By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Donna Abu-Nasr - 2012-07-19T22:47:50Z
As the United Nations failed to act yesterday to stop bloodshed in Syria, rebels pushed to control border crossings and mount new attacks in Damascus, raising the danger that President Bashar al-Assad might retaliate with chemical weapons.
Opposition fighters battled with Syrian security forces for a fifth day yesterday and won control of three border crossings with neighboring Turkey and one with Iraq, Al Arabiya television reported. At the UN Security Council in New York, Russia used its veto power to block a resolution threatening the Syrian regime with sanctions.
As international peace efforts reached a dead end, forces loyal to Assad pounded rebel hideouts in reprisal for a blast that killed three senior figures close to Assad. After 18 months of diplomatic stalemate at the UN, Assad’s fate probably will be decided on the Syrian streets amid growing apprehension over whether he’ll turn his country’s large arsenal of Sarin and VX nerve gas and other chemical weapons on his opponents.
“The potential for this regime to consider using chemical weapons against its own people should be a concern for us all,” U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice told the council yesterday.
Labeling Russia’s veto “dangerous and deplorable,” the top American diplomat at the UN said the scene was set for a “proxy war that could engulf the region.”
Syria is at the heart of the Middle East with Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan and Israel as neighbors. Nearby is Shiite Muslim Iran, its only ally left in the region.
[h=2]Sarin, Cyanide[/h]Governments in the region have used chemical weapons against domestic opponents -- Yemen during its civil war in the 1960s, and Iraq against Kurdish and Shiite rebels in 1988 and 1991 -- so such a scenario isn’t implausible in Syria, Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said in a research paper this week.
To ensure chemical weapons don’t fall into the hands of terrorists, the U.S. should enlist the help of Syrian officers to locate them as well as manage “the political end game in Damascus,” Lincoln Bloomfield, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state in former President George W. Bush’s administration, said at a congressional hearing yesterday.
At least 180 Syrians were killed yesterday by security forces, Al Jazeera television reported, citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
About 125,000 Syrians have fled the country, with Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon the primary destinations for refugees, U.S. State Department officials told reporters yesterday.
[h=2]Suffering Syrians[/h]The officials said they estimate that 1.5 million Syrians inside the country need urgent medical care, food and shelter, including 300,000 to 500,000 who’ve been displaced from their homes. The U.S. has spent $64 million in humanitarian assistance for Syrian refugees this year, and more is coming, according to the State Department.
Rice and other Western diplomats attacked Russia for putting its historic links and economic interests with Assad first. Syria is an arms customer and hosts Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union in the port of Tartus.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, criticized the Obama administration’s handling of Russia in a statement yesterday.
“Russia’s veto again shows the hollowness of President Obama’s failed ‘reset’ policy with Russia and his lack of leadership on Syria,” Romney said. “President Obama has given away generous concessions on missile defense and nuclear arms to Russia, but has received little in return except obstruction and belligerence. While Russia and Iran have rushed to support Bashar al-Assad and thousands have been slaughtered, President Obama has abdicated leadership and subcontracted U.S. policy to Kofi Annan and the United Nations.”
[h=2]Ulterior Motives[/h]Russian UN envoy Vitaly Churkin accused the U.S. of “pushing its own geopolitical designs” in the region, particular relating to Iran, suspected of carrying out a secret nuclear weapons program and funding Shiite Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.
“It’s all about Iran,” Churkin told reporters yesterday. “A major geopolitical battle is being fought on the fields of Syria, and which have nothing to do with the Syrian people.”
“It’s all very sad for them to fire away this biased rhetoric saying nothing about the larger picture of their policy,” Churkin said. “To me it is hypocritical.”
The Western-drafted resolution excluded military action like the UN-authorized NATO air strikes that were used to help oust Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. It called instead for measures such as an embargo on supplying arms to the Syrian military and the freezing of assets.
[h=2]Wrong Side[/h]U.S. President Barack Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, said the double veto puts Russia and China on the “wrong side of history.” Traveling with Obama to Florida, he told reporters yesterday, “It’s a mistake prop up that regime as it comes to an end.”
As chaos envelops Syria, 300 unarmed UN peacekeepers were set to withdraw from the country. The monitoring mission was unable to quell the escalating violence in a country torn by a civil war pitting majority Sunni Muslims against a leadership class drawn from the Alawite minority affiliated with Shiite Islam.
The Security Council is poised to vote today on a 30-day extension of the mission. The U.S. has objected to keeping monitors in the country because they’ve been unable to carry out the job they were given and because of the risks they run.
Rebel fighters, mostly armed with light weapons, have taken the fight to the capital this week, battling government forces armed with tanks, artillery and attack helicopters.
[h=2]Sunni Leadership[/h]The fighters are led mostly by Sunni Muslims, who form the majority of Syria’s population. Assad and many of his top officials come from the country’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam that stands to lose privileges, property and even lives if his regime falls.
As the violence reached even privileged neighborhoods in Damascus, Assad’s power base, frightened residents stocked up on food and stayed indoors. The capital, until recently, had been spared the worst of the carnage experienced in cities such as Homs and Hama.
Syrian troops are deploying helicopters and heavy artillery against the rebels, while snipers take up positions on rooftops on the outskirts of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
The regime’s latest round of brutality comes in response to a July 18 explosion that killed three key members of Assad’s military establishment as they met at the national security headquarters in Damascus.
[h=2]Assad Appears[/h]They were the most senior officials to die since the uprising began in March 2011.
In the aftermath of the attack, Assad disappeared, only to re-emerge after more than 24 hours. State-run Syrian television yesterday aired footage of him dressed in a dark blue suit and tie, greeting the new defense minister and attending his swearing-in. The broadcast didn’t indicate where the brief ceremony took place.
“You always look for possible tipping points” and “we may well have seen it now,” Dennis Ross, a former senior Middle East adviser to President Barack Obama and other U.S. presidents, said of the bomb that killed three of Assad’s top military officials yesterday.
“There could be an unraveling” of Assad’s key support mechanisms, and it’s increasingly likely that he may flee Syria, Ross, now counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in an interview yesterday.
To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in New York at [email protected]; Donna Abu-Nasr in Manama at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at [email protected]
Enlarge image
[h=3]Violence in Syria Escalates as Russia Again Shields Assad at UN[/h]
Bulent Kilic/AFP/GettyImages
Members of Jihadist group Hamza Abdualmuttalib train near Aleppo on July 19, 2012.
Members of Jihadist group Hamza Abdualmuttalib train near Aleppo on July 19, 2012. Photographer: Bulent Kilic/AFP/GettyImages
As the United Nations failed to act yesterday to stop bloodshed in Syria, rebels pushed to control border crossings and mount new attacks in Damascus, raising the danger that President Bashar al-Assad might retaliate with chemical weapons.
Opposition fighters battled with Syrian security forces for a fifth day yesterday and won control of three border crossings with neighboring Turkey and one with Iraq, Al Arabiya television reported. At the UN Security Council in New York, Russia used its veto power to block a resolution threatening the Syrian regime with sanctions.
As international peace efforts reached a dead end, forces loyal to Assad pounded rebel hideouts in reprisal for a blast that killed three senior figures close to Assad. After 18 months of diplomatic stalemate at the UN, Assad’s fate probably will be decided on the Syrian streets amid growing apprehension over whether he’ll turn his country’s large arsenal of Sarin and VX nerve gas and other chemical weapons on his opponents.
“The potential for this regime to consider using chemical weapons against its own people should be a concern for us all,” U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice told the council yesterday.
Labeling Russia’s veto “dangerous and deplorable,” the top American diplomat at the UN said the scene was set for a “proxy war that could engulf the region.”
Syria is at the heart of the Middle East with Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan and Israel as neighbors. Nearby is Shiite Muslim Iran, its only ally left in the region.
[h=2]Sarin, Cyanide[/h]Governments in the region have used chemical weapons against domestic opponents -- Yemen during its civil war in the 1960s, and Iraq against Kurdish and Shiite rebels in 1988 and 1991 -- so such a scenario isn’t implausible in Syria, Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said in a research paper this week.
To ensure chemical weapons don’t fall into the hands of terrorists, the U.S. should enlist the help of Syrian officers to locate them as well as manage “the political end game in Damascus,” Lincoln Bloomfield, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state in former President George W. Bush’s administration, said at a congressional hearing yesterday.
At least 180 Syrians were killed yesterday by security forces, Al Jazeera television reported, citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
About 125,000 Syrians have fled the country, with Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon the primary destinations for refugees, U.S. State Department officials told reporters yesterday.
[h=2]Suffering Syrians[/h]The officials said they estimate that 1.5 million Syrians inside the country need urgent medical care, food and shelter, including 300,000 to 500,000 who’ve been displaced from their homes. The U.S. has spent $64 million in humanitarian assistance for Syrian refugees this year, and more is coming, according to the State Department.
Rice and other Western diplomats attacked Russia for putting its historic links and economic interests with Assad first. Syria is an arms customer and hosts Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union in the port of Tartus.
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, criticized the Obama administration’s handling of Russia in a statement yesterday.
“Russia’s veto again shows the hollowness of President Obama’s failed ‘reset’ policy with Russia and his lack of leadership on Syria,” Romney said. “President Obama has given away generous concessions on missile defense and nuclear arms to Russia, but has received little in return except obstruction and belligerence. While Russia and Iran have rushed to support Bashar al-Assad and thousands have been slaughtered, President Obama has abdicated leadership and subcontracted U.S. policy to Kofi Annan and the United Nations.”
[h=2]Ulterior Motives[/h]Russian UN envoy Vitaly Churkin accused the U.S. of “pushing its own geopolitical designs” in the region, particular relating to Iran, suspected of carrying out a secret nuclear weapons program and funding Shiite Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon.
“It’s all about Iran,” Churkin told reporters yesterday. “A major geopolitical battle is being fought on the fields of Syria, and which have nothing to do with the Syrian people.”
“It’s all very sad for them to fire away this biased rhetoric saying nothing about the larger picture of their policy,” Churkin said. “To me it is hypocritical.”
The Western-drafted resolution excluded military action like the UN-authorized NATO air strikes that were used to help oust Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. It called instead for measures such as an embargo on supplying arms to the Syrian military and the freezing of assets.
[h=2]Wrong Side[/h]U.S. President Barack Obama’s spokesman, Jay Carney, said the double veto puts Russia and China on the “wrong side of history.” Traveling with Obama to Florida, he told reporters yesterday, “It’s a mistake prop up that regime as it comes to an end.”
As chaos envelops Syria, 300 unarmed UN peacekeepers were set to withdraw from the country. The monitoring mission was unable to quell the escalating violence in a country torn by a civil war pitting majority Sunni Muslims against a leadership class drawn from the Alawite minority affiliated with Shiite Islam.
The Security Council is poised to vote today on a 30-day extension of the mission. The U.S. has objected to keeping monitors in the country because they’ve been unable to carry out the job they were given and because of the risks they run.
Rebel fighters, mostly armed with light weapons, have taken the fight to the capital this week, battling government forces armed with tanks, artillery and attack helicopters.
[h=2]Sunni Leadership[/h]The fighters are led mostly by Sunni Muslims, who form the majority of Syria’s population. Assad and many of his top officials come from the country’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam that stands to lose privileges, property and even lives if his regime falls.
As the violence reached even privileged neighborhoods in Damascus, Assad’s power base, frightened residents stocked up on food and stayed indoors. The capital, until recently, had been spared the worst of the carnage experienced in cities such as Homs and Hama.
Syrian troops are deploying helicopters and heavy artillery against the rebels, while snipers take up positions on rooftops on the outskirts of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mailed statement yesterday.
The regime’s latest round of brutality comes in response to a July 18 explosion that killed three key members of Assad’s military establishment as they met at the national security headquarters in Damascus.
[h=2]Assad Appears[/h]They were the most senior officials to die since the uprising began in March 2011.
In the aftermath of the attack, Assad disappeared, only to re-emerge after more than 24 hours. State-run Syrian television yesterday aired footage of him dressed in a dark blue suit and tie, greeting the new defense minister and attending his swearing-in. The broadcast didn’t indicate where the brief ceremony took place.
“You always look for possible tipping points” and “we may well have seen it now,” Dennis Ross, a former senior Middle East adviser to President Barack Obama and other U.S. presidents, said of the bomb that killed three of Assad’s top military officials yesterday.
“There could be an unraveling” of Assad’s key support mechanisms, and it’s increasingly likely that he may flee Syria, Ross, now counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in an interview yesterday.
To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in New York at [email protected]; Donna Abu-Nasr in Manama at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at [email protected]
Enlarge image
[h=3]Violence in Syria Escalates as Russia Again Shields Assad at UN[/h]
Members of Jihadist group Hamza Abdualmuttalib train near Aleppo on July 19, 2012.
Members of Jihadist group Hamza Abdualmuttalib train near Aleppo on July 19, 2012. Photographer: Bulent Kilic/AFP/GettyImages