Deadly Syrian stalemate spurs new diplomacy, little hope

Galvanized by a Syrian death toll that has doubled to 36,000 in little more than a month, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for a new rebel hierarchy to direct the fighting against President Bashar Assad and steer Syria back to peaceful ethnic and religious coexistence.

The latest proposal for halting Syria's 19-month-old civil war brings little new strategy to the crisis. Rather, it vents frustration with the international community’s own "divisions, dysfunctionality and powerlessness," as the International Crisis Group recently noted, that have prevented brokering an end to the bloodshed.

Like European leaders before her, Clinton acknowledged this week that the West’s reliance on out-of-touch exiles within the Paris-based Syrian National Council has done more harm than good in the effort to have opposition forces speak with one voice on their plans for a post-Assad future.

Clinton told reporters accompanying her on a trip to North Africa and the Balkans on Wednesday that the Obama administration will be suggesting names and organizations it believes should play prominent roles in a reconfigured rebel alliance that Western diplomats hope to see emerge from Arab League-sponsored talks next week in the Qatari capital, Doha.

But the U.S. push to get the opposition’s act together also exudes desperation. In the two months since a failed rebel campaign to take strategic ground around major cities, fighting has ground down to a bloody impasse, giving neither Assad nor his opponents hope of imminent victory on the battlefields.

The rebels’ summer offensive also exposed the widening role of Islamic extremists who have entered the fight, bringing arms and combat experience to the side of Assad’s fractured opponents. But the Islamic militants’ alignment with Syrians trying to topple Assad also gives weight to the regime’s claims to be fighting off terrorists, not domestic political foes.

Clinton reiterated the West’s insistence that Assad have no role in Syria’s future. That prompted immediate pushback by Russia and China, which have opposed what they call foreign interference in Syrian domestic affairs.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was in Paris for talks with his French counterpart when Clinton announced the Obama administration’s latest initiative. A longtime ally and arms supplier to Syria, Russia has blocked three United Nations Security Council resolutions to censure Assad and, along with China, has rejected Western demands that the Syrian president resign and leave the country.

"If the position of our partners remains the departure of this leader who they do not like, the bloodbath will continue," Lavrov warned.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi registered Beijing’s objections by unveiling a "four-point plan" for bringing peace to Syria that reiterates the communist state’s position that the future of Syria be left for Syrians -- including Assad -- to decide.

Beijing has a solid history of blocking international intervention on human rights grounds, apparently fearing China could become a target of such actions because of its harsh treatment of dissent and political opponents.

For some Middle East experts, the solution to Syria’s crisis lies somewhere between the Russian-Chinese "hands-off" policy and the U.S.-led Western view that only regime change will bring about peace.

"This conflict is for Syrians and their neighbors to resolve, with European and Russian involvement. The U.S. should stay one removed," said Ed Husain, senior fellow in Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

He described Clinton’s appeal for a new rebel leadership structure as "laudable, but a year too late."

"She’s driven by a desire to want to help now, but also to ensure a smooth transition in a post-Assad Syria. Sadly, reality on the ground dictates otherwise,” Husain said, alluding to entrenched battles that portend a long standoff.

Growing fears that extremists are gaining clout with the rebels also complicates diplomacy, as Syria’s Shiite, Christian, Kurdish and other minority sects are wary of how they would fare under a Sunni-dominated government allied with fundamentalist jihadis.

Clinton emphasized that extremist forces should be excluded from any new opposition forum that might emerge from Doha.

"It may seem ironic to call for a broad tent and then say 'except for those guys.' But I think the administration and other countries concerned about the future of Syria know that one of the challenges will be to have an analysis of who is who in the opposition,” said Charles Ries, a career U.S. diplomat now heading Rand Corp.’s Center for Middle East Public Policy.

Ries sees the need for "more movement on the ground in Syria" before Assad or the rebels are ready to submit to negotiations on the country’s future.

He is hesitant to declare the civil war a stalemate or the Russian-Chinese position unchangeable in the long run. But with rebels pinned down in the urban areas they hold and warding off attacks by Assad’s superior armed forces, he said, no one seems to think Assad is in the kind of imminent danger of being ousted that would be the catalyst for negotiation and compromise.

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Photo: A Syrian rebel fighter last month defends territory near Aleppo, one of many urban battlegrounds the opponents of President Bashar Assad are now struggling to hold. Credit: Zac Baillie / AFP/Getty Images

U.S., allies marshaling African proxies for fight against terrorism

"A quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing."

That was how British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain saw the Nazi threat against the Czech Sudetenland in 1938, a sentiment freshly evoked among war-weary citizens as the United States and its allies ponder moves to oust Islamic extremists from northern Mali, a country most Americans couldn't find on a map.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and diplomatic counterparts from France have been shopping around a plan to train and equip West African troops to drive out the Al Qaeda-aligned militants who hold sway over a swath of northern Mali the size of Texas. Ultraorthodox Muslims this year hijacked a long-simmering rebellion by ethnic Tuaregs and began imposing an extreme version of Islamic law once in power. In July, they took axes to "idolatrous" cultural treasures in Timbuktu, provoking worldwide horror at the destruction.

Like Afghanistan before 9/11, when Taliban collusion with Al Qaeda made the country a training ground for terrorism, Mali left in the grip of militant Islamists runs the risk of becoming the next launch pad for attacks on the United States and its allies.

U.S. interest in rooting out Ansar Dine and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb from northern Mali has intensified in the seven weeks since a suspected terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The Al Qaeda affiliates in Mali are believed to have played at least a supportive role in the Benghazi attack.

"The Benghazi event, with the murder of Chris Stevens, has really precipitated American intervention. It's turned the tables in the region," said Ghislaine Lydon, a history professor at UCLA and expert on precolonial Northwest Africa.

Wounded Syrian rebel leader refutes reports of his death

 

BEIRUT -- The leader of the Tawheed division, one of the largest rebel factions fighting in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, has survived an assassination attempt while visiting the front lines, according to an oppositon video posted on YouTube.

The video appears to show Abdel Qader Saleh, the Tawheed chief, recuperating in bed with a bandaged left arm and torso.

The video posting was apparently meant in part to refute reports on pro-government social media sites that a military sniper had killed Saleh, one of the best-known rebel figures in Aleppo, with a loyal following among various brigades in the disparate opposition forces. The government labels the opposition fighters "terrorists" and "mercenaries," but the rebels call themselves revolutionaries.

"I'm in good health and God willing, I will be among them [rebel fighters] in few days," Saleh says in the video. Directly addressing Syrian President Bashar Assad, the wounded commander sends a message:  "We are coming to your presidential palace."

Lebanese intelligence chief among the dead in Beirut car bombing

BEIRUT -- A top Lebanese intelligence official was among the eight people killed by a car bomb that exploded Friday in a bustling central district of the Lebanese capital -- igniting fears that spillover violence from neighboring Syria may inflame sectarian tensions in Lebanon.

Hours after the midafternoon blast, which also left scores injured, authorities confirmed to the press that the dead included Col. Wissam al-Hassan,  intelligence chief for the Internal Security Forces. Hassan  was allied with a political bloc that is a  fierce opponent of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

News of Hassan’s killing immediately signaled that the blast was a well-planned, professional assassination -- not a random bombing or a “message” attack, as some had initially speculated.

His killing signals a potentially perilous moment for Lebanon, with its weak central government and deep sectarian fissures. Many feared the attack could trigger new violence across Lebanon's sectarian fault line.

Lebanese  protesting the attack took to the streets of several areas, burning tires and blocking roads. Gunfire was reported in the flashpoint northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, site of frequent clashes between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Assad.

Hassan was a loyalist of Lebanon’s adamantly anti-Assad “March 14” coalition, a leading Sunni Muslim-led  faction said  to have close ties to Washington. The March 14 grouping stands in opposition to the current Lebanese government, which is backed by Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group and loyal ally of Assad. Leaders of March 14 have publicly accused Assad of trying to sow violence in Lebanon in a bid to shift attention away from his military campaign against armed opponents inside Syria.

Rumors swirled Friday that Hassan worked closely with the Syrian opposition, which has a strong presence in Lebanon. But there was no immediate confirmation that Hassan had any direct role with the Syrian armed groups seeking to oust Assad.

The assassinated security official did play  a central role in the incendiary, Syria-linked case of former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha.  The former Lebanese parliamentarian was arrested in August on charges of colluding with Syria to conduct terror attacks in Lebanon. Samaha is reported to have a close personal relationship with Syrian President Assad.  Allies of Samaha condemned the arrest as political in nature.

In his security role, Hassan  also gave evidence to a tribunal investigating the  assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, killed in a massive 2005 truck  bombing in Beirut. Last year, the tribunal indicted four Hezbollah operatives in Hariri’s  killing. Hezbollah and its  Syrian allies have denied any involvement in the killing of the prime minister and said evidence against its members was fabricated.

Following Friday’s explosion, several  opposition politicians  in Lebanon immediately blamed Syria, and the Lebanese government vowed  a thorough investigation. But many Lebanese were skeptical that the killers would ever be brought to justice in a nation where so many political killings have never been resolved.

Iran nuclear threat: More Americans want 'firm stand,' poll says

WASHINGTON -- As international efforts to curb Iran's nuclear development program continue, a growing share of Americans say they want firm action to end the threat of the Tehran regime building a nuclear bomb, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said they favor Washington taking a "firm stand" with Iran, while 41% said it is "more important to avoid military conflict," the poll found. The share saying they advocate firm action has increased from 50% since January.

The poll, taken of 1,511 adults October 4-7, didn't define "firm stand."

The Obama administration has argued that a combined effort of international economic sanctions and diplomacy can persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, and says time remains before policymakers need to decide whether to launch airstrikes and/or other military action against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Western nations believe that Iran is developing the capacity to build nuclear weapons; Iran says its nuclear program is meant for civilian purposes only.

The poll also found some disillusionment with the popular revolts that rocked much of the Middle East last year in the "Arab Spring," and a growing desire for Washington to support stable Middle Eastern governments, even if they are undemocratic. The results also pointed to a desire for the United States to scale back involvement in the turbulent region.

The results suggest some gulf between the public and political leaders in Washington. President Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney both advocate continued deep engagement in the region and active efforts to foster democratic governments.

The survey found 57% of respondents said they don't believe the uprisings that ousted governments in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya will lead to lasting improvements for their citizens.That's up sharply from 43% in April 2011, three months into the upheaval.

It also found that 54% said they believe it is more important to have stable governments in the Middle East, even if there is less democracy. In contrast, 36% said it is more important to have democratic governments. Sixty-three percent said they think the United States should be less involved with changes of leadership in the Middle East, while 23% said it should be more involved. 

The poll also indicated that most Americans say they want an accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. The U.S. currently has about 68,000 troops in that country, and the Obama administration plans to withdraw them by the end of 2014, although the pace of the pullout remains unclear. 

Fifty-eight percent of independent respondents and 70% of Democrats said they want American troops removed as quickly as possible. Republicans were evenly split, with 48% saying they want immediate withdrawal and 48% saying they want the troops to stay "until the situation is stabilized."

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U.S. soldiers arrive in Israel for largest-ever military exercise

JERUSALEM -- More than 1,000 U.S. soldiers have begun to arrive in Israel for the largest-ever joint military exercise between the two nations to test their cooperation in the event of a large-scale missile attack against Israel.

The three-week, $30-million war games are purely defensive in nature and unrelated to any specific regional threat, Air Force Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin said during a briefing with reporters Wednesday.

Israel is particularly worried about recent turmoil and new threats in the region. Syria’s unrest is raising fears about the fate of its chemical weapons. Israel has threatened to launch a military attack against Iran’s purported nuclear weapons program. An Iranian-built unmanned spy drone sent by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group was shot down over Israel last week.

Militants in the Gaza Strip this week, for the first time, fired an antiaircraft missile against Israeli planes. Israeli officials believe that weapon and many more like it were smuggled into Gaza from Libya after the revolution in that country.

But Franklin stressed that the exercise, which will include tests of U.S.-made Patriot and Aegis missile defense systems, had been planned for two years and was not intended to send any signal about possible upcoming military operations.

The drill is “not there to send a message,” he said.

In the same telephone briefing, however, Israel Defense Forces Brig. Gen. Nitzan Nuriel said that “anyone who wants can get any kind of message he wants from this exercise.”

Israel relies heavily on its close cooperation with the U.S. military to serve as a deterrent against its enemies.

The exercise will simulate a multifront missile attack against Israel, Nuriel said.

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Photo: A U.S. soldier works on an anti-missile system in an earlier U.S.-Israeli military exercise. About 1,000 U.S. military personnel are arriving in Israel for joint military exercises to take place over the next three weeks. Credit:  Ziv Koren / European Pressphoto Agency

Swiss freeze $1 billion tied to leaders targeted in Arab Spring

Switzerland has frozen more than $1 billion connected to leaders who were toppled or are still being battled in Arab Spring uprisings, a top Swiss official told reporters Tuesday.

The bulk of the money -- more than $750 million -- was stashed away by former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and his associates, Valentin Zellweger said at a briefing in Geneva. The rest is tied to Syrian President Bashar Assad, former Tunisian leader Zine el Abidine ben Ali and the late Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi, according to news reports.

Zellweger, who heads the international law department at the Swiss Foreign Ministry, told reporters that the money "is blocked in the framework of Arab Spring," the Associated Press reported. The government reportedly began freezing the funds in early 2011, as protests began to sweep the Middle East.

In times of political upheaval, the Swiss government can freeze the assets of political leaders and their entourages in order to stop money deposited in Switzerland from being shunted elsewhere, according to the Foreign Ministry.

The ultimate goal is to return any pilfered funds to their countries.

Switzerland has sought to shake off its image as the banker to scofflaws. "The Swiss government has made it very clear that funds of illegal origin are not welcome in Switzerland," Zellweger told Reuters television.

Turning the money over to Arab Spring countries could take years, as Swiss authorities pore over evidence that the money was illegally acquired before attempting to return it.

In the past, Switzerland has sent back money from the late leaders Mobutu Sese Seko of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, among other cases.

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Photo: Valentin Zellweger, head of the Swiss Foreign Ministry's international law department, speaks at a news conference in Geneva on Tuesday. Credit: Salvatore Di Nolfi / Keystone / Associated Press

Islamist president backs off on replacing Egypt's top prosecutor

CAIRO -- Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi backed off his decision to replace the nation’s prosecutor-general following an outcry Saturday from judges and lawyers criticizing the new Islamist leader for tampering with an independent judiciary.

The retreat was a bracing political lesson for Morsi, who is moving to control government institutions still influenced by officials appointed by deposed autocrat Hosni Mubarak. Morsi deftly maneuvered in August to replace Egypt’s top military commander, but he encountered defiance in recent days from Prosecutor-General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud.

Egyptian law prevents the president from firing the prosecutor-general. Instead, Morsi pressured Mahmoud to accept the role of ambassador to the Vatican. Mahmoud declined and received the backing of judges who supported him Saturday when he showed up for work. That left the president’s staff trying to finesse a way around the embarrassment.

"There was confusion. The acceptance was not complete, was not clear," Vice President Mahmoud Mekki told journalists, referring to the ambassador offer. He said the president decided to keep Mahmoud in his post at the request of the Supreme Judicial Council.

Morsi moved against Mahmoud, an unpopular holdover from an era many Egyptians revile, on Thursday after a court acquitted 24 Mubarak loyalists of plotting an assault on protesters during last year’s uprising. The attack became an international spectacle when camels and horses charged into demonstrators in a desperate attempt for Mubarak to hold on to power.

U.S., allies girding for worst-case scenario with Syria's WMD

During a week that witnessed deadly artillery exchanges between Syria and Turkey and a tense showdown over a plane purportedly ferrying munitions from Russia, the arrival of 150 U.S. troops in Jordan was likely to be viewed as token support for an ally coping with a refugee influx from Syria's civil war.

The deployment, though, may be a response to mounting concerns at the Pentagon and among European and Middle East allies that Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons could fall into the hands of hostile forces if the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad is eventually toppled.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta disclosed little about the special-forces mission to Jordan when he confirmed it at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Wednesday. But he noted that the United States has been working closely with Jordan to keep track of Syria's weapons of mass destruction as the 19-month-old rebellion grinds on.

Unlike a decade ago, when bad intelligence on Iraq's alleged chemical and biological weapons spurred a clamor for U.S. military intervention, defense strategists appear to be approaching the suspected stockpiles of mustard and nerve gases in Syria with more collaboration and caution.

The resistance to preemptive action isn't just a consequence of lessons learned in Iraq. Syria is believed to have one of the world's largest chemical weapons arsenals, with commercial satellite surveillance and intelligence reports suggesting as many as 50 production and storage sites as well as missiles that could carry the deadly agents beyond its borders. Jane's Intelligence Review reported in 2009 that Damascus had embarked on a major upgrade of its chemical weapons facilities, transforming its Safir site near Aleppo, now the scene of intense fighting, into a credible deterrent to any threat from nuclear-armed Israel.

The scope of the Syrian chemical weapons program and the international community's failure to craft a cohesive plan to stop the fighting confront Western military strategists with the need to plan for a worst-case scenario rather than act to prevent it, analysts say. That means preparing allies in the region to launch a massive rapid-deployment operation after the Assad regime collapsed but before Al Qaeda-aligned fighters or rogue elements of the Syrian rebels could get their hands on the WMD.

The U.S. special forces sent to Amman are probably training Jordanian troops in containment techniques and checking their equipment and chemical-biological hazard protection and practices, said Steven Bucci, a former Army Green Beret officer and senior Pentagon official who is now a research fellow in defense and domestic  security at the Heritage Foundation.

"They will probably be running them through training procedures for dealing with this stuff to secure it and get it under control or to respond to it if it gets used" in a calamitous last battle, said Bucci. "This is about the best use of our military we could have now, and hopefully we're also helping out the Turks."

Bucci testified to Congress in July that even a limited operation to secure Syria's chemical weapons would require more than 75,000 troops -- and many more if launched amid the civil war now raging.

It is "not a viable option" to commit masses of U.S. ground troops to such an operation, Bucci told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade. Any effective force, he said, would have to involve troops from allied Muslim countries also at risk of attack with Syria's chemical weapons.

That's why, he said in an interview Thursday, it is essential for the United States to coordinate with Syria's neighbors now to prepare a post-Assad operation that can prevent terrorist groups or smugglers from making off with the WMD.

Raymond Zilinskas, director of the chemical and biological weapons program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, points out that assessments of Syria's chemical weapons program are largely unverified. But he, too, says the United States and its allies should be girding for the worst.

"From what I understand, these depots are pretty well guarded by the Syrian regime's forces, and they would probably be the last to give up their guarding duties," Zilinskas said. "But if there is a total collapse, there would of course be a threat of jihadists getting these weapons."

Talk of airstrikes to remove the threat is nonsensical, Zilinskas said. Syria has formidable antiaircraft defenses built with Russian assistance, and the international community lacks crucial information on the precise locations, quantities and containment of the gases to be able to bomb them without risking spreading the deadly substances.

"Sarin is pretty volatile. If all these other problems could be resolved, the sarin would probably be destroyed or would be so volatile that it would disappear quickly," Zilinskas said. "But that's not necessarily the case with mustard gas. It's much less deadly but much more persistent. And if the Syrians turn out to have VX, which is a persistent nerve gas, that could cause real problems. That is the worst-case scenario they have to prepare for."

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Photo, top: A military training facility in Russeifeh, Jordan, where U.S. forces and a handful of British allies began training Jordanian commandos this week to respond in case of an attack with chemical weapons from neighboring Syria. Credit: Mohammad Hannon / Associated Press

Insert: A scene from U.S.-Jordanian military exercises in the Qatrana desert in June. Credit: Jamal Nasrallah /AFP/Getty Images

Syrian rebel group claims responsibility for Damascus blast

BEIRUT -– A Syrian rebel group claimed responsibility for the detonation of explosives in a military judiciary building Thursday night that rocked Damascus, the capital. 

The explosion, which occurred near Ummayed Square, targeted a meeting of judges and military officers who oversee the military court that tries and sentences opposition members or those accused of supporting the opposition, said a spokesman for the Ahfad Rasul brigade, which said it carried out the attack.

“They don’t hand down any sentence other than execution,” said the spokesman, Nabil Amir.

Information on casualties and damages was not immediately available.

A statement released by the group said the attack was in response to the massacres the regime has been committing against the Syrian people. The building “has been turned into a slaughterhouse for the activists and detainees.”

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