by ROBERT FISK
Protesters tear down a poster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a demonstration in Taibet al-Imam IMAGE/AFP/Getty
Syria’s revolt against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad is turning into an armed insurrection, with previously peaceful demonstrators taking up arms to fight their own army and the “shabiha” – meaning “the ghosts”, in English – of Alawi militiamen who have been killing and torturing those resisting the regime’s rule.
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In 1980, Assad’s father, Hafez, faced an armed uprising in the central city of Hama, which was put down by the Special Forces of Hafez’s brother Rifaat – who is currently living, for the benefit of war crimes investigators, in central London – at a cost of up to 20,000 lives. But the armed revolt today is now spreading across all of Syria, a far-mightier crisis and one infinitely more difficult to suppress. No wonder Syrian state television has been showing the funerals of up to 120 members of the security services from just one location, the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour.
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Bashar and his cynical brother Maher – the present-day equivalent of the outrageous Rifaat – may now be gambling on the old dictator’s saw that their regime must be defended against armed Islamists supported by al-Qa’ida, a lie which was perpetrated by Muammar Gaddafi and the now-exiled leaders Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and the still-on-the-throne al-Khalifas of Bahrain.
The few al-Qa’ida cells in the Arab world may wish this to be true, but the Arab revolt is about the one phenomenon in the Middle East uncontaminated by “Islamism”. Only the Israelis and the Americans may be tempted to believe otherwise.
Al Jazeera television yesterday aired extraordinary footage of a junior Syrian officer calling upon his comrades to refuse to continue massacring civilians in Syria. Identified as Lt Abdul-Razak Tlas, from the town of Rastan, he said he had joined the army “to fight the Israeli enemy”, but found himself witnessing a massacre of his own people in the town of Sanamein. “After what we’ve seen from crimes in Deraa and all over Syria, I am unable to continue with the Syrian Arab army,” he announced. “I urge the army, and I say: ‘Is the army here to steal and protect the Assad family?’ I call upon all honourable officers to tell their soldiers about the real picture, use your conscience… if you are not honourable, stay with Assad.”
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