2013

DamascusBombAttacks–TheAlawiteFactor–ExtremistHijack–Iran–Syria Timeline

The Damascus bomb attack in mid-July 2012 that killed three senior members of the Syrian establishment was thought by many observers to have marked a turningpointinwhathaddegeneratedfromrebelliontocivilwar.

OurBeautifulRevolutionwasStolen The principal victims of the attack were by no means rank and file officers, on the contrary – they were senior members of President Bashar al-Assad’s inner cabinet, including his brother in law, Assef Shawkat, who had been at the core of Syria’s intelligence activities for over a decade. Syria’s defence minister, Daoud Rajha, also perished. He had been defence minister for little more than a year and, notably, was virtually the only Christian in the hierarchy. Major Gen- eral Hassan Turkmani, an assistant vice president reportedly in charge of the régime’s crisis committee, was also killed. The July attack created a complex vacuum at the top of the security apparatus that could not easily be filled. The attack appeared to coincide with an increased rate of defections from senior militarycircles. Damascus and Syria’s second city, Aleppo (population 2.5 million), had, un- til mid-2012, been relatively isolated from the civil strife. That isolation rapidly disappeared as 2012 wore on and rebel fighters gained control of parts of the city, where foreign journalists had toured neighbourhoods dotted with Free Syrian Army checkpoints flying black and white Islamist banners. Significantly, in July 2012 US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested that the government attacks on Aleppo were putting the nail in the coffin of Assad’s government, showing that he ‘lacked the legitimacy to rule. If they continue this kind of tragic attack on their own people in Aleppo, I think it ultimately will be a nail in Assad’s own coffin,’ said Mr Panetta. The fighting in Aleppo generated the wholesale evacuation of parts of the once vibrant city. Estimates put the num- berofdisplacedpersonsataround200,000.

Realities Throughout 2012 fighting between government troops and various rebel fac- tions increased, swinging back and forth in the major cities. A few hours after

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:�0.��63/978900439�533_036 2013 309 the Free Syrian Army’s first, unprecedented attack on Damascus, the pictures of Syrian troops happily kissing children were replaced by newsreel footage of commandos fighting their way across Damascus street crossings under fire from the rebels. For the first time the Syrian public began to see things as they were, rather than as the government hoped they might be. Foreign journalists were allowed access to military hospitals in Damascus, increasingly full as the war, in a vicious push came perilously close to the hub of government. Ru- mours circulated that President Bashar al-Assad and his family were seeking an escape route by which to leave Damascus for Doha or Riyadh; what was certain was that if caught by the more extreme rebel factions, their days would be num- bered. Syria’s capital had become two cities – the centre held by the government, the suburbs taken and held by rebel forces. The government sought to over- come rebel forces with constant mortar and air attacks. In late 2011 the Syrian government claimed that the rebel grouping Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) had become the dominant military group in a large part of Damascus: well or- ganised, with a clear structure and even running training courses for its re- cruits. Liwa al-Islam was mistakenly compared to Al-Qaeda by government information sources. In July 2012 they were one of two rebel groups claiming re- sponsibilityfortheJulybombattackinDamascus.

TheRoadtoDamascus The question increasingly raised was how much longer the government could continue to hold on. As the revolt had become a war, attention was focussed on the personality of Bashar al-Assad; Western observers had been lulled into a sense of misguided optimism that Assad the younger’s time spent studying ophthalmology in London had somehow changed him into a man of reason. These theories overlooked the simple fact that he was his father’s son and an Alawite to boot. His formative years were probably those spent in Damascus during the Arab-Israeli conflicts and the Cold War. However much his wife was a ‘lady who lunched’, the odds were that he would not depart quietly, nor allow hisfamilytodoso. In the second half of 2012, the defence of Damascus, or at least the central parts of the city, was mostly fought by Maher al-Assad’s (the President’s youn- ger brother) 4th Division. Army sources claimed that they had been fighting not only rebel Syrians but also Egyptians, Jordanians, Palestinians, one Turk and Sudanese. Syrian soldiers, it was reported, were uneasy if ordered to shoot at fellow Syrians; they preferred to think that they were shooting at foreigners. If truth is the first victim of war, it follows that the statistics of the Syrian war will always be in dispute. Neither side is anxious to provide the exact number of