DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 23, 2011, 12:39 AM (GMT+02:00)
Bashar Assad faces the final showdown for his survival Saturday, April 23 after Friday saw the bloodiest day in the month-long protest movement against his regime: At least 90 civilians were killed and hundreds wounded by live gunshots, as well as scores of people missing. In his second statement in 24 hours, US President Barack Obama condemned the Syrian regime's "outrageous use of violence" against the protesters saying "it must end now." While blaming outsiders, President Assad seeks Iranian assistance in repressing Syria's citizens," said the US president.
In neither statement was the Syrian president urged to step down, even after the decision he took Friday to muster the entire army for crushing the surging uprising, which is expected to explode with greater fury during the funerals Saturday. Under new orders from Damascus, Syrian troops have already quit their posts on the Israeli border to reinforce units deployed in the cities.
Assad has his back to the wall: Armed protesters are barring his security forces from entering broad regions of the country unless they are accompanied by large-scale, military strength with massive fire power.
Friday night, DEBKAfile reported:
The eleven Syrian army divisions are Assad's last card in his fight for survival. Until now, he kept most of them back, sending out to the streets only his trusted security services, Republic Guard and 4th Division commanded by his younger brother Gen. Maher Assad.
But when Friday's bloodbath failed to keep the rising tide of protest from igniting 16 towns from north to south - Hama, Homs, Deir al-Zur, Banias, Daraa and the three Kurdish towns - and encroaching on Damascus, the capital, and second largest Syrian city, Aleppo, the Syrian president decided to go all the way. He ordered his army chiefs to assume control of security in Syria's main towns and districts and divide the country up into thee military regions.
The die was cast by the time the White House issued its first statement urging the Syrian government "to cease and desist" its violence against demonstrators and follow through on promised reforms. Assad's orders to the army had already gone out by the time the White House spokesman Jay Carney, speaking to reporters as President Barack Obama flew back to Washington from California, said, "We deplore the use of violence" against the demonstrators.
In any case, US President Barack Obama's tardy statement still refrained from addressing Bashar Assad's responsibility for the violence, least of all calling on him to step down to meet the people's demands.
In Daraa, epicenter of the movement in the south, the crowds hoped to reach Washington's ears with slogans shouted in English: "Assad: The game is over! " and "Go and open an eye clinic!"
Friday night, our sources report, Syrian army units were already sighted heading towards the cities, joined for the first time by troops normally on duty on at the Syrian-Israel border.
DEBKAfile's military sources disclose their assignments:
Corps No. 1 was given responsibility for the capital Damascus and its outlying towns and districts;
Corps No. 2 took charge of central Syria and the towns of Aleppo, Homs and Hama;
Corps No. 3 spread out in the south and Jebel Druze.
It was the last straw for Assad when Friday, the strategic town of Katana west of Damascus was drawn into the protest movement and rallied against his regime. Katana houses the main bases of the Syrian armored corps, which is part of the 7th Division, and serves as divisional logistical administration center. Its population is made up mostly of the officers, men and civilian personnel serving at those bases.
Having Katana turn against the regime finally persuaded its leaders to throw every resource it had into crushing the uprising.
For the Syrian ruler, deploying the entire army is a wild gamble because more than 75 percent of Syria's 220,000-strong rank and file are Sunni Muslims, Kurds and Druzes and therefore drawn from ethnic and religious groups long repressed by the Alawite-dominated regime. Saturday could see uniformed troops flouting orders to shoot live rounds into crowds of protesters who are members of their community or even family. It would start the break-up of the Syrian army amid large-scale defections of officers and men.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report April 22, 2011, 5:33 PM (GMT+02:00)
Both of Libya's fighting camps are taking delivery of a surging influx of weapons shipments and military personnel – each hoping to use the extra aid for breaking the military standoff in its own favor, DEBKAfile's military sources report. Thursday, April 21, President Barack Obama authorized a pair of armed Predator drones to help the rebels break breaking the siege of Misratah, while British, French and Italian military officers headed for rebel headquarters in Benghazi, part of a package of arms and military equipment from the US, Britain, France, Italy and Qatar.
On the other side of the Libyan divide, China, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Serbia are keeping the pro-Qaddafi camp's arsenals stocked with new hardware along with combat personnel from Eastern Europe and the former Yugoslavia.
Building up in Libya is a confrontation that recalls the 1999 war in Yugoslavia (Serbia today) when NATO's four-month Operation Noble Anvil hammered Yugoslav forces to force their retreat from Kosovo. The Serbs too were backed then by clandestine Chinese-Russian support in tactical advice, intelligence, fighting men and arms.
Just like 12 years ago, our military sources report that from mid-March, hundreds of "volunteers" - professional soldiers ranking from colonel down to corporal - have joined the army loyal to Qaddafi. Calling themselves "nationalists" operating in paramilitary organizations without the knowledge of their governments, these foreigners claim they have come "to repulse the Western-Muslim onslaught on Qaddafi's regime."
Of course, they are handsomely paid from Muammar Qaddafi's plentiful war chest.
One group says it is in Libya for unfinished business with the West, especially the United States, for their role in the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts.
China is helping the Libyan ruler with arms, mostly through African neighbors, and intelligence on NATO strikes in order to limit the damage they inflict (a service like that performed for Serbia in the 1990s). Beijing has a stake in helping the Libyan ruler after being informed that the Obama administration seeks to sever Chinese-Libyan oil ties before Beijing sinks tens of billions of dollars in Libya's transformation into its primary oil and gas supplier on the African continent.
Hence the pair of armed drones which the US president decided Thursday to contribute to rebel strength in Misratah, the only town the rebels are clinging to in western Libya. The Predators are intended doubly to break Qaddafi's siege of the town and destroy the Chinese electronic intelligence and weapons systems deployed around it. The NATO bombardment of a large ammunition dump near Tripoli on April 14 aimed at destroying the latest Chinese arms arrivals.
Echoes of the Balkan Wars were also resurrected by the rebels' determination to hang on in Misratah and replicate the long Sarajevo siege which eventually drew the United States into the conflict.
DEBKAfile's military sources point to four major difficulties still confronting the next, intensified, round of Western coalition operations in Libya:
1. Pushing Qaddafi too hard could split NATO between is West and East European members;
2. The alliance is short of fighter-bombers for blasting the arms convoys destined for government forces in western Libya and lacks the precision bombs and missiles for these attacks. These shortages have forced NATO to limit its air strikes for now. A larger number of US Predators than the two authorized might have altered the balance. However, these armed pilotless aerial vehicles are in short supply owing to their essential role in US operations in the Afghan, Yemeni and Somali war arenas.
3. It is not clear that the UN Security Council resolution mandate extends to this kind of attack. The Russians criticize the Western alliance almost daily for exceeding its mandate.
4. In view of this criticism, Washington, London, Paris and Rome are careful to label their war assistance to Libyan rebels as "non-lethal military aid" and the military personnel helping them as "military advisers" – raising memories of the euphemisms used in previous wars.
The trouble is that all the additional military assistance the West is laying on is barely enough, say DEBKAfile's military experts, to maintain the current stalemate against the Qaddafi regime's boosted capabilities - certainly not sufficient to tip the scales of the war.
Qaddafi holds one major advantage: His army can absorb foreign assistance without delay and almost seamlessly, whereas Western aid drops into a pit of uncertainty with regard to the rebel groups and their chiefs. The military advisers arriving in Benghazi first need to guide the opposition's steps in fighting Qaddafi's forces, then form the rebels into military units and teach them how to use the weapons they are receiving.
It could take months for regular units to take shape under the direction of British, French and Italian military personnel who, too, are not necessarily working in harness.
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