Syria: Can Assad fight his way to political survival?

Despite the death and destruction his security forces are raining down on opposition-held neighborhoods in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad is unlikely to succeed in crushing a year-old rebellion. International revulsion at the crackdown and the breadth of an uprising that has seen Syrians take up arms in a fight to the death also make it increasingly unlikely that Assad will manage to reestablish the status quo ante through military force. But even if he can't win, Assad may have reason to believe, as he surveys the national and international battlefield he has created, that he can nonetheless fight to a messy draw. The difference between a draw and a defeat, for Assad, now amounts to this: Will he be at the table when a political solution to the conflict is negotiated?

The European Union on Monday announced new sanctions against Assad's regime in support of demands that he end his assault on opposition strongholds and accept an Arab League plan that requires him to surrender power. But the EU measures amounted largely to an incremental tightening of those previously imposed. The meeting in Tunis last Friday of the "Friends of Syria" ad-hoc forum also confirmed that while Western and Arab powers concur on the need for Assad to step down -- and before that, to halt his assaults on rebel-held areas and allow in humanitarian relief supplies -- there is limited agreement on new strategies to pursue those goals. Western powers have no appetite for direct military involvement in Syria, not only because of post-Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya intervention fatigue, but because the sectarian and regional political stakes in Syria's conflict threaten region-wide chaos. Support for direct military intervention appears to be lacking even if those doing the fighting are not Western troops: Qatar failed in its efforts to persuade the Friends of Syria to back intervention by an Arab force that would invade Syria to open humanitarian corridors to besieged cities.

(PHOTOS: Free Syrian Army Joins Anti-Assad Protests)

Qatar has since defaulted to the Saudi view that arming Syria's rebels is, as the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, put it, "an excellent idea." The vociferous advocacy of the Gulf states for funneling weapons to the insurgents reinforces widely held suspicions that they're probably already doing so. There may even be some non-lethal aid from Western countries, including communications equipment, medical supplies, night-vision goggles and other such equipment, reaching rebel forces. But the Saudis, who reportedly walked out of the Friends of Syria forum at one point, allegedly decrying its "inaction," could not persuade the forum to endorse even that idea.

The U.S. certainly remains skeptical of the proposal to send weapons to the opposition. "We don't really know who it is that would be armed," said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a CBS interview last weekend, noting the amorphous nature of the opposition and the fact that some of its elements are inimical to U.S. foreign policy goals. The Syrian opposition had the backing of al-Qaeda and the Palestinian Islamist organization Hamas, she said, raising the question of who the U.S. would be supporting if it provided arms. "Despite the great pleas that we hear from those people who are being ruthlessly assaulted by Assad, you don't see uprisings across Syria the way you did in Libya," she continued. "You don't see militias forming in places where the Syrian military is not, trying to get to Homs... So if you're a military planner or if you're a Secretary of State and you're trying to figure out do you have the elements of an opposition that is actually viable, that we don't see."

(PHOTOS: Inside Syria's Civil War)

The U.S. and its allies may have hoped to crown the Syrian National Council (SNC) as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, as they did with the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council ahead of the intervention in Libya last year, but the fact that the Tunis gathering hailed the SNC as "a" rather than "the" representative of the Syrian people was telling. The extent of the SNC's authority on the ground remains questionable, and even its influence over the Free Syrian Army -- the umbrella insurgent organization of defectors from the regime's army and civilian volunteers, whose own control over fighting units on the ground appears to be limited -- is far from established. Some have argued that providing arms will help to organize the rebellion and build up the political authority of the SNC leadership under whose auspices such arms would be provided. But Clinton's concerns may have been underscored by Sunday's news that some of the SNC's most senior leaders had broken away to form the Syrian Patriotic Group, challenging the effectiveness of the SNC and giving less equivocal backing to armed rebellion.

While the majority of U.N. member states have backed the Arab League plan, Assad still enjoys strong support from Russia and Iran, and countries such as China and Iraq insist that any solution in Syria be based on diplomatic reforms and dialogue with the regime, rather than its a priori replacement. Needless to say, the Assad regime concurs: Even while it continued to rain artillery fire down on Homs and other opposition strongholds on Sunday, the regime also managed to stage a referendum on a package of constitutional reforms. Opposition leaders denounced the vote as a farce given the war being waged, and there's no way it could be taken as a sign of national consensus behind Assad-led reforms. But even if the regime's claim of a 57% turnout was exaggerated, Western journalists in the major cities of Damascus and Aleppo saw thousands of young voters turning out to participate in the poll in spite of opposition calls for a boycott. That served up a timely reminder that Assad's regime retains a substantial support base, with a number of key constituencies -- particularly his Alawite sect that dominates key military units, as well as Christians and other minorities that together make up as much as a third of the population -- fearful of their prospects should the rebellion triumph.

(MORE: Three Acclaimed Journalists Die Covering the War in Syria)

By militarizing the political contest in Syria, Assad has effectively created a sectarian civil war that presents the Syrian population with stark choices that work in his favor. And the more intense and protracted the military conflict becomes, the greater the danger that the de facto leadership of the rebellion passes to more extreme and sectarian elements -- which, of course, reinforces Assad's own hold on his core support.

All sides in Syria, then, appear to be hunkering down for a protracted civil war -- a conflict of a type that, given the external backing on which the combatants rely, is unlikely to end in a rout by either side. And if it ends at the negotiation table, as the Balkan wars of the 1990s did, Assad will be hoping at least to secure his place as a key player at the table. Indeed, even the SNC in a statement last Friday appeared to walk back from its refusal to engage with the regime, saying that negotiation -- if the regime first agrees to a cease-fire -- "is still possible and is likely the best way to achieve the desired goal of regime change." Council members and Western diplomats also tell reporters that Russia's role remains crucial in achieving any settlement to end the violence, despite its dissent from the international consensus.

No surprise, then, that European Union officials were careful following the adoption of the new sanctions on Monday to stress the importance of the role of Kofi Annan, the former U.N. Secretary General who has been appointed as joint U.N.-Arab League envoy for Syria. His job, of course, will be to talk the Assad regime and its enemies into some sort of workable compromise that can end the violence.

MORE: Just When They Needed It Least: The Syrian Opposition Fractures Again

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China paper says West stirring civil war in Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) - China's main newspaper accused Western countries of stirring civil war in Syria and two Iranian warships docked at a Syrian naval base, underscoring rising international tensions over the near year-long crisis.

Despite a continued government crackdown on the opposition in cities across the country, President Bashar al-Assad forged ahead with plans to hold a referendum at the end of the week.

Syrian government forces maintained their siege of pro-opposition neighborhoods of Homs, a western city at the heart of the revolt. Opposition activists reported sporadic morning shelling of Baba Amro district.

Security forces also mounted a campaign of arrests and raids in two suburbs of Deraa city and loud gunfire was heard, activists said. The reports could not be independently verified.

The Monday morning action followed a weekend which saw one of the biggest anti-Assad demonstrations yet in the capital as the pro-democracy uprising against his 11 year-rule neared its first anniversary.

Security forces have killed at least 5,000 people, according to human rights groups, in a campaign to crush the revolt while the Assad government says it has lost more than 2,000 soldiers and security agents in what it describes as a struggle against foreign-backed terrorists,

The conflict has also pitted Western and Gulf-led Arab powers against Assad allies Russia, China and Iran.

The former have condemned Assad for the bloodshed and called for him to step down. Beijing and Moscow say all sides are to blame for the violence and the crisis should be resolved through talks, not foreign intervention.

China's Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily, in a front page commentary on Monday, said: "If Western countries continue to fully support Syria's opposition, then in the end a large-scale civil war will erupt and there will be no way to thus avoid the possibility of foreign armed intervention."

A Chinese envoy met Assad in Damascus on Saturday and backed his plan to hold a referendum this coming Sunday on a new constitution which would lead to multi-party parliamentary elections with 90 days.

Syria's official SANA news agency said about 14,600,000 people throughout Syria were eligible to take part in the referendum.

Deputy Minister of Interior for Civil Affairs, General Hassan Jalali said 13,835 offices were devoted to the poll, including ones opened on land borders and at airports to enable all citizens to vote.

The West and Syrian opposition figures have dismissed the plan as joke, saying it is impossible to have valid election amid the continuing repression.

WESTERN FEARS

Assad has ruled Syria for 11 years after succeeding his father Hafez on his death. The Assad family belongs to the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, in a majority Sunni country, and there are fears the uprising could break down into a full sectarian conflict.

Foreign ministers at a G20 industrialized and emerging nations meeting in Mexico were increasingly worried about whether a peaceful solution could be found.

"There is grave concern about the fact that existing structures of the United Nations have not delivered an outcome,"

Australia's foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, told reporters in Los Cabos, Mexico.

The West has ruled out any Libya-style military intervention but the Arab League, led by Saudi Arabia, has indicated some of its member states were prepared to arm the opposition.

In Washington the senior U.S. military officer, General Martin Dempsey, said intervening in Syria would be "very difficult" because it was not like Libya.

Syria's army is very capable, with a sophisticated, integrated air defense system and chemical and biological weapons, Dempsey said. It was also not clear who or what the fragmented opposition was exactly, he said.

IRANIAN SHIPS

Meanwhile two Iranian naval ships docked at the Syrian port of Tartous on Saturday, Iran's state-run Press TV reported. The ships were said to be providing training for Syrian naval forces under an agreement signed a year ago.

Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, quoted by the semi-official Fars news agency, said: "Our ships passed through the Suez canal and it is Iran's right to have a presence in international waters."

With Shi'te-led Iran already at odds with the United States, Europe and Israel over its nuclear program, the deployment was

likely to add to Western concerns that the Syria crisis could boil over into a regional conflict if it not resolved soon.

A so-called "Friends of Syria" conference is scheduled to take place in Tunisia this Friday, bringing together Western and Arab powers. The group was formed at the instigation of France and the United States after Russia and China shot down a proposed resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling for Assad to relinquish power.

Australia's Rudd, speaking in Mexico, said the group aims "to place maximum pressure on president Assad to go, to end the butchery that we see day by day unfolding in Syria and to make sure we have a durable and peaceful political transition."

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Parisa Hafezi in Tehran; Susan Cornwell in Washington; Krista Hughes in Los Cabos, Mexico; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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New York Times correspondent Shadid dies in Syria

NEW YORK (AP) — New York Times correspondent Anthony Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who strove to capture untold stories in Middle East conflicts from Libya to Iraq, died Thursday in eastern Syria after slipping into the country to report on the uprising against its president.

Shadid, shot in the West Bank in 2002 and kidnapped for six days in Libya last year, apparently died of an asthma attack, the Times said. Times photographer Tyler Hicks was with him and carried his body to Turkey, the newspaper said.

"Anthony was one of our generation's finest reporters," Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger said in a statement. "He was also an exceptionally kind and generous human being. He brought to his readers an up-close look at the globe's many war-torn regions, often at great personal risk. We were fortunate to have Anthony as a colleague, and we mourn his death."

Shadid's father, Buddy Shadid, told The Associated Press on Thursday his son had asthma all his life and had medication with him.

"(But) he was walking to the border because it was too dangerous to ride in the car," the father said. "He was walking behind some horses — he's more allergic to those than anything else — and he had an asthma attack."

The Times reported that Shadid and Hicks recently were helped by smugglers through the border area in Turkey adjoining Syria's Idlib Province and were met by guides on horseback.

Hicks told the newspaper that Shadid suffered one bout of asthma the first night, followed by a more severe attack a week later on the way out.

"I stood next to him and asked if he was OK, and then he collapsed," Hicks told the Times.

Hicks said that Shadid was not conscious and that his breathing was "very faint" and "very shallow." He said that after a few minutes he could see that Shadid "was no longer breathing."

Shadid, a 43-year-old American of Lebanese descent, had a wife, Nada Bakri, and a son and a daughter. He had worked previously for the AP, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. He won Pulitzer Prizes for international reporting in 2004, when he was with the Post, and in 2010, when with the Times, for his Iraq coverage.

In 2004, the Pulitzer Board praised "his extraordinary ability to capture, at personal peril, the voices and emotions of Iraqis as their country was invaded, their leader toppled and their way of life upended."

Shadid was a native of Oklahoma City and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He joined the AP in Milwaukee in 1990, worked on the International Desk in New York and served as the AP's news editor in Los Angeles. He was transferred to Cairo in 1995, covering stories in several countries.

AP Senior Managing Editor John Daniszewski, who worked with Shadid in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion in 2003, called him "a brilliant colleague who stood out both for his elegant writing and for his deep and nuanced understanding of the region."

"He was calm under fire and quietly daring, the most admired of his generation of foreign correspondents," Daniszewski said.

Shadid had been reporting in Syria for a week, gathering information on the resistance to the Syrian government and calls for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, the Times said. The exact circumstances and location of his death were unclear, it said.

Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson sent a note to the newsroom Thursday evening, relaying the news of Shadid's death and remembering him.

"Anthony died as he lived — determined to bear witness to the transformation sweeping the Middle East and to testify to the suffering of people caught between government oppression and opposition forces," she wrote.

Shadid, long known for covering wars and other conflicts in the Middle East, was among four reporters detained for six days by Libyan forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi last March.

Speaking to an audience in Oklahoma City about a month after his release, he said he had a conversation with his father the night before he was detained.

"Maybe a little bit arrogantly, perhaps with a little bit of conceit, I said, 'It's OK, Dad. I know what I'm doing. I've been in this situation before,'" Shadid told the crowd of several dozen people. "I guess on some level I felt that if I wasn't there to tell the story, the story wouldn't be told."

When Shadid's wife was asked at the time whether she worried about him returning to writing about conflicts, she said as a journalist she understood that he might need to.

"At the end of the day, he's my husband, and the thought of going through life without him and raising our children alone is terrible," she said afterward.

Shadid's father, who lives in Oklahoma City, said a colleague tried to revive his son after he was stricken Thursday but couldn't.

"They were in an isolated place. There was no doctor around," Buddy Shadid said. "It took a couple of hours to get him to a hospital in Turkey."

___

Associated Press writer Rochelle Hines contributed to this report from Oklahoma City.

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Assad proposes referendum in strifetorn Syria

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian troops attacked Deraa on Thursday to try to stamp out rebels in the border city where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule began last March, residents and opposition activists said.

The attack, a day after Assad said he would hold a referendum and elections, followed a push against rebels in the major cities of Hama and Homs in an apparent drive to crush the 11-month uprising against his rule.

Assad's offer of a referendum on a new constitution in two weeks' time, leading to multi-party elections within 90 days, drew scornful rejections from the opposition and the West.

France said it was negotiating a new U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria with Russia, Assad's ally and main arms supplier, and wanted to create humanitarian corridors to ease the plight of civilians caught up in the violence.

An authoritative Chinese newspaper, apparently responding to criticism of China and Russia for vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution urging Assad to step down, said on Thursday that meddling in Syria by foreign powers risked stirring up a hornets' nest of bloodshed and instability in the region.

The commentary in the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, carried an author's pen name that is often used to state Beijing's foreign policy stance.

"The political ecology in the Middle East is extremely frail, a tangled mess of thousands of years of ethnic and religious conflict," the commentary said.

World powers must realize this and handle bloodshed in Syria and Middle East tensions with a sense of realism, the paper said, adding that the spread of conflict would be a "catastrophe" in a crucial phase of global economic recovery.

"The Middle East is the world's most important fuel depot. If gripped by chaos, oil prices would skyrocket, shocking the stock market, financial systems and economies," the paper said.

Washington's aim was to install a friendly government in Syria to counter the influence in the region of Iran, it said.

The Chinese foreign ministry said later that Vice Foreign Minister Zhai Jun would visit Syria on Friday and Saturday.

In Deraa, a city on the Jordanian border, the sound of explosions and machinegun fire echoed through districts under attack by government troops, residents said.

"The army bombardment started around dawn and after that exchanges of fire occurred," Hussam Izzedine, a member of the Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah, told Reuters from Deraa. "Demonstrations have resumed and the Free Syrian Army has been providing security for protests in some parts of the city," he added.

There was no comment from Syrian authorities, who tightly restrict media access to the country.

An army offensive last April put down large demonstrations in Deraa, which had been provoked by the arrest of several women activists and the detention of schoolboys who had written freedom slogans on walls, inspired by other Arab Spring revolts.

The military has also begun a new offensive in Hama, a city with a bloody history of resistance to Assad's late father Hafez al-Assad, and opposition activists said shelling and sniper fire had killed at least five people and wounded 50 in 36 hours.

The state news agency said security forces "chased and fought with an armed terrorist group in the Hamidiya neighborhood of Hama that has been terrifying citizens" and arrested some of its members, who had automatic rifles and rocket propelled grenades.

Artillery shelled parts of Homs on Wednesday for the 13th day in a row. The Local Coordination Committees, an activist group, said at least four people were killed by army fire concentrated on Baba Amro district, a Sunni neighborhood.

In Damascus, troops killed at least two youths when they swept into the Barzeh district, searching houses and making arrests, residents said.

NO REGIME CHANGE

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told French radio "The idea of humanitarian corridors that I previously proposed to allow NGOs to reach the zones where there are scandalous massacres should be discussed at the Security Council."

He said a U.N. General Assembly vote on Thursday on a non-binding resolution on Syria would be "symbolic." It follows a February 4 veto by Russia and China of a draft Security Council resolution that backed an Arab League call for Assad to quit.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said "If the plan is to use the Security Council and United Nations to adopt some language to help legitimize regime change, then I'm afraid international law does not allow this and we cannot support such an approach."

Diplomats said Arab delegations had rejected proposed Russian amendments which would weaken the Assembly resolution.

The Arab League wants a joint U.N.-Arab peacekeeping force to be deployed in Syria and has adopted a resolution that would allow its members to arm Syrian rebels.

Libya's interim leader, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, said the exiled opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) would be allowed to open an office in Tripoli. "We support the Syrian people and their aspirations," he said.

Syrian state media said on Wednesday a draft constitution to be put to a vote on February 26 would establish a multi-party system in Syria, under Baath Party rule since 1963. Parliamentary elections would follow within 90 days of its approval.

The constitution would allow the president to be elected for two seven-year terms. Assad's late father Hafez was president for 29 years and was succeeded by his son when he died in 2000.

Melhem al-Droubi, a member of the SNC and the Muslim Brotherhood, told Reuters Assad must resign now. "Bashar al-Assad has increased the killing and slaughter in Syria. He has lost his legitimacy and we aren't interested in his rotten constitutions, old or new," he said.

The United States also dismissed the referendum plan.

The Syrian leader dismisses the revolt as the work of terrorists backed by a conspiracy of enemy nations.

Thousands of civilians have been killed since the uprising began in March, inspired by other Arab revolts. The government says more than 2,000 soldiers and police have been killed.

(Writing by Angus MacSwan in Beirut; editing by Tim Pearce)

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White House: Assad's call for Syria referendum ‘laughable’

The Obama administration has dismissed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's call for a constitutional referendum in late February as a bad joke.

"It's actually quite laughable.  It makes a mockery of the Syrian revolution," Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Barack Obama traveled to Wisconsin.

"Promises of reforms have usually been followed by an increase in brutality and have never been delivered upon by this regime since the beginning of the peaceful demonstrations in Syria," Carney said. "The fact of the matter is the Assad regime's days are numbered." Assad ordered the referendum to reshape his strife-torn country from its current autocratic rule--Assad and his late father, Hafez al-Assad, have ruled it with an iron hand for four decades--into a multiparty system, news agencies reported earlier.

But Carney signaled no softening in the American line that Assad must go.

"Members of his regime, senior military and civilian leadership, are demonstrating their own lack of faith in the future of Assad by moving assets out of the country, by preparing to send their family out of the country, and it's clear that Syria's future will not include Assad," Carney said. "It's not a question of if; it's just a question of when."

"We are working in a very focused way with an array of international allies and partners who are friends of Syria, friends of the Syrian people, to add to the pressure being brought to bear on Assad, to isolate him further, and to help bring about a peaceful transition to democracy in Syria," he added.

Olivier Knox is the White House correspondent for Yahoo News.

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