Syrian Leader Hit by Setbacks in Fighting and Diplomacy
By ANNE BARNARD and ELLEN BARRY
Thair Al-Khalidieh/Shaam News Network, via Reuters
A Free Syrian Army fighter battled government forces in Homs, Syria, on Monday.
A Turkish official said Russia had agreed to a new approach that would
seek ways to persuade President Bashar al-Assad to give up power, as
fighting raged around Damascus.
U.S. Warns Syria on Chemical Weapons
By PETER BAKER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
The White House said it would take action if such arms were used, suggesting even the possibility of military force.
Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
Recent Developments
Dec. 3 The government faced fierce fighting around Damascus and a potential diplomatic setback, as Turkey said Russia had agreed to a new approach to persuading President Bashar al-Assad to relinquish power. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued warnings against the use of chemical weapons.
Dec. 2 Syrian warplanes and artillery blasted parts of Damascus and its rebellious suburbs, part of what activists described as intense fighting as rebels tried to push their way into the center of President Bashar Assad’s power base. In central Syria, a car bomb killed at least 15 people, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported. Despite the fighting, merchants around the country closed their shops in an attempt to keep the nonviolent protest movement, called the “Strike of Pride,” alive.
Dec. 1 As Syrian rebels and government forces clashed on the outskirts of Damascus, explosions rumbled in the distance and warplanes screeched overhead, the rebels appeared to be making their strongest push toward the city since the government repelled an offensive there in July.
Nov. 30 The United Nations refugee agency said that armed groups are attacking Syrian civilians as they try to flee to Jordan to escape the conflict in their country. Without saying who was responsible, the agency appealed to all sides to allow them safe passage.
Nov. 29 The United States is moving toward recognizing the Syrian opposition, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people as soon as it fully develops its political structure, American officials said. Also, the Obama administration is considering deeper intervention to help push President Bashar al-Assad from power, said government officials. In Syria, Internet access disappeared across the country, and commercial air traffic was halted.
Nov. 28 Syrian state media said that 34 people and possibly many more had died in twin car bombings in a suburb populated by minorities only a few miles from the center of Damascus. One estimate by the government’s opponents put the death toll at 47.
Nov. 27 Syrian rebels accused the authorities of launching an airstrike outside the northern city of Idlib, killing at least 20 people as they waited to have their olives turned into oil.
Nov. 26 After declaring that they had seized an important military airport and an air defense base outside Damascus, Syrian rebels said they overran a hydroelectric dam in the north of the country, adding to a monthlong string of tactical successes that demonstrate their ability to erode the government’s dominance in the face of withering aerial attacks.
Nov. 24 Hundreds of thousands of Syrians displaced by the war now face the onslaught of winter with inadequate shelter, senior government officials and aid organizations say. With temperatures already plunging, the humanitarian crisis is deepening.
Overview
The wave of Arab unrest that began with the Tunisian revolution reached Syria on March 15, 2011, when residents of a small southern city took to the streets to protest the torture of students who had put up anti-government graffiti. The government responded with heavy-handed force, and demonstrations quickly spread across much of the country.
President Bashar al-Assad, a British-trained doctor who inherited Syria’s harsh dictatorship from his father, Hafez al-Assad, at first wavered between force and hints of reform. But in April 2011, just days after lifting the country’s decades-old state of emergency, he set off the first of what became a series of withering crackdowns, sending tanks into restive cities as security forces opened fire on demonstrators. In retrospect, the attacks appeared calculated to turn peaceful protests violent, to justify an escalation of force.
In the summer of 2011, as the crackdown dragged on, thousands of soldiers defected and began launching attacks against the government, bringing the country to what the United Nations in December called the verge of civil war. An opposition government in exile was formed, the Syrian National Council, but the council’s internal divisions kept Western and Arab governments from recognizing it as such.
Syrian opposition factions signed an agreement in November 2012 to create a unified umbrella organization with the hope of attracting international diplomatic recognition as well as more financing and improved military aid from foreign capitals. The coalition, known as the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, was recognized by Britain, France, Turkey and several Gulf Arab countries. However, several extremist Islamist groups fighting in Syria said they reject the coalition.
By November 2012, the country was many months into a full-blown civil war. Nearly 40,000 people, mostly civilians, were thought to have died and tens of thousands of others had been arrested. More than 400,000 Syrian refugees had registered in neighboring countries, with tens of thousands not registered. In addition, about 2.5 million Syrians needed aid inside the country, with more than 1.2 million displaced domestically, according to the United Nations.
Shifting Tactics
Control of towns and cities seesawed between rebel forces that were poorly organized but increasingly well-armed and confident, and a government that was too weak to stamp out the rebellion but strong enough to prevent it from holding large chunks of territory.
Tactics have often shifted throughout the conflict, which is approaching the two-year mark. In the summer of 2012, the government withdrew to strong points, increasingly relying on air power and artillery to smash areas that rebels had seized.
The rebels have changed their tactics, too. They have focused on challenging air power, their deadliest foe, by harassing some air bases, ransacking others and seizing antiaircraft weapons. Fighters have overrun a half-dozen bases around Damascus, Syria’s capital; two in the country’s eastern oil-producing area; and the largest military installation near the country’s largest city, Aleppo.
Yet the tactical gains appear unlikely to lead to a sudden shift that collapses the government, analysts say. Rather, they say, a de facto split of Syria is hardening with the government slowly shrinking the area it tries to fully control, a swath that runs from Damascus north along the more-populated western half of the country to Latakia, the ancestral province of President Assad.
The government is still strong in core areas, analysts say, and even when it cedes control of the ground to rebels, as in parts of northern Syria and growing areas of the thinly populated east, it retains the power to strike from the air. And, analysts warn, even if the army abandons some areas, that could simply open the way to fighting among sectarian and political factions.
The conflict is complicated by Syria’s ethnic divisions. The Assads and much of the nation’s elite, especially the military, belong to the Alawite sect, a minority in a mostly Sunni country. While the Assad government has the advantage of crushing firepower and units of loyal, elite troops, the insurgents should not be underestimated. They are highly motivated and, over time, demographics should tip in their favor. Alawites constitute about 12 percent of the 23 million Syrians. Sunni Muslims, the opposition’s backbone, make up about 75 percent of the population.
The government has been widely condemned internationally, most ardently by its former ally Turkey and other Sunni Arab nations. Iran, Syria’s closest regional ally, has provided a flow of arms, much of it through Iraq, through the chagrin of the United States, and Russia, its traditional great-power patron, has blocked efforts by the United Nations Security Council to take forceful measures to push Mr. Assad from power.
The danger of the fighting setting off regional conflict appeared to rise every month, with destabilizing effects seen in Lebanon and Iraq. But it was the possibility of a clash between Syria and its former ally Turkey that drew the most worry, particularly after Turkey shelled targets across the border in October 2012 after a Syrian mortar attack killed five of its civilians. Since Turkey is a NATO member, the fighting there could deepen international involvement.
After the U.S. presidential elections in November 2012, discussions within the Obama administration turned to the question of finding more direct ways to help the rebels.While no decisions have been made, the administration is considering several alternatives, including directly providing arms to some opposition fighters.
The most urgent decision was whether NATO should deploy surface-to-air missiles in Turkey, ostensibly to protect that country from Syrian missiles that could carry chemical weapons.
Background to Protests
The country’s last serious stirrings of public discontent had come in 1982, when increasingly violent skirmishes with the Muslim Brotherhood prompted Hafez al-Assad to move against them, sending troops to kill at least 10,000 people and smashing the old city of Hama. Hundreds of fundamentalist leaders were jailed, many never seen alive again. COPY http://global.nytimes.com/
Multimedia
Women Assert Role in Rebel Forces
Online videos show all-female rebel brigades and even
one bridge of men led by a young woman. However, their role in combat
remains unclear.
The Lions of Tawhid
The Times’s C.J. Chivers travels with an
antigovernment fighting group in and near Aleppo, where the war for
Syria’s future has hardened all involved.
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