BLOODY SYRIAN UPRISE
Por Javier Bonilla Saus
After more than nine months of massive protests throughout Syria, the polítical situation is becoming more and more unsustainable for the Alaouite Régime of Bashar el Assad. According to government declarations, this morning a suicide bomber killed 25 and injured 46 in a central district of Damascus.
Al-Jazeera, reporting from the Turkish border town of
Antakya, near northern Syria, says that it wasn´t clear who was
behind the attack. "The government says that a suicide bomber detonated himself in a very crowded area in the al-Maidan district," said the Al Jazeera reporter but
"The opposition, on the other hand, is saying that this is a plot
staged by the government to deter thousands of people that were planning
to converge on that same spot to call for the international community
to step in and enforce a no-fly zone and enforce also a dramatic of the
regime in Syria."
The Free Syrian Army dismissed the official report of the attack, saying that friday's
explosion was "... the work of the regime, just like the previous two
explosions" refering to the explosions that shaked Damascus on december 23th, causing a huge carnage in the centre of the
city. As it did at that moment, inmediatly after the bombing the government had found
itself a suspect. “...Al-Qaida did it...“, said official TV, continuing with the theory that islamic terrorists are behind the general uprising all around the country over the past
nine months. These two explosions targeted security
headquarters in a central area of the capital and caused 44 deaths. It is not clear who was targeted by today´s explosion. Inmediatly after the Damascus´s blast, Ammar
Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights,
told Al-Arabiya that syrian security services were planning a massive blast in Aleppo, the second largest city of the country. He described all those explosions as "...fabricated by the Bashar al-Assad regime“. Surprinsingly, Hezbollah accused the United States in a AFP later report. Today, on january 6, there is 35 shot death in differents popular demonstrations in Siria: 14 in Damascus, 9 in Hama, 8
in Homs, 3 in Idlib and 1 in
Dera'a. Those figures does not include the increasing number of victims of this morning´s explosion in Damascus.
In such a messy political turmoil, more and more military and official men are defecting and trying to join the still relatively unstructured, but growing, oppositions forces. After the defection of General Mustapha Ahmed el Sheick, last wednesday, a senior syrian official has defected to the opposition in
protest of the government’s crackdown on peaceful demonstrations
that has caused thousands of lives across the country. Mahmoud
Souleiman Hajj Hamad, head inspector of the country’s Defence Ministry, held a press conference in Cairo announcing his
defection. Interviewed by Al Jazeera, Hajj Hamad, former auditor for the interior ministry, “...denied government claims that the
ongoing violence was caused by “terrorists” aided from abroad...“. “We
were analysing and seeing for ourselves that the regime's story about
armed gangs going out and killing protesters was all lies," he said. "I
confirm there are no armed gangs, they are all unarmed protesters.” Hajj Hamad also said that there is a large number of government officials and employees who wants to defect but they “... are afraid of the consequences...“: ”Syrian
government officials live in a kind of prison... No one can go anywhere
without being accompanied by a member of the security services...", but even if the government is receiving support from Iran and Irak, Hajj Hamad was optimist and said that Free Syrian Army, with more than 25.000 soldiers, will be able to confront the regime.
No later than yesterday a very important defection was announced live by Al-Jazeera, after friday´s blast: Colonel Afif Suleiman, from the Hama Air Force Division, announced his
defection along with 30 of his soldiers. He said Arab League observers ignored his demand to visit mass graves.
International community is more and more concern by the situation in Syria. Supported by China, Russia, Lebanon and the Shias, alaouite Bachar el Assad is becoming a growing problem in the Middle East. The powerful sunni block headed by Jordan, Turkey, Saudi
Arabia and Qatar,
forced the 13 Arab League observers to go finally to Damascus to see things for themselves. But obviously Bachar el Assar changed his tactics and started with this serie of blasts accusing Al Qaeda. The problem is that the Sunni states do not beleive, neither el Assad, nor the reports of the ”observers” of the Arab League. They arrived to late, because the sunni countries had either downgraded or completely suspended their relations with
the president Bashar al-Assad and they arrived under a questionable leadership: General Mohammed al Dabi, the former intelligence chief in Sudan Omar al Bashir´regime. Being repeatly accused of Darfur´s genocide, the least the world can say is that al Dabi was the worst personnage imaginable to conduct a mission to prevent human right abuses.
After two weeks of “ observations“, the Arab League mission is been accused of ”failure” by a large number of key actors in the region: specially by the syrian opposition and the public opinion. Waiting for a meeting of the Arab League at Cairo on sunday, the international press reports that Qatar’s prime minister, Hamad Bin Jasim al-Thani, told reporters in New York on Wednesday that “mistakes” had been made during the mission and that he had discussed with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon the possibility of “technical help” from the multilateral organisation.
After two weeks of “ observations“, the Arab League mission is been accused of ”failure” by a large number of key actors in the region: specially by the syrian opposition and the public opinion. Waiting for a meeting of the Arab League at Cairo on sunday, the international press reports that Qatar’s prime minister, Hamad Bin Jasim al-Thani, told reporters in New York on Wednesday that “mistakes” had been made during the mission and that he had discussed with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon the possibility of “technical help” from the multilateral organisation.
See links
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/spotlight/syria/
Syria's actress-turned-revolutionary - Middle East - Al Jazeera English
http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2012/01/06/la-mission-arabe-en-syrie-fait-face-a-un-deluge-d-obstacles_1626638_3218.html