Syria Analysis: A New Insurgent Alliance --- With New Weapons --- Is Changing the War

Rebel fighters gather men and firepower, including a Yugoslavian M-60 recoilless rifle, to attack the Hamidiyah base near Ma'arrat al Nouman.

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Yesterday's dramatic news was the insurgency['s capture of an airbase, complete with working fighter jets, in Aleppo Province and the assault against the largest Assad base in the north, near Aleppo International Airport.

This surge is at least partially the result of new weapons and new organisation of insurgency groups in Daraa and Damascus, with ample evidence that the boost in arms is courtesy of foreign powers.

Now a new piece of evidence bolsters the assessment that these weapons are coming from outside Syria, and also gives insight into the modified organisation of insurgent groups. Eliot Higgins presents this video:

A classroom of opposition fighters get a lesson on the new weapons flooding Syria, very unusualyoutube.com/watch?v=gZYbYv… h/t @massdall

— Brown Moses (@Brown_Moses) February 13, 2013

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Syria Live Coverage: Insurgents Take Another Airbase --- Next, a Major City?

2113 GMT: Aleppo Airport Closer to Falling. Videos claim to show the rebels attacking the base of the 80th regiment, one of the key defenses for Aleppo airport, the largest major airbase in the north. It is from this the airport that Assad has launched most of his attacks in Aleppo, and without it the rebels have the city nearly surrounded and cut off from reinforcements.

Videos show the rebels pounding the base with RPGs and sniper fire, while other videos show the rebels looting the base of both ammunition and anti-aircraft weapons:

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Syria Analysis: The Lessons from Airpower in the Libyan Uprising (Wehrey)

Anti-Assad forces in Syria have long boasted of making Aleppo their Benghazi -- a haven from which to topple the regime in Damascus. But perhaps a closer analogy is Misrata where, after months of grinding, urban combat, Libyan revolutionaries pushed out Muammar al-Qaddafi's troops and paved the way for the liberation of Tripoli. Precision airpower, combined with the presence of foreign ground advisors working alongside the city's defenders, helped in this crucial battle, but in ways that were dependent on a number of other factors --- all with important implications for Syria.

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Syria Live Coverage: Car Bomb on Turkey Border; Insurgents Take Major Dam

Islamist-led insurgents attack an Air Force building near the Taqaba Dam

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2124 GMT: Foreign Weapons - Update. Last week we came to a provocative conclusion - there was sufficient evidence that a foreign power was arming the Syrian rebels, and those weapons were being deployed into the fight as part of a new, and far more effective, rebel strategy. We're still finding more evidence that this is true, and that the weapons are spreading, suggesting that a large amount of weapons have been smuggled into the country.

As we've also noted, those weapons were showing up in the hands of Free Syrian Army units, secular units with good reputations, and they had not been seen in the hands of Jihadists.

Until now. This was taken near Hamidiyah Military Base, southwest of Ma'arrat al Nouman (map), where rebels have been gathering to siege the power. The first, and most obvious, feature of the video is the impressive array of weaponry, from tanks to RPGs (including the RPG 29, a powerful anti-tank weapon) to 4x4s with machine guns. One of the shields on the 4x4s is painted in an Arabic prayer common to Jihadi elements. At least some of these soldiers appear to be Mujahadeen, Islamists, Jihadists, likely part of Jabhat al Nusra - not moderates. And among the weaponry, an M60 recoilless rifle is visible, part of the "foreign weapons" arsenal we've been pointing out.

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Syria Video Feature: The Dangers of Reporting for State TV (Sturdee)

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Nick Sturdee writes in The Guardian:

What's it like to represent one of the world's most reviled regimes? At the very heart of Damascus, opposite the army's chief of staff headquarters – crippled by car bombs in September – stands a building with a shiny blue facade, topped by towers of satellite dishes. In front a big screen proudly emits what the building produces – the world according to Syrian state TV.

It's the frontline in a "media war" that the Syrian government sees itself as waging against the outside world. And the newest and youngest weapon in this war is the Syrian News Channel, al Ikhbariya, --- a satellite channel combating such hostile voices as al Jazeera, al Arabia and...the BBC.

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Syria 1st-Hand: Battle in Damascus Takes Toll on Regime Soldiers (New York Times)

In this war of murky battlefield reports, it is hard to know whether the rebels’ recent forays past some of the capital’s circle of defenses — in an operation that they have, perhaps immodestly, named the “Battle of Armageddon” — will lead to more lasting gains than earlier offensives did. But travels along the city’s battlefronts in recent days made clear that new lines, psychological as much as geographical, had been crossed.

“I didn’t see my family for more than a year,” a government soldier from a distant province said in a rare outpouring of candor. He was checking drivers’ identifications near the railway station at a checkpoint where hundreds of soldiers arrived last week with tanks and other armored vehicles.

“I am tired and haven’t slept well for a week,” he said, confiding in a traveler who happened to be from his hometown. “I have one wish — to see my family and have a long, long sleep. Then I don’t care if I die.”

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Syria Live Coverage: Fighting Escalates Near Damascus

A regime tank fires from a main highway into Jobar, near Damascus

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1930 GMT: Car Bombs. Footage has been posted of the aftermath of today's explosions at the Turkish border, with smoke rising and victims screaming.

1800 GMT: Negotiations. Ali Haidar, the Minister for National Reconciliation, has told a British journalist, "I am willing to meet [head of opposition National Moaz] al-Khatib in any foreign city where I can go in order to discuss preparations for a national dialogue."

Al-Khatib said earlier this month that he will enter discussions with the Assad regime if it meets conditions such as the release of political prisoners.

Haidar, without making commitments, said the discussion could lead to political reforms:

The dialogue is a means to provide a mechanism for reaching free parliamentary and presidential elections. This is one of the subjects which will be discussed at the table. Such a thing could be the result of negotiations, but not a precondition.

We reject a dialogue that is just to hand power from one side to another.

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Syria Analysis: Dissecting The Washington Post's Scary "Iran-Hezbollah 50,000 Militiamen in Syria " Story

Head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Mohammad Ali Jafari announces Tehran's military support for Assad regime, 16 September 2012

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The real question beyond "50,000 militiamen": why is the US Government, backed by an Arab ally, feeding this story to the Post now?

Is this laying the ground for the revelation that the Obama Administration --- contrary to its recent denials --- has been involved in provision of arms to the insurgency, supposedly ensuring that it can block any rise of an Iran-Hezbollah-Assad force after the fall of the regime? Is it another volley in the campaign to separate "good" insurgents from "bad" insurgents such as Jabhat al-Nusra? Is it justification for the ever-increasing US sanctions on Iran, including the measures put in place last Wednesday? All three?

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Syria 1st-Hand: A "Sliver of Hope" in Non-Violent Civil Movements (Hossino)

Protest in Azaz, September 2012

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The secular and nationalist spirit that initially sparked the Syrian revolution is also still alive and well. Many grassroots activists and religious leaders are working to forge a country that is built on secular principles, against sectarian revenge, and supportive of equal rights for all its citizens. Even some of the sharia courts that have sprung up to administer justice in areas the Syrian government has abandoned contain surprising, non-sectarian trends.

Whether such a movement can survive as the uprising drags on is not yet clear. For the time being, however, these figures embody the sliver of hope that Syria may avoid an all-out sectarian war.

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Syria Live Coverage: Watching the Attack in Damascus

2058 GMT: Idlib. Rania Abouzeid reports new rebel offenses against several key bases in Idlib province, including Wadi Deif which is the main base near Ma'arrat al Nouman (map) and the Abu Dhuhur military airport (map, also see update 1341). This time, she writes, the offensives are different, as the rebels organize to take some of the last key Assad bases in the north:

On Wednesday, the push to take it was forcefully renewed, but unlike previous offensives here and elsewhere that tend to be disorganized, poorly coordinated actions by a few brigades, this phase of the battle has been carefully planned over many weeks. It is not an isolated fight but part of a wider strategy, codenamed Marakit il Bina il Marsoos, or the Battle of Reinforced Structures, to open all the remaining fronts in Idlib province at around the same time — Wadi Deif, the Karmid Checkpoint, the Mastoomeh Checkpoint, the Abu Duhoor military airport and the smaller checkpoints associated with these outposts — before rebels turn their full attention to the regime forces concentrated in Idlib city, the provincial capital, and the city of Jisr al-Shughour, the two key urban areas still in the regime’s firm grip. If the rebels succeed, they will have created the first liberated province in Syria, an area completely free of regime forces and a de facto safe zone — without direct international help.

Read the entire article here.

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