Syria premier defects to anti-Assad opposition: spokesman

[muriel_volestrangler]

Last edited Mon Aug 6, 2012, 07:03 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: Reuters

Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab has defected to the opposition seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, a spokesman for Hijab said on Monday, marking one of the most high profile desertions from the Damascus government.

Syrian state TV said Hijab had been fired, but an official source in Amman said the dismissal followed his defection to neighboring Jordan with his family.

"I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution. I announce that I am from today a soldier in this blessed revolution," Hijab said in a statement read in his name by the spokesman, which was broadcast on Al Jazeera television.

Syrian state TV announced Hijab's dismissal as government forces appeared to prepare a ground assault to clear battered rebels from Aleppo, the country's biggest city.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/06/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE8610SH20120806

---

(Tidied up the OP to use the changes Reuters made to the story)

[dipsydoodle]

1. Syria PM Riad Hijab defects to Jordan

Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab has defected from President Bashar al-Assad's government, to join "the revolution", his spokesman says.

Mr Hijab was appointed less than two months ago and his departure is the highest-profile defection since the uprising began in March 2011.

His family is reported to have fled Syria with him.

A Sunni Muslim, Riad Hijab comes from the Deir al-Zour area of eastern Syria which has been caught up in the revolt.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19146380

[oberliner]

2. Wow

That says something, doesn't it?

[leveymg]

3. It tells me that last vestiges of the secular state are crumbling, and that this is now full Jihad

by the Sunni against the Shi'ia minority in Syria.

Congratulations. Operation Genocide is now in motion.

[geek tragedy]

4. So opposing dictatorship=genocide.

That's certainly a creative attempt at pimping Assad. Morally repugnant to the level of Reagan's support of apartheid in South Africa, but creative.

How dare those insolent Sunnis not support their psychopathic dictatorship!

[leveymg]

5. Genocide is the foreseeable outcome of religious civil war in Syria. To some, the outcome is

entirely welcome and intentional (KSA), to others its collateral damage (US). But genocide is genocide, and aiding and abetting it is a crime against humanity, no matter who does it.

I don't give a damn about Assad, but I do about my government fueling conflicts that result in bloody religious civil wars and genocidal outcomes. Just love those personal attacks. Keep 'em coming.

[geek tragedy]

6. You equate opposition to the dictator to support for genocide.

No different than those who supported overthrowing apartheid with supporting the genocide of white South Africans.

[leveymg]

8. I do not equate opposition. I equate coordinating arms shipments and jihadi fighters

by outside powers into a country that has a high potential for religious-based conflict and a history of genocidal outcomes.

There was no genocide of white South Africans because Saudi Arabia didn't support the inflow of al-Qaeda fighters there to overthrow the regime, and the US didn't coordinate such an intervention.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

15. He was deprecating policy, not attacking personally.

That wasn't a personal attack. The poster was deprecating the policy and equating it to your policy.

If you personally identify with Reagan, then that's on your head, not his.

[leveymg]

16. "pimping Assad" - that's personal.

If you can't see that, your frame of reference is off.

I know that a lot of people's view of Syrian conflict is stuck in the "bad regime vs good protestors" framework created by the corporate media early on during the Arab Spring phase. But, the facts have evolved (quite predictably given the history of Syria) into a religious civil war that's being fueled by outside powers, some of which are intent upon Jihad and the extremination of the Shi'ia and overthrow of the secularist Ba'ath Party. I hate to see my country in the middle of this, but it can only get worse and end badly for us.

[oberliner]

7. Doesn't it mean that Syrians are now moving towards freedom from dictatorship?

It seems like the dictator is no long able to hold on to power.

[leveymg]

9. It's moving towards a Sunni dictatorship that replaces a Shi'ia one. Not freedom.

Given that the Shi'ia who dominate the Ba'ath Party regime are a small minority (about 14%), and the country has a history of genocidal Sunni-Shi'ia conflict, one should instead expect genocide to be the outcome. Not freedom.

[oberliner]

11. Why do you think it will lead to another dictatorship?

Do you not think that Syria could move towards democracy and freedom once Assad has been deposed?

[leveymg]

13. It is most likely to lead to a break up of Syria into separate, warring states

after campaigns of bloody, ethnic cleansing in each region. Because once the central government and Syrian Army that keeps it in power are fractured, that's the nature cleavage lines in the country. Very predictable and typical outcome for a region where most national boundaries are really just "lines in the sand" drawn in the British Foreign Office in 1918.

[oberliner]

18. That sounds awful

I hope you are wrong.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

17. Do you have a link to an article about the history

of genocide in Syria?

Edit: I searched for "Syria genocide" and this is all I could find: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hama_massacre


A section of Hama, after the government attack

Not to be confused with 2012 Hama massacre or 1981 Hama massacre.

The Hama massacre ( Arabic: ةامح ةرزجم ) occurred in February 1982, when the Syrian army, under the orders of the country's president, Hafez al-Assad, conducted a scorched earth operation against the town of Hama in order to quell a revolt by the Sunni Muslim community against the regime of al-Assad. [1] The Hama massacre, carried out by the Syrian Army under commanding General Rifaat al-Assad, President Assad's younger brother, effectively ended the campaign begun in 1976 by Sunni Islamic groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, against Assad's regime, whose leaders were disproportionately from president Assad's own Alawite sect.

Initial diplomatic reports from western countries stated that 1,000 were killed. [2][3] Subsequent estimates vary, with the lower estimates claiming that at least 10,000 Syrian citizens were killed, while others put the number at 20,000 (Robert Fisk), or 40,000 (Syrian Human Rights Committee). About 1,000 Syrian soldiers were killed during the operation and large parts of the old city were destroyed. Alongside such few events as the Black September Massacre in Jordan, the attack has been described as one of "the single deadliest acts by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East". The vast majority of the victims were civilians.

According to Syrian media, anti-government rebels initiated the fighting, who "pounced on our comrades while sleeping in their homes and killed whomever they could kill of women and children, mutilating the bodies of the martyrs in the streets, driven, like mad dogs, by their black hatred." Security forces then "rose to confront these crimes" and "taught the murderers a lesson that has snuffed out their breath"

[leveymg]

19. Here's more on the 76-82 Sunni uprising and "long campaign of terror" in Syria

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_Syria

History
Under Hafez al-Assad
Islamic uprising
Main article: Islamic uprising in Syria

From 1976 to 1982, Sunni Islamists fought the Ba'ath Party-controlled government of Syria in what has been called "long campaign of terror". Islamists attacked both civilians and off-duty military personnel, and civilians were also killed in retaliatory strike by security forces.

The Muslim Brotherhood was blamed for the terror by the government, although the insurgents used names such as Kata'ib Muhammad (Phalanxes of Muhammad, begun in Hama in 1965 Marwan Hadid) to refer to their organization.

Following Syrian occupation of Lebanon in 1976 a number of prominent Syrian officers and government servants, as well as "professional men, doctors, teachers," were assassinated. Most of the victims were Alawis, "which suggested that the assassins had targeted the community" but "no one could be sure who was behind" the killings.

Among the better known victims were:

the commander of the Hama garrison, Colonel Ali Haydar, killed in October 1976
the rector of Damascus University, Dr. Muhammad al-Fadl, killed in February 1977
the commander of the missile corps, Brigadier 'Abd al Hamid Ruzzug, killed in June 1977
the doyen of Syrian dentists, Dr Ibrahim Na'ama, killed in March 1978
the director of police affairs at the Ministry of the Interior, Colonel Ahmad Khalil, killed in August 1978
Public Prosecutor 'Adil Mini of the Supreme State Security Court, killed in April 1979.
President Hafez Asad's own doctor, the neurologist Dr. Muhammad Shahada Khalil, who was killed in August 1979.

These assassinations led up to the 16 June 1979 slaughter of cadets at the Aleppo Artillery School. On that day a member of school staff, Captain Ibrahim Yusuf, assembled the cadets in the dining-hall and then let in the gunmen who opened fire on the cadets. According to the official report 32 young men were killed. Unofficial sources say the "death toll was as high as 83." This attack was the work of Tali'a muqatila, or Fighting Vanguard, a Sunni Islamist guerrilla group and spinoff of the Muslim Brotherhood. `Adnan `Uqla, who later became the group's leader, helped plan the massacre.

The cadet massacre "marked the start of full-scale urban warfare" against Alawis, cadre of the ruling Ba'ath party, party offices, "police posts, military vehicles, barracks, factories and any other target the guerrillas could attack." In the city of Aleppo between 1979 and 1981 terrorists killed over 300 people, mainly Ba'thists and Alawis, but also a dozen Islamic clergy who had denounced the murders. Of these the most prominent was Shaykh Muhammad al-Shami, who was slain in his own mosque, the Sulaymaniya, on 2 February 1980.

On 26 June 1980 the president of Syria, Hafez al-Asad, "narrowly escaped death" when attackers threw two grenades and fired machine gun bursts at him as he waited at a diplomatic function in Damascus.

On 17 June 1980 an estimated 1,152 Islamist inmates at the prison in Palmyra were massacred by the alawi-ruled government Defense companies troops. Less than a month later membership in the Muslim Brotherhood became punishable by death with a month grace period given for members to turn themselves in.

Individuals assassinated at this time include:

Salim al-Lawzi, publisher of al-Hawadith, in Lebanon killed by Syrian assassins in March 1980.
Riad Taha, head of the journalists' union in Beirut killed in July 1980.
Wife of guide of Muslim Brothers Isam al-`Attar, (Bayan al-Tantawi) killed in Aachen, Germany as she opened the front door to assassins in July 1980. (p.329)
Salah al-Din Bitar, co-founder of the Ba'ath Party killed in Paris on 21 July 1980.

While the involvement of the Syrian government "was not proved" in these killings, it "was widely suspected."

The insurgency is generally considered to have been crushed by the bloody Hama massacre of 1982, in which thousands of were killed, "the vast majority innocent civilians".
Perpetrators

According to some sources, such as Syrian president Hafez al-Asad and journalist Robert Dreyfuss, the Muslim Brotherhood insurgents in Syria were aided by the Jordanian government in cooperation with Lebanese Phalangists, South Lebanon Army, and the right-wing Israeli government of Menachem Begin, who allegedly supported, funded and armed the Muslim Brotherhood in an effort to overthrow the regime of President Assad.

We are not just dealing with killers inside Syria, but with those who masterminded their plans. The plot thickened after Sadat's visit to Jerusalem and many foreign intelligence services became involved. Those who took part in Camp David used the Muslim Brothers against us.

The South Lebanese Army allegedly set up camps to help train the Muslim Brotherhood insurgents. Both Israel and Syria had troops in Lebanon and clashed over domination of that country. Syria's Arab nationalist government has supported the overthrow of the Royalist, pro-Western Jordanian government.
1986 bombings
Main article: 1986 Damascus bombings

. . .

The arrival and dominance within the opposition of Saudi and other foreign-supported jihadists should come as a surprise to no one as this reverts to the long meat grinder phase of the last Sunni uprising in Syria.

[pampango]

10. Full jihad (full civil war) was a predictable last stage when Assad started to repress peaceful

protests early last year.

The "Assad" strategy for dealing with massive protests is something all dictators should learn.

1: When massive peaceful protests occur, repress them as them as violently as you can get away with - snipers, tanks, artillery, arrests, torture, etc. Start talking about the presence of "criminal gangs" or "terrorists" among the protestors. There may not be any yet, but it's good to get the talking point out there for future use.

2. Sometimes repression works to quell the protests. (It's why dictators frequently stay in power so long or inherit their positions from their fathers like in Syria and North Korea.) If repression works, reward your military and security services and go back to being a dictator.

3. If #1 doesn't work right away and massive peaceful protests continue, keep up the repression. (You have to come up with a strategy to keep the international community at bay. If you already have a powerful international patron, you may be OK. If not, you had better find one.)

4. If, after many months, your military and security forces continue to prove to be ineffective in suppressing dissent, don't worry. Do not stop the armed repression. (As a dictator, the military and security forces are all you have going for you. Peaceful negotiations are a trap. Your assets - the army and internal security forces - cannot help you there.) Eventually frustration will build up among factions of the protesters and some will become willing to resort to violence given the apparent futility of peaceful protest. (You will also lose some of your common soldiers to defection. Many of them will not understand that they signed up to protect you not their country.) Or outside groups will begin to take advantage of these frustrations.

5. At this point you can unleash your military and security forces to the full extent and hope you don't lose the civil war (jihad) you have created. Keep in mind that civil wars are very messy affairs. Be sure to keep you international patron happy.

I think this is a strategy that is workable in many repressive countries when populations get fed up with living with no rights.

[leveymg]

12. The current round of Shia-Sunni conflict is an extension of the 76-82 "long war of terror"

also called the "long campaign of terror."

In that one, the Assad (Sr.) regime won after about 80,000 casualties on both sides, and the destruction of Hama, the Sunni bastion. Religious civil wars take (at least) two sides, and usually go back generations. They are very difficult to stop, and often end up with "ethnic cleansing" and genocide.

In this round, both sides are guilty of atrocities - but, the Obama Administration has taken sides and is now admittedly to be working with the Saudis to help the Sunnis prevail in what is essentially a religious war. That is not in the interests of the US, and that is what I object to.

[grantcart]

14. astonishing.