Civil war in Syria? By Gwynne Dyer

BACK in 1989, when the communist regimes of Europe were tottering towards their end, almost every day somebody would say `There`s going to be a civil war.` And our job, as foreign journalists who allegedly had their finger on the pulse of events, was to say: `No, there won`t be.`

So most of us did say that, as if we actually knew. But the locals were pathetically grateful, and we turned out to be right.

It was just the same in South Africa in 1993-94. Another non-violent revolution was taking on another dictatorship with a long record of brutality, and once again most people who had lived their lives under its rule were convinced there would be a civil war. So we foreign journalists (or at least some of us) reassured them that there wouldn`t be, and again we turned out to be right.

Now it`s Syria`s turn, and yet again most of the people who live there fear that their non-violent revolution will end in civil war. It`s not my job to reassure them this time, because like most foreign journalists I can`t even get into the country, but in any case I would have no reassurance to offer. This time, it may well end in civil war. Like Iraq.

The Assad dynasty in Syria is neither better nor worse than Saddam Hussein`s regime was in Iraq. They had identical origins, as local branches of the same pan-Arab political movement, the Baath Party. They both depended on minorities for their core support: the Syrian Baathists on the 10 per cent Alawite (Shia) minority in that country, and the Iraqi Baathists on the 20 per cent of that country`s people who were Sunni Arabs.

They were both ruthless in crushing threats to their power. Hafez al-Assad`s troops killed up to 40,000 people in Hama when Sunni Islamists rebelled in Syria in 1982, Saddam Hussein`s army killed at least as many Shias in southern Iraq when they rebelled after the 1991 Gulf War, and both regimes were systematically beastly to their local Kurds.

When the American invaders destroyed Saddam Hussein`s regime in Iraq in 2003, however, what ensued was not peace, prosperity and democracy. It was a brutal civil war that ended with Baghdad almost entirely cleansed of its Sunni Muslim population and the whole country cleansed of its Christian minority. Only the Kurds, insulated by their own battle-hardened army and their mountains, avoided the carnage.

So if the Baathist regime in Syria is driven from power, why should we believe that what follows will be any better than it was in Iraq? The country`s ethnic and sectarian divisions are just as deep and complex as Iraq`s.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/13/civil-war-in-syria.html

More Syria deaths as dissidents urge Assad isolation

DAMASCUS: Thirty-eight people were killed in clashes in two days in northwest Syria, a rights activist said on Sunday, as dissidents meeting in Brussels called for the isolation of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Thirty-eight people were killed in shootings in the region of Jisrash Shughur, 10 yesterday and 28 today,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP.

The updated toll includes six members of the Syrian security forces.

Rahman earlier gave a toll of 25 – 19 civilians and six security agents – but warned that number could rise as military and security forces continued operations in the northwest Idlib province.

Residents of the central city of Hama, where at least 53 people were reported killed during anti-regime protests on Friday, said nearly 100,000 people were staging a protest during a three-day strike that began on Saturday.

On Saturday, an activist in Jisrash Shughur said “security forces opened fire to scatter more than 1,000 demonstrators protesting after the funeral of a civilian killed on Friday” in protests at the nearby village of Has.

Syria’s official SANA news agency reported at the time that “a member of the army was killed and a policeman injured in clashes” in Jisrash Shughur.

“Armed groups attacked a police station and military barracks in the area” and one assailant was killed, SANA said.

Rights groups say more than 1,100 civilians have been killed and at least 10,000 arrested in Syria since protests erupted in mid-March.

Damascus insists that the unrest is the work of “armed terrorist gangs”backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

Syria has freed more than 450 political prisoners and prisoners of conscience since Tuesday as part of a general amnesty announced by Assad, Rahman told AFP on Sunday.
Most of the released are Islamists or Kurds, he added.

Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar, meanwhile, ordered the creation of a committee tasked with drafting a law on political parties, SANA reported.

The current constitution stipulates that the ruling Baath party is “the leader of state and society” and political pluralism has been at the forefront of demands by pro-reform dissidents.

In Europe, Syrian opposition activists urged the international community to increase pressure on Assad and called for an independent investigation into his regime’s deadly crackdown.

The roughly 200 activists gathered in Brussels also said charges should be laid against those responsible for violations of human rights in the repression, and cases brought before the International Criminal Court.

“There needs to be more pressure on the regime,” organisers of the Brussels meeting said in a statement.

“It is very important to impose diplomatic isolation on the Syrian regime, and to not allow it to be represented in international bodies,” added the grouping, called the National Coalition of Support for the Syrian Revolution.

The European Union and the United States have already imposed sanctions on Assad and his inner circle.

The coalition dismissed as a “farce” Assad’s creation of a body tasked with creating a national dialogue.

A final resolution from the Brussels meeting announced the creation of a commission to evaluate human rights violations by the regime with the purpose of laying charges and sending cases to the International Criminal Court.

It said the coalition also wanted to “communicate with international organisations with the aim of coming up with a resolution condemning the violence by the Syrian regime.”

At a similar meeting in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya in Turkey on Wednesday and Thursday, opposition groups urged Assad’s immediate resignation and the holding of parliamentary and presidential elections within a year.

Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, meanwhile, made a brief visit to the United Arab Emirates where he met Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahayan.

“The demands of reform and the need for stability can go hand in hand as they can be reconciled,” the official WAM news agency reported Sheikh Mohammad as saying.

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/06/06/more-syria-deaths-as-dissidents-urge-assad-isolation.html

Syria: threat of armed uprising grows

BEIRUT/WASHINGTON: An armed insurrection inside Syria looks set to gather momentum after the failure to pass a UN resolution against president Bashar al-Assad’s regime, according to dissidents in two key Syrian cities.

Activists from Homs and Hama, where mostly peaceful protests over the past six months have lately become more aggressive and armed, say the failure of the US effort to threaten sanctions against Syria has convinced some that diplomacy cannot protect them.

“There’s no way out of this except to fight,” said an activist from Homs. “For the people of Homs the international community are not with us and we know that for sure. Russia and China will continue to protect Assad and as long as that happens, he will hunt us down.”

Britain, France and the US are expected to seek a fresh resolution on Syria before the UN Security Council after Russia and China on Tuesday night vetoed a draft that threatened sanctions, a Security Council source said on Wednesday.

The veto by Russia, supported by China, provoked the biggest verbal explosion from the US at the UN for years, with its ambassador Susan Rice expressing outrage over the Moscow and Beijing move.

Rice also walked out of the Security Council, the first such demonstration in recent years.

While walkouts are common at the UN general assembly, they are rare in the Security Council.

“It will not go away,” the source said. “It will not be next week. We don’t have a date. But there are a number of ways the Security Council can get back to this.”

The vote was 9-2 in favour, with four abstentions: South Africa, India, Brazil and Lebanon. The draft resolution on Tuesday only said the Security Council would “consider its options” in 30 days’ time if Assad failed to stop the violence and seek a peaceful settlement of the crisis.

It said the options would include sanctions. To further water down the resolution in an attempt to make it more acceptable to Russia and China, there was no hint of military intervention.

In Homs, where government forces are routinely clashing with armed members of the opposition — many of them former soldiers who defected with their weapons — outgunned protesters are now openly seeking weapons from outside the country

Source: http://www.dawn.com/2011/10/07/syria-threat-of-armed-uprising-grows.html