like a western intelligence agency hit.
Mashaal Tammo, 53, was a respected activist who had been released last summer after spending more than three years in prison. Activists and relatives said he was killed by four masked gunmen who stormed his house Friday, and they blamed government forces for his death.
The founder of the liberal Kurdish Future Movement Party, Tammo had angered both the government and rivals in the Kurdish community with his outspoken support for a pluralistic democratic state, in which Kurds would be an essential component.
Hmmmmmm.
Kurds make up about 10 percent of Syria’s 20 million people, concentrated in the remote northeast, which borders Iraq and Turkey, but also in Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s two largest cities. They have long faced harassment and discrimination, and for years many were denied Syrian citizenship.
Though the community has sympathized with the uprising, its traditional leadership has yet to decisively enter the fray against Assad, and the government itself, veering between crackdown and concession, had appeared reluctant to provoke the Kurds.
And WHICH FORCES WOULD BENEFIT by GETTING THEM INVOLVED? Who wants Assad overthrown?
Early in the uprising, the government had informally negotiated with Kurdish leaders, reaching what some had termed “a gentleman’s agreement’’ to forestall mass unrest. Assad even promised to give tens of thousands citizenship in April, though activists say few, in fact, have received it.
Then how does Assad benefit from this action? (Answer; he doesn't)
The Syrian news agency blamed an “armed terrorist group’’ for Tammo’s death, a phrase it often deploys to underline its view of the uprising as an armed insurgency led by militant Islamists....
The sad fact is that is the truth. When those guys work for the empire it is not a problem.
--more--"
"Syria vows measures against nations that recognize opposition" October 10, 2011|By ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIRUT - Syria’s foreign minister warned the international community yesterday not to recognize a new umbrella council formed by the opposition, threatening “tough measures’’ against any country that does so.
Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem did not specify what measures Damascus might take. But he went on to say that countries that do not protect Syrian missions could find their own embassies treated in the same way.
“We will take tough measures against any country that recognizes this illegitimate council,’’ Moallem said without elaborating.
The Syrian National Council, announced last week in Turkey, is a broad-based group that includes most major opposition factions. No country or international body has recognized it as a legal representative of the Syrian people. Bourhan Ghalioun, the opposition council’s most prominent official, said he expects the organization will be recognized “in the coming few weeks.’’ Moallem’s comments came as the council was scheduled to hold two meetings yesterday, one in Cairo and another in Stockholm.
Damascus appears concerned that if the Syrian National Council is recognized by the international community, it could play the same role as the National Transitional Council in Libya that ultimately overthrew Moammar Khadafy.
Syria’s top diplomat was speaking during a joint news conference with a delegation from the left-leaning ALBA bloc of mostly Latin American countries, which includes Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. The ALBA officials were visiting Damascus to express solidarity with Syria and met yesterday with President Bashar Assad.
State-run news agency SANA quoted Assad as telling the delegation that Syria aims to make political reforms, then end armed presence. But past promises of sweeping reforms have not been carried through, and the opposition says it will accept nothing short of his departure.
--more--"
"EU plans expansion of Syrian sanctions, looks to opposition" October 11, 2011|By Malin Rising, Associated Press
LUXEMBOURG - The European Union said yesterday it will reach out to the Syrian opposition movement to determine whether it can play a role in ousting President Bashar Assad, whose crackdown on prodemocracy protesters has killed nearly 3,000 people....
Diplomats said Syria’s opposition needs more work to become an effective political force and gain formal recognition as a legal representative of the Syrian people....
Earlier in the day, Syrian opposition members, including representatives of the newly formed Syrian National Council, said they had agreed on a democratic framework for a future nation and they want international observers to be allowed into the Arab state to examine the situation.
Ghied Al Hashmy, a political scientist who participated in a conference in Sweden of Syrian opposition members, including council representatives, said they oppose military intervention but want more political pressure on Syria....
The international community’s unwillingness to get directly involved stems from a mix of international political complications, worries over unleashing a civil war, and plausible risks of touching off a wider Middle East conflict with archfoes Israel and Iran in the mix.
That's where the heads of Empire are taking it, yeah.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said last week the alliance has no intention of entering the Syrian conflict. Still, the prospect of such an intervention seems to have rattled the Assad regime.
Syria’s top Sunni Muslim cleric has warned Western countries against military intervention and threatened to retaliate with suicide bombings in the United States and Europe if his country comes under attack.
That's a SUNNI in the land of the great sectarian divide?
In a speech late Sunday, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, a state-appointed cleric and Assad loyalist, issued a clear warning to the West. “I say to all of Europe, I say to America, we will set up suicide bombers who are now in your countries, if you bomb Syria or Lebanon,’’ Hassoun said. “From now on an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’’
It leaves the whole world blind and toothless; however, I can certainly understand where the feeling comes from.
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"Tens of thousands of Syrians rally in support of Assad" October 13, 2011|By Albert Aji Zeina Karam, Associated Press
DAMASCUS, Syria - Tens of thousands of Syrians thronged a main square of the nation’s capital and nearby streets yesterday in a show of support for President Bashar Assad, as he struggles to quell a 7-month-old uprising. Opponents charge such rallies are staged by the regime.
I am really, really, tired of the pot-hollering-kettle, agenda-pushing AmeriKan media.
Yesterday’s demonstration was intended to show that Assad still enjoys the support of many Syrians. The gathering was huge in comparison with the almost daily antiregime protests that have been taking place across the country since March....
Organizers said the Damascus rally was also meant to thank Russia and China for blocking a UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria for its brutal crackdown. Their vetoes last week drew heavy criticism from the United States....
You think you can beat both of 'em in a war, AmeriKa?
It's going to take nukes, isn't it, you unimaginable bastards?
--more--"
Did you SEE HOW MANY PEOPLE were in that PICTURE?!!!!
Yes, dear American reader, you are constantly being filled with lies, distortions, obfuscations, and omissions from your newspaper.
Speak of the devils!
"US accuses Va. man of working as Syrian spy" October 13, 2011|New York Times
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department accused a Syrian-American man yesterday of secretly working for Syrian intelligence. It said he collected information about people in the United States who were protesting the Syria’s crackdown on its prodemocracy movement as part of a scheme to “silence, intimidate, and potentially harm the protesters.’’
*************
The indictment of the man - Mohamad Anas Haitham Soueid, 47, a resident of Leesburg, Va. - says that he undertook surveillance of protesters against the Syrian regime, including recruiting others to make videos of rallies and interviews with people at the rallies. He also gathered names, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses of protesters and sent the materials to the Syrian intelligence service, the Mukhabarat, the indictment says.
Oh, like AmeriKan law enforcement officials did at antiwar protests?
It also says that he was working with an official at the Syrian Embassy in the United States, and that in June 2011 the Syrian government paid for him to travel to Syria, where he met with intelligence officials and spoke with the Syrian president, Bashar el-Assad, in private.
The Syrian Embassy called the charges “baseless and totally unacceptable,’’ and said they were part of a “campaign of distortion and fabrications against the Embassy of Syria in the US.’’
That I believe. Smells like another FBI frame-up.
--more--"
"13 killed in fighting with Syrian troops" October 14, 2011|Associated Press
RASTAN, Syria - Syrian troops clashed yesterday with armed men believed to be military defectors in a southern village and a northwestern town, killing at least 13 people in the latest sign that the 7-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad is becoming increasingly militarized, activists said.
In an attempt by the regime to show it still had the upper hand, the government took journalists on a tour of a central town where the most serious insurrection in recent weeks drew a crushing response. Many buildings in Rastan were burned, shops were shuttered, and soldiers manned military checkpoints.
Several residents told of gunmen who they said terrorized the area. And government escorts displayed rifles and light weapons they said had been seized from gangs or terrorists, not from army defectors.
Despite the spiraling violence and continuing protests, Assad said Syria has passed the most difficult period and is working to become “a model to be followed in the region.’’
He was apparently referring to promised political reforms, most of which have yet to be delivered. The comments, to a visiting Lebanese delegation, were reported by the official news agency....
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"UN says Syria deaths top 3,000" October 15, 2011|By Zeina Karam, Associated Press
BEIRUT - Thousands of Syrian protesters called on soldiers yesterday to abandon President Bashar Assad’s regime and join a dissident army numbering in the small thousands, as the top UN human rights official warned of a “full-blown civil war’’ in Syria, saying the death toll in the 7-month-old crackdown has passed 3,000.
Security forces opened fire at protesters, killing at least 11, including a 14-year-old boy, in what has become a weekly ritual of protests met by gunfire, according to activists.
Yesterday’s protests, dubbed “Free Soldiers,’’ were in honor of army officers and soldiers who have sided with the protesters and are reportedly clashing with loyalists in northern and central Syrian cities in an increasing militarization of the uprising.
“The army and people are one!’’ protesters shouted in the southern village of Dael, where most of the deaths occurred yesterday. In other locations, some protesters held up banners that read: “Free soldiers do not kill free people asking for freedom.’’
“I will not serve in an army that destroys my country and kills my people,’’ read a posting on the Syrian revolution’s main Facebook page that was meant to encourage defections.
Yesterday’s demonstrations were the most explicit show of support so far by the country’s protest movement for the defectors. Faced with gunfire, bullets, mass arrests, and a lack of willingness by the international community to intervene militarily, many Syrians now feel the armed dissidents are their only hope to topple Assad’s regime.
The Free Syrian Army, as the dissidents are known, are led by an air force colonel who recently fled to Turkey. The group is said to include more than 10,000 members and is gaining momentum as the first armed challenge to Assad’s authoritarian regime after seven months of largely nonviolent resistance....
Analysts say that until the rebels can secure a territorial foothold as an operational launching pad - much like the eastern city of Benghazi was for the Libyan rebels - the defections are unlikely to pose a real threat to the unity of the Syrian army.
Still, the increased military operations have raised concerns that the country may be sliding into civil war.
International intervention, such as the NATO action in Libya that helped topple Moammar Khadafy, is all but out of the question in Syria.
Meaning it is NOT out of the question!
Washington and its allies have shown little appetite for intervening in another Arab nation in turmoil. There also is real concern that Assad’s ouster would spread chaos around the region.
What a crock of crap given the last ten years.
Syria is a geographical and political keystone in the heart of the Middle East, bordering five countries with which it shares religious and ethnic minorities and, in Israel’s case, a fragile truce.
Its web of alliances extends to Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement and Iran’s Shi’ite theocracy. There are worries that a destabilized Syria could send unsettling ripples through the region.
Arab League officials said Arab foreign ministers will meet in Cairo tomorrow to discuss the situation in Syria after a request for an emergency meeting by the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council.
Several Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, have pulled their ambassadors out of Syria to protest the government’s brutal crackdown on the protest movement.
They have never been friends anyway.
A top UN official warned that the unrelenting crackdown by the Assad government could worsen unless further action is taken.
Navi Pillay, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said in a statement issued in Geneva: “The onus is on all members of the international community to take protective action in a collective and decisive manner.’’
While most in the Syrian opposition still reject military intervention, some now say it’s a necessity....
TO WAR!!!!!
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"Syrians revive protest effort" October 22, 2011|By Anthony Shadid, New York Times
BEIRUT - The death of Moammar Khadafy reverberated across Syria yesterday, reviving protests that had begun to stall and focusing attention on a newly organized, unarmed opposition group seeking to challenge the Assad family’s four decades of rule.
With an ambitious task, the Syrian National Council, announced in Istanbul this month, has begun trying to emulate the success of Libya’s opposition leadership, closing ranks in the most concerted attempt yet to forge an alternative to President Bashar Assad and courting international support that proved so crucial in Libya.
“The focus of the world will now turn to Syria,’’ Samir Nachar, an activist from Aleppo and leader of the group, said yesterday. “It’s Syria’s turn to receive attention.’’
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Update: Rubio to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad: You’re next, buddy
