Syrian Terrorists withdraw from enclave after siege

[SyrianChristianPatriot]

After a punishing, monthlong military siege, Syrian rebels made what they called a "tactical retreat" Thursday from a key district in Homs, saying they were running low on weapons and the humanitarian conditions were unbearable.

Within hours of the rebels' withdrawal, President Bashar Assad's regime granted permission for the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter the neighborhood of Baba Amr, which had become a symbol of the resistance.

Human rights workers have been appealing for access for weeks to deliver food, water and medicine, and to help evacuate the wounded from an area that has been sealed off and attacked by the government since early February.

The Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent received a "green light" from the Syrian authorities to enter Baba Amr on Friday "to bring in much-needed assistance including food and medical aid, and to carry out evacuation operations," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan told the Associated Press in Geneva.

Also Thursday, Syria's main opposition group, the Syrian National Council, formed a military bureau to help organize the armed resistance and funnel weapons to rebels — a sign of how deeply militarized the conflict has become over the past year.

The uprising began in March 2011 with mostly peaceful protests, but a fierce government crackdown has led many army defectors and others to take up arms and fight back, with more than 7,500 estimated killed. The siege of Baba Amr has been among the deadliest assaults as Syrian forces bombarded the district with shells and snipers fired from rooftops.

Late Thursday, a Syrian official said the army had entered and taken control of the area.

Hundreds of people were killed and an unknown number wounded in Baba Amr; bloodied victims were forced to seek help in makeshift clinics with dwindling supplies amid a frigid winter. Activists said 17 people were killed in Homs on Thursday.

"Assad's army has destroyed most of the homes in the neighborhood," said a statement posted online by the Baba Amr rebels' brigade about the retreat. They said the decision was based on "worsening humanitarian conditions, lack of food and medicine and water, electricity and communication cuts as well as shortages in weapons."

"We will return, God willing," the statement said.

The retreat came one day after a Syrian official said the government was planning a major offensive to "cleanse" Baba Amr once and for all, and activists reported troops massing outside the neighborhood.

Two French journalists, Edith Bouvier and William Daniels, have been trapped in Baba Amr during the siege.

Bouvier was wounded last week in a government rocket attack on a makeshift media center that killed American-born journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik. Bouvier is asking for a European ambassador to accompany any evacuation, said Burhan Ghalioun, head of the opposition Syrian National Council, at a Paris news conference.

On Thursday, a Syrian activist posted a video online that he said showed the burial of Colvin in Baba Amr on Monday.

Homs is Syria's third-largest city with about 1 million people. Activists estimated 100,000 people lived in Baba Amr before the revolt, but many have fled and it is uncclear how many are left. The rebels estimate that 4,000 people remain.

Rebels have relocated from some areas but said the resistance in Baba Amr "is still strong," Ghalioun said.

He also laid out the plans for a military council to organize and unify all armed resistance to Assad's regime.

The Paris-based leadership of the Syrian National Council said its plan was coordinated with the most potent armed opposition force — the Free Syrian Army, which is made up mainly of army defectors.

A Turkey-based member of the FSA confirmed that the council coordinated the move with the rebel fighters.

"The revolution started peacefully and kept up its peaceful nature for months, but the reality today is different and the SNC must shoulder its responsibilities in the face of this new reality," Ghalioun said, adding that any weapons flowing into the country should go through the council.

Still, he tried to play down the risks of an all-out civil war.

"We want to control the use of weapons so that there won't be a civil war," he said. "Our aim is to help avoid civil war."

Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been discussing military aid, but the U.S. and others have not advocated arming the rebels, in part out of fear it would create an even more bloody and prolonged conflict. Syria has a complex web of allegiances in the region that extend to Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, raising fears of wider violence.

"It's not clear to us that arming people right now will either save lives or lead to the demise of the Assad regime," the top U.S. diplomat for the Mideast, Jeffrey Feltman, told a Senate committee Thursday.

Both sides in Syria have accused the other of leading the country toward civil war, which is perhaps the worst-case scenario in a country with a fragile mix of ethnic groups including Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and the minority Alawite sect, to which Assad and the ruling elite belong.

Ghalioun said the military council will be made up of military and civilian experts in charge of following up with the various armed factions in Syria and organizing its ranks and unify it under one central leadership.

The SNC has called for arming rebels in the past, but this was the first time it sought to organize the fighters under one umbrella. It's not clear how successful the SNC will be in unifying the various anti-Assad forces. The opposition's main problem in the past year has been its inability to coalesce behind a single leader or ideology beyond toppling the regime.

As the West and Arab states consider offering direct support to Assad's opponents, there are serious questions about whether any opposition group is even remotely prepared to take the helm after more than 40 years under Assad family rule.

Besides the rebel fighters, the chorus of voices speaking against the regime include distinguished exiles who hold little sway back home, aging dissidents who spent years locked in Syrian prisons and tech-savvy young people desperate to cast off a suffocating dictatorship.

Also within opposition ranks are various ideologies and motivations, from secular forces to religious conservatives to outright radicals. Separately, there are worries that al-Qaeda will take advantage of the chaos to increase its clout and carry out attacks on Assad's regime.

International pressure on the regime has been growing more intense daily. The U.N.'s top human rights body voted to condemn Syria for its "widespread and systematic violations" against civilians, and the U.K. and Switzerland closed their embassies in Damascus over worsening security. The U.S. closed its embassy in February.

Also Thursday, the U.N. Security Council called on Syrian authorities to grant U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos "unhindered access."

The press statement, obtained Thursday by the AP, was the first one on Syria approved by the council in seven months. It is significant because it requires agreement of all 15 council members including Russia and China who have vetoed two resolutions condemning Assad's crackdown and calling for him to step down.

While a press statement is not legally binding, it does reflect the growing concern of the council about the impact of the violence. Council diplomats said Russia, Syria's closest ally, had urged Assad's government to approve the Amos visit.

On Wednesday, Amos said Syria had not yet agreed to allow her to into the country. But Syria's state-run news agency, SANA, denied that, saying Thursday she wanted to visit "on a date not suitable for us."

"The Syrian side is ready to continue consultation with Amos on a date that is appropriate for both sides … for Amos to start her visit to Damascus," the SANA statement said.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said Amos has been "extremely flexible … and she's still ready to go at a moment's notice."

 

[Syrian Lion]

GOD BLESS THE SYRIAN ARMY.
ALLAH SOURIA BASHAR W BAS.

 

[BLACKEAGLE]

Don't get your hopes up too much, Syrian free army have tactically withdrawn many times from several areas but they got back even with stronger forces. Because every time regime's army enter a city, a large number of soldiers defect because they don't see terrorists but rather killed and injured children, elders and women. The coming days will reveal everything...

 

[Syrian Lion]

Don't get your hopes up too much, Syrian free army have tactically withdrawn many times from several areas but they got back even with stronger forces. Because every time regime's army enter a city, a large number of soldiers defect because they don't see terrorists but rather killed and injured children, elders and women. The coming days will reveal everything...

Defect and defection, i didn't know normal people that has nothing to do with the army when they join that terrorists organization they became defectors.

 

[BLACKEAGLE]

Defect and defection, i didn't know normal people that has nothing to do with the army when they join that terrorists organization they became defectors.

Do you want me to provide you with videos? ok... just write in Arabic "defected soldiers" on youtube and you will find thousands of videos. The defected soldiers proved their identity with army ID cards, personal ID cards, Army uniforms and ranks. Stop trying to get the world's sympathy by baseless and loose terms like "terrorists" because you know that this revolution kept itself peaceful despite the slaughtering for 8 months then they had to defend themselves and its their right like any normal human being to protect his women and children from being raped and killed.

 

[Syrian Lion]

Do you want me to provide you with videos? ok... just write in Arabic "defected soldiers" on youtube and you will find thousands of videos. The defected soldiers proved their identity with army ID cards, personal ID cards, Army uniforms and ranks. Stop trying to get the world's sympathy by baseless and loose terms like "terrorists" because you know that this revolution kept itself peaceful despite the slaughtering for 8 months then they had to defend themselves and its their right like any normal human being to protect his women and children from being raped and killed.

I can make my own uniform for god sake., and those id cards are not even clear to read, what are they saying idk.

So bombing Damascus and Aleppo is protection?

 

[BLACKEAGLE]

I can make my own uniform for god sake., and those id cards are not even clear to read, what are they saying idk.

So bombing Damascus and Aleppo is protection?

I told you there are THOUSANDS of videos of defected soldiers. Don't compel me to publish them here. you check them yourself.
This is the colonel Riyadh Alasaad. very clear ID cards...

 

[Syrian Lion]

I told you there are THOUSANDS of videos of defected soldiers. Don't compel me to publish them here. you check them yourself.
This is the colonel Riyadh Alasaad. very clear ID cards...

OK i didn't say there are not defectors, but they are not more then 200, for god sake. Please the FSA is Al Qaeda it self with new name to gain world wide support. Which already does. Should i talk about the FSA and their destruction of Churches and Mosques?

 

[anon45]

The siege of Homs is over. After a confused and ominous 24-hour news cycle, the Syrian rebels have made a "tactical withdrawal" from the restive neighborhood of Baba Amr, which withstood a month of rocket fire, drone-guided artillery shelling, and possibly even helicopter gunship attacks by President Bashar al-Assad's security forces.

But the rebels' withdrawal was not a total defeat. As of March 1, the Free Syrian Army (FSA) could still boast that it had kept some 7,000 soldiers from Maher al-Assad's elite 4th Division at bay on Baba Amr's outskirts, a claim that appeared corroborated by eyewitness accounts. One Homsi in an adjoining district told me last night, Feb. 29, via Skype that tanks were moving in and out of his street in a violent attempt to enter Baba Amr. They'd failed.

Although Baba Amr's fall was inevitable, the snow and freezing cold cast an image of a Levantine Stalingrad in the making. Electricity and water have been shut off in large parts of Homs -- a city of 1 million people -- for the past three days. Food is scarce, prompting the United Nations to fret about mass starvation.

What happens to the civilians in Baba Amr now, particularly with communication lines cut and no YouTube clips being uploaded, is up to the Assad regime's totalitarian imagination. The regime has apparently given the International Committee of the Red Cross the green light to send in humanitarian aid and evacuate the wounded on March 2. Clearly, this step is designed to lend the impression that the armed rebels were responsible for Baba Amr's misfortunes all along. Sources inside the neighborhood, however, say that a "bloodbath" is currently taking place. Seventeen civilians have been beheaded or partially beheaded by security forces, the activist organization Avaaz said March 1.

With the destruction of the opposition's stronghold in Homs, Syria's revolutionaries aren't going to melt into thin air. U.S. and European policymakers might like to believe that Homsis wake up each morning and consult the writings of Gene Sharp, but the bulk of the opposition now recognizes that the revolution must be accomplished through arms and that returning to the passive resistance of eight months ago would amount to a suicide pact.

After all, it's Assad -- not the revolutionaries -- who transformed this into an armed conflict in the first place. The original peaceful protest movement, which originally called for "reforms," was met with wanton acts of brutality. Nor have most Syrians forgotten that 13-year-old Hamza al-Khatib, an early rallying symbol for the revolution, wasn't carrying a Kalashnikov when Assad's security forces kidnapped him and then delivered his mutilated corpse back to his parents.

Would these security forces and their shabiha mercenaries promise not to arrest, torture, or shoot at more men, women, and children if the opposition disarmed? If so, who'd believe them? Tens of thousands of civilian fighters and military defectors are fanned out all over Syria at present -- will they be granted "amnesty" to trade their guns in for slogans calling for the toppling of the regime?

Changes are also afoot in the makeup of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the political body designed to represent the opposition, to adapt to the new reality on the ground. On March 1, the SNC established a "military bureau," consisting of civilians and soldiers, to unify the armed opposition and coordinate weapons delivery. The council's media spokesman, Ausama Monajed, responded to an email inquiry asking who would sit on the new military bureau by stating that FSA leader Riad al-Asaad, retired Brig. Gen. Akil Hashem, and Gen. Mustafa al-Sheikh, and others "have [all] been contacted and [are] on board."

Reports, however, already suggest that Asaad wasn't even consulted about the new bureau, and Hashem has declined to head the organization due to an acrimonious argument with SNC President Burhan Ghalioun. And more bad news: Turkey has refused to host the new bureau.

Whatever the case, the military apparatus of the opposition has never trusted the aspiring political leaders of the Syrian opposition. Asaad called the SNC "traitors" a few weeks ago for not supporting the FSA and for "conspiring" with the Arab League. Meanwhile, Sheikh recently tried to set up a rival "Higher Revolutionary Council" to steal Asaad's thunder.

No matter who heads the SNC's military bureau, it's unclear whether it can actually unify Syria's largely autonomous and atomized militias, which are increasingly manned by civilians. Ghalioun was characteristically oblique in his Paris news conference about the SNC's military strategy, saying that the new bureau's job would be "to protect those peaceful protesters and civilians."

This implies exclusively defensive operations rather than offensive ones, which many rebels unaffiliated with the FSA -- indeed, openly hostile to it -- have already carried out in Damascus's suburbs and the northern province of Idlib.

Like many decisions devised through the SNC's manic-depressive policymaking process, the military bureau announcement was in response to the changing attitude of the Syrian "street." And it's not the only change that followed the international "Friends of Syria" conference in Tunisia last Friday, Feb. 24. For starters, the conference led to semi-recognition of the Syrian opposition by the United States and the European Union, which dubbed the SNC "a legitimate representative" of the Syrian people -- but not the sole representative.

The conference also led to Ghalioun's explicit offer to Syria's Kurds of a "decentralized" government in a post-Assad state. This is crucial. Kurds constitute as much as 15 percent of the Syrian population, and they want the sort of autonomy their brethren enjoy in Iraq. Ghalioun's overture was designed to forge a rapprochement with the Kurdish National Council (KNC), a separate umbrella group made up of 11 Syrian Kurdish parties, which had suspended its membership in the SNC and largely takes direction from Iraqi Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani. Two KNC members told me at a conference in Copenhagen last week that "we can put a million Kurds on the street" the minute their demands are satisfied. This likely isn't an idle boast.

The Friends of Syria conference also led to the formation of an angry breakaway movement within the SNC, called the Syrian Patriotic Group, which is headed by longtime dissidents Haitham al-Maleh and Fawaz Tello. Tello told me the other day that this faction wants to better coordinate with the activists on the ground to bring their prescriptions for winning the revolution in line with the SNC's foreign advocacy work. This faction wants the SNC's 310-member General Assembly expanded to "500 or 600" seats to make room for more grassroots activists inside Syria.

"What we are pushing for is to make the base of the opposition broader and to make the SNC more democratic," Tello said, adding that the SNC's main decision-making bodies, the Secretariat General and Presidential Council, should be subject to elections rather than appointments and reappointments made by Muslim Brotherhood fiat.

All this is progress, of a sort, though how it manifests within Syria remains to be seen. Senior U.S. officials pontificating on Capitol Hill would do well to remember that activists and rebels have never waited for a by-your-leave from the U.S. State Department -- much less from external opposition groups -- to decide how to defend themselves and their families.

As Homs submits to what some are calling an "occupation" by regime forces, the next flashpoint could be Idlib, whole swaths of which are rebel-controlled and which benefits from easy resupply from Turkey. Well, what happens when the 4th Division tries to storm this province? Unlike one neighborhood in Homs, the vast province isn't so easily surrounded. Nevertheless, the last time a major assault was waged in Idlib, 10,000 Syrians fled to Turkey, where they now remain, living in tents. The Turks likely won't sit back and accept tens of thousands of more -- they may be forced to make good on their much-promised "buffer zone" out of necessity if not desire.

As ever, the one setting the schedule for this revolution is none other than Bashar al-Assad. The siege of Homs may be over, but the war for Syria has just begun.


The Fall of Homs - By Michael Weiss | Foreign Policy
_______________________________________________________________________

 

[Solomon2]

Syria: escape for trapped civilians 'now a suicide mission’

During more than three weeks of sustained bombardment, escape seemed the best hope of survival for the thousands of civilians trapped in Homs.

'Omar' - the activist who has been smuggling wounded across the border into Lebanon from Baba Amro

By Ruth Sherlock, Tripoli
12:53AM GMT 02 Mar 2012

Those who guided fugitives out of the Syrian city while bringing in medical supplies took such risks that they were called “suicide missions”. One of these people was Omar, who lay in a hospital bed in neighbouring Lebanon yesterday, his right leg amputated.

Last Saturday he and a party of 14 civilians, including four children — two of whom were under the age of four — crept out of a home in the Baba Amr area of Homs. “We crept along the walls of streets to stay out of sight of the snipers. We escaped into nearby fields, running through the shrubbery for cover,” he said. For more than four hours, the group, which also included a woman of 70, walked through the countryside. Finally, they found a waiting pick-up truck, but had driven only a few hundred yards when they saw a mobile checkpoint of the Syrian army.

”They were six men, waiting near a military jeep. They saw us coming, I know they saw the families in the back, but they opened fire,”said Omar. “They kept shooting their Kalashnikovs. As they ran towards us they didn’t stop, they kept firing until everyone was hit. We were lying on top of one another in the back of the truck, covered in blood.”

Three women, including the 70 year-old, were killed instantly. Villagers found the wounded survivors, including Omar, and took them to a secret dressing station. “They had no medicines in the field clinic and it was not safe even there, so they moved us to safe houses,” said Omar, who is in his mid-twenties. “They gave us normal painkillers. My lower leg was shattered by two bullets. All they could do was cover it with a bandage.”

The next day the seven survivors began the trip across the border to Lebanon — covering the 40 miles took 18 hours. “When I arrived the doctors told me, if I had been here twelve hours earlier, they could have saved my leg,” said Omar.

He had twice before run the gauntlet, guiding more than three dozen civilians out of Homs. His family managed to escape the city earlier this week, but thousands remain trapped inside.

Blizzards and freezing temperatures have all but closed off the smuggling routes into Lebanon.
Now that the regime’s troops have arrived, activists fear they will exact a brutal revenge on the district’s surviving inhabitants. “For two days, no one has been able to come out,” said Omar. “It is hell there. Bashar al-Assad has no morals. I promise you, he will kill anyone that is found moving inside.”

 

[Solomon2]

An injured Muhammed Ibrahim, 18, a singer in the region of Hama, Syria, lies in a hospital in Antakya, Turkey, on Thursday. He was struck by a shell fired by the Syrian Army. (AP) link