After the jump, news of today’s suicide attack in Damascus, via Storify.
(matt’s diary originally posted 7:05AM,)
Live Updates on Twitter at #Syria. Guardian has live updates here – editors
Editor in Chief: Michael Collins
Editorial Team
nymole, Raja, Numerian, Lex, Actor212, Graham, steeleweed
Contributing Authors
Brian Downing, Jillian, Cliff Schecter, Nat Wilson Turner, Don Henry Ford, Jr., Jack Cluth,
Rook
July 18
BBC News – Syria’s defence minister, President Assad’s brother-in-law and the head of the crisis management office have died in a suicide bombing, state TV says.
Daoud Rajiha, Assef Shawkat and Hassan Turkomani had been at a meeting at the national security HQ in Damascus.
No footage has yet emerged of the attack in which the national security chief and interior minister were also said to have been wounded.
It comes as rebels claim to have launched an offensive on the capital.
The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) and a jihadist group calling itself Lord of the Martyrs Brigade both said they were behind the bombing.
As events in Damascus unfolded, UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan called for a delay to a Security Council vote on a Western-sponsored resolution threatening Syria with tougher sanctions.
more
[Comment: It's worth keeping in mind how little direct insight we have into all this. As a thought exercise, leafing through the range of scenarios that are potentially consistent with what we know would be pretty time consuming. As an example, even something like a power struggle at the top of the regime could look like this (i.e., if the guys slotted had told Assad that it was time to fold 'em and he took them out in a way constructed to boost support for the regime). To be clear, that seems a pretty "out there" idea, but it would be potentially consistent with the paucity of data we have. Interesting times. ~ JPD]
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Khaled Yacoub Oweis | Istanbul | July 18
Reuters – Maher al-Assad asked his own grade-school daughter what she had planned to do in class that day. The girl answered her father with trademark fierceness of Syria’s ruling family.
“Break heads, is what she answered him,” his sister-in-law Majd Jadan told Reuters from exile in the United States. “He even taught his little kids brutality.”
Jadan fled to America two years ago, after an argument with Maher, younger brother of President Bashar al-Assad and the man most Syrians say is the enforcer of the Assad clan’s grip on Syria.
She wasn’t the first member of the family to leave in a hurry: brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, who was killed in a bomb attack in Damascus on Wednesday, once had to be flown to France for lifesaving treatment after Maher shot him.
With rebels closing in on Damascus 16 months into an uprising against the Assad family’s four decades of iron-fisted rule, the world’s attention is focused on Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle, where none is more influential than brother Maher.
more
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Erika Solomon | Beirut | July 18
Reuters – The world saw only a handful of pictures of Assef Shawkat. Few knew what he really did, or what power he wielded.
But any Syrian would have told you that President Bashar al-Assad’s 62-year-old brother-in-law, reported to have been killed in a suicide attack in Damascus on Wednesday, was one of the pillars of Assad family rule.
Despite a difficult entry into the Assad clan, Shawkat was widely seen as a member of the president’s inner circle. After years as deputy head and then chief of military intelligence, he had become deputy defense minister, another position that allowed him to wield power out of the limelight.
U.S. diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks described him as both a clever, well-read officer and as part of Syria’s “killing problem”.
Washington imposed sanctions on Shawkat in 2006 on suspicion that he orchestrated the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri and other officials seen as threats to Syrian influence.
more
[Comment: Interesting that these granular personality sketches are coming out now. I dunno, maybe folks really are seeing endgame... ~ JPD]
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Samia Nakhoul | Beirut | July 18
Reuters – As fighting rages in Damascus, and the Assad family that has ruled Syria for four decades struggles for its life against a growing rebellion, a picture is emerging of a tight inner group determined to fight its way out of the crisis, even as support for the government falls away.
At its head is President Bashar al-Assad, who inherited power from his father in 2000 and who friend and opponent alike say appears increasingly detached from reality, convinced he is fighting a conspiracy against him and Syria.
Around him is a tight circle of family and clan members, and a security establishment staffed mainly by adherents of the Alawite minority to which the Assads belong, a branch of Shi’ite Islam in a country that is three quarters Sunni.
“Even those who love him feel he can no longer provide security,” said Ayman Abdel-Nour, an adviser to Assad until 2007 and now an opposition figure. “They think he is useless and living in a cocoon.”
more
[Comment: Worth reading to the end for the sense that there may be some form of tipping point occurring here. Interestingly, I think this appears to have been written before the bombing. ~ JPD]
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Clinton’s bellicose calls for regime change and threats to those who resist are the back drop for the suicide bombing.
I wonder if the hypocrites in the White House, Brussels, and the UN will call this terrorism? I seriously doubt it.
The Money Party RSS
…of the “they hate our freedoms” meme is, isn’t it? That one, combined with Islamists == al-Qa`eda (or indeed that al-Qa`eda affiliate == al-Qa`eda central organization) makes life a lot harder than it needs to be.
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Suleiman Al-Khalidi | Antakya, Turkey | July 18
Reuters – Syrian army defectors and rebel commanders based in Turkey said on Thursday a bomb that killed three top military officials in Damascus would hasten the end of President Bashar al Assad’s rule, predicting more defections and divisive internal feuding.
Brigadier Fayez Amr, a senior member of defectors’ group, the Joint Leadership of the Higher Council, said the attack was a turning point in the 16-month-old uprising.
Intense clashes were reported late on Wednesday in centre of the capital and the army was shelling its own capital from the surrounding mountains as night fell.
“The regime might now resort to more lethal weapons in retaliation but the biggest loser will ultimately be the regime. The strength of the regime no longer matters when it faces the will of a people against soldiers who have lost their will to fight and when a soldier knows he is fighting his own people. Victory is closer than ever now,” Amr told Reuters.
[snip]
However, Muhaiman al-Taiee, a senior officer in the Front for Syrian Revolutionaries, an umbrella group that coordinates major rebel brigades, said organizational weakness among armed opposition groups meant Assad could still win more time.
“Unfortunately if we had been better organized these momentous events would have brought an immediate collapse of Assad’s rule. But … we still have some way to go,” he said.
more
[Comment: Interesting primarily because of those last two grafs - I think these guys surprised the hell out of themselves. They certainly have surprised all of us outside observers. [This is rather making me think that a certain bunch of Armoured Corps folks I know is nodding their heads - the lowest grade was if you milled in front of enemy positions not knowing what to do; if you suicidally charged, you passed because sometimes that works - milling about always gets you killed.] ~ JPD]
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Peter Apps | London | July 19
Reuters – Rising violence in Damascus and a lethal bombing at the heart of Bashar al-Assad’s government might be good news for Syria’s rebels, but the ever murkier situation puts foreign powers in a tough position.
The US, Britain, France and others remain adamant Assad must go. But there is still little clarity on who if anyone could run the country in his stead, while the recent crop of bomb attacks raise their own worries about a perhaps growing jihadi presence.
The United States and Western allies said recent events made it more important than ever to secure a meaningful United Nations agreement on the conflict. So far Russia – and to a lesser extent China – have refused to agree any Security Council text that either tightens sanctions on Assad or could be used to justify later use of military force.
Western worries over the rebels and concern in Moscow that Assad’s position could become unsustainable could narrow the gap and make UN agreement easier. But as things stand, there seems little the great powers could do immediately to influence events on the ground even if they were to find a common approach.
While precise details remain sketchy, this week appears to have seen the the 16-month-old uprising grow bloodier by the day. Wednesday’s bombing killed Syria’s defense minister, Assad’s brother-in-law and another senior general as well as wounding senior officials. Government artillery and attack helicopters were reported to be firing on several areas of the capital in the fourth day of serious fighting there.
more
[Comment: Useful among other things because it does highlight that the central issue in the bombing was access. I very much wonder if this scenario wasn't principally driven by some entity that was able to present the FSA with this access (assuming of course that it wasn't the "way out" option of an inside job). A key analytical question would then then become who provided the access (e.g., Islamists?, disgruntled Sunnis in the state apparatus? elements more aligned to the FSA core?). ~ JPDEverything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
Well, that is what we’ve been told the people who attack our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are. Our troops are military targets and theirs is a war of liberation from a foreign oppressor. I wouldn’t call either terrorists but the flexibility starts with our gov.
it’s not just generals who are always prepared to fight the last war.
No, just trying to use language consistently.