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| Map from BBC co.uk |
It’s time for the “morning-after pill.”
Supporters of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad are
wailing and his opponents gloating over the killing of three men at the heart
of his crisis team.
The three men killed in still unexplained
circumstances at a meeting of the crisis team at national security headquarters
in Damascus are:
- Defense Minister and ex-chief of staff Gen Daoud Rajha
- Deputy Defense Minister Assef Shawkat, who is married to Assad's sister Bushra, and
- Gen Hassan Turkmani, assistant to the vice-president and head of the crisis management office.
In
neighboring Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah condemned what he termed
a targeted killing: "We are going to miss them and we offer our
condolences to the Syrian leadership and the Syrian army."
Assef Shawkat and Hezbollah
Ibrahim
al-Amin, editorial chairman of Lebanon’s daily al-Akhbar, which
is close to Hezbollah and speaks for the Assad regime, goes further in his
leader comment, titled, “The
Damascus Crime: A new chapter of blood and tears.”
Al-Amin
writes in part:
The
blow is hard. What happened is not surprising in the context of the Syria
crisis. But it’s a major development that hit pillars of the regime in Syria…
The
question is what next?
The
debate will slump to tell tales and scenarios ranging from conspiracy theories
to long hands that reached the higher echelons of government. In the end,
however, the incident remains a potent security operation that can be mounted
by a small group, particularly that security measures surrounding leadership
command centers are not as tight as imagined, given Syria’s current circumstances.
Assuming
the perpetrators were professional, their mission would have been made so much
easier by information provided by a global web of intelligence networks. Their aim
is to bring down the regime by killing its icons.
It’s
been months since the Syrian leadership was forewarned of security operations
targeting security leaders and even President Assad personally. And success of
yesterday’s bombing underscores the perseverance of the enforcers. It also
gives added evidence that global stakeholders and some Syrian opposition groups
are bent on a bloody ending to the crisis.
Opponents
of the regime in Syria and their Arab and international backers simply don’t
want a political settlement. All they want is to eradicate the regime. For
them, the war currently underway is an existential war. Consequently, they are
not interested in either political initiatives or dialogue.
Among
those killed in yesterday’s Damascus outrage was someone who was the ceaseless
focus of security, political and media scrutiny.
He
was Assef Shawkat, the most controversial figure by virtue of his range of key positions.
The
man’s demonization by the United States, Israel and their lackeys in the region
did not stop for one day.
He
was a true partner of the (Hezbollah) Resistance in Lebanon. He never waited
for a demand or recommendation from higher up to help the Resistance.
He
was a central player in the (July 2006) war by
Israel.
Throughout
the fighting, he remained seated in the central operations room on orders from
President Assad. He supplied the Resistance with the weapons it needed, chiefly
quality rockets.
Together
with the late Gen.
Mohamed Suleiman, who Israel assassinated on Syria’s coastline in 2008, Assef
Shawkat spent weeks following up the delivery of quality weapons to the
Resistance, smoothing the latter’s way to rout Israel.
The whodunit
In
his front-page
comment, Abdelbari Atwan, publisher and editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab
daily al-Quds al-Arabi, zooms in on the whodunit.
He
begins by recalling the January 1986 “massacre
with tea” in Aden by President Ali Nasser Muhammad
of his rivals. A violent struggle ensued and Ali Nasser fled to North Yemen
before settling in Damascus as a protégé of Hafez Assad.
Atwan
says he evokes the incident after following news of the “mysterious” bombing of
the crisis team meeting at the national security headquarters in Damascus.
“Conspiracy
theorists say the perpetrator is the regime, or one of its offshoots, amidst
non-stop reference to an inner circle power struggle pitting the president’s
brother-in-law Assef Shawkat against the president’s biological brother Maher Assad, who is
Fourth Division chief and the muscle behind the throne.”
In
their opinion, Atwan continues, the deadly attack came within two weeks of the
flight to France of Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass, commander of the most important
Republican Guard unit, after his fallout with the president’s younger brother
Maher. (See my earlier post, “Would
Gen. Manaf Tlass ease Assad’s way out?”)
Atwan
says talk is rife of both West and East condoning a palace coup in Damascus. “There
are also rumors of Assef Shawkat having been in contact with Paris for years
and that he may have been instrumental in smuggling out Manaf” to Paris.
