By Liz Sly from Wadi Khaled in Lebanon
A
group of defectors calling themselves the Free Syrian Army is attempting the
first effort to organize an armed challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s
rule, signaling what some hope and others fear may be a new phase in what has
been an overwhelmingly peaceful Syrian protest movement.
For
now, the shadowy entity seems mostly to consist of some big ambitions, a
Facebook page and a relatively small number of defected soldiers and officers
who have taken refuge on the borderlands of Turkey and Lebanon or among
civilians in Syria’s cities.
Many
of its claims appear exaggerated or fanciful, such as its boasts to have shot
down a helicopter near Damascus this month and to have mustered a force of
10,000 to take on the Syrian military.
But
it is clear that defections from the Syrian military have been accelerating in
recent weeks, as have levels of violence in those areas where the defections
have occurred.
“It
is the beginning of armed rebellion,” said Gen. Riad Asaad, the dissident
army’s leader, who defected from the air force in July and took refuge in
Turkey.
“You
cannot remove this regime except by force and bloodshed,” he said, speaking by
telephone from the Syria-Turkey border. “But our losses will not be worse than
we have right now, with the killings, the torture and the dumping of bodies.”
His
goals are to carve out a slice of territory in northern Syria, secure
international protection in the form of a no-fly zone, procure weapons from
friendly countries and then launch a full-scale attack to topple the Assad
government, echoing the trajectory of the Libyan revolution.
In
the meantime, the defected soldiers are focusing their attention on defending
civilians in neighborhoods where protests occur, while seeking to promote
further defections, he said.
If
the group achieves even a fraction of those aims, it would mark a dramatic
turning point in the six-month standoff between a government that has resorted
to maximum force to suppress dissent and a protest movement that has remained
largely peaceful.
There
is still scant evidence that the defectors are anywhere close to presenting a
serious threat to Assad. Diplomats and activists say it is clear that the Free
Syrian Army does have a presence in several locations, including the central
city of Homs, the remote northern area of Jabal Zawiya near the Turkish border,
and the eastern town of Deir al-Zour.
There
have been frequent reports of firefights between defected soldiers and the
regular army in these areas, but the numbers involved do not appear to be as
large as the Free Syrian Army claims.
“I
don’t think the numbers are big enough to have an impact one way or another on
the government or on the contest between the protesters and the government,”
said U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford, speaking by telephone from Damascus. “The
vast majority of protests are still unarmed, and the vast majority of
protesters are unarmed.”
There
are nonetheless signs that the Free Syrian Army is expanding and organizing as
reports of violent encounters increase. The group has announced the formation
of 12 battalions around the country that regularly post claims on the group’s
Facebook page, including bombings against military buses and ambushes at
checkpoints.
One
of the most active units is the Khalid Bin Walid Brigade in Homs, where the
presence of hundreds and perhaps as many as 2,000 defected soldiers is believed
to be responsible for an intensified government offensive over the past two
weeks in which neighborhoods have been shelled and dozens of civilians have
died.
According
to defected soldiers and local activists, soldiers there are abandoning their
units on a near-daily basis, encouraged in part by a tactic that involves
ambushing patrols, shooting their commanders then convincing the rank and file
to switch sides.
The
brigade also serves as a defense force in neighborhoods opposed to the government,
guarding streets while protests take place and attacking the militias, known as
shabiha, that are an integral part of the government’s efforts to suppress
dissent.
“We
only kill them in self-defense,” said a captain in the brigade, interviewed via
Skype, who requested that his name not be used, to protect his family from
retribution.
He
and other defected soldiers say they have Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled
grenades and antiaircraft guns and can count on a steady supply of ammunition
secured from sympathetic soldiers within the military. News reports of arms
seizures on both the Lebanese and Iraqi borders suggest weapons are also being
smuggled from neighboring countries.
Though
several activists and defected soldiers offered similar accounts of the Free
Syrian Army’s activities, verifying them is impossible, because the Syrian
government refuses to allow foreign journalists access to the country.
The
Free Syrian Army has an interest in amplifying its activities to encourage
defections. Activists committed to preserving the revolt’s pacifism have a
stake in playing down its relevance.
The
only admission by the government that defections are taking place has come in
the form of a televised “confession” by one of the most prominent defectors, Lt.
Col. Hussein Harmoush, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Turkey
in late August then surfaced two weeks later on Syrian state television
denouncing the opposition.
Defections
are not new, but until now most have consisted of small groups of disgruntled
soldiers fleeing orders to shoot civilians, then taking refuge in local homes,
where they are hunted down and captured or killed, often along with those who
sheltered them.
The
phenomenon was causing so many civilian casualties that protest organizers this
summer appealed to soldiers to not defect until they could count on sufficient
numbers to make a difference, said Wissam Tarif, an activist with the human
rights group Avaaz.
Soldiers
with the Free Syrian Army say they are hoping that point has now been reached.
Large-scale or high-ranking defections are still unlikely, because the
overwhelming majority of the officer corps belongs to Assad’s minority Alawite
sect, said a defected first lieutenant who has taken refuge in the Lebanese
border town of Wadi Khaled and makes frequent clandestine visits to Homs to
support the Free Syrian Army’s activities.
But
among ordinary Sunni conscripts, frustration is building after six months of
battling protesters. Many thousands of soldiers are deserting their units and
going home simply because they want to see their families, said the officer,
who uses the pseudonym Ahmad al-Araby to protect his family.
Asaad,
the dissident general, predicted that the sectarian imbalance within the army
will ultimately tilt the battle in the defectors’ favor.
“Ninety
percent of the soldiers are Sunni, and their morale is bad,” he said. “Every
day they are defecting, and the regime is in a panic because they know they are
being destroyed from within.”
This report was published in The Washington Post on 25/09/2011
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