Taking Zabadani in a Pincer Movement
Who’s side is the Lebanon Army on?

The Syrian Army circling the besieged city from the East and Hezbollah & Lebanon Army from the West “boosts” presence along Syria border

TRIPOLI — The Shiite Brigades loyal to Hezbollah in Lebanese Army late Thursday reinforced its presence in the northern region of Wadi Khaled, which borders Syria and is close to the flashpoint province of Homs, officials and local residents said. These Army units have been withdrawn from Southern Lebanon and sent to the north to prevent the Free Syrian Army from getting supplies and logistics for the Zabadani area from Wadi Khaled and northern Lebanon . “A Shiite army unit was seen deploying at a base in Wadi Khaled and then it began patrols & harassment inside the Sunni villages and towns in the region,” a local official in Muqaybleh said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Another official in Kneysseh, located in the same region, said troops were seen deploying in three villages along the border — Kneysseh, Hnayder and Qarha.

Several local residents said the army was also searching cars and checking identification at the main checkpoint located at the entrance of Wadi Khaled, an impoverished region at the northern tip of Lebanon.

A Lebanese army spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.
 
Syrian troops in recent months have mined the border with Wadi Khaled to prevent smuggling through illegal crossings and Lebanon becoming a safe haven for the opposition.

A Syrian man was seriously wounded on Thursday after stepping on a mine as he tried to cross into Lebanon , officials said.

The 26-year-old had one leg blown off, and was being treated at a hospital in the northern Lebanese region of Akkar.

Syria officials should face war crimes charges at The Hague, UN rights chief says

Spokesman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay says Assad's brutal crackdown on opposition is a case that belongs in the International Criminal Court

Arms, not diplomacy,
will decide the fate of Syria
Adrian Hamilton

Don't be fooled by the outraged cries coming from London , Paris , Washington and now the UN Secretary General himself over the Russian and Chinese veto of the resolution on Syria . True, it spoiled the careful build-up of diplomatic pressure organised by Western and Arab governments. But it's also quite convenient to put all the blame for the continuing escalation of violence in Syria on these two countries, Russia in particular.

Of course, President Assad must welcome the fact that he escaped the censure of the UN. But does anyone think for a moment that, had the resolution passed, he would have instantly ceased bombarding Homs or any other centre of resistance?

The Syrian government isn't deploying the heavy weaponry so deplored by UN chief Ban Ki-moon and President Obama just as an exercise to cow the civilian population which can be turned on or off at will. It's using it to crush any centre of resistance or independence, the more so now that the resistance has become armed by army desertions.

If the Assad family and its Alouite supporters weren't willing to stop the onslaught even when observers from the Arab League were present, they certainly wouldn't just because of a UN vote. Given the growing armed strength of its opponents, the regime in Damascus must feel it has no alternative but to suppress with full force the revolt while it still lacks the weaponry or numbers to overthrow it. President Bashar al-Assad may make all the promises he likes to the visiting Russian Foreign Minister about stopping the violence and talking to his foes. He may even think he means it. But only once his regime has won on the ground.

Diplomacy in these circumstances, like sanctions, is essentially just a means of western politicians to sound as if they are "doing something" about a situation that anguishes their public, but about which they can do very little without direct military engagement.

Russia and China might well have been wrong to veto the resolution. It has cost them a good deal of credibility in the Middle East and elsewhere. Their diplomats, at any rate, must think it might have been better to have abstained. But that doesn't make the Russians wrong in the basic case they have been making. However the UN resolution was worded, the intention was regime change and, like it or not, it does smack of Western-inspired intervention.

The West would argue, just as it did over Libya, that the support of the Arab League and the refusal to put troops on the ground make this something quite different from Western interventions of the past.

Libyan intervention – which Russia and China went along with – does not provide a reassuring example, however. Arab League participation was entirely down to loathing of Gaddafi. Imposition of a no-fly zone quickly led to a one-sided bombing of the regime's forces and effective participation in a civil war. While it succeeded in unseating Colonel Gaddafi, it was at a high cost in casualties and a messy aftermath still to be resolved.

Regime change is the name of the Syrian game, now as it was then. It's far too late to talk of negotiated settlements. Too much blood has already been spilt. The question is whether it can be achieved quickly on the ground without full-blown civil war.

The best hope is that a horror at the civilian casualties will combine with a middle-class conclusion that the Assad rule is doomed to produce a mass insurgency which sweeps away the government. The more likely development is the arming of the rebellion by the religious groups in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, eased by Turkey and very probably helped clandestinely by the US and Britain.

In either case, diplomacy is now but a side-show.

America may have been down but it's beginning to get up

The most important news of the week may well prove to be not the escalating violence in Syria nor the continuing troubles in getting an economic package through in Greece , but the rise in the US employment figures.

Economists have been quick to dismiss the idea that the rise could represent a real revival. And they may be right. It's too early to talk of a return to growth just yet, or indeed for some years into the future. But six months of rising employment has to mean something.

So far, that something has been interpreted in domestic political terms. If the jobs figures go on rising, then so do the chances of President Obama being re-elected in the November vote (although that is not a given, as UK governments have learned). But the implications are far broader than that.

America means business. It's a cliché. But it's true. Much of the fall in America 's influence abroad has been caused by the collapse in its economic growth and the failure of its financial model. Iraq and Afghanistan have shown up the limits of its military muscle. But far more important, particularly in Asia and Latin America , has been its decline as an economic powerhouse.

Restore growth, and with it self-confidence, and we will see a very different America , far more nationalistic in spirit and far more willing, I believe, to throw its weight around.

UN impasse over Syria boosts
prospect of military intervention

BEIRUT // The diplomatic impasse on Syria after Russia and China's steadfast refusal to back any UN resolution condemning the ruthless repression of protesters could accelerate the militarisation of the uprising, analysts warn.

Diplomatic solutions to the Syrian crisis have been "exhausted," said Shadi Hamid, head of research at the Brookings Doha Centre, "and now you're seeing serious discussion of the military options."

"You're hearing more discussion of safe zones, buffer zones, humanitarian corridors and that's something that the Syrian opposition has requested," he said.

Moscow and Beijing sparked outrage in the West for vetoing on Saturday a UN Security Council resolution condemning the crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad's regime on the 11-month uprising, which activists say has left more than 6,000 people dead.

It was the second time they had done so in four months, and Syria 's cold war ally Russia underlined its intention to prevent world powers from forcing the crisis by sending Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Damascus on Tuesday.

His visit came as government troops stepped up a fierce assault on the flashpoint central city of Homs , where more than 400 people have died since Saturday, according to activists.

The Security Council veto "was the best recruiting tool that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) could have asked for. It puts them in a much stronger position now," Hamid said.

"I think a lot of Syrians are saying 'We tried peaceful protests, it didn't work, now we have to defend ourselves from the repression of the regime'," he added.

Hilal Khashan, professor of political science at the American University of Beirut (AUB), argued that the diplomatic stalemate at the United Nations did not prevent outside support for the Syrian opposition.

Without having to go through the Security Council, "the West has many options at its disposal for weakening the regime, particularly by supplying the FSA and imposing more economic sanctions," he said.

Imad Salameh, another political analyst at AUB, warned that pursuing such options would not prevent a violent political transition.

"All that can be done internationally is (to help) this process take place quickly," he said, referring in particular to "an economic, political and military blockade of the regime."

After Russia and China 's Security Council veto, the Syrian National Council and the FSA called on businessmen in Syria and other Arab countries to help finance "the self-defence operations and civilian areas controlled by the FSA."

The SNC is a coalition of Syria 's major opposition parties, while the FSA, based in Turkey across the border from northwestern Syria , claims to have 40,000 soldiers who have deserted the regular army.

In Washington , top Republican US Senator John McCain said the time had come to consider arming the outgunned opposition to Assad.

But the FSA would need much more than that to topple the regime, said the Brookings Doha Centre's Hamid.

"Arming the Free Syrian Army would have to come with other measures for it to be successful, and that would include targeted air support. It would require some kind of more involved military intervention," as happened in Kosovo in the 1990s, he added.

Analysts say the government's violent crackdown could intensify in the coming days.

"The Syrian question has yet to reach an extreme. The violence will rise as well as the death toll, but the crisis will be settled this year, and not in a matter of years, as some think," said the AUB's Khashan.

For Salameh, the military establishment is all that remains of the regime.

"I think the popular and international pressure on Syria will finally cause this institution to collapse," he said.