Syria: The regime is rotting from the inside

[tabatha]

Last night, my friend Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian dissident who runs the immensely informative Syrian Revolution Digest blog, spoke with Muhammad. Two weeks after the fall of Baba Amr, and mere hours after Kofi Annan’s predictably bathetic diplomatic mission to Syria ended in failure – 150 more people were killed at the weekend, 61 of them civilians, and a horrific massacre involving rape and burning people alive has allegedly taken place in Karm el-Zaytoun, Homs - I wanted Muhammad’s assessment of all the big questions: Where is this revolution now headed? Does he believe in a negotiated settlement? How weak or strong is the regime? And what does he want, much less expect, from the West?

I’d been depressed about Syria for weeks, so I stupidly thought a revolutionary would be too. “Our morale has not decreased since the fall of Baba Amr,” Muhammed said baldly. But surely that was a setback for the Free Syrian Army? “No, because Assad’s soldiers were not able to move in and take over even this single neighbourhood until they used human shields and mercenaries and heavy artillery and tanks – everything at their disposal. We had to withdraw after we knew we’d be firing on human shields and after our ammunition ran out. Baba Amr showed the regime’s cowardice, which gave us more confidence to fight back.”

And where does that ammunition come from, exactly? Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have all, at one point or another, been fingered as gun-running countries even though the rebels’ materiel is still unsophisticated: Kalashnikovs, RPGs, a few sniper rifles and homemade IEDs. No one is underwriting the revolution, Muhammed insisted, except the regime itself. “We buy our munitions from active officers in the Syrian army, men who are loyal to the regime but more loyal to making money. Some of these officers eventually defect but the majority are still there.” The prices are high and the supplies are low but rebels have other means. “Occasionally, collaborators on the inside allow us to raid weapons depots.”

I’d heard this a lot: consignments of weapons coming in from Lebanon are in the tens per day, not the hundreds or thousands. At certain FSA checkpoints, mukhbarat agents or local policemen are known to consort with the rebels, offering them water, feeding them intelligence as to the army’s operational activities or, sometimes, replenishing their bullets. No doubt some of these contacts are meant to sew misinformation or perform reconnaissance for the regime but there is no denying that the cooperation between both sides hints at Assad’s terminal weakness: the entire edifice of the state is saturated with sympathisers, informers and turncoats-in-waiting. “The regime is rotting from the inside,” as Muhammed put it, not bothering to add the recent defections of more army generals and a deputy oil minister.

http://syrianfreedomls.tumblr.com/post/19183349691/despite-the-horrors-of-homs-syrias-rebel-leaders-are

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. The US government disagrees.

"Syria's Bashar a;-Assad firmly in control, US intelligence officials say"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/syrias-bashar-al-assad-firmly-in-control-us-intelligence-officials-say/2012/03/09/gIQAv7r71R_story.html?tid=pm_pop

Now, granted, US intelligence has been wrong before. But I would wager its assessment of the situtation is at least as credible as the perhaps wishful thinking of a highly committed activist. Spinning the fall of Babs Amr as some sort of victory is a bit much.

[Voice for Peace]

2. there is always a reason to have hope.

often you can't justify the hope, or see the way; but sometimes hope
itself is the only way.

These dark hatreds are going to perish, ultimately, & will lose their
power; I'd like to live to see it, but it's likely going to take a few
generations beyond me. Still, I see every reason for hope. There is
something in human beings' hearts that is SO powerful, the ultimate
weapon.

When spring comes, there isn't much you can do to stop it. Stuff
grows, there is unstoppable power when nature deems it's time.

When the sun rises, dark things have to crawl back under their
rocks, or dry up and die on the sidewalk. The light of daytime
and all its effects, unavoidable. This is nature, and seems
how it works. I believe the cycle of human consciousness is
similarly a natural phenomenon, follows the same pattern
of darkness and light.