Activists: Massacre in Syria kills more than 100

ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY

Asso­ci­ated Press

BEIRUT — Syr­ian activists reported a new mas­sacre late Thurs­day in the cen­tral Hama province, say­ing regime forces killed more than 100 peo­ple in shelling and other attacks.

There were few details on the attack, which was reported by the Local Coor­di­na­tion Com­mit­tees activist group and the Britain-based Syr­ian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights.

The Obser­va­tory said it was aware of up to 100 killed from sources on the ground, but the group had only con­firmed the names of 30 peo­ple so far.

Death tolls are nearly impos­si­ble to inde­pen­dently ver­ify in Syria, where the gov­ern­ment restricts jour­nal­ists and where more than a year of vio­lence has con­vulsed much of the country.

There were few details of the vio­lence in Hama’s Trem­seh area.

Activists say more than 17,000 peo­ple have been killed since the upris­ing against Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad began in March 2011, and he is com­ing under grow­ing inter­na­tional pres­sure to stop the vio­lence. But as the blood­shed con­tin­ues, and the con­flict morphs into an armed insur­gency, hopes for a peace­ful tran­si­tion are dimming.

The lat­est report of vio­lence came in the wake of the highest-level defec­tor yet from Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad’s regime — his ambas­sador to Iraq.

Defec­tions from the Syr­ian regime have stirred hopes in the West Assad’s inner cir­cle will start aban­don­ing him in greater num­bers, has­ten­ing his downfall.

But the tightly pro­tected regime has largely held together over the course of the 16-month-old upris­ing, dri­ven by a mix­ture of fear and loyalty.

The lat­est offi­cial to flee, Ambas­sador Nawaf Fares, announced that he was join­ing the rev­o­lu­tion, assert­ing Thurs­day that only force will drive Assad from power.

“There is no road map ever with Bashar Assad, because any plan, any state­ment that is agreed on inter­na­tion­ally he delays on and ignores,” Fares told the Al-Jazeera satel­lite chan­nel. “There is no way that he can be pushed from power with­out force, and the Syr­ian peo­ple real­ize this.”

Syria’s For­eign Min­istry denounced Fares, say­ing he should face “legal and dis­ci­pli­nary accountability.”

In Wash­ing­ton, State Depart­ment spokesman Patrick Ven­trell hailed what he called the “first major diplo­matic defec­tion,” adding: “We think this a wider sign that the regime is feel­ing the pres­sure. The pres­sure is up and the regime is really start­ing to fall apart.”

Fares is the sec­ond promi­nent Syr­ian to break with the regime in less than a week. Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, an Assad con­fi­dant and son of a for­mer defense min­is­ter, defected last week, but has not spo­ken publicly.

French For­eign Min­is­ter Lau­rent Fabius said Tlass has been in con­tact with the Syr­ian oppo­si­tion. He would not com­ment on reports that Tlass was in Paris.

“I know that there is some close­ness between the oppo­si­tion and the gen­eral… Con­tact has been made,” Fabius told jour­nal­ists in Paris.

Assad’s regime has suf­fered a steady stream of low-level army defec­tors, who have joined a group of dis­si­dents known as the Free Syr­ian Army, now num­ber­ing in the tens of thou­sands. There have been sev­eral high-level defec­tions in the past — includ­ing a Syr­ian fighter pilot who flew his plane to neigh­bor­ing Jor­dan dur­ing a train­ing mis­sion in June in a brazen move.

Although the defec­tions are notable, Assad’s regime has remained remark­ably air­tight, par­tic­u­larly com­pared with the hem­or­rhag­ing of Moam­mar Gadhafi’s inner cir­cle in Libya in 2011.

Within weeks of the Libyan revolt, a num­ber of Libyan ambas­sadors and other high-ranking offi­cials quit the gov­ern­ment, and many joined the oppo­si­tion lead­er­ship. The early defec­tion of huge sec­tions of the army in east­ern Libya gave the rebel move­ment a safe zone where they could freely orga­nize their polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary strategies.

Syria has seen noth­ing sim­i­lar. Part of the rea­son is the loy­alty of the armed forces.

Unlike the armies of Tunisia and Egypt, Syria’s mil­i­tary has stood fiercely by the country’s leader as Assad faces down an extra­or­di­nary protest movement.

Assad, and his father who ruled before him, stacked key mil­i­tary posts with mem­bers of their minor­ity Alaw­ite sect over the past 40 years, ensur­ing the loy­alty of the armed forces by meld­ing the fate of the army and the regime.

The army has a clear inter­est in pro­tect­ing the regime because they fear revenge attacks and per­se­cu­tion should the country’s Sunni major­ity gain the upper hand.

But besides the military’s loy­alty, another fac­tor that con­strains a flood of defec­tions is fear. Open dis­sent is dan­ger­ous in Syria, a coun­try that crushed any rum­blings of defi­ance even before the pop­u­lar revolt started to threaten the Assad family’s 40-year dynasty. The secu­rity forces, which are the back­bone of the regime and drive the cul­ture of fear and para­noia, will pro­tect the lead­er­ship at all costs.

Defec­tors fear not only for their own lives, but for those of any fam­ily mem­bers left behind. When deputy oil min­is­ter Abdo Husamed­dine defected in March, he said in a video state­ment that he fully expected gov­ern­ment forces to “burn my home” and “per­se­cute my family.”

Already, the con­flict is believed to have killed more than 17,000 peo­ple since the cri­sis began in March 2011, accord­ing to activists’ esti­mates. Although the revolt began with protests, it has mor­phed into an armed insur­gency with scores of rebel groups across the coun­try clash­ing with gov­ern­ment troops and attack­ing their bases and convoys.

On Thurs­day, Syr­ian forces shelled the sub­urbs of the cap­i­tal, Dam­as­cus, to flush the rebels out from areas where they have estab­lished a foothold. Troops pounded Mezzeh and Kafr Souseh in east­ern Dam­as­cus with mor­tars, send­ing res­i­dents stream­ing out, activists said. They also tar­geted the Liwan, Qadam and Daraya neigh­bor­hoods from a nearby mil­i­tary airport.

Explo­sions could be heard though much of the cap­i­tal and ama­teur videos posted online showed huge clouds of smoke ris­ing from the tar­geted areas. The Britain-based Syr­ian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights reported three dead in the area, among more than 45 peo­ple killed across Syria on Thurs­day. At least 11 were gov­ern­ment sol­diers, it said.

The reports and videos could not be inde­pen­dently verified.

Also Thurs­day, Human Rights Watch said it had found evi­dence the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment had fired clus­ter bombs in an area near the cen­tral city of Hama. The New York-based group said the muni­tions are clearly iden­ti­fi­able in ama­teur videos posted online, and that local activists said the area has been under gov­ern­ment bom­bard­ment for weeks.

Clus­ter bombs explode in the air and drop dozens of “bomblets” over a large area, but these often do not explode on impact. They remain explo­sive, increas­ing the threat of later injury to civilians.

As the con­flict grinds on, U.N. offi­cials are grow­ing more pes­simistic over prospects for a diplo­matic solu­tion to the cri­sis, even though Assad’s main back­ers, Rus­sia and China, have signed on to the idea of a tran­si­tion to democ­racy in Syria.

Despite incre­men­tal progress, a senior U.N. offi­cial said the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil is deeply divided on Syria pol­icy, with West­ern diplo­mats still uncer­tain whether Moscow is any closer to cut­ting its ties with the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment or using its con­sid­er­able lever­age with Dam­as­cus to end the con­flict on terms unfa­vor­able to Assad.

With diplo­macy near a stand­still, the U.N. observer mis­sion in Syria is serv­ing as lit­tle more than a bridge between the United Nations and the Assad gov­ern­ment, the offi­cial said, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity because he was not autho­rized to dis­cuss diplo­matic maneu­ver­ing with media.

Posted by AP News on Jul 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.