Syrian Civil War Developments

[Doktor]

Countdown to an Article 39 UNSC resolution ?

You mean to Chapter VII, right?

Article 39

The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

[Double Edge]

Yes.

Otherwise all that is required is for those weapons to be secure and for the world to know & believe they are secure.

Can we see this as a show of force by the Assad regime, a message to the wider world that they are still the top dogs and aren't going anywhere just yet.

They perceive the regime is under threat and are posturing. All it took was to shift a few around for everybody to take notice.

[Doktor]

Well, there is a bug in the system called veto power, something Russia and China like to exercise when Syria is the topic.

"The Security Council shall determine..."

[Double Edge]

Depends on the threat perception. And that is dictated by interests of the parties concerned.

Just that when you hear WMD's being mentioned along with mad dictator it tends to concentrate the mind. A big shout out to everybody.

[Parihaka]

Yes.

Otherwise all that is required is for those weapons to be secure and for the world to know & believe they are secure.

Can we see this as a show of force by the Assad regime, a message to the wider world that they are still the top dogs and aren't going anywhere just yet.

They perceive the regime is under threat and are posturing. All it took was to shift a few around for everybody to take notice.

The general consensus seems to be they were moving some out of storage to safer locations that are still under the control of the regime. The major concern is not that Assad will use them but that they will fall into the hands of others. The article I posted doesn't really do justice to this, talking simply in terms of Hezbollah and Hamas, but as we've seen with Libya, those weapons can fall into the hands of various non-state actors and spread across the region during Syria's period of instability. I'd expect a big part of current western negotiations with the rebels is post Assad security of these sites and their eventual destruction. Perhaps Assad is also looking to muddy those issues by shuffling them about.

[JAD_333]

Syria’s Collapse Could Be a Chem Weapon Nightmare

Iain:

Scary prospect. Despite what little we know, I am assuming we--and I include the Russians--are finely tuned into the problem and have contingency plans to prevent their use or theft. At this stage I see no gain for Assad or his generals to start using CW. It would shut their door to any chance of a secure retirement.

[Parihaka]

Iain:

Scary prospect. Despite what little we know, I am assuming we--and I include the Russians--are finely tuned into the problem and have contingency plans to prevent their use or theft.

It depends on the speed with which we can get into the country. There's no or little incentive for Assad to use them but there's plenty of incentive for third parties to go in and snatch what they can in the days following Assad's fall. The border with Turkey and Lebanon is porous and it'd be easy for AQ or some such to enter the country as 'rebel' Syrians. As Syria's stockpile includes large numbers of shells, significant quantities could be smuggled without much difficulty. An example is Libya. Of the estimated 20,000 manpads held there, 5000 have been accounted for.

[JAD_333]

BBC News - Syria: Assad regime 'ready to use chemical weapons'

16 July 2012 Last updated at 21:59 ET


Syria: Assad regime 'ready to use chemical weapons'


The most senior Syrian politician to defect to the opposition has told the BBC the regime will not hesitate to use chemical weapons if it is cornered.

Nawaf Fares, ex-ambassador to Iraq, said unconfirmed reports indicated such weapons might have already been used.

[JAD_333]

Assad is in a difficult position. Can he shell Damascus neighborhoods and get away with it?

Fighting is intensifying across the Syrian capital Damascus, where the military has deployed tanks and helicopters, activists say.

Shooting was reported in one of the main central streets and a square housing the Central Bank.

Rebel forces say they have launched an all-out assault on the capital, calling it Operation Damascus Volcano.

...

With international diplomacy virtually paralysed by big-power splits over how to tackle the Syrian crisis, the clashes in Damascus seem to have carried the conflict into a new phase.

The fighting in the capital may have started on Sunday as a case of security forces tackling armed rebels displaced by a crackdown on the suburbs. But the Free Syrian Army has now declared that Operation Damascus Volcano is under way. The Muslim Brotherhood, the biggest and most organised opposition group, has called it a "decisive battle" and urged all Syrians to join a nationwide civil insurrection.

The regime is clearly discomfited. With parts of the capital's centre paralysed, and thousands of residents displaced within the city limits, state media have dropped all mention of the Damascus fighting.

The UN has until Friday to renew the mandate for observers in Syria, and Western nations want the two nations to back tougher measures to stop the fighting.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has landed in Beijing, where he called for rapid unified action by the Security Council to tackle the crisis.

In other developments:

...
Iraq warns its citizens to flee the violence, hours after the bodies of two killed journalists were handed over by the Syrian authorities

'Decisive battle'

Activist video on Tuesday showed government tanks and troops moving on the main roads into the centre of Damascus.

The rebel Free Syrian Army said it had launched Operation Damascus Volcano, and has called for an escalation of attacks on regime targets and the blocking of main roads all around the country.

One of the biggest and most organised opposition groups, the Muslim Brotherhood, has called on all Syrians to join what it called a decisive battle.

....

Witnesses say the government's military deployment in Damascus is the biggest since protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule began in March last year.

Clashes were reported in a major thoroughfare, Baghdad Street, the first time fighting has reached central Damascus since the conflict began.

Also, machine-gun fire was reported in nearby Sabaa Bahrat square, site of the Central Bank and scene of several major pro-government demonstrations.

Activists reported continued clashes on the south-western side of the city, including in Midan.

"The army is shelling al-Midan hysterically; the collapsing regime has gone mad," one activist told AFP.

Fighting is also said to have broken out on the other side, at Barzeh and Qaboun. Attack helicopters were seen there firing rockets for the first time since the uprising began.

Rebels told Reuters news agency they had shot down a helicopter in Qaboun.

Syrian Information Minister Omran Zoabi told Reuters that "some armed elements had infiltrated Damascus".

"The security forces surrounded them and dealt with them - and are still dealing with them," he said.

"Some [fighters] have surrendered and others escaped on foot and by car and are firing randomly in the air to frighten people," he said.

The BBC's Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon says it appears the uprising has moved into a new phase in the heart of the capital, paralysing parts of it for a time and causing panic.


Meanwhile, the head of Israeli army intelligence said Syrian forces had been redeployed from the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to help defend the capital.

"The Syrian military is acting very brutally, which shows the regime is desperate. Its control of Damascus is getting weaker," Maj-Gen Aviv Kochavi told a parliamentary committee, according to a Knesset spokesman.

...

http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/new...treply&t=62934

[Bigfella]

Its gettin' messier & messier. A regime that can't protect senior figures like the Defence Minister is a regime that is crumbling. Only question is how ugly it gets before this is all over (and just how long that will take). I'm just wondering how many US/NATO teams there are hanging around Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon & Iraq trying to make sure they get the chance to secure as many chem weapons as possible before they fall into the wrong hands.

Syrian Defence Minister Dawoud Rajhah was killed in a blast in Damascus today as rebels encroached on President Bashar al-Assad's capital amid mounting defections.

The explosion also injured other government officials, including the interior minister and Assad's brother-in-law, Major General Assef Shawkat, state television said. Al Manar television said that Shawkat was dead.

Rajhah is the most senior government official to be killed since the uprising started in March 2011. Assad, fighting for the survival of his family's four-decade hold on power, has been unable to suppress an insurgency largely pitting majority Sunni Muslims against a leadership class drawn from the Alawite minority, affiliated to Shiite Islam. About 17,000 people have been killed, according to activists.

"The attack shows how fragile the regime has become," Rima Flaihan, a spokeswoman for the opposition Local Coordination Committees in Syria, said in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan. "I expect more defections. The ship is sinking and there will be people who will be leaving the regime before it does."

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The latest violence came as talks on Syria's future headed toward a showdown at the United Nations with a vote this week on sanctions against the country.

Rebel fighters, mostly armed with light weapons, have been pushing into the capital to battle government forces armed with tanks, artillery and attack helicopters. Damascus and Aleppo, Syria's largest cities, had been spared the worst of the violence until recently, as the army carried out attacks in mainly Sunni provinces such as Homs and Hama.

"Whilst the armed opposition has registered a degree of success at the tactical level, it is far from being able to dislodge the regime through force alone," Torbjorn Soltvedt, senior analyst at UK-based risk analysis company Maplecroft, said in an e-mail. "Even with improved accesses to anti-tank weapons, anti-regime fighters are likely to avoid major open engagements with the Syrian army and instead focus on ambushes, operations aimed at wearing down state forces."

Earlier today, artillery shells slammed into areas of Damascus as security forces tried for a fourth day to dislodge rebel fighters from the heart of the president's power base. Heavy gunfire could be heard in several districts, according to the Local Coordination Committees. Rebel fighters clashed with government troops in neighbourhoods including Maidan, Kfar Souseh and Nahr Aisha, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mail. At least 13 people were killed, Al-Arabiya television reported.

The violence is mostly concentrated in areas on the outskirts of the city and is approaching the centre. Some upper-income areas, such as Mazzeh where several embassies are located, have also seen sporadic clashes or gunfire. A few neighbourhoods have been largely calm, with restaurants still open and traffic jams during rush hour.

The opposition, which began as a loosely connected group of army defectors and untrained dissidents, has morphed into a more compact and organised rebel army that's grabbed control of more territory and can now attack Assad closer to his seat of power, according to three UN diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information they cited is classified.

With Syria's borders increasingly porous, weapons from Qatar and Saudi Arabia are easier to smuggle in, the officials said.

In New York, diplomats have been trying to persuade Russia, which twice has blocked measures against its ally, not to use its veto a third time.

That allegiance will be tested again as soon as today in a vote threatening sanctions in 10 days if Assad doesn't comply with a UN peace plan he has flouted for five months.

At stake for Russia is its last toehold in the Arab world. Syria is an arms customer and hosts Russia's only military base outside the former Soviet Union in the port of Tartus.

While Russia re-submitted an amended version of its resolution, it calls only for a rollover of a UN monitor mission, according to Western diplomats who all spoke on condition of the anonymity because the text isn't public.

With little sign of a breakthrough at the UN, Assad's fate is more likely to be decided on the Syrian streets, said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, in a telephone interview.

"Even if Russia doesn't use its veto, is there a workable outcome if he leaves?" he said. "This is going to play out bloodily on the battleground. It's difficult to imagine a brokered scenario where the Alawites give up and one that the Sunnis accept."

Bloomberg

Read more: Syrian officials killed by bomb

Syrian officials killed by bomb

[Doktor]

Its gettin' messier & messier. A regime that can't protect senior figures like the Defence Minister is a regime that is crumbling. Only question is how ugly it gets before this is all over (and just how long that will take). I'm just wondering how many US/NATO teams there are hanging around Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon & Iraq trying to make sure they get the chance to secure as many chem weapons as possible before they fall into the wrong hands.

I guess it's his own fault.

[Parihaka]

Not just his defence minister but in fact most of his inner circle, his tiger team for dealing with the insurgency. Initially it was claimed it was a suicide bomber but now reports are coming through that it was a placed bomb, that is someone inside the security team planted it.
Meanwhile my radio is reporting Assad has now moved himself and whats left of his command to Homs.

[JAD_333]

Meanwhile my radio is reporting Assad has now moved himself and whats left of his command to Homs.

If memory serves that's where he was allegedly moving his CW stocks.

[Bigfella]

Not just his defence minister but in fact most of his inner circle, his tiger team for dealing with the insurgency. Initially it was claimed it was a suicide bomber but now reports are coming through that it was a placed bomb, that is someone inside the security team planted it.
Meanwhile my radio is reporting Assad has now moved himself and whats left of his command to Homs.

Apparently another of the dead was Assad's brother in law. If he has left Damascus that is yet another bad sign for the Regime. Leaving the Capital is rarely a sign that things are going well & that you are confident that you can control events. If true it is the sort of thing that makes soldiers of all ranks wonder just how much effort they should put into defending the regime.

[Parihaka]

If memory serves that's where he was allegedly moving his CW stocks.

Some of them yes. It was initially interpreted as keeping them safe from rebel hands but twenty four hours later he was warned not to move any more.