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Subscribe to RSSCAIRO -- With fighting now encroaching the suburbs of the Syrian capital, the conflict is entering into a new dimension for the first time in nearly 10 months.
Ayman Mohyeldin / NBC News
President Bashar Assad's regime is intensifying its violent crackdown on Syrian protesters, despite international pressure. NBC News' Ayman Mohyeldin is one of the few Western journalists to have been granted permission inside Syria in recent weeks, click to see some of his photos.
The Syrian military has regained control of the Damascus suburbs after rebel fighters over the weekend made strong advances around the capital, threatening the grip of President Bashar al Assad. The Syrian News Agency say security forces attacked "terrorist hideouts" in the Damascus countryside -- a loosely veiled acknowledgment that the fighting is now on the doorsteps of the capital.
But the attention on the capital and its outlying areas is a sign that rebel fighters who are part of the loosely knit Free Syrian Army have grown more brazen in their attacks as they go on the offensive against government troops. The fighting near the capital comes as a spike in violence has left several hundreds of people dead over the past five days. Both the government and opposition activists continue to blame each other for the violence that only seems to be escalating.
Syrian opposition fighters say the spike in violence is a sign that Assad's regime is desperate and launching whatever counter offensive it can to crush a stubborn uprising against his rule. Syrian analysts say with the international community convening at the U.N. to discuss the Syria crisis, the regime sees a window of opportunity in which it can resort to violence before pressure and possibly action is ratcheted up against Damascus rendering it impossible to continue on the same path.
An Arab League monitoring mission tasked with making sure Syria complies with an Arab peace plan to end the violence has been suspended. Syrian opposition says this has given Assad the greenlight to crack down in the blackout of media and monitors.
Read more: Gunfire 'everywhere': Street battles rage in Damascus suburbs
Some Syrians say the Free Syrian Army has grown in strength as more supporters and defectors join its ranks buoyed by its will to fight on despite being overpowered and outnumbered. As their numbers grow, the Syrian military is increasingly fatigued and weary, according to opposition members. Time is the regime's enemy, they say.
President Bashar Assad's regime has slaughtered thousands of people since March, according to the United Nations. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
But Syria's fault lines are now spilling over into the international arena. U.N. Security Council members are convening in New York on Tuesday to discuss endorsing an Arab League plan that calls on Assad to hand over power immediately. The biggest objection so far has come from Russia which sees such attempts as interference in Syrian domestic affairs.
Russia instead has gone on its own diplomatic offensive, offering to host negotiations between the Assad government and all of the opposition forces. But a member of the Syrian opposition tells me Russia's efforts are only so that it does not appear as an obstacle to the will of the international community without offering an alternative. The Syrian opposition will not enter into any dialogue with Assad's government without preconditions. At the top of its list of demands? The President must agree to step down from power immediately.
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The strategy is clear and predictable. Assad will try to wipe out all of the opposition, kill their children and torture a few as examples. Once there is a reasonable lull in the genocidal killing, he will quickly call for phony 'elections' which he will win because there will be no opposition left willing to run against his party. Then he will declare victory and claim a new mandate to rule forever.
Just wait and watch.
The best thing will be for the UN to kick his sick ass out of the UN and declare him a wanted genocidal criminal.
Or what will happen is he will be removed from power by catching a sudden case of death. It seems tyrants only ever leave themselves two options.
The UN has little punch IMO. The problem in Syria is the same problem in Egypt and Libya that what is left after removal of the regime is a void that other bad guys figure out how to fill. Now the US has lousy relations with Egypt, with Libya falling apart due to lack of governing structure by rebels. At some point, people begin to see their lives worse under the "new" guys. It is easy to be the ones protesting, but quite another to govern and come up with solutions.
theboys......you beat me to posting almost the same remarks.
Another failed International policy decision by this Administration....praising the Arab Spring.
"Democracy" is what the hooligans used as a theme to overthrow the suppressive governments. However, the "Democratic" government they will wind up with will even further LIMIT their freedoms.
On another point: Why did Mr. Obama send 12,000 troops into Libya when he stated over and over that there would be "NO TROOPS ON THE GROUND" ?
Assad's thrown is weakening rapidly......his castle will soon have new occupants ....
ido I found this?'' Former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney said Obama has 12000 US troops in Malta waiting for deployment to Libya''examiner.com Cynthia Mckinney? hmm interesting,time will tell?
NATO occupies all petroleum platforms in Libya - Charlotte City ...
www.examiner.com/...in.../nato-occupies-all-p... - Isalin ang pahinang ito
6 days ago – Pravda.ru is reporting that 12000 American troops were in Malta waiting for ... The White house did not respond to emails asking for clarification on this ... Why Is President Obama Sending 12000 US Troops To Libya?
An article about the Syrian civil war is merely an excuse for right-wingers to post attacks on President Obama. Facts don't matter to these people ... whatever lies and misinformation they get from talk radio or the Internet will do. The claim Obama sent 12,000 troops in Libya is a flat out lie. It also has nothing to with what is going on in Syria.
J. Davis-2165978''excuse for right-wingers to post attacks on President Obama.'' I personally do not believe this story,Cynthia Mckinney is a lefty democrat that is spreading this story. J. Davis-2165978 please apologize to all the rightwingers?
After spending some time looking around Google
Libyan Free Press which is the same story that Iran produced on PressTV. I also see Cynthia McKinney's name mentioned above, so I tried to Google her name along with 12,000 and Libya and found a story on San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper written by Cynthia. I do not know if this is the original publisher or if they picked it up from somewhere else, but read the article and judge for yourself.
She makes unfounded claims saying she has heard this story in the foreign media and Libyan sources without citing the actual sources of her information. From what is written in the article, it appears she has an ulterior motive and she is making false accusations either ignorantly or willfully for attention to promote her cause. In either case, it is inappropriate. If she is at least going to make accusations the least she could do is provide a source.
John R. Bolton made a secondary list, to President George W. Bush's Axis Of Evil, in which he listed Cuba, Libya, and Syria. It's pretty clear that putting troops on stand-by, would be at the very least - the same actions that GWB would have taken. No Right v Left argument to be had.
The only question is - what is known of the Rebel forces, and how far will Russia go to keep the current powers in office?
I say let them fight each other, and throw in the Christians from America - and let the chips fall where they may. Whatever is left will be fought over by the super powers, to which I say - let China and Russia have them. In the end that should take care of a third of the population problem - sounds like a winner to me.
You know Israel and the U.S. are behind most of the conflict there. They are supporting the dictatorships in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc but using the sympathy of the public feels for the Arab Spring in order to go after the the regimes they don't like.
And in the "Here we go again with another war over non-exsitant WMD" category looks like the NYT is performing the same role it did before the Iraq invasion in helping to get the U.S. public ready for another disastrous war, this time with Iran.
Notice they always have plenty of money for aggressive wars and bailing out wealthy bankers but not enough for Medicare, Social Security, Education, Healthcare, etc?
The New York Times and the drive to war against Iran
31 January 2012
The New York Times on Sunday published a lengthy article in its weekly magazine that sympathetically and clinically lays out the arguments of Israeli policy makers in favor of a military attack on Iran sometime this year. The article, written by Ronen Bergman, a prominent Israeli journalist who specializes in intelligence matters, features interviews with top current and former Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon and former Mossad chief Meir Dagan.
Bergman discusses the extensive military preparations made by Israel for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities and reviews the covert war being waged by Israel, with US support, which has included deadly explosions at military and nuclear facilities, cyber warfare, and the assassination of five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007, the latest occurring January 11 in the center of Tehran.
The author concludes the article by stating, “I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012."
Appearing in the context of newly announced US and European sanctions against Iranian oil exports and a buildup of US naval forces in the Persian Gulf, the article serves a definite and sinister purpose: to provide the pretexts and condition public opinion for a preemptive and unprovoked war of aggression that will have catastrophic consequences for the people of Iran and the Middle East and ultimately for the entire world.
It appeared only days after President Obama’s belligerent State of the Union address, in which he boasted of isolating and economically crippling Iran and reiterated that he would “take no options off the table” to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. The same day the article was published, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta appeared on CBS Television’s “60 Minutes” program and baldly asserted that Iran would have a nuclear weapon within a year….
….Israel, a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which illegally maintains a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, declares its right to destroy the nuclear program of Iran, a signatory to the treaty, which insists that its nuclear program is civilian and therefore permitted under international law. Despite the best efforts of the US, Israel and their imperialist allies, the International Atomic Energy Agency has been unable to substantiate their claims that Iran is, in fact, seeking to build nuclear weapons….
….The Times article demonstrates the degree to which it and the entire US media and political establishment have embraced a foreign policy based on outright criminality—aggressive war, torture, assassinations, abductions, disappearances, etc….
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jan2012/pers-j31.shtml
I pity the poor Jewish community in Syria, as well as the Christian Syrians. Ironically, they are among Assad's most ardent supporters, since they know if the U.N. installs another Islamic government they are doomed.
Why we would want to install another Islamocracy like in Libya, Iraq, and pending in Egypt is beyond me. I suppose some look forward to armageddon - after which we can clap and say "it was all for nothing".
Turning these secular states into ethnically cleansed Muslim States is utterly fascist and dangerous for Israel. It will also soon upset the balance of power, and that unerringly leads to large scale war.
Nothing new.
Most of ME dictators have phony elections like in Egypt or feudal and highly corrupt dictatorships like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and many more.
Yemen is in a worse state of fighting than Syria. So what is the big deal about Syria?
Are you kidding? Man, this war is the best thing ever. Syrians killing Syrians - it doesn't get any better than that!
Obama did not send 12,000 troops to Libya. That is not true.
You can link to all the ludicrous articles you want, but the fact is that there is no way to deploy that many soldiers - or one TENTH of that many soldiers - with any level of secrecy. There would be major military operations, bases installed, supply drops, support crew... so if he did send them, every single news outlet would know about it and run stories on the deployment.
And for Archie, I'm not going to bother kicking at your silly conspiracy theories, but I'm just curious: do you get your ridiculous assumptions from some sort of mainstream organization of lunatics or is blaming the US and Israel just a knee-jerk reaction? When one of your socks are missing is it the CIA's fault?
the Gulf countries should supply the opposition with money and weapons. Thousands will defect for $ 200 a month and will hang him in Damascus. screw the UN. Another dictatorship like Russia can paralyze the whole UN with a Veto, No solution for this criminal but the same fate as Kaddafi. The opposition needs weapons and money and I will guarantee you they will finish him quickly.
Looks like Lybia part II to me.
One thing you can always count on is Russia and China standing up for the dictators.
They are both scared @!$%#less that the same thing may happen in their own countries one day.
Again, Libya is falling apart because the government isn't function for the people. After the civil war, the people expect things to go back to some sort of normalcy and when it doesn't they panic and begin to listen to anybody with a plan. Equally they resort to fighting amongst themselves.
Reminds me of OWS, everyone knows what they want, however they never had a plan in the first place.
Are we not backing up Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and other worse dictators?
Does your yardstick apply uniformly?
Arab League chief observer for Syria, Gen of Sudanese army was responsible for killings of more than 300000 Christians in Darfur. What an irony!
No Christians in Dafur.
Actually, Libya is doing remarkably well for a nation with no experience of democracy or functional government institutions that recently emerged from a full-blown civil war. Of course it isn't going to be smooth sailing, but most things you could hope to go right have gone right.
And people who like to look down on the Arab Spring rarely mention Tunisia, which has held its elections successfully and is even turning around its economy.
Hopefully one day all the dictators will be dead and we can concentrate on hating our politicians like civilized people.
Secretary of State Hilliary Clinton will back U.N. action on Syria. Good for her! Hillary is Wonder Woman
without the flashy costume.
Hillary is a fool to stop this. Just like Reagan was a fool to try to stop the Iranians and Iraqis from killing each other.
There's not a lot that the USA can do.... overtly. The covert operations depend on the Free Syrian Army, and what they need/want. Face it war hawks, the ball is NOT in our court!
It funny how we don't hear about Lybia anymore even though things haven't improved. Which is exactly what will happen here.
The media only reports the good news if US involvement is part of the equation because to do otherwise reflects poorly on the president they want to keep in power.
theboys, you should specify 'US' or 'western' media in your claims
By personal sentiment, I side with the forces that oppose Assad. These various revolutionary forces are multi-ethnic and multi-religious and are only unified by being anti-Assad. Syria is a shatterbelt of ethnicities similar to the old Austro-Hungarian empire and is consequently plagued by the same centrifugal forces that such multi-ethnic/religious nation states suffer. Once Assad has fallen, then the next inevitable conflicts between Sunni vs. Allawite (shia), Druze vs. Christian, Kurd vs. Arab, etc... will begin. I hate it, but that seems to be the prevailing pattern with human behavior, as proven over and over again in the historical record.
I wish the people of Syria the best. I will only support military action with UN approval. Our European allies will not join in without the seal of international law via the UN. As everyone already knows, the Russians and Chinese will veto such an action in the Security Council. Consequently, there will be no collective security operatoin and the UN will fail in Syria as the former League of Nations failed in Manchuria in 1934 and in Ethiopia in 1935-36. Therefore, with deep regret... I insist that the US stay on the sidelines. The administration seems to be intent on taking that course of action, which is a good thing in this case.
The only problem is the US looks like hypocrites. We did get involved in a big way with Libya supposedly to stop further killings. So were there actually less killings because NATO was involved or actually more? We will never know, but the massive destruction left by all the bombings would never have happened if we had let Libya work out their own government and pick their own leader.
So now Syria is knocking off people left and right and the US has not sent in the bombers. Why not? We all know what not. We were willing to help Libya because they are low hanging fruit, but Syria is entirely a different matter. So we immediately back off and offer useless threats knowing China and Russia do not believe in removing leaders - PERIOD.
I disagree. The operation in Libya does indeed come as close to possible as fulfilling the mandate of the UN as it was envisioned in regards to protecting civilian populations from oppressive governments or external aggressors (external aggressor not the case for Libya, but must be mentioned to make point).
You can call it low-hanging fruit. So be it. Saving the people of Benghazi from impending slaughter will go down in history as the right thing to do, morally and militarily. Even in political terms it was to the benefit of the UK, France and the USA.
Gadhafi was destroyed with the loss of only two pieces of capital equipment (one F15E fighter due to mechanical malfunction and one drone). No NATO lives lost. This action was a huge sucess.
The people of Libya will find their way. Regardless of pending troubles, life will be better without Gadhafi.
Syria is a more complicated picture than Libya. The mosaic of tribes, religions and ethnicites and the larger population centers makes this region far more problematic for UN sponsored collective security action than was Libya or Bosnia.
Not to mention the purely technical details of trying to fight a war in such a dense and urban country will be much harder for any foreign force trying to fight only one set of Syrians.
I agree fully with you, Anthony. I wish the people of Libya the best, and I hope that Syria's opposition can pull through on their own, because I don't think any NATO action is likely this time around.
yeah let's spend another billion dollars helping them overthrow their government so the muslim brotherhood can take over...
"Of all the forces that make for a better world, none is so powerful as hope. With hope, one can think, one can work, one can dream. If you have hope, you have everything."
Assad will fall......
Freedom fighters? Is that what Aqeda is calling itself now? This opposition force is just another Muslim faction wanting control of another government keeping it at bay and using the UN and the media to twist everything to get their way.
Actually, that's not true. The only people reporting that is the Syrian state media.
Everyone else has confirmed that the rebels are largely deserters from the Syrian army. Kind of bizarre that they would be part of "Aqeda" or whatever you were trying to say there.
President Obama will do nothing while he is in the middle of and election campaign
Russia does not want the world to medal in Syria's affairs because they them selves have done thus type of thing to their owen people and other countries. Who knows. Putin may have to do this to his own people in the next couple of years. He can not do this if he does not back the government of Syria because he would be a hypocrite in the worlds eyes.
The reposts of the demise of Bashar Al-Assad are greatly exaggerated. There is a large population of Alawites that would be exterminated by the Shia if they took over. The Alawite are not even considered true Muslims by many. They take communion, allow Christians to practice their religion including Christmas something the backwards Shia will not allow. The Alawite are fighting for their very survival and will not abdicate their position of power and control. Most in the US are so ignorant of there reality of this part of the world.
Shia? You mean the Sunni? The Alawite are a sect of the Shia and it would most likely be the Sunni killing the Alawite. You should not make assumptions like in your last sentence, and especially not when you are being ignorant of the reality of that part of the world.
The idiots have FINALLY figures out that POWER comes from the barrel of a gun when you SHOOT BACK, and SCREW those damned protests that go nowhere
A revolution might stop the bloodshed, but it will do little to stabilize the country or offer it's people any hope. What Syria, and the rest of the Middle East, needs is economic stability. Outside of oil and a few other precious natural resources, there is little in the area. Which means that the people are living in poverty with no hope of ever improving their situation. It is that dismal state of affairs that keeps causing all of the unrest. Well, outside of discrimination and religious nutjobs. But hey, nothing distracts people better than having a steady job that they can't afford to loose. That's what the entire Middle East needs. Some good infrastructure so they can manufacture, or looser laws about foreigners and women so that they can attract some tourism (which won't happen until after they've reached stability). If we'd spent all of the dollars on these pointless wars on building some serious infrastructure and facilitating economic independence for the little man, the entire region would be far better off. Many young men join these militant terrorist groups simply because they have no other real opportunities in life. Bloodshed is not the solution.
The 2nd amendment merely gives Constitutional permission for the people to use violence if necessary to get RID of their bought off DULY ELECTED government. Right? The BALLOT BOX sure won't make them go away, because your ONLY choice is between two bought off upper class members. And it will always be thus via the vote. Look how Mitt just bought Florida
I don't see exactly this has to do with Syria, but you make a rather good point. Although it's generally a fairly bad idea to march to Washington with an armed militia. Election reform is desperately needed. To answer why it's needed just ask yourself a few questions. Is all of Washington corrupt? Were all of those people corrupt to start with? Why? Your answers to the first two were "Yes" and "No" respectively. The answer to why is the election process.
Our election process relies on something our forefathers could never have seen coming: the mass media. To get elected to any high level position in this country one must win over voters by spending millions on ads. Individuals don't have that kind of money, so they have to sell their souls to corporations bit by bit until nothing remains but a corrupt, soulless politician. The only solution is to ban the use of political ads and bias by mass media pundits and programming. The only time an election hopeful should be on television is if they are doing a speech or debate. Period.
Another reason ads should be banned is that even though they may be entirely truthful, they have the ability to play on people's gullibility. Even smart folks are susceptible to subtle and even overt attempts to fool them. Take the oh-so-famous dihydrogen monoxide scenario. People of reasonable intelligence thought it would be a good idea to ban the substance due to the (entirely true) facts that it's in everything we eat and drink, is in all forms of cancer, is fatal if even a small amount is inhaled, etc. This sort of gullibility makes ads work and the people in power and those seeking power know it.
Only without misleading ads and forced opinions from pundits and programs, people can get a true sense of who they are voting and rest assured that there is a slim chance that the election hopeful isn't corrupt. In the current system everyone can rest assured that they are corrupt thanks to the fact that no one can win a major election without an avalanche of ads.
That's an excellent point, Bird, and a very insightful solution.
David, good luck with your little armed rebellion. I'll be waiting for another story about some nutcase being arrested after shooting at the White House.
The Syrian civil war is between the armed thugs of the blood-thirsty dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad and the armed thugs of radical Islam. The mainly peaceful people who desire freedom and democracy will be crushed no matter which side wins. And now the malignantly, useless Arab League has declared that their lame attempt to broker the Syrian civil war is a failure. The Arab League is abandoning their so-called mission and has turned the Syrian civil war over to the UN. So that means that NATO, which primarily means the US, will be given the job of resolving the conflict. Please tell Mr Obama that we are already $14+ trillion in debt and already overcommitted militarily around the world. This is not our fight. Don't spend money we don't have and don't risk our troops.
I know for a fact that the opponents of Assad are not armed thugs of radical islam. There may be some of those, but life is complicated. Most of his opponents are people who just want their freedom.
Which brings us to the 'Arab Spring.' This series of events was more or less spontaneous. However, it lit the fire of freedom. Do you really think that the USA could or should somehow remain on the side of oppressive dictators of the last century? Why? True, it may be tough for a while. Yes, the Islamic Brotherhood may become part of the ruling councils of those countries. But only a country such as Israel (and there only the most rigid zionists) need to worry much about it. Most experts on the Middle East think Obama has got the tone of the US response exactly right, given everything.
Most of the rebels are Syrian army deserters. How would you assume that they're radical Islamists? They were part of the very government they're now fighting against.
Why would they do that? It sure isn't because of religion.
Assad will end up just like Mussolini, lynched on a telephone pole by an angry mob. And the world will cheer when his head is displayed on a pike for the Iranians to see
Yup, just like Haman was hanged on the gallows, meant for Mordecai
What the world needs is a MacArthur to repeat what he benevolently did in Japan. Let them know in no uncertain terms that the warrior days of past are now eradicated from the face of the Earth and that their Beloved leader / emperor is nothing but a disgraced chump. And so it WAS in Japan-- and they are OH so grateful today for being " straightened out"
Cultural eradication CAN occur and it is a GOOD thing. I give you WW2 Germany and Japan as FINE examples. Turned BOTH of those big bad bastards into the church mice pacifists of the world. All it took was a PROPER EFFORT
And a few good bombs.
The Arab World will not be quieting down any time soon. So the question becomes: how to take advantage of it and make it a plus to the point that instigation is worth while
let them fight untill it's just a few left.. They will wipe out one another if you leave them alone !!!
My sentiments exactly.
Pack your bags Assad before it is too late
Anyone know how George Bush and the jews are pulling this one off?
Everyone knows that when muslims @!$%# all over each other that Bush and the jews are ultimately the reason.
Otherwise it would just be muslims that would be to blame for muslim problems.