Rally in Allepo

"Landep News"

Rally in Allepo

Tens of thousands of people rallied in the streets of Allepo, the northern largest city of Syria and an important economic hub, in support of the president Bashar al-Assad, while the troops of his regime continued the brutal crackdown on the civil population in an attempt to crush the rebellion that broke out against him seven months ago.

The demonstration in Allepo is said to have been organized by the state a week after a similar demonstration in the centre of the capital city of Damascus and it is meant to show the Syrians that the authorities can still count on the support of the masses in the two most important cities of the country, and to the international community that the truth about what is going on in Syria is the one uttered by the president Assad, that is that the peaceful country has been subjected to the attacks of an international conspiracy aiming at toppling the leadership.

The demonstrators in Allepo went as far as to shout “We love you” to the man who is suspected of being responsible for the killing of at least 3,000 people since the unrest began.

They were carrying huge portraits of Bashar al-Assad and the flags of Syria, China and Russia, showing the gratitude toward the support the two countries offered Syria in the United Nations Security Council, where they vetoed a resolution of the European countries intended to sanction the crackdown on the people of Syria.

In order to boost attendance at the rally, schools are said to have been closed on Wednesday in Allepo. The people listen to speeches of Assad’s supporters, and chanted patriotic songs.

While the people in Allepo were proclaiming, voluntarily or not, their love for the president of the country, in the real world, in the city of Homs six people were reported shot dead by Assad’s famous “shabbiha” troops in the district of Naziheen.

The six deaths on Wednesday raises to 38 the death toll in the last three days of conflict in the city of Homs, which has a million residents, and was the first city to have demanded the ouster of Assad’s regime.

Two more people were reported killed in a village near the border with Lebanon. The report was made by the Syrian activists and could not have been confirmed due to the interdiction the press has in Syria.

One of the most important phenomena Assad must face these days is the defections from his army. The intensity of the battle and the fact that more and more soldiers or security officers can be found among the victims shows that the defectors’ numbers have increased to such an extend that they pose a real threat to the rest of the military, and that the confrontation are no longer mere savage bloodbaths created by governmental armies which open fire on defenseless civilians, but rather military confrontations between two military sides.

The United Nations have already warned that the conflict in Syria is turning slowly into a civil war, and that the number of the defectors will continued to raise. A few weeks ago, a defecting colonel told the Turkish authorities that the number of the defectors has reached 10,000.

There were a few officers who announced their defection but it is said that mostly the defectors are Sunni conscripts with lower ranks in the army commanded by the Alawite officers.

About 20 soldiers defected in the town of Hirak on Tuesday and then clashed with the troops after they killed three protestors who were demonstrating against the assassination of a cleric. The clash is said by the witnesses to have continued through the night until Wednesday morning.

Syrian Soldiers Carry Comrades Killed In Clashes

An European diplomat explained that as the unrest spreads from town to town, Assad’s troop have more and more ground to cover, and for that matter they must use more Sunni soldiers. The tension grows within the army’s ranks and the number of defections grows also, creating a serious problem for the regime.

As the regime is attempting to contain the rebellion after receiving a new deadline of two weeks from the Arab League, during which time the conflict must end and the sides must go to Cairo to commence negotiations, the Syrian National Council, created a few weeks in Istanbul, acquires international recognition from some of the countries in the region.

On Tuesday the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met with the leaders of the council in the first overt meeting, thereby considering them a legitimate partner.

On Wednesday, the Libyan National Transitional Council has formally recognized the Syrian National Council as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, which is the first recognition of this body.

The United States and the European countries announced that they would not recognize it as the legitimate representative of the people, so that the regime in Damascus may not accuse them of having plotted to topple Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian council was formed more difficultly than the one in Libya, mainly because of the state of division the society in Syria has been under the 40-year rule of the Assad family. Distrust and suspicion kept the members of the opposition apart for a long time.

On top of that, the UN documented cases in which the Syrian security services threatened people that belonged to the opposition and were living abroad. Some of those living inside Syria were detained, or arrested, or threatened.

The council is expected to take charge of the country the way the Libyan council did after the topple of Qaddafi. Still, the Syrian council will not receive any support to form a military faction like NTC did in Libya, and the chances to put itself in the frontline of demonstrations against Assad are very slim, given that the population in the country is divided, as the rally in Allepo demonstrates.

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