Syrian Forces Renew Raids on Damascus Suburbs
By DAMIEN CAVE and HWAIDA SAAD
James Lawler Duggan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A man showed marks of torture on his back after being released from detention by regime forces in Aleppo on Thursday.
Government forces supported by tanks raided a suburb of the Syrian
capital on Thursday, killing 15 people, opposition activists said.
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Syrian Forces Renew Raids on Damascus Suburbs
By DAMIEN CAVE and HWAIDA SAAD
Published: August 23, 2012
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Government forces supported by tanks raided a suburb
of Damascus on Thursday, opposition activists said, killing 15 people a
day after opponents of President Bashar al-Assad
reported a widening military campaign in neighborhoods where the rebels
are strong and the government is too weak to assert full control.
James Lawler Duggan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A man showed marks of torture on his back after being
released from detention by regime forces in Aleppo on Thursday.
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Rebels fought the Syrian Army in Aleppo on Wednesday, as shelling rocked Damascus.
News reports said loyalist forces were conducting house-to-house
searches in the Daraya neighborhood, even though rebel forces had
apparently withdrawn from the area. The Local Coordination Committees,
an opposition network in Syria, said 15 people had been killed by rocket
fire, including a mother and two children, although the figures could
not be immediately verified. By late morning, the group said 73 people
had been killed so far, mainly in the suburbs of Damascus.
The reported attacks came after gunfire and shelling on Wednesday when the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,
an opposition group in Britain with contacts in Syria, said the
government raid on Kfar Sousa — also with tanks backed by infantry
soldiers — left at least 24 people dead. In the Damascus neighborhood of
Qaboun, activists said, Syrian forces executed dozens of others. On
Thursday, the Syrian Observatory said, government forces had drawn up
tanks at checkpoints ringing Daraya to fire into the neighborhood, which
was also under attack from Qassioun Mountain, overlooking Damascus.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International said in a new report released on
Thursday that civilians in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, were bearing
the brunt of fighting there.
“Civilians are enduring a horrific level of violence in the battle
between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters for control of
Aleppo,” Amnesty said in a summary of the 11-page report, which it said was based on a 10-day visit to the city by its investigators earlier this month.
“The use of imprecise weapons, such as unguided bombs, artillery shells
and mortars by government forces, has dramatically increased the danger
for civilians,” Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s senior crisis
response adviser, was quoted as saying.
“As the conflict continues there are also growing concerns about
increased abuses, including unlawful killings and ill-treatment of
captives by opposition fighters belonging to a plethora of armed
opposition groups, including the Free Syrian Army, operating in the
city,” the report said.
The state news agency, SANA, reported on Thursday that government forces
had routed “terrorists” — the usual official name for rebels — in parts
of Aleppo and Homs. Opposition groups described the attacks around
Damascus on Wednesday as “hit and run” assaults. Similar raids have been
reported in several areas ringing the capital in recent weeks, as troop
presence and shelling intensify then fade.
This week, activists reported finding 40 bodies in one suburb; last
week, 60 others were discovered in a landfill, many of them believed to
be of civilians.
Analysts said the effort — in which the government invades but does not
hold an area — underscores the challenge that Mr. Assad faces as he
tries to defeat an insurgency that often slips away, only to resurface.
It is an effort that experts describe as the opposite of the “winning
hearts and minds” model and is based instead on the Arabic saying “rule
is based on awe.”
“Terror is the basic approach,” said Paul Salem, director of the Carnegie Center for the Middle East,
Beirut. “From the beginning of the uprising the logic was hit and hit
hard, punish and scare, and that would be the way to do it.”
But Mr. Salem added, “It’s a crazy logic, and it has not served them
well.” While the approach worked when the Syrian government suppressed a
revolt in Hama in the 1980s, he said, the current effort to intimidate
the country into calm is increasingly showing signs of failure.
The opposition has not broken; it has scattered and regrouped. In many
areas, from north to south, the government has claimed that its mission
has been accomplished, or would be quickly, only to have the rebels
resurface to fight again with help from residents.
In Aleppo, the government has tried nearly everything, including missile
strikes from fighter jets, but while rebel brigades have retreated
temporarily from some areas, they have created what amounts to formal
rotation schedules in others.
They have also completed their own successful hit-and-run ambushes on
the military airport that is the main base for government troops, and on
the city center, while food and other supplies have been provided by
wealthy residents.
In the region around the southern city of Dara’a, where the uprising began, the pattern has been similar. On Tuesday, rebel leaders said they were retreating from several areas because of an ammunition shortage, but on Wednesday, they reported reoccupying some of the places they had fled.
There are also many areas, more distant from the most concentrated
fighting, where the government’s forces have retreated as rebels have
made incremental gains.
Deir al-Zour is one example. An area deep into the east of the country,
about 300 miles from Damascus, it has seen intense fighting at various
times during the nearly 18-month-old conflict, but in recent weeks, the
battle has taken on what rebels there described as a familiar pattern:
government troops based outside the city, and with little knowledge of
the area, use air power and shelling, but not much else.
“The Assad forces are afraid to enter the towns and villages, so they
started with this new strategy of bombardment from long distance and
from helicopters,” said Abu Khalaf, 40, a fighter sitting at a rebel
base in Deir al-Zour. “We can succeed because we know the land, while
the Assad forces are coming from outside the province.”
On Wednesday, an activist in another section of Deir al-Zour said rebels
had seized two checkpoints near the Iraqi border, taking over
government buildings as officials fled.
The dynamic, Abu Khalaf said, has changed: the government has become the
equivalent of a foreign power. “We are fighting to liberate our country
from the Assad occupation army,” he said. “We don’t have a government
that runs the country; we have an occupation army.”
Deir al-Zour is also where rebels said last week that they had shot down their first fighter jet, using an antiaircraft weapon seized from the military.
The fighter who claimed responsibility, Abu Allawi, has become a hero
among the rebels, and he says he has also become a target for the
government. His commanders denied requests to make him available for an
interview.
Another fighter who said he was with Abu Allawi when the jet crashed
said that most of the fighters in the area were defectors and that they
had been using purloined military weapons — including antiaircraft
weapons — to gain an advantage. He described the attack on the fighter
jet as a mix of luck and talent.
“We deploy these antiaircraft guns around the villages and among trees
and houses, so the regime didn’t expect us to use them like we did,”
said the fighter, who identified himself with the nickname Abu Mohammed.
“The surprise played a key role in downing this MiG fighter, which was
flying in low; the pilot was feeling relaxed as he bombed, and when he
flew in really low, Abu Allawi shot it and was able to target the body
of the plane. That set it on fire.”
The Syrian government has contended that the aircraft crashed because of a mechanical problem.
The rebels’ account, which is consistent with earlier unverified reports
of the downing of the plane, suggests that any strike against Syrian
aircraft would not be easy to repeat.
Abu Mohammed, 35, said the initial claims that the rebels were on their
way to creating their own no-fly zone, without international support,
seemed far-fetched, at least until the rebels could seize or buy
stronger weapons.
He said the fighters were trying to acquire Stinger missiles “from some ‘friends’ in Iraq.”
“We hope to get them because that will change everything in our region,” he said.
COPIADO : http://www.nytimes.com/
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