Syria conflict: Assad fires more Scuds - Friday 21 December 2012

Here's a summary of today's main events:

Syria

 President Bashar al-Assad's forces have resumed firing Scud missiles at rebel positions, according to Nato, US officials and activists. Nato's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said it was "the act of a desperate regime approaching collapse." He also claimed it justified Nato's decision to deploy Patriot missiles on the Turkish Syria border.

Germany's defence minister has become the latest figure to predict the imminent collapse of the Assad regime. Thomas de Maiziere told Bild that "there are signs that the opposition will soon achieve a military victory against the regime". 

Syrian rebels fired warning shots at an airliner preparing to take off from Aleppo airport in the first direct attack on a civilian flight since the uprising began. Rebels were also reported to have won more territory in Hama province and to have surrounded an Alawite town inflaming already raw sectarian tensions.

The wife of British doctor who went missing in Aleppo last month, has made an appeal for his release. Hanaa Yehia said her husband, Abbas Khan, travelled to Syria to use his medical training to help the worsening humanitarian crisis. "We plead with his captors to treat him well and expedite his release and return him to his loving family who cherish his extraordinary selflessness," she said.

 The UN's anti-genocide envoy warned that minority groups in Syria, including Assad's fellow Alawites, are at risk of major reprisal attacks as sectarian violence increases. "I am deeply concerned that entire communities risk paying the price for crimes committed by the Syrian government," Adama Dieng, UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, said in a statement. In a report, UN human rights investigators said that Syria's conflict was becoming more sectarian, with more civilians seeking to arm themselves and foreign fighters – mostly Sunnis – flocking in from 29 countries.

Egypt

Syrian rebels fired warning shots at an airliner preparing to take off from Aleppo airport, in the first direct attack on a civilian flight since the uprising began, Reuters reports, citing a rebel commander.

The commander, who gave his name only as Khaldoun, told Reuters by Skype that snipers from his brigade had hit the wheels of Syrian Airways flight RB201 on Thursday.

"Those were warning shots," he said, adding that the plane had been unable to take off. "We wanted to send a message to the regime that all their planes - military and civilian - are within our reach."

The wife of a British doctor who we first reported missing in Aleppo last month, has made an appeal for his release.

Dr Abbas Khan, a 31-year-old orthopaedic surgeon based in London, travelled to Syria to help treat victims of the conflict.

He is believed to have been arrested on 22 November after travelling to Aleppo. Khan, the father of children aged five and six, had previously been working in a field hospital in the rebel-controlled town of Saraqeb, south-east of Idlib.

Hanaa Yehia said her husband wanted to use his medical training to help the worsening humanitarian crisis.

"My husband put himself in harm's way to help women, children and the infirm," she said. "We plead with his captors to treat him well and expedite his release and return him to his loving family who cherish his extraordinary selflessness." 

In a statement emailed to the Guardian she added:

Having witnessed the horrific injuries of those fleeing the area, my husband ventured to Aleppo answering the call of fellow doctors based in the area.

He arrived in Aleppo province on 20 November knowing he was due to be back in the UK on the 25 November. He operated day and night for 48 hours travelling between hospitals offering assistance and performing life saving surgery. On the morning of the 22 November my husband
set out in search for the more field hospitals, it seems that he got lost on his journey and has been missing since ...

He may have been taken by government forces on the premise that he was an Indian doctor, the reason for his internment has yet to be disclosed.

His sole efforts were to help civilians unwillingly caught up in the civil war.

We plead with his captors to treat him well and expedite his release and return him to his loving family who cherish his extraordinary selflessness. We reiterate that he poses no threat to any individual.

My husband is a kind and gentle man who has no malice towards any political group. His sole efforts were to help civilians unwillingly caught up in the civil war.

Khan's family have set up a Facebook group to campaign for his release.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office said there has been no update on Khan's whereabouts since he went missing in November. It said it advised against all travel to Syria.

Nato's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said Syria's use of Scud missiles justified Nato's decision to deploy Patriot missiles on the Turkish Syria border.

This is what he told today's press conference:

I can confirm that we have detected the launch of Scud-type missiles; we strongly regret that act. I consider it an act of a desperate regime approaching collapse. The fact that such missiles are used in Syria emphasises the need for effective defence and protection of our ally Turkey.

Let me stress that the recent launch of missiles has not hit Turkish territory, but there is a potential threat and this is exactly the reason why Nato allies decided to deploy Patriot missiles in Turkey for a defensive purpose only.

The use of Scud missiles illustrates that the Assad regime is running out of options, according to EA World View's James Miller.

It is the cumulative use of ballistic missiles, Grad rockets, naval mines, and other strange munitions are important. They signal that Assad has used every weapon left in his arsenal (almost), and is running out of resources almost as fast as he is running out of ideas. The use of these weapons proves that the regime is ready to use inefficient weapons against both insurgents and civilians instead of negotiating an escape and ending this bloody war.

Assad is going to go down with his ship. The question is: how many Syrian civilians will he take with him before he finally falls?

Germany's defence minister has become the latest to predict the imminent collapse of the Assad regime, AP reports.

Thomas de Maiziere told mass-circulation daily Bild that "there are signs that the opposition will soon achieve a military victory against the regime."
The interview to be published Saturday also cited him as saying that a foreign military intervention remains "absolutely not up for debate".

Maiziere's assessment chimes with analysis by right-leaning thinktank the Washington Institute for Near East studies.

Defence fellow Jeffrey White said: "The regime's forces could collapse at any time now."

Speaking at seminar on Thursday he said the use of air power, artillery fire and Scud missiles were failing to hold back rebel advances.

"Maybe the war's got some weeks to run, may be a few months, but not more than that," he said.

Others are more cautious. Syria watcher Joshua Landis, predicts Assad will survive beyond next summer.

Tunisia's finance ministry is seeking to ease its stretched current account by selling off cars, pictures and assorted bling confiscated from the deposed president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family, writes Eileen Byrne in Tunis.

Heavy security is in place around the Cleopatre exhibition space in Gammarth, a wealthy resort north of Tunis, for the opening on Saturday of a display of sale items including 34 luxury cars – semi-armoured Cadillac limousines, BMWs, Mercedes, two Lamborghini Gallardos, Bentleys, Aston Martins – and some 300 pieces of jewellery. Among the paintings, clothes, furniture and knick-knacks on show, the prevalence of gilded falcons and swallows in flight perhaps betrays the taste of the former first lady Leila Trabelsi, Tunisians speculate.

Cash dispensers and currency exchange desks stand at the ready. Smaller items will be sold at a fixed price, while anything priced at more than £4,000 will go to the highest bidder. Many pieces come from the Ben Ali family's sumptuous palace with a Mediterranean view at nearby Sidi Dhrif. The residence is itself now topping Tunis estate agents' lists as the authorities seek a wealthy Gulf buyer.

Thousands of Islamists have clashed with anti-government protesters in Alexandria, ahead of the second leg of the referendum, AP reports.

The two sides hurled rocks and stones at each other in the Mediterranean port city, prompting police to fire tear gas to separate them.

Volleys of tear gas containers fell into the sea as security forces cordoned off the crowds to prevent further clashes between the Muslim Brotherhood members and ultraconservative Salafis on one side, and groups of young protesters on the other.

It was not immediately clear who started the fight, which added to the already tense political crisis over the draft charter.

The Islamists had called for a massive rally Friday outside the Qaed Ibrahim main mosque in the heart of Alexandria. About 20 political parties had issued a joint statement, saying they would not hold a rival rally in the city to avoid clashes.

Security forces cordoned off streets leading to the mosque as throngs of mostly long-bearded Salafi Islamists gathered for what they called "the million-man rally to defend clerics and mosques." Islamists chanted "God is Great," and warned opponents, "with blood and soul, we redeem Islam."

The Satellite channel ONtv has been carrying footage of the clashes.

The Assad regime may be firing Scud weapons to warn off the west from intervening in Syria, according to Shashank Joshi, a research fellow at the Royal United Services defence thinktank.

Speaking to the Guardian, he said:

Missiles are a useful way of reminding the outside world ‘look we still have potentially several hundred of these ballistic missiles and if they can land very near the Turkish border they can also land within Turkey itself’.

Assad may be gambling that this is a useful signal of deterrent against foreign intervention ... it only takes one [missile] to get through and hit a populated area, or an air base, for their to be very serious political consequences particularly in this context if it has chemical armed warheads.

I still don’t see any strong reason for Assad to use such weapons, but the capability does exist. And it is only sensible for Turkey and other countries to prepare for that contingency.

Joshi warned that the Nato Patriot missile system, which is due to be operational on the Turkish border by the end of January, “hasn’t been tested against fall-blown Scud missiles in battlefield conditions".

He said Iranian suggestions that the deployment of Patriots was a step towards war were “absurd”.

Joshi said reports of Scud missile attacks were credible. There is little reason for the US government to make false claims about such attacks, he said. And he warned that the legacy of the Iraq invasion should not be used to “reflexively reject all evidence”.

In the case of Syria, western states continue to have little appetite for intervention, he said.

If we had wanted a reason to intervene [in Syria] there are innumerable pretexts to have done so, without have to raise the spectre of chemical weapons.

Although I think we should be sceptical, I’m not one of those who thinks this is a swirl of propaganda being thrown up in the air simply to allow an easy path for western states simply to assault Syria under false pretexts. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be very much on our guard in how we assess these little bits of fragmentary evidence coming through.

He warned that it is unlikely to be clear from satellite detection whether the missiles launched were Scud or Scud-type missiles.

“It is easy to confuse the specifics. But what’s clear is that some sort of missile was launched at this base last week and something has been launched this week," he said.

He said Scud missiles were too imprecise to hit specific targets, but can be effective against wide areas like air bases.

Assad maybe turning to such missiles because his air force is over stretched and now vulnerable to anti-aircraft weapons, newly acquired by rebels, Joshi said.

He said were grounds for scepticism about US claims that Assad is preparing to use chemical weapons, as they were based on anonymous briefings.

If officials are only willing to speak off the record there is a problem of accountability and reliability of the evidence.

Today's message from the protesters of Kafranbel:

Pope! Merry Christmas from Syria. The land where Assad killed Santa Claus

Video highlighted by activists purports to show a Scud missile being launched in Syria last week. The footage cannot be independently verified.

Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre and a former UN advisor on the Middle East peace process, uses very undiplomatic language on the international community's likely response.

Nato has backed US claims that Syria launched Scud-type missiles at rebel positions, Reuters reports.

The alliance's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said the launch of the missiles was the act of a "desperate regime approaching collapse".

CBS News claims that Syria launched six Scud missiles from Damascus at a rebel-held base near Aleppo. It claimed it was almost an exact repeat of an attack reported last week by US and Nato officials, but denied by Syria.

It is unclear whether the notoriously inaccurate missiles hit their targets. Activists pointed to craters in rural areas both last week, and on Thursday, where they claim two of the missiles struck.

A Syrian footballer raised a revolutionary flag after Syria beat Iraq to the win West Asian championships, according to the Saudi news site al-Arabiya.

An image showed striker Omar al-Soma raising a flag to Syrian fans at the match in Kuwait, but it's unclear what type of flag he was holding aloft.

In a post match interview, Soma was quoted as saying: “I give this win and this worthy title to the Syrian people. I thank God that we succeeded in bringing happiness to the sad people."

A large green, white and black Syrian Independence flag, used by the opposition, was raised by the crowd during the match.

View image in fullscreen

Welcome to Middle East Live.

Here's a roundup of the latest developments and analysis:

Syria

President Bashar al-Assad's forces have resumed firing Scud missiles at rebel positions, according to activists and the US. “We’ve been clear that we have seen the regime in Syria use Scud missiles against its own people, and that continues,” a senior State Department official told the New York Times. Activists circulated video footage of a crater in a field in near Maara norther Aleppo province where they claim one of the missiles landed.

The UN's anti-genocide envoy warned that minority groups in Syria, including Assad's fellow Alawites, are at risk of major reprisal attacks as sectarian violence increases. "I am deeply concerned that entire communities risk paying the price for crimes committed by the Syrian government," Adama Dieng, UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, said in a statement. In a report, UN human rights investigators said that Syria's conflict was becoming more sectarian, with more civilians seeking to arm themselves and foreign fighters – mostly Sunnis – flocking in from 29 countries.

Vladimir Putin has signalled that he is not concerned about the fate of Assad, insisting that Russia wants only stability in Syria. But he gave no sign of a policy shift that would help galvanise international action to help end the country's deepening crisis.

The Assad regime is likely to last beyond next summer but eventually the president and his Alawite clan are likely to retreat to the mountains by the coast, according to Syria-watcher Joshua Landis, whose wife come from an Alawite family. Speaking to Voice of America, he said the Assad could form a separate Alawite enclave but only if their international allies stay loyal.

If Russia and Iran continue to support the Alawites along the coast, and the Arabs remain very divided and perhaps settle into civil war, well then they could pull it off, the same way the Kurds pulled it off in Iraq ...

I see a long, long battle along the same lines we’ve seen, and unfortunately, both sides are radicalising, and the radicals are taking over – not only among the Sunni Arabs but also within the Alawite community, and that means bad things because it’s going to destroy – it is destroying Syria.

Bahrain

The Labour MP Ann Clwyd, who sits on a committee conducting an inquiry into human rights abuses in Bahrain, has refused to accept a Fortnum & Mason Christmas hamper from Bahrain's ambassador to London. "I just could not accept it given what has happened to the citizens of Bahrain. I said, 'Let's get it out of my office and send it back'," she said.

Egypt