A scenario. The regime will continue to fight for control of the supply lines that run from Damascus to Homs, Hama, Idlib, and Aleppo. As it does so, it will lose more territory to the north and east of Aleppo. The vice will eventually close on the city, and it will fall to the FSA.
And if Aleppo falls, this war is over. Assad will then lose all of Idlib Province --- which has in effect already happened --- then Hama, then Homs.
In short, unless there is a surprising change in the course of this fight, every indication is that the President Assad cannot win this war.
1943 GMT:Lebanon. The toll from today's clashes in Tripoli between supporters and opponents of the Syrian regime has risen to nine dead and 42 wounded, according to residents and a doctor.
1919 GMT:Syria. The Local Co-ordination Committees of Syria has said that 27 people died across the country today, including 11 in Homs Province and eight in Idlib Province.
A reporter for State TV, presenting live, is hit with a shoe by a man who shouts, "The Syrian TV is a liar!".
University of Aleppo students demonstrate against the regime on Monday
I just had a long conversation with friends and family in Aleppo. It may not be long before the city joins the revolution, I believe. My father could not travel by car to the border with Turkey. No driver dares take the roads north any longer, [even though] the drive to Turkey is only a half-hour. The working-class neighborhoods of Azaz, Hreitan and Anadan have largely fallen out of government control. Friends who own factories in the industrial regions outside of Aleppo complain that for a week now they have been unable to visit them. Lack of security, frequent anti-regime demonstrations and clashes between militants and the army make the excursion impossible.
Aleppo's dismal reputation among Syria's revolutionaries is slowly changing. The regime's hold on the city has been increasingly challenged: Recent Fridays have witnessed sizeable protests, and the residents of the lower-income neighborhoods of Fardous, Marjeh, and Sakhour are taking to the streets regularly.
Aleppo is also becoming increasingly violent. Assad's security forces shot dead 13 people in the city last Friday, according to local activists -- on par with the number of fatalities in other hotspots. On Feb. 10, twin car bombings targeting Aleppo's Military Intelligence bureau killed 28 people. The growing Free Syrian Army presence in the areas around the city is also making it hard for Aleppo to remain a bystander to the revolution.
2100 GMT: Anti-Assad regime protest in Trafalgar Square, London.
2030 GMT: Two American women accused of aiding anti-government activists deported from Bahrain.
2020 GMT: Higher Revolutionary Council of Syria says that the death toll rises to 67 across the country and the army tries to storm Baba Amro district in Homs.
1900 GMT: Exchange of fire between two rival factions, the Sunni Muslims and the Alawite sect in Lebanon leaves one from each party dead and 12 wounded.
2249 GMT: With nightfall, solid information from Syria is only harder to come by. However, with power and internet cut in many key areas, like Homs, and Zabadani and Madaya, good information has been hard to verify all day. We've been searching for many hours, for instance, but have not found a single video from Zabadani or Madaya, true testimony to how closed off and isolated those cities have become.
However, at the end of the day, there are two reports that have our attention, two reports which may be significant once day breaks. The first is from the Kafer Souseh district of Damascus, a key area very close to some major government buildings. The LCCS report large explosions in the area, of unknown origin.
The second potentially significant report come from the Irbeen district of Damascus. The CFDPC report that there is currently a gunfight between members of the Free Syrian Army and Assad-loyal troops. This video that they share shows the gunfire:
Friday protests in the Akramiye neighborhood in Aleppo, once thought to be an Assad stronghold
With Arab League observers in Syria, the Ministry of Information sponsoring a trip for Western journalists (which led to the death of France reporter Gilles Jacquier), and with the reporting of eyewitnesses and activists, the world has its sharpest look into the crisis in Syria. But what does it see, 10 months into the crisis?
Initially, the protests in Syria were fairly large, and reports of violence were far less. It was unclear whether the violencat against the protesters was the work of local leaders of security forces, individual police officers, or a systemic approach by the regime to deter dissent.
As the violence escalated, the third answer was the right one, but what was remarkable was that the protests continued.
As we noted yesterday, the Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations, Imad Moustapha, spoke on NPR, and he tells a very different story than the evidence that we have collected here. In our conversation with NPR's Andy Carvin and Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell, none of us have seen any video evidence that would support the Syrian government's claims, despite the fact that Moustapha claims there are hundreds of videotapes that the Syrian government has collected which show armed gangs killing innocent civilians.
Below we have posted the audio, one of our favorite excerpts (of which we have hundreds or thousands of counterexamples), and a link to the full transcript.
1520 GMT: Yesterday we received a picture from an activist showing a man, reportedly in Sitra, Bahrain, standing in front of a police convoy at protests. Frankly, I don't like pictures, as they are hard to verify, but today we have received and EXCLUSIVE VIDEO of the same scene, and more. Protesters take to the streets, but tear gas, and what appears to be rubber bullets (though it's possible that live ammunition was also used) is fired towards the protesters. Amidst the smoke an chaos, the police convoy can be seen, and the man with no shirt stands in front of it.
A massive anti-Assad protest in Douma, an important Damascus suburb, during the funeral of Yusef Al-Toukhi.
Just two weeks ago, I was beginning to think that the protests were losing steam. Every passing day, since the fall of Tripoli, we see larger and larger protests in Syria. Protests in some locations were becoming smaller. In other places, the activists who were protesting seemed almost defeated. Reports from contacts in the country hinted that the spirit of the protesters was very low. At least 473 people had been killed by the Assad military since the beginning of Ramadan, according to rights groups. The bloody month had proven that the protests were not going away, the genie of Arab Spring would never be returned to the bottle in Syria, but it had also proven that the violence had taken its toll.
Some activists in Syria had even begun to question whether a peaceful revolution would be successful
All of that has changed in the last two weeks.
What we are seeing is protests in locations where there were not protests before, which has in turn caused the Syrian military to kill in those locations, intensifying protests in those locations. While Aleppo and central Damascus still seem elusive targets for widespread protests, the areas around these cities are seeing larger and more widespread protest. Eventually, these protests may very well push into the centers of the last two holdouts of dissent.
Below we're collecting just a sample of videos of the day. We'll add to the list as the day goes on:
8. Protests in A'zaz, Aleppo (MAP). Earlier we noted daytime protests in Tall Rifat, halfway between A'zaz and downtown Aleppo, and there are also protests there this evening.
7. A puzzling yet impressive video. This clip claims to have been taken by soldiers during the siege of Daraa, and has apparently been set to (what we would assume is) victorious music, by the soldiers themselves. Smoke can be seen rising from the city, and smiling soldiers take up sniper positions on the rooftop.
Sunday, July 22, 2012 at 10:40