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

Qatari emir visits Gaza Strip in sign of support

This post has been updated. See the notes below for details.

GAZA CITY -- Palestinians in the Gaza Strip rolled out the red carpet Tuesday for Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, the first foreign head of state to visit the besieged seaside territory since it was taken over by the Islamist militant group Hamas in 2007.

[Updated, 10:55 a.m. Oct. 23: The emir called on Hamas and its rival, the West Bank-based Fatah Party, to reconcile their differences and work together to establish a Palestinian state.

"Palestinians should understand that division does the greatest harm to them and to the cause of all the Arabs," he said during a speech at Islamic University in Gaza.]

The visit came during a period of renewed violence between Gaza militants and Israel.

On Monday, two Palestinian militants were killed by Israeli airstrikes as they attempted to fire rockets into southern Israel, Israeli officials said. An Israeli officer was wounded Tuesday morning by an explosive device planted along the Gaza border.

In preparation for the emir's visit, Hamas deployed hundreds of security guards to protect the him and his delegation, and lined the streets with Qatari flags.

Hamas leaders have been looking increasingly to Qatar for patronage since the unrest in Syria led the militant group to abandon its base in Damascus.

New virus doesn't spread easily person-to-person, WHO says

A new virus that has killed one person and landed another in a London hospital does not appear to spread easily from person to person, the World Health Organization said Friday.

The discovery this month of a never-before-seen coronavirus, part of a family of viruses that range from the common cold to the SARS virus that killed hundreds, had caused fear that it might spread further. The fact that the two known cases were linked to Saudi Arabia added to the concern, with millions of people headed to the country for an annual Muslim religious pilgrimage.

However, no new cases have emerged since Britain informed the WHO last week that a 49-year-old Qatari man with a history of traveling to Saudi Arabia  was suffering a severe respiratory infection. The first case was a 60-year-old Saudi national who died of the infection this year.

Though the virus does not appear to be spreading, the United Nations agency said it was still monitoring the situation, given the severity of the two known cases of the new virus. It has not recommended any travel or trade restrictions for Saudi Arabia or Qatar.

European Center for Disease Prevention and Control scientists wrote in a newly published paper that the infection probably originated with animals. Though it is in the same family of viruses as SARS, it is “quite different in behavior from SARS,” the scientists wrote in the  Eurosurveillance  journal.

The two people known to have been infected with the new virus suffered from fever, coughing and shortness of breath.

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New virus akin to SARS reported; man hospitalized in London

A Qatari man hospitalized in London is suffering a severe infection in the same family as the SARS virus that killed hundreds and sickened thousands across the globe roughly a decade ago, the World Health Organization and British authorities have announced. The hospitalized man is the second of two known cases this year.

The 49-year-old man, who had a history of traveling to Saudi Arabia, showed symptoms of the illness three weeks ago and was admitted to an intensive care unit in Doha four days later, according to  WHO officials. He was transferred to Britain by air ambulance on Sept. 11.

The virus, detected with laboratory testing, was very similar to another virus that killed a 60-year-old patient from Saudi Arabia earlier this year, the health organization said in a statement Sunday. Both are coronaviruses, a large family of viruses that cause a range of ailments from the common cold to SARS. The two people known to have been infected with the new virus were struck with fever, coughing and shortness of breath.

The new virus is different than any previously identified in humans, the British Health Protection Agency said. Health officials are still investigating where it came from and how it is spread; similar viruses are typically passed when someone who is infected coughs or sneezes.

Envisioning a post-Assad Syria as civil war grinds on

With no end in sight for the bloody fratricide ravaging Syria, and with the world's most powerful nations bitterly divided over what to do next, U.S. and European diplomats have redirected their efforts from trying to halt the civil war to planning for a new Syria once it is over.

The blueprints emerging are necessarily vague, given that no one yet knows how or when Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime will fall or what constellation of political opponents will replace it. The proposals also lack any common strategy, reflecting discordant views among advocates of a free Syria on how best to aid the outgunned rebels. Washington is more wary than its allies of sending arms that could end up in the hands of Al Qaeda and other Islamic militants who have infiltrated the civil war to gain a new foothold in the Middle East.

French President Francois Hollande this week called on rebel factions to cobble together a transitional government that the international community can officially recognize and work with. But U.S. diplomats and political analysts argue that Assad's opponents are too fractious to put forward a united front or cohesive strategy for the war's end game. And with President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney equally loath to endorse bolder action on Syria -- fearing another costly, faraway conflict -- responsibility for contingency planning has fallen to academia instead of the Pentagon.

On Tuesday, the United States Institute of Peace issued "The Day After" plan for a post-Assad Syria. The 133-page statement of goals and principles for a new Syria was six months in the making. It was produced by 45 Syrian opposition figures brought together by the State Department-funded institute's Middle East experts and partners from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. It is long on institution-building wonk-speak and short on how the opposition is supposed to get to the post-Assad era. But analysts hailed it as a worthy undertaking even as government and rebel forces are mired in protracted battles to control key areas of Damascus and Aleppo.

No representatives of the Free Syrian Army fighting the regime were party to the post-Assad project, said Steven Heydemann, a senior advisor on Middle East initiatives who coordinated the talks among Syrian exiles, defectors and regime opponents who managed to travel abroad or participate via video linkup.

"The group very sensibly recognized there was no way to anticipate how the transition would happen," instead focusing on identifying the challenges that would confront the next leadership whether Assad flees, negotiates an exit or is deposed in a palace coup, Heydemann said. However the Assad dynasty ends, he noted, Syrians will have to grapple with divisive questions on how to treat those accused of war crimes, deter revenge killings and get the economy and social services back in working order.

While the United States is holding firm to its policy of providing only nonlethal aid to the rebels, Heydemann said, Washington could play a more effective role in coordinating other outside support. He pointed to the mounting incidents of Islamic extremists waging strikes against the Assad regime for their own purposes and weaponry coming in from autocratic supporters like Qatar and Saudi Arabia as giving "a Wild West quality" to help for the underdog rebels.

"The United States is very concerned that support from outside for elements of the Syrian opposition not lead to strengthening of Al Qaeda or Islamic fundamentalist forces that becomes problematic in the postwar process," said Charles Ries, a career diplomat heading Rand Corp.'s Center for Middle East Public Policy.  "But our reluctance [to supply arms] has paradoxically caused the division of the Syrian opposition and has encouraged those Islamist elements to find their own sources of support and influence."

The task eluding the United States and its allies is uniting the disparate opposition forces inside and outside Syria into a cohesive leadership that they can support and ratchet up the pressure on Assad, Ries said. 

Bilal Y. Saab, a Syria expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, shares other analysts' concerns that Islamic militants are filling the vacuum left by a hands-off U.S. policy toward the rebels. But it would be "ill-advised," he said, for the United States to recognize a transitional government that isn't broadly inclusive of the myriad ethnic, sectarian, religious and political factions in Syria.

"This administration is nowhere near doing that," Saab said of the prospects for a representative rebel leadership.

That said, initiatives like "The Day After" are laudable for keeping the Syrian opposition forces and their allies focused on the daunting challenges of building a stable nation once the civil war ends, Saab said.

"This is the most comprehensive effort by a U.S. entity to date to think about scenarios for after Assad," Saab said of the peace institute project. "It's not putting the cart before the horse."

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Photo: A rebel supporter treads on posters of Syrian President Bashar Assad lining the floor of a Free Syrian Army office in the town of Tal Rifaat, near Aleppo. Fighting has ground into a bloody impasse as international mediators differ on how to end the 17-month-old conflict. In Washington, the U.S. presidential election has relegated the Syrian civil war  to the diplomatic sidelines. Credit: Phil Moore / AFP/Getty Images

Taliban denies negotiations with Afghan government

REPORTING FROM ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN, AND KABUL, AFGHANISTAN -- The Taliban movement on Thursday strongly denied participating in secret talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, even as the Afghan leader sought help from Pakistani officials to facilitate peace talks.

“We have not decided to negotiate with the Karzai regime,” said spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid. He called the Karzai administration “impotent” and accused the Afghan leader of wanting “to extend his foreign-backed power for a few more days.”

“This false campaign will fail,” he said.

Karzai’s visit to Islamabad, the Pakistan capital, Thursday came amid reports that he had said in an interview that the U.S. and Afghan governments had begun secret talks with the Afghan Taliban insurgency. In recent months, U.S. officials have been meeting with Taliban envoys to discuss the establishment of a Taliban office in the gulf state of Qatar.

But late Thursday, the Taliban issued its statement denying negotiations. Previously, the Taliban leadership has dismissed Karzai as a “puppet” and publicly indicated willingness to hold contacts only with the Americans and the West.

A member of the Karzai-appointed body set up in 2010 to try to begin negotiations with the Taliban, Haji Musa Hotak, had said the Taliban position had changed.

“The Taliban have stopped insisting on talking to the U.S. and not the Afghan government,” he said. “Now the Taliban are saying they are ready to talk with the Afghan government face to face. They said they will talk to both Americans and the Afghan government.”

Karzai held separate meetings with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asif Ali Zardari. He also met with Zardari and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who also arrived in Islamabad on Thursday.

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Photo: Afghan President Hamid Karzai, center, with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani at the prime minister's house in Islamabad, Pakistan, on Thursday. Credit: B.K. Bangash / Associated Press

Racism and political tension tied to Israel's soccer league

REPORTING FROM JERUSALEM -- High drama exists in Israel's soccer league for reasons other than goals scored, as political tension and racism sometimes play out on and off the fields.

The Beitar Jerusalem soccer club, most recently owned by Dan Adler and Adam Levine of the U.S., remains closely associated with its fans' far right-wing politics and slurs against opposing players.

The club faces numerous penalties because of fan behavior, with Beitar fans often chanting personal and religious insults at other players. A group dubbed "La Familia" is viewed by many as setting the tone.

“We are against racism and against violence and we pay a price for our fans,” Assad Shaked, a spokesman for the team, recently told the Associated Press.

 Racism, mostly against Arabs, has plagued Israeli soccer for years. But the New Israel Fund organization's "Kick Racism out of Israeli Soccer" program reported last year that racist chanting declined during the 2010-11 season, saying that much of the change was tied to fans booing and silencing those who behaved in a racist fashion.

The overall problem involving Beitar, however, appears far from solved.

Hamas' prime minister in Gaza embarks on trip to Iran

REPORTING FROM GAZA CITY -- Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas' prime minister in the Gaza Strip, left Monday for a regional tour that will include stops in Qatar and Iran.

Haniyeh's tour will focus on raising investment and reconstruction funds for the war-torn coastal enclave, said Yusuf Rizqa, his political adviser.

It is the second foreign trip in two months for Haniyeh, who some believe is trying to raise his international profile as part of a power struggle with Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshaal. Haniyeh recently visited Sudan, Turkey and Tunisia.

Meshaal has also been on the move, this week making his first visit to Jordan since 1999.

Haniyeh will stop in Iran at the official request of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, according to Taher Nono, a spokesman for the prime minister.

Iran has been a strategic supporter and donor for the Islamist militant movement, which has ruled Gaza since 2007. But Tehran reportedly cut back its funding of Hamas recently because Hamas has refused to express public support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, who is fighting to retain power amid a 10-month-old popular revolt in his country.

Though Haniyeh has remained in Gaza, other Hamas leaders, including Meshaal, have used Damascus as a base. But the recent unrest in Syria has caused most Hamas officials to leave the country.

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Photo: Top Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh, center, returns to the Gaza Strip from a visit to Turkey and other nations in this Jan. 10 photo. Credit: Ali Ali / EPA

Six Persian Gulf nations plan to pull peace monitors from Syria

REPORTING FROM DAMASCUS, SYRIA AND BEIRUT -- An Arab League peace plan for Syria appeared to be near collapse Tuesday as six Persian Gulf nations announced their intention to withdraw monitors from Syria and urged the United Nations Security Council to take “all needed measures” to pressure Syrian President Bashar Assad to relinquish power.

The gulf monarchies, including regional giant Saudi Arabia, said in a statement that Assad’s government had failed to comply with demands by the 22-member Arab League designed to curb the bloodshed in Syria. The six nations -- which also include Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- contribute about one-third of the league's 165 or so monitors in the country.

On Monday, Syria rejected as a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty a proposed Arab League political  road map that called on Assad to transfer power to his deputy while a national unity government was formed within two months. Supervised parliamentary and presidential elections would follow, according to the proposal.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem was defiant Tuesday in a news conference in Damascus, assailing the Arab League political plan and denouncing “a plot against Syria” abetted by Arab nations. Syria, a close ally of Iran, has repeatedly alleged that it is the victim of a “conspiracy” backed by Washington and other Western nations in alliance with Arab states.

Moallem was dismissive of any effort to take the question of Syria to the Security Council, saying the Arab League could take the issue “to New York or to the moon, as long as we don’t have to pay [for] their ticket.”

What is the Strait of Hormuz? Can Iran shut off access to oil?

What is the Strait of Hormuz and why are people worried about it?

Iran has been threatening to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The waterway is bordered to the north by Iran, and its closure could cut off access to 20% of oil shipped around the world, sending fuel prices skyrocketing.

Why is Iran threatening to close it?

Iran has been under increasing pressure to stop its nuclear program. The European Union just approved an embargo on Iranian oil Monday to punish the country. Iran insists it is only working on nuclear power and medical research, but Western countries believe it is trying to create a nuclear weapon.

To counter that pressure, Iran has played up its power over the strait. A Revolutionary Guard commander was quoted in a Tehran newspaper saying government leaders would not "allow a drop of oil" to pass through the strait if "our enemies block the export of our oil."

MAP: Strait of Hormuz

Putting it even more boldly, "closing the Strait of Hormuz for Iran's armed forces is really easy ... or, as Iranians say, it will be easier than drinking a glass of water," Iran’s top naval commander said on television in December. The country has also been test-firing missiles to show control of the strait.

Why is this waterway vulnerable?

There are a few things that make the strait vulnerable. Its narrowest point is only 34 miles wide. Oil tankers can only use one channel to come in and one channel to come out, each of them roughly two miles wide. Iran has claimed sovereignty over a few islands near the western entrance to the strait.

How would Iran close the strait?

Nobody is worried that Iran would actually put a barrier in front of the Strait of Hormuz. "What most people think of -- and what the Iranians would probably do -- is a combination of things that would not really close the Hormuz Strait but make traversing it very difficult and risky so that people would not go through," said Afshon Ostovar, a senior analyst at the nonprofit research organization CNA.

Iran could do that by using everything from mines to submarines to missiles to small boats that harass ships. Political scientist Caitlin Talmadge outlines one scenario: Iran could set mines in and around the shipping channels, then attack from the air or the coast when people try to clear them.

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But Talmadge points out that the bluster from Iran makes any attempt to plant lots of mines without being detected “essentially impossible.” 

Could Iran really shut down the strait?

Many experts are skeptical that Iran could or would carry out the threat. In a recent article for Foreign Policy Magazine, Ostovar dubbed it a “kamikaze act” because Iran would be devastated by an all-out war with the United States, which could be triggered by closing the strait.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta called it a “red line” that would spur the U.S. to react. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says Iran could block traffic “for a period of time,” but that the United States could reopen it the strait. U.S. officials have said it could be done within a week.

Closing the strait would also hurt Iran. Most Iranian imports and exports come and go by sea, a report from the Institute of Near East and Gulf Military Analysis points out. And Ostovar adds that stopping traffic in the strait would also harm Asian countries that aren't among Iran's enemies, such as India and China.

However, a new report suggests that the Iranian threat could become more real in a decade or two. The U.S. has historically relied upon its allies in the Persian Gulf region to provide bases from which it can deploy troops and get supplies. Iran is now building weapon systems that could to stop that, possibly by threatening governments that offer bases to the U.S. military.

Deploying lots of ground forces and bombers "worked for Operation Desert Storm and for Operation Iraqi Freedom," said Mark Gunzinger, co-author of the report from the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments."We need to think through -- what if we're not able to do that?"

If closing the strait is an extreme or unlikely step, what else could Iran do?

Iran has a wide range of other ways to use its power in the gulf, from seizing ships to raiding facilities offshore. It can also use small ships to damage or detain tankers or board merchant ships to slow down shipping, harassment that falls short of war. Those minor attacks could reduce traffic or raise insurance costs for shippers. And those attacks don't need to be at or near the Strait of Hormuz.

“Everyone uses ‘close the gulf’ as sort of a slogan,” said Anthony Cordesman, a strategy expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But Iran has demonstrated that it would look at a whole range of different ways to put pressure on the Arab Gulf states and the West.

“It wouldn’t make any sense at all for Iran to concentrate all of its assets around one narrow point and make it extremely easy to attack them,” he added.

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