Gray Lady's Anne Barnard Savors Ambiguous Rebel Victory

Anne Barnard, back in Beirut after her stay in Damascus, celebrates the rebel capture of Minakh air base (spelled as "Minnigh" and "Minnegh" in other accounts) in northern Syria's Aleppo Province. Writing with Hwaida Saad, Barnard, in "Rebels Gain Control of Government Air Base in Syria," is even more accepting of rebel claims than the reliably pro-opposition Al Jazeera, which in its story, "Syrian rebels claim control of Aleppo airbase," is careful to frame the government's loss of the air base as hearsay. SANA issued a pro forma denial.

According to Barnard and Saad,

Warplanes from the base had struck at villages across northern Syria, and the base, in flat fields with little cover, had presented its own challenge. But as rebels began to acquire antiaircraft weapons from Qatar and other donors, shooting down helicopters and warplanes, it became harder for the army to restock the base by air, stranding the soldiers with dwindling supplies.

Chechen jihadis were apparently instrumental in the attack:

The base was first besieged by a Free Syrian Army brigade called North Storm, and joined by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham and a group calling itself Jaish al-Muhajireen wal Ansar. Muhajireen means emigrants, and the group, which carried out several suicide attacks at the base, is led by Russian speakers from Chechnya and other parts of the Caucasus. 

Mr. Farzat said Chechen Islamist fighters near the airport had refused to let the defecting government soldiers flee, so he helped them escape by another route. “I give the Islamic fighters credit for the liberation,” he said.The seizure of the base could have an impact on the stalemated fight for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, by freeing up rebel fighters and antiaircraft weapons to put pressure on Aleppo’s airport, which rebels have been unable to take despite months of trying. It could also dampen the morale of government troops in other remote outposts. 

Abu al-Haytham, a rebel fighter who fought for months to seize Minakh and is now in Turkey, called the capture of the base a morale booster and “a strike against the regime.” But, he added, “it won’t change anything on the ground — we just got some vehicles and ammunition.”

Licking her lips in anticipation of those freed-up antiaircraft guns being trained on Aleppo, Barnard also heralds an ISIS surge into the Alawite coastal stronghold of Latakia:

In Latakia, the rebel offensive, involving more than 1,500 fighters led by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, accelerated what had been a gradual rebel push into a province whose government-held central city has been a relatively secure haven for displaced Syrians from war-torn areas. 

Government forces withdrew Monday from a number of villages in the coastal mountains, said Ammar Hassan, an opposition activist in close touch with rebels. 

He said rebels had seized four mountaintop military posts that had been shelling villages below, and were trying to advance farther toward the coast and toward Qardaha, the ancestral mountain village of President Bashar al-Assad’s family.

Regardless of the veracity of rebel gains in these two particular instances, it does seem that Patrick Cockburn's assessment of the conflict after the government victory at Qusayr is on target: there are going to be no outright winners here. The government can continue to rack up victories, but the opposition -- with its myriad Islamist groups; its CIA-supported Free Syrian Army; its Kurdish separatists -- controls significant amounts of territory and appears ever ready to mount fresh offensives.

A piece that appeared in The Guardian at the beginning of last month, "Syria's al-Nusra Front – ruthless, organised and taking control," written by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, provides excellent insight into the antagonistic relationship between Al Nusra Front and Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, as well as why the United States seems blithely unconcerned about the spread of Islamist fighters into Syria:

If the jihadis are in the ascendant in the east, they are not without challenges. The first of these is a strategy that bore fruit for the Americans in Iraq: the threat of an Arab "awakening", or sahwa, in which the US pays tribes to fight the jihadists on their behalf. In Iraq, this delivered a disastrous defeat for al-Qaida and other jihadis, but it has since achieved mixed results in Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. 

But while it took the Americans months of intricate negotiations and huge sums of money to convince a few tribal elders in Iraq, in Syria almost every other marginal tribal elder and his many cousins flirt with the the idea of sahwa, and the money that it could bring. 

"They used to tell us that the FSA will turn to sahwa and fight us, which I thought was an exaggeration," said the emir of gas before we departed. "Now I know that will happen for sure."

Abdul-Ahad's piece gives one a non-partisan perspective of the breadth of opposition within Syrian.

Rebel Defeat in Qusayr

Jacob Wirtschafter, reporting for USA TODAY, says that Qusayr has been taken by government troops:

"Yes, al-Qusayr fell to regime control," said 25-year-old Muhammad Awad of the Free Syrian Army's al-Farouk Battalion in Qusayr. "Let the world, the regime and all the people against us be happy. We retreated because we could not take them on anymore." 

The Free Syrian Army, which had held on to the city for months through increasingly fierce bombardment and attacks by the regime, killing hundreds, conceded that they had to make a retreat from the town that lies on a key supply route.

Widely predicted to determine the outcome of the revolution, Qusayr puts the West in a difficult spot. How will it respond? Look no further than today's story by Steven Erlanger, Nick Cumming-Bruce and Alan Cowell, "France and Britain Say Nerve Gas Likely Used in Syria":

A day after France announced that French laboratory tests had confirmed that sarin gas had been used “multiple times” in Syria “in a localized way,” Britain on Wednesday repeated an earlier assessment that “a growing body of limited but persuasive information” pointed to the use of the same toxin.

The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said that in one case, at least, “there is no doubt it was the regime and its accomplices” that used the gas. France and Britain said their conclusions were based on samples brought out of Syria.

The statements came as United States, Russian and United Nations officials prepared for talks on Wednesday in Geneva on setting up a possible international peace conference. 

In a statement, Mr. Fabius said samples of body fluids taken from victims in Syria and tested at a French laboratory — including urine samples carried out of Syria by French reporters — “prove the presence of sarin,” a poisonous nerve gas. 

“It would be unacceptable that those guilty of these crimes can benefit from impunity,” Mr. Fabius said, without specifying of whom he spoke. But sarin is in the government’s stock of chemical weapons, and he later told France 2 television that blood samples from victims of a helicopter attack in April in Idlib Province left no doubt that it was the government that had used sarin. 

“We are aware of the entire chain, from when the attack took place to when the people were killed and the samples taken,” he said.

The Assad government, so it appears, has finally mastered how to defeat the rebels: use surface-to-surface missiles and air power to pound opposition forces and then send in tanks and infantry. The rebels can't hold turf in face of this; they don't have the firepower. For a description of this, check out C.J. Chivers' frontpage story this morning, "Syrian Rebels Meet Setbacks on a New Front." Chivers describes the fighting in the towns of the Hama plain east of the Damascus-Aleppo Highway in northern Syria:

The battles have shown the strains on all sides in a war in its third year. 

The rebels are pulled between the limits inherent to a lightly equipped and fundamentally guerrilla force and their urge to fight with the battlefield weight of an army.

And the Syrian Army and its loyalist militias are simultaneously trying to maintain a sprawling network of outposts on territory sympathetic to the opposition, while repositioning forces with hopes of reversing the rebels’ gains of the past year. 

The West now appears to be committed to ginning up a justification for direct military intervention. It won't have a UN stamp of approval. Carla Del Ponte's statement in early May that UN investigators had "strong, concrete suspicions" that rebels used sarin gas undercuts the rationale for an attack on the Assad government. This means that it would have to be a NATO operation like Libya. But it is not clear -- because of Germany -- that NATO would lead an assault. So it would probably fall to the old colonial powers -- France, Britain -- in concert with the U.S., Israel and the Gulf monarchies. To go this route the West will have to accept the likely outcome -- world war in the Middle East and replacing Sykes-Picot for something that would look like Somaliland. At this point I'm not sure that the West is willing to stomach this. Clearly a bellicose posture is being maintained in an attempt to get Assad to bargain away the territorial integrity of Syria.

Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi Calls for Holy War

Dominic Evans of Reuters is reporting this morning that rebels setting up to launch more rockets toward the Lebanese city of Baalbek were hit hard by Hezbollah. Russia blocked a UN Security Council statement of grave concern over the fighting in Qusayr because the UN had failed to speak out when the city was seized by rebels more than a year ago. Government forces seem to be in the mopping-up phase. Reuters is also reporting that Qatar-based Al-Jazeera TV star "Sunni Muslim cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi called on Saturday for holy war against the Syrian government after fighters from Shi'ite Lebanese group Hezbollah intervened to help President Bashar al-Assad."

It is interesting when one reads the Western press coverage of the Syrian civil war it always refers to the spread of hostilities to adjoining nations as if it were a force of nature or an occult power and that if any blame was to be had it belongs to Assad for setting off the war by his violent crack down on Arab Spring protesters. But ownership of the regional, sectarian expansion of the war belongs firmly to the West's monarchical allies in the Gulf.

Rebels Losing Ground in Qusayr

The rebels must be getting their clocks cleaned in Qusayr. How else to explain the West's braying about Hezbollah in this morning's paper? Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry, meeting in Jordan with foreign ministers and their clients in the Syrian opposition, warned ominously about the destabilization of Lebanon due to Hezbollah fighting alongside the Assad government. Where were the ominous pronouncements from the State Department when month after month Sunni fighters streamed from Lebanon to wage jihad inside Syria? The Amman meeting was designed to get all the anti-Assad nations on the same page prior to next month's peace conference. This from "U.S. Fears the Fighting in Syria Might Spill Over Into Lebanon, Kerry Says," by Michael Gordon and Mark Landler:

The planning for the Geneva meeting also comes as the Assad government has been making gains on the battlefield and the leverage of the United States and its partners to induce Mr. Assad to vacate his post appears to have declined. 

“Yeah, he’s made a few gains in the last days,” Mr. Kerry said during his news conference, referring to Mr. Assad. “But this has gone up and down in a seesaw.” 

Mr. Kerry asserted that any progress the Syrian government had made in the war would prove to be ephemeral. He warned that the United States and its partners were prepared to increase support for the Syrian opposition if Mr. Assad refused to negotiate an end to his rule and agree to the establishment of a transitional government. 

If Mr. Assad is not prepared to negotiate in “good faith,” Mr. Kerry said, “we will also talk about our continued support and growing support for the opposition in order to permit them to continue to be able to fight for the freedom of their country.”

In other words, if Assad doesn't agree prior to the peace conference to give up power and accept a new government -- which is what the war is being fought for -- then the West along with the Gulf monarchies will continue to destabilize the region. This is not a tenable position. But it is consistent with what we've come to expect from the United States and Israel. So expect more war. Expect more instability in the Middle East. What began over two years ago as a legitimate democratic uprising has been crushed by militarized Great Power conflict.

More proof of Hezbollah's gains on the battlefield is found in Nicholas Kulish's "3 in Europe Now Oppose Hezbollah." Britain is being joined by Germany and France -- in a sudden about-face -- in an attempt to have the European Union brand the military wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization:

Neither the British nor the Germans mentioned the situation in Syria, but it clearly has affected attitudes toward Hezbollah. “Obviously they’re all sitting in Amman getting worried about Hezbollah,” said Sylke Tempel, editor in chief of Internationale Politik, the journal published by the German Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the foreign ministers gathered in the capital of Jordan. 

There was no official reaction from Jerusalem, but one Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he had not been authorized to address the matter, called it “a half-baked move.” The official objected to the notion that only a “militant wing,” and not all of Hezbollah, would be deemed terrorist, saying it was akin to “trying to get in the pool and not get wet.”

Jodi Rudoren reporting from Jerusalem has a piece, "Israel Finding Itself Drawn Into Syria’s Turmoil," while being a little muddled is worth reading because it shows that Israel is not in a position to go to war with Syria. Israel is keeping its powder dry for Iran, and it does not want a Somalia rife with Al Nusra Front jihadists on it's northeast border.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Approves Military Support for Rebels

Of particular interest in "Iran and Hezbollah Support for Syria Complicates Peace-Talk Strategy," by Michael Gordon and Steven Lee Myers, is the news that Iranian and Iraqi paramilitaries are fighting alongside Hezbollah with the Syrian army:

According to American intelligence reports, there are some 200 Iranian paramilitary Quds Force personnel in Syria. Qassim Suleimani, the Quds Force commander, recently ordered Iranian artillery and armor officials to help Mr. Assad’s regime, American officials say.

And Mr. Suleimani has also requested that several hundreds fighters from Asaib al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, two Iraqi Shiite militias that have been trained by the Iranians, join the war effort in Syria, according to officials familiar with the intelligence assessments. Iran is heavily involved in training thousands of members of Mr. Assad’s militia, the Jaish al-Sha’bi, including in Iran.

Therefore it is likely that there are Western "advisers" on the ground with the rebels. Imagine U.S. Special Forces fighting alongside Al Nusra Front jihadists. Whence GWOT? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted yesterday to supply weapons to the rebels:

In Washington, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Mr. Kerry was chairman before becoming secretary of state, voted on Tuesday to approve legislation that would authorize expanded assistance to the rebels in Syria, including weapons. 

“I think all of us understand the risks that come with this type of legislation,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. “But we also know that if we don’t shift the balance there and the moderate groups don’t have the opportunity to be successful the day after Assad, then I think all of us are going to regret we did not play a role in helping make that happen.” 

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to comment on the proposed legislation but said the White House’s policy was clear. 

“We are working urgently to end the conflict in Syria and hasten a transition from Bashar al-Assad to a democratic Syria that is inclusive of all Syrians,” she said.

Working urgently to end the conflict by arming Al Qaeda and thereby creating an inclusive, democratic Syria. How does that smell to you?

Thomas Friedman, though still wedded to his personal fantasy of the magical healing powers of capitalism, sensibly cautions us to think twice before supplying weapons to the Free Syrian Army. In his column today, "Tell Me How This Ends," he lists the likely outcomes of the civil war. It's worth quoting at length:

We can only properly answer the question — should we be arming the Syrian rebels? — if we first answer what kind of Syria do we want to see emerge and what will it take, beyond arms, to get there? 

If we want Bashar al-Assad’s regime to be toppled and pluralistic democracy to emerge in Syria, then we not only need to arm the rebels but we need to organize an international peacekeeping force to enter Syria as soon as the regime falls to help manage the transition. Otherwise, when Assad is toppled, there will be at least two more wars in Syria. First will be a war between Sunnis and Alawites, the sect that Assad represents. The Alawites will fight to defend their perks and turf. After that, there will be a war within the opposition — between the Islamists and more secular fighting forces that have very different visions of a future Syria. Only an outside peacekeeping force could make up for the lack of trust and shared vision and try to forge a new Syria. And it would be a very, very long haul. 

If our goal is to arm the rebels just to serve our strategic interests — which are to topple the Assad regime and end the influence of Iran and Hezbollah in Damascus and not care what comes next — then we need to be ready for the likely fragmentation of Syria into three zones: one Sunni, one Alawite and one Kurdish. 

That might eventually solve the trust and civil war problems, as everyone would be living “with their own,” but I am not sure it would better enable Syrians to address their development challenges.

A third option would be to arm the rebels just to ensure a stalemate — in the hope that the parties might eventually get exhausted enough to strike a deal on their own. But, again, I find it hard to see how any deal that might set Syria on the long, difficult path to a decent, inclusive political system could be implemented without outside help on the ground to referee. 

So let’s do something new: think two steps ahead. Before we start sending guns to more people, let’s ask ourselves for what exact ends we want those guns used and what else would be required of them and us to realize those ends?

In "Syrian Forces and Hezbollah Fighters Press Assault on Key City," Hania Mourtada and Anne Barnard report on the fog of war. The Syrian state news agency, SANA, reports steady gains by government forces in taking control of Qusayr, which is denied via Skype by activists inside the city. Syria says it destroyed an Israeli jeep that had crossed into its territory in the Golan Heights. Israel claims that the jeep was only lightly damaged and it never left its side of the border.

SANA said the incursion was meant to raise the “collapsed morale” of the rebels after the blows they had suffered in Qusayr. It was the second time in two days that the Syrian state news media, aiming to bolster its case that Syria’s opposition was allied with Israel, claimed that it had evidence that Israel had aided the rebels. On Monday, the state news media showed pictures of what it said was an Israeli jeep found in Qusayr, but it appeared to be an old vehicle, and experts said it could have been supplied to Israeli-allied militias in southern Lebanon years ago.

There does seem to be a pattern emerging. Rebel losses on the ground are followed by an Israeli attack. At the beginning of this month government gains in Tartus Province were followed by the Sunday morning mega-bombing outside Damascus. Something to keep an eye on.

The Battle for Qusayr

The battle for Qusayr is important for both sides. As Anne Barnard, reporting from Lebanon's Bekaa Valley explains,

Lebanon and the region have been electrified by the fierce fighting in Qusayr and the role of Hezbollah. Fighters on both sides said rebels continued to hold the north of the city against Hezbollah, the Syrian Army and pro-government militias. 

An official with the March 14 movement, Hezbollah’s main political rival, said that with Hezbollah’s help Mr. Assad could probably take Qusayr, a crucial area because it lies near the border and links Damascus with the rebel-held north and the government-held coast. But, the official said, it could cost Hezbollah hundreds of fighters.

Barnard's piece, "Hezbollah’s Role in Syria War Shakes the Lebanese," once again spotlights the sectarian destabilization underway in the Middle East. She focuses on what she says are unusually heavy losses for the Party of Allah, comparing its losses in Qusayr to the losses it suffered in the 2006 war with Israel. But the story, while not extremely unbalanced, is nonetheless slanted. Nowhere are rebel casualties discussed. Clearly Barnard has contacts with the Free Syrian Army. Why not get a quote about its losses at Qusayr?

No, it smacks of agitprop. Hezbollah losses seem large compared to the 2006 Israeli war because Israel mostly fought from the air, dropping bombs from above. There was no extended campaign to capture a city with ground troops. Hezbollah was successful in hit-and-run attacks on Israeli tanks, but there was no pitched battle stretching over days in urban rubble.

On its Op-Ed page the New York Times in an unsigned editorial asks the question. "Why Is Russia Still Arming Syria?" For the same reason the United States is still arming Bahrain. 

The Times continues to view the Syrian civil war through the lens of the Arab Spring (this is the agitprop) when all its reporting tells us otherwise, tells us that it is in fact a Great Power conflict, with the West and its rancid cronies in the Gulf monarchies on one side against Syria, Iran, Russia, China and the Party of God on the other.

The editorial does go on to say this week will determine if the U.S.-Russia peace conference actually takes place:

The week ahead is critical. Most of the major countries and groups with an interest in Syria are holding meetings that will determine whether the conference can even take place, much less make any progress. 

Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to explain the plans for the conference on Wednesday in Jordan to the anti-Assad alliance of Western and Arab countries. He will need to do a better job of clarifying the American vision, and organizing the allies, than Washington has done so far. The opposition forces are scheduled to meet in Istanbul on Thursday, followed by an Arab League meeting in Cairo. For the opposition to boycott the conference would hand a significant propaganda victory to Mr. Assad.

Sectarianism in Syria's Civil War

Qusayr, a rebel-held Syrian city on the border with Lebanon, is falling to government forces and Hezbollah fighters. This from today's story, "Hezbollah Aids Syrian Military in a Key Battle," by Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad:

The small city, about 100 miles north of the Syrian capital, Damascus, is crucial to supply routes for both sides. Qusayr is a conduit for rebel supplies and fighters from Lebanon, and it links Damascus to the Mediterranean coast, which is the heartland for Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect. 

The Syrian government appears to be trying to regain as much territory as possible, to strengthen its negotiating position while Russia and the United States try to organize peace talks for next month.

The regional, sectarian nature of the conflict is plainly visible for all to see. It's Sunnis backed by the rich Gulf States, Israel and the West against Shiites supported by Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Russia. The Arab Spring is a fading memory. Bashar al-Assad in an interview with an Argentinian newspaper that appeared over the weekend cast doubt on peace talks that Russia and the United States are organizing; he said that the West doesn't want peace. Assad asserts that Israel is providing logistical support to the rebels.

At the end of last week Ben Hubbard had a story, "Syria Begins to Break Apart Under Pressure From War," about the fractured Syria of the present and likely future. There is a Sunni jihadist state in the north, a Kurdish state in the northeast and a Shiite state in the center of the country. It's a story worth reading. Another noteworthy story from last week is the news that Russia has sent advanced antiship missile batteries to Syria.This will deter the United States from having a carrier group to sit in the Mediterranean to enforce a no-fly zone. Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada had a story last week about atrocities committed by pro-government militias against Sunni civilians who live in the coastal Tartus Province.

The West's position seems untenable. They want the folks at home to be outraged by atrocities and the horror of war, and at the same time they want us to support the widening of the war by supplying weapons to jihadist groups with whom we are supposedly engaged in a life-or-death struggle.