Confusion before reeling

Put on the jersey "Syria"

"Hey, think about how to fall!" the overthrown Ben Ali, Mubarak and Gaddafi are shouting to Assad Discord before reeling. On September 12, Syrian human rights activists living in a foreign land declared the “world day of awareness” that a revolution has been going on in Syria for several months. They call on the youth of the world through Facebook (Syrian Revolution 2011 page) to wear T-shirts with a map of the country or simply with the inscription "Syria" on this day. International pressure on Syria seems to be bearing fruit. Not only under the impression of the EU sanctions adopted on September 2, Bashar al-Assad allowed representatives of the International Red Cross into the central prison of Damascus. But the main effect is ahead: after the embargo on imports of petroleum products comes into force in November, Damascus will lose at least $ 4 billion.

Brother against brother Interesting news comes from Damascus: almost half of Bashar al-Assad's advisers today consists of retired generals who faithfully served his father Hafez al-Assad. Those who, with the help of military aviation in 1982, that is, almost 30 years before Muammar Gaddafi tried to do the same with the rebels in Benghazi with the help of his Air Force, brutally suppressed the putsch of Sunni Muslims in Hama, killing them in three day 30 thousand people.

The city lay in ruins. In Syria, then they said about Hama: "She fell out of geography and went down in history." Why did the president need former thug generals? So that Hama, where tanks had already walked the streets a month ago, would again fall out of geography? And along with it - Homs, Deraa, Latakia ... There is no doubt that not a single punitive operation of the regime can do without the promptings of friends and associates of the father. But the main lesson of Hama-1982 for Bashar al-Assad is now still different. Then the younger brother of Hafez Assad, Rifaat Assad, who commanded the 50,000th elite Defense Brigades, was responsible for cleaning up the rebellious city. But at the same time, the first cat ran between Hafez and Rifaat: the president lost confidence in his brother, who tried on the laurels of the "savior of Syria." A year later, Rifaat attempted a coup, bringing troops loyal to him to the streets of Damascus, but lost and was expelled. Then the brothers reconciled, and then quarreled again - Rifaat was expelled forever. Bashar remembers that story. He remembers and is afraid of her repetition, because he also has a younger brother - Maher. And now, under his command, as then under the command of Rifaat, there are elite units ... So what if Rifaat lost then? After all, things could turn out differently now. To secure Bashar al-Assad from such a scenario, apparently, retired generals are called upon.

Pressure from within There are indeed enough disagreements in the presidential clan: between Bashar and Maher; Bashar and his sister Bushra's husband, military intelligence chief Assef Shafkat; Bashar and the oligarchic clan Makhluf, representing the ancient Alawite family

* * The Assad clan also belongs to the Alawites, who make up 11% of the population of Syria. , headed by the "grey eminence" of Syrian politics, the first head of the Republican Guard

* The court paramilitary intelligence service, whose task was initially to protect the central part of Damascus, the presidential palace and the Malki region, where most of the high-ranking Syrian officials live. The number is about 10 thousand people. billionaire Mohammed Makhlouf, the president's maternal uncle. Many experts started talking about a serious split in the highest echelon of power after the dismissal on August 8 “for health reasons” of the Minister of Defense, 73-year-old Alawite Ali Habib, and the appointment of a Christian, Daoud Rajih, in his place. According to unofficial reports, the minister, dissatisfied with the use of the army to suppress protests, refused to follow the orders of Bashar and Maher Assad. Hearing about Khabib's alleged "disloyalty", the Assads forced him to publicly "thank the president for his military career." In fact, the Assads have always been afraid of Khabib, whose clan is not so close to the presidential one, but much more numerous. “The regime in Syria primarily looks after the interests of the Alawite clans, which, in turn, are divided into several families, and the security services,” explains Bahia Mardini, chairman of the Arab Committee for Freedom of Speech and Thought. “But in a situation where there are not enough benefits for everyone, the families that form the core of this system begin to “fight” among themselves.” The oil embargo, says Radvan Badini, a member of the executive committee of the opposition Syrian Congress For Change, based in Antalya (Turkey), could seriously hit the financial interests of Alawites close to power: “They are scared in Damascus. Power groups have already entered the struggle for the remains of the oil pie. The system may not be able to withstand such pressure from within.”

Immediately after the resignation of Habib, reports appeared on the website of the Syrian opposition New Syria that he was allegedly found dead in his own apartment. “This is not surprising, the government in Syria is a closed system,” says Omar Qurabi, head of the Syrian National Committee for Human Rights, headquartered in Cairo. - A person entering it will not be able to leave it voluntarily. Except with the wording "suicide". According to Qurabi, it was in this way that former Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan, who was shot dead in his office, “dropped out” of power structures, and a month later, his brother, who was “accidentally” hit by a train. However, there is one more sense in replacing Khabib with an inexperienced Rajikh. The Assads are sending a message to the Christians in Syria: stay close to power in the fight against the Sunni majority and everything will be fine. In this way, the regime, which has always relied on minorities, hopes to give the revolution an Islamic flavor. "Assad's popularity has waned dramatically over the past five years, and provoking the people of Syria into sectarian opposition to the regime is unlikely to succeed," said Suhira Attasi, head of the Washington-based Bureau of Arab Studies.

Syrian "Strong Three": Bashar al-Assad, Maher al-Assad (left) and Assef Shafkat (center) Kiss the portrait! There is no mass desertion in the army yet, but quite a few middle-level soldiers and officers leave the regiments or try, if possible, to disobey orders. And it also takes a lot of courage. The tactics of the regime is as follows: the regular army first enters the rebellious cities, followed by detachments of snipers and hired killers, who are recruited from drug addicts and criminals. They have their own order - to shoot, in addition to civil activists, any soldier who did not comply with the order or tried to escape. They are followed by the second wave of the Syrian “smersh” – the security forces. The so-called “fourth division”, led by Maher al-Assad, is completing the cleansing. According to rumors, he personally punishes those captured, but first he makes them kiss the president's portrait and shout: "There is no god but Bashar!" Punishers have a lot of work. The same units appear in different places, which means that there are clearly not enough forces to suppress speeches simultaneously throughout the country.

With the whole world To carry out an all-Syrian protest action of the opposition is not yet possible. Therefore, it sometimes seems to foreign observers that when there is a strike in Hama, nothing happens in Latakia. In fact, in Hama, and in Homs, and in Latakia, and in Daraa and Deir ez-Zor, demonstrations were interrupted only during the invasion of troops into the cities and frenzied sweeps. Even Ramadan, the holy month for Muslims, did not stop the punishers. Only during the assault in mid-August on the Palestinian settlement of Al-Raml near Latakia, 30 people were killed, including children.

* In total, according to the UN, about 2,200 people have died in Syria since the beginning of March. . Mosques today are the only place in Syria where the authorities cannot forbid people to gather for prayer, and then start a demonstration after it. But this situation cannot go on forever. With the current intensity of events, the cessation of demonstrations means the death of all one by one. At the same time, for Assad to still decide to resign, three factors must coincide at once: a split in the Republican Guard and the army, a popular uprising in Damascus, and diplomatic pressure. The latter, as you know, is already being provided by the UN, the US and the EU. But the support of Russia so expected by the Syrians against this background looks extremely vague. On the one hand, President Medvedev conveyed on August 29 to his Syrian counterpart an urgent request to immediately and completely stop "violence from any side." A delegation of the Syrian opposition on September 9 even visited the Russian capital. On the other hand, Moscow has not supported the EU sanctions and has not yet refused to supply weapons to the Assad regime. Will everything turn out the same as in Libya: the friendship of the people - please, and lucrative contracts - for those who turned their backs on the agonizing dictatorship in time.

The father of the Syrian secret services is considered to be an SS man, a former confidant of Eichmann, Alois Brunner. Having fled from Germany, he appeared in Damascus in 1954, where he lived under a false name. In 1961, the French counterintelligence service officially included him in the list of Nazi criminals, whose presence in Syria was absolutely established. The Mossad sent booby-trapped packages to Brunner several times. During the explosion of one of them, he lost an eye; during the explosion of another, several fingers on his right hand were torn off. According to some reports, until October 1991 he lived in the Syrian capital, then he was transferred to Latakia, where he died in 1996.