Bashar al-Assad

Smart Reads May 7, 2013

May 7, 2013 3:18 pm by Amie Tsang

♦Cecile Kyenge, Italy’s first black minister, is confronting the country’s culture of casual racism, but the success of her proposed legislation depends on her fellow parliamentarians – some of whom have not been entirely complimentary about her.
♦ China is pushing to water down the World Bank’s Doing Business report, showing its increased assertiveness at international bodies and its willingness to challenge liberal economic prescriptions.
♦ Growth in Indonesia has reached its slowest pace in two years, hit by the slowdown in China and India, but investors are still feeling confident.
♦ David Gardner argues that Israel’s latest attacks on Syria play right into Assad’s hands supporting conspiracy theories about a western-conceived attempt to destroy Syria.
♦ Somalia’s president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, calls for a Marshall plan to help his country recover from decades of poverty, civil war and terrorism.
♦ Roberto Azevêdo of Brazil and Herminio Blanco of Mexico are scrambling to secure last-minute votes in a tight race to become the next head of the troubled World Trade Organisation.
♦ Hollywood film-makers are going to great lengths to satisfy the whims of Chinese censors. However, appearances by Chinese actors in the Chinese version of Iron Man 3 have not been to everyone’s taste – “One microblogger named Bumblebee Marz compared the new scenes to chicken ribs — a common expression denoting the most tasteless and undesirable cut of meat in Chinese cuisine.”
♦ Dexter Filkins looks at the White House debate over Syria. According to Gary Samore, who was President Obama’s chief adviser on weapons of mass destruction until February, “All the options are horrible”.
♦ Obama’s off-the-cuff remark about large quantities of chemical weapons crossing a “red line” have now put him into a bind, “his credibility at stake with frustratingly few good options.”
♦ Gabriel Kuris at Foreign Policy looks at how Latvia’s anti-corruption bureau managed to pass through reforms and take down oligarchs. Read more

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Posted in Foreign affairs, Smart Reads |
From FT.com April 29, 2013

Barack Obama is meant to be the most powerful man in the world. But it looks increasingly as though he may be dragged into a conflict in Syria, against his own better judgment. Read more

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Posted in Middle East, Syria, US foreign policy |

Esther Bintliff The Syrian Electronic Army – an introductory reading list

April 24, 2013 7:13 pm by Esther Bintliff

A kind of digital shiver went across the internet on Tuesday, after the Associated Press sent out a message saying two explosions had taken place at the White House, and that Obama was injured. Several things were suspicious about the tweet, and within minutes, AP announced that their official account had indeed been hacked:

Tweet from AP: "The @AP Twitter account has been suspended after it was hacked. The tweet about an attack on the White House was false."

While markets recovered their losses almost immediately, the incident leaves troubling questions about the capabilities of the group that claimed responsibility for the hack: the so-called ‘Syrian Electronic Army’. As one former US official involved in cyber security told the FT’s Michael Peel and Geoff Dyer on Wednesday:

“When you start to do things that have a big impact on the stock market, you are getting away from hacking and moving much closer to something that resembles an actual cyber attack on the US – which takes things into a different area altogether.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the SEA have become good at what they do. They were already in full swing two years ago, when Max Fisher and Jared Keller looked at their efforts for The Atlantic.

“The SEA has aggressively engaged in a wide range of online activities to punish perceived opponents and to force the online narrative in favor of the Assad regime… their primary means of attack has been to overload the social networking profiles of government institutions and Western media outlets…”

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Posted in cyber warfare, Syria |

David Gardner Chemical weapons in Syria: Bashar al-Assad hovers over a red line

April 24, 2013 12:51 pm by David Gardner

In this image made available by the Syrian news agency (SANA) on March 19, medics attend to a man at a hospital in the northern Aleppo province. (AFP)Someone who worked closely with Bashar al-Assad, before and after he inherited Syria’s presidency from his father, once remarked to me that he “is not really very bright”. Perhaps. But he is not lacking in cunning.

Now, as in the past, he feels his way forward by probing and constantly testing the limits of what his adversaries will tolerate before provoked to respond. Having sometimes found that these limits are surprisingly elastic, he has developed a tendency to overreach. Yet, as his regime and his country crumble around him, he is still there – just about – and it looks as though he is still testing the limits, this time by the limited use of portions of Syria’s reportedly vast chemical weapons arsenal.

In recent months, allegations have been flying that the Assad regime has fired nerve-gas shells at Syria’s rebels. On the most cited occasion last month, near Aleppo, the country’s besieged commercial capital in the north, loyalist troops were among the casualties, and the government claimed that jihadi terrorists – part of an international conspiracy against Syria in the Assad narrative – were responsible.

Last week, Britain and France told the UN there was “credible evidence” the Assad regime has started using chemical weapons. This week, a top Israeli military intelligence officer categorically asserted the government was using them. The UN team of experts tasked with investigating these claims is meanwhile stranded in Cyprus, denied entry by Damascus.

There is, thus, no certainty about what is going on, but the mounting circumstantial evidence is spine-chilling.

President Barack Obama, who has brushed aside the advice of his security officials in his determination to stay out of Syria, nevertheless warned Damascus last August any use of chemical weapons would provoke unspecified action by the US.

Obama said at the time: “That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.” On a visit to Israel last month, he reinforced the point, saying the use of chemical weapons inside Syria would be a “game changer” for the US.

So far, however, the White House and State Department are officially withholding judgment on the veracity of Syria’s alleged use of these arms, about which few close observers of the conflict now harbour doubts. There is probably more here than simply the president’s caution. Read more

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Posted in Syria |

Smart Reads March 15, 2013

March 15, 2013 4:11 pm by Amie Tsang

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David Gardner Syria: Moaz al-Khatib and opposition tactics

February 6, 2013 3:52 pm by David Gardner
Moaz Al-Khatib (L), with Lakhdar Brahimi during the Munich Security Conference on February 1 (Getty)

Moaz Al-Khatib (L), with Lakhdar Brahimi during the Munich Security Conference on February 1 (Getty)

Moaz al-Khatib, the Damascene preacher elevated to lead Syria’s rebel coalition last November, is the most astute tactician the opposition has fielded so far.

The feelers al-Khatib has put out to Bashar al-Assad and his backers in Russia and Iran are clever, even though anyone who discerns diplomatic progress here, let alone the birth of a “peace process”, will be disappointed.

Al-Khatib, president of the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces (the full title by which more than a hundred countries recognised the rebels in December) has ostensibly revived the idea of a dialogue with the Assad regime, in weekend talks held in Munich with the Russian and Iranian foreign ministers – who both said this was what they had been advocating all along. But the devil is, as ever, in the detail.

The conditions set by al-Khatib include: the release of 160,000 prisoners (the number he says) the regime is holding; the issue of passports to tens of thousands of refugees who have had to flee Syria without papers; and that any talks on transitional arrangements to end the war should be with Farouk Sharaa, the Syrian vice-president.

A little more than implicit in the latter point is the offer of safe passage out of Syria for President Assad – which most rebel forces on the ground and a good number of the political figures in the National Coalition regard as taboo, maybe even treachery. Read more

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Posted in Syria |

Syria’s uranium stash?

January 9, 2013 3:45 pm by Lindsay Whipp

As if concerns over whether Syria’s chemical weapons might fall into the wrong hands amid the increasingly violent civil war weren’t enough to worry about, behind the scenes nuclear experts are now expressing fresh fears over the security of what may be 50 tonnes of unenriched uranium in the country.

As the FT’s diplomatic editor James Blitz reported on Wednesday, concerns centre on the whereabouts of this as yet unconfirmed stash. It is believed by some to have been meant for Syria’s supposed al-Kibar nuclear facility – before Israel destroyed it in a secret mission back in September 2007, a mission that David Makovsky dissected in the New Yorker last September.

For its part, Syria has always denied ever having a nuclear programme. So, did it have one or not? Below are some interesting articles that wade into these extremely murky waters. Read more

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Posted in Foreign affairs, In The Picture, Iran, Middle East, Syria, Syria, World affairs |

Smart Reads December 17, 2012

December 17, 2012 1:44 pm by Amie Tsang

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James Blitz How close is the Assad regime to collapse?

December 14, 2012 8:07 pm by James Blitz

There is little doubt that the period since November has seen many setbacks for Assad, not the least of which has been the growing co-ordinatiuon – and international recognition – of the opposition. But some senior military and political figures in the Middle East and in Britain remain cautious. Read more

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Posted in Middle East, Syria |

James Blitz Syria’s chemical weapons: Safer in whose hands?

December 6, 2012 2:47 pm by James Blitz

Since the start of this month, there has been a spate of stories in the western media about the possibility that the Assad regime is about to use chemical weapons against rebel forces in Syria. The stories – most of which have been briefed by US intelligence officials to the American print and broadcast media – have been alarming. As the Assad regime comes under increasing pressure, there are fears that it might use some of its stocks of sarin in a last-ditch demonstration that it is determined to hang onto power. The Obama administration has again asserted that it would see the use of such weapons as the crossing of a red line that triggers US intervention in the conflict.

Anyone trying to bring together the steady stream of news stories on this issue is left with a somewhat murky picture. Some have suggested that the military has loaded chemical weapons into bombs and is awaiting the order from the regime to drop them on rebel groups.

Others have suggested that the precursors for sarin gas have been mixed and could be ready for use.

There is also one report that goes in the other direction and suggests the fears of US intelligence have eased.

What are we to make of it all ? The fact that Syria possesses chemical – and possibly biological – weapons is not in doubt. After years of obfuscation, the regime admitted to having chemical weapons stocks last summer. Most academic opinion is in no doubt that Syria possesses one of the largest arsenals in the world, one that was developed as a strategic deterrent against Israel. Read more

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Posted in Middle East, Syria, Syria, US foreign policy, World affairs |
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