Gray Lady Discovers Reality of Syrian Civil War

The newspaper of record is finally trying to get atop of the Syrian civil war story. Ben Hubbard, who has been reporting from Cairo on the coup in Egypt, spells Beirut Bureau Chief Anne Barnard and provides a frontpage story, "Momentum Shifts in Syria, Bolstering Assad’s Position," that appears top of the fold right-hand side of this morning's New York Times national edition. In it, Hubbard gives a bird's-eye view of developments that have been well underway for several weeks but have been given short shrift by Barnard; the long and short of which is that the rebels are coming apart at the seams -- despised by local populations that they're purportedly liberating, fighting among themselves and distrusted by their state benefactors -- and that the Syrian government is steadily consolidating its territory on the battlefield.

To be sure, Hubbard doesn't abandon the Gray Lady's anti-Assad bias; but he does curb its enthusiasm for the rebels (Barnard consistently reports on the rebels through the rose-colored glasses of the Arab Spring). There are some choice passages:

Even fighters who had hoped that Mr. Assad would end up deposed, dead, jailed or exiled like other autocrats singled out in the Arab Spring uprisings have begun to acknowledge the emerging reality. 

“If the revolution continues like this, the people will revolt against us,” said a rebel commander from the central city of Homs, where Mr. Assad’s forces have made gains in recent days. 

The commander, who wanted only his first name, Ahmed, used to protect his family, criticized his fellow rebels for putting the interests of their brigades ahead of the wider anti-Assad struggle and accused them of hoarding powerful weapons or selling them for a profit. That lack of unity has prolonged the war and made their mission harder, he said. 

“If a regular Syrian comes and asks me what we have given him, I don’t know what to say,” Ahmed said.

Hubbard quotes Free Syrian Army leader General Salim Idris basically tossing in the sponge, saying the West wants to maintain al-Assad in power:

“They do not want the fall of this regime; that is why they are not helping,” said Gen. Salim Idris, the head of the Free Syrian Army, a loosely knit umbrella group that has been soliciting aid and that is supposed to funnel it to vetted groups while keeping it from extremists. 

General Idris accused the West of delaying with endless meetings, summits and requests for new “guarantees” that extremists would not get arms, and said this left the rebels at a huge disadvantage against Mr. Assad’s forces.

The reporting of the Times from Egypt has always been much stronger than the coverage of Syria, which is a testament to David Kirkpatrick. Barnard's reporting seems to follow the basic contours of the official position of the U.S. government. And while Hubbard's article is a welcome improvement, he does make one glaring omission. In recounting state support of the rebels, he mentions Saudi Arabia and Qatar; but he fails to mention the role the Central Intelligence Agency has played in providing logistical support as well as the rebel training base it runs in Jordan.

Hubbard, writing with Hwaida Saad, also has a story about yesterday's murder of al-Assad supporter Mohammed Darrar Jammo in southern Lebanon and the battle between the Wahhabis and the Kurds in the Syrian city of Ras al-Ain:

Along another Syrian border, fighting among Syrian rebels, extremist groups and Kurdish militias killed 29 fighters in Syria and at least one civilian in Turkey.

The clashes in the Syrian city of Ras al-Ain pitted Syrian rebels and extremists linked to Al Qaeda against Kurdish militias that have used the chaos of the civil war to push for greater autonomy.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict from Britain through a network of contacts on the ground, said the clashes began Tuesday when extremist fighters attacked a Kurdish patrol and took a Turkish militiaman captive.

On Wednesday, Kurdish fighters seized control of most of the town and the nearby border crossing with Turkey as fighting spread to nearby areas, the observatory said, adding that at least 29 combatants had been killed since Tuesday, 10 of them Kurds.

Reporting from London, Alan Cowell has more bad news for the Syrian opposition in his story "Britain Said to Step Back From Push to Arm Syrian Rebels":

After leading a determined push with France to remove legal hindrances to arming Syria’s rebels, Britain is apparently signaling a more cautious approach, even as British newspaper reports say Prime Minister David Cameron has retreated from the idea altogether.

The car bombs and mortar attacks will continue as the SAA continues operations. But at this point it appears the Syrian government has won the civil war.