Syrian Troops Battle Anti-Assad Rebels in Suburbs of Damascus
January 30, 2012, 6:57 AM ESTBy Glen Carey and Mourad Haroutunian
Jan. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Syrian security troops fought anti- government forces in the suburbs of Damascus under rebel control, activists said, after the Arab League suspended its observer mission citing an upsurge of violence.
The government yesterday sent tanks and armored vehicles to the areas, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Mahmoud Merei, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights. The army has set up roadblocks and communication has been cut to suburban areas, Merei said.
The suspension of a regional mission to end the violence that has left about 5,000 dead and allow for a political resolution may add to pressure on the international community to find a solution. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will attend a United Nations Security Council meeting tomorrow to support an Arab League plan for President Bashar al-Assad to step down in favor of a national unity government.
“The suspension helps guarantee that the Arab League will be able to successfully argue that a resolution needs to be passed and that the UN should start thinking about getting involved militarily,” said Theodore Karasik, director of research at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.
Arab League foreign ministers will convene on Feb. 5 to discuss Syria, Egypt’s state-run Middle East News Agency said yesterday. Clinton will push the 22-member group’s peace plan tomorrow at the UN, an Obama administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
‘Grave Deterioration’
The Arab League halted its mission due to “the grave deterioration of the situation in Syria, and the continuation of violence and exchange of shelling and shooting,” the group’s secretary-general, Nabil El-Arabi, said in a Jan. 28 statement. “The Arab League decided to immediately stop the work of its observers’ mission in Syria until submitting the issue to the council of the Arab League for review.”
Fifteen people were been killed yesterday and 98 the day before, Merei said. More than 100 people were killed in clashes Jan. 27, the bloodiest day since the uprising started in March, Al Jazeera reported, citing activists.
Six Syrian soldiers were killed when a “terrorist group” detonated a bomb on a road outside of Damascus, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported, citing an unidentified military official. Six others were wounded in the attack, the news service said. Syrian security forces killed seven yesterday, Al-Jazeera television reported, citing activists.
‘Collapsing’ Regime
“For ten months, the regime has been collapsing in slow- motion, and it is showing,” Peter Harling, director for Egypt, Syria and Lebanon at the International Crisis Group, said in e- mailed comments. “Its political structures, weak at the outset, have eroded beyond repair; the executive has lost any ability it once had to implement policy and the ruling party is an empty shell. The security services remain largely cohesive and ready to fight, but in many places they increasingly resemble at best an occupying force cut off from society, at worst a collection of sectarian militias on a rampage.”
El-Arabi and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani plan to travel to New York and present Syria’s dossier to the Security Council on Jan. 31. A draft council resolution affirms a transition plan put forward by the Arab League calling for a national unity government within two months to implement a handover of power.
Syria has rejected the Arab League proposal, saying it infringes on the country’s sovereignty, while Russia has opposed Security Council efforts to take action against Syria.
Draft Resolution
The Security Council on Jan. 27 discussed a revised draft resolution calling on Assad to transfer power to his deputy. Previous language, which urged Assad to abandon power to pave the way for “fair elections,” was replaced with a call for him to hand over “full authority” to his deputy and for the “formation of a national unity government,” according to the draft obtained by Bloomberg News.
Eleven months into the unrest, the European Union and the U.S. have yet to overcome Russia’s resistance at the UN’s decision-making body to hold Assad responsible for the crackdown.
“The Syrian regime has little time left,” Paul Sullivan, a specialist in Middle East security at Georgetown University in Washington, said in an e-mail. “The clock is ticking. If it were not for Iranian and Russian help, Bashar would have been out already most likely.”
Assad’s government has blamed “terrorists” and foreign provocateurs for fomenting the protests.
“If chaos deepens further, criminals, foreign volunteers, and home-grown fundamentalists are bound to become more striking features of this crisis -- a self-fulfilling prophecy come true,” Harling said.
Syria said it was surprised by the Arab League decision after the country agreed to allow the mission to stay for another month, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported, citing an unidentified government official.
The Syrian government controls access to the country for journalists and the death tolls cited by activists aren’t independently verifiable.
--With assistance from Flavia Krause-Jackson in United Nations, Dahlia Kholaif in Kuwait and Zaid Sabah Abd Alhamid, Ian Katz, Nadeem Hamid and Nicole Gaouette in Washington. Editors: Ross Larsen, Louis Meixler, John Brinsley
To contact the reporters on this story: Glen Carey in Dubai at gcarey8@bloomberg.net; Mourad Haroutunian in Riyadh at mharoutunian@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net
