Warning: Undefined array key "rbname" in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 14
Hello !
Recent Appearances... Rantburg

Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Hidden agendas lurk behind military changes in Syria’s Suwayda
2023-08-24
[NPASyria] Recently, Suwayda Governorate in southern Syria has witnessed a number of scenarios regarding the military aspect including convoys of militias affiliated with the Syrian government forces heading deep in the desert of Suwayda, the formation of local military councils, and the threat of the revival of the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
 (ISIS) in the area. These incidents left everyone baffled and wondering about the triggers behind them.

After years of being a hotbed for smuggling narcotics, the desert in the east of Suwayda has morphed into a conflict zone between two parties. One party wants to secure its border along the desert, and the other advances armed forces to maintain its control over the area.

Suleiman Abdulbaqi, leader of the Ahrar Jabal al-Arab movement in Suwayda, told North Press that the military movements that occur in the desert are carried out by "Iranian-backed and Afghani militias in addition to Lebanese Hezbollah militias along with the Syrian government forces and militias affiliated with the Military Security."

Ahrar Jabal al-Arab was founded in February 2022 by a group of activists, led by Sheikh Suleiman Abdulbaqi. It calls for a democratic, fair and civil state, revealing the fate of the arrestees, and combating corrupation and drug-smugglers.
In Syria?? That way lies madness, though one understands the heartfelt desire.
Presently, those factions attempt to station in the desert that expands all the way to the Jordanian border.

"Ramping up forces in the area comes in a bid to keep it under their controlled, being a passageway for smuggling drugs and weapons to Jordan," Abdulbaqi said.

The forces in the desert are establishing outposts and bringing reinforcements. Not long ago, they brought military convoys to their posts in eastern Suwayda, Abdulbaqi added.

Late in July, thousands of Iranian-backed Lions of Islam entered the desert, according to a previous statement by Abdulbaqi to North Press.

Early in August, a circulated footage showed a group of people from Suwayda claiming to join the Military Council led by Brigadier General Manaf Tlass, which includes defectors from the government forces.

Manaf Tlass is the cousin of former Syrian Minister of Defense, Mustafa Tlass, and one of the highest-ranking military figures who was serving within the ranks of the Syrian Elite Republican Guard. He was the first commander of the Elite Republican Guard to defect from the Syrian forces and declare support for the opposition.

Hafez Qarqut, a writer and politician, said to North Press, "The Military Council tried to communicate with defected members who are originally from Suwayda to enlarge its own popular incubator across Suwayda."

However,
we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by...
 Qarqut reckons the influence of the Military Council over Suwayda will be limited and related to international decisions and actions.

"There will be no actual activation of the Military Council’s role without international support, no matter the large numbers it recruits," Qarqut added.

USING ISIS
The presence of military factions in Suwayda’s desert sparked concern and fear among the local population, particularly fear of using ISIS to attack Suwayda.

Abdulbaqi pointed out that the area currently occupied by these factions were previously ISIS forts.

Abdulbaqi rules out the presence of ISIS Death Eaters. However,
we can't all be heroes. Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by...
 he speculates that some ISIS Lions of Islam operate under the guise of Iranian-backed militias.

He highlighted that these remnants are now being utilized by the Syrian government and its affiliated militias, either for launching attacks on Suwayda or intimidating its residents. The threat posed by ISIS continues to persist in the eastern desert of Suwayda.

Abdulbaqi stressed "even though the people of Suwayda constantly fight against gangs, the regime is likely to resort to utilizing them. Currently, efforts are underway to strengthen the regime’s military militias and remaining members of gangs in order to solidify its presence in the region."

In December, 2022, the Suwayda Governorate witnessed widespread public protests rejecting the political and economic situations in the governorate. The protests then turned into festivities between the protesters and the security forces, which resulted in casualties and material damage.
Related:
Suwayda: 2023-08-18 Government forces pursue ISIS in Syria’s Deir ez-Zor
Suwayda: 2023-08-17 IRGC brings military reinforcements in Syria’s Homs, Deir ez-Zor
Suwayda: 2023-08-14 Landmine explosion injures Syrian government soldiers in Deir ez-Zor
Related:
Manaf Tlass: 2012-12-27 Syrian general who led military police defects to rebels
Manaf Tlass: 2012-09-12 France Helped Syrian Military Figures to Desert
Manaf Tlass: 2012-08-27 Syrian VP Sharaa Makes First Appearance in over a Month
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syrian general who led military police defects to rebels
2012-12-27
[FOXNEWS] The general who heads Syria's military police has defected and joined the uprising against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Leveler of Latakia...
's regime, one of the highest walkouts by a serving security chief during the country's 21-month uprising, a pan Arab TV station has reported.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal appeared in a video aired on Al Arabiya TV late Tuesday saying he is joining "the people's revolution."

Al-Shallal's defection comes as military pressure builds on the regime, with government bases falling to rebel assault near the capital Damascus
...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
 and elsewhere across the country. On Wednesday, the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government shelling in the northeastern province of Raqqa killed at least 20 people, including women and kiddies.

Dozens of generals have defected since Syria's crisis began in March 2011. In July, Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlass was the first member of Assad's inner circle to break ranks and join the opposition.

Al-Shallal is one of the most senior and held a top post at the time that he left. He said in the video that the "army has derailed from its basic mission of protecting the people and it has become a gang for killing and destruction." He accused the military of "destroying cities and villages and committing massacres against our innocent people who came out to demand freedom."
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
France Helped Syrian Military Figures to Desert
2012-09-12
[An Nahar] La Belle France has helped a number of Syrian military figures to desert from Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor...
's embattled regime, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Tuesday.

"We have contributed to a certain number of desertion operations," he told a parliamentary commission, without giving any further details.

The comment came a day after defected general Manaf Tlass said French secret agents helped him escape in July from Syria, where he had been a member of Assad's inner circle.

A general in the elite Republican Guard charged with protecting the regime, Tlass is the son of former defense minister Mustafa Tlass, a close friend of Assad's late father and predecessor, Hafez Assad.

La Belle France is among the Western nations leading calls for Assad to step down in a bid to end the bloody conflict in Syria that erupted in March last year.

French President Francois Hollande
...the Socialist president of La Belle France, and a fine job he's doing of it...
 has said that if the Syrian opposition forms a "provisional, inclusive and representative" government, his own government will formally recognize it.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syrian VP Sharaa Makes First Appearance in over a Month
2012-08-27
[An Nahar] Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa made his first public appearance in over a month on Sunday, following rumors that he had tried to defect and was under house arrest.

Sharaa, who met the head of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy committee, Aladin Borujerdi, was last seen in public at a state funeral for top security officials who were killed in a Damascus
...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
 kaboom on July 18.

Speculation has swirled since last week over the fate of Sharaa, the most powerful Sunni Moslem figure in Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Scourge of Qusayr...
's minority Alawite-led regime, since the opposition claimed he had tried to defect.

Assad's regime has been rattled by several high-profile defections as the Syrian conflict has escalated, including former prime minister Riad Hijab and prominent General Manaf Tlass, one of Assad's childhood friends.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
72 Dead as Syrian Army Battles Rebels around Capital, Pounds Aleppo Rebel Hubs
2012-08-18
[An Nahar] Syrian forces pounded rebel hubs in the northern city of Aleppo
...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins...
 and battled opposition fighters around Damascus
...The City of Jasmin is the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
 on Friday, activists said, as the U.N. reported a surge in the number of people fleeing.

And despite the imminent departure of the observers, the United Nations
...a formerly good idea gone bad...
 announced that veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi will take over as international envoy from Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
, who quit earlier this month.

On the ground, violence was also reported in other towns and villages across the country, with the bloodletting showing no signs of any let-up a day after the United Nations formally called time on its observer mission.

"The violence and the suffering in Syria must come to an end," U.N. chief the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan...
 said in a statement announcing the appointment of Brahimi.

Ban called on the international community to give "strong, clear and unified" support to the new envoy, after Annan complained that his mission had been mission had been hamstrung by the deep rift on the U.N. Security Council between the West and traditional Damascus allies Beijing and Moscow.

But in sign that the divisions remain as large as ever, Washington called for clarifications on Brahimi's mandate and Moscow called off a meeting on the conflict that had been planned for Friday after Western and Arab governments said they would not attend.

On the ground, at least 72 people were killed as the regime continued its onslaught on Friday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human rights, a watchdog which has a network of activists on the ground.

The army clashed with rebels near the main military airport in Damascus and shelled southern parts of the capital as well as areas of the commercial city of Aleppo and the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, the Observatory said.

Deadly violence was also reported in the provinces of Homs and Daraa, the cradle of the uprising that began with peaceful protests in March 2011 but has escalated into an increasingly vicious battle between armed rebels and government forces.

Opposition factions reported that 65 bodies had been found dumped on a rubbish tip in a town near Damascus, claiming the victims had been bound, executed and set on fire by pro-government forces.

The Syrian Revolutionary Command Council issued a poor quality video which showed, some of the bodies were in just underwear or half-dressed, their limbs splayed apart, and hands tied behind their backs. Many were charred beyond recognition.

"The victims were handcuffed, extrajudicially executed and burned by Assad forces," the SRGC said in a statement.

It is impossible to independently verify such claims as journalists are unable to report freely in Syria.

With the international community still deeply divided over how to end the conflict, the U.N. said the number of Syrians seeking refuge in neighboring countries had now soared to at least 170,000.

"There has been a further sharp rise in the number of Syrians fleeing to Turkey," the U.N. refugee agency said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called for Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Scourge of Qusayr...
's regime to be "smashed fast" as he visited Turkey's largest refugee camp near the border.

"After hearing the refugees and their account of the massacres of the regime, Mr. Bashir al-Assad doesn't deserve to be on this earth." he said.

Russia rejected a proposal to set up no-fly zones to help fleeing civilians after the United States said it was ready to consider the move.

"You have to solve citizen security issues using methods put in practice by international humanitarian law," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Sky News Arabia.

"But if you try to create no-fly zones and safety zones for military purposes by citing an international crisis -- this is unacceptable," he said.

More than 23,000 people have died since the revolt against Assad's iron-fisted rule broke out, according to activists, while the U.N. puts the toll at around 17,000.

Assad has described the conflict as a battle for the very survival of his minority Alawite-led regime against a foreign "terrorist" plot aided by the West and its allies in the region.

But he has faced a string of high level defections, including by prime minister Riad Hijab and senior general Manaf Tlass, and a kaboom that killed four security chiefs.

"It is clear that both sides have chosen the path of war... and the space for political dialogue and cessation of hostilities and mediation is very reduced at this point," U.N. assistant secretary general for peacekeeping Edmond Mulet said.

And in a damning report this week, a U.N. panel said government forces and their militia allies had committed crimes against humanity including murder and torture, while also accusing the rebels of war crimes but to a lesser extent.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
France’s FM says Assad regime should be ‘smashed fast’
2012-08-18
ONCUPINAR, Turkey: French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called Friday for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime to be “smashed fast” as he visited Turkey’s largest refugee camp near the border.

“The Syrian regime should be smashed fast,” Fabius told reporters. “After hearing the refugees and their account of the massacres of the regime, Mr. Bashar Assad doesn’t deserve to be on this earth.”
Sure Sparky. When is the Foreign Legion landing in Aleppo?
“It is an operation of destruction of an entire people that he is trying to accomplish,” he said.

Fabius made the remarks at a refugee camp near the Oncupinar border crossing in Kilis province, where he met a number of Syrian refugees appealing to France for weapons and aid to fight the Damascus regime. In response to the demands, the top diplomat said his country was spending efforts in the political and humanitarian fields, but France could not accept continuation of Assad’s “massacre.”

“The sooner this regime leaves, the better,” he said.
Nice words. What are you doing about it?
The Oncupinar camp is one of several refugee settlements in Turkey’s border provinces and houses around 12,000 people in prefabricated buildings.

Fabius had previously visited Jordan and Lebanon, where he had renewed calls for Assad to go in the face of his regime’s relentless onslaught against Syrian civilians and predicted more “spectacular” defections to come soon. Fabius was referring to the recent defections of Assad’s prime minister Riad Hijab and general Manaf Tlass, his childhood friend and the son of a close aide of Assad’s father Hafez, who ruled Syria with an iron fist.

The high-level clearance into Oncupinar camp, a Turkish diplomat told AFP, was the result of the improvement in French-Turkish ties after a tumultous period during the term of the previous French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syrian army 'bombs Palestine Hospital'
2012-07-27
[Ma'an] Forces loyal to Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Despoiler of Deraa...
 on Thursday bombed a hospital in Damascus
...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
' Yarmouk refugee camp, Paleostinian sources told Ma'an.

Sources in the camp told Ma'an that that there have been heavy festivities between Assad's troops and opposition forces around the Paleostine hospital since Monday morning, and that Assad's forces shelled the building twice on Thursday causing a huge fire.

Paleostinians in Yarmouk told Ma'an that the Syrian army was targeting the hospital because medics were treating maimed from all sides, while Assad's regime only allowed its soldiers to be treated.

They added that fighting in Yarmouk was intensifying daily, and that the number of Paleostinians killed was rising dramatically in camps across Damascus and in Daraa and Halab.

A resident of Yarmouk told Rooters on Thursday that the army seemed to be targeting sites on the edges of the camp, firing shells every minute. The bombardment started around 7 a.m. and was still going three hours later.

Yarmouk is the largest Paleostinian refugee camp in Syria.

Damascus and Syria's second biggest city, Aleppo
...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins...
, came under shell fire on Thursday as Assad's forces stepped up efforts to crush rebels threatening the government's two main power centers.

One of the most senior figures to defect from Assad's inner circle, Brigadier General Manaf Tlas, put himself forward as someone who could help unite the fragmented opposition inside and outside Syria on a blueprint for a transfer of power.

A kaboom that killed four of Assad's closest lieutenants last week prompted predictions among his enemies that the 46-year-old president's time in power was drawing to a close.

But in the days that have followed that attack, Assad's forces have noticeably toughened their response to the armed revolt, with fixed-wing combat aircraft seen in action over Aleppo and rebel fighters said by opposition sources to have been summarily executed on the streets of Damascus.

Military experts believe an overstretched Syrian army is pulling back to concentrate on Aleppo and Damascus, while leaving outlying areas in the hands of rebels.

In its most recent comment on the fighting, state-run Syrian television said on Wednesday that government troops were imposing security and stability in and around Aleppo.

Assad himself has not spoken in public in more than a week since the Damascus kaboom on his inner circle, confining himself to appearing at formal televised events.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syrian forces pound Aleppo and Damascus
2012-07-27
BEIRUT: Damascus and Syria’s second biggest city, Aleppo, came under shell fire yesterday as troops loyal to President Bashar Assad stepped up efforts to crush fighters threatening the government’s two main power centers.

One of the most senior figures to defect from Assad’s inner circle, Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlas, put himself forward as someone who could help unite the fragmented opposition inside and outside Syria on a blueprint for a transfer of power.
He'd reluctantly agree to be the new head cheese. You'd have to force him to do it, but the burdens of power are those that he could bear...
Residents in the capital reported a shell landing in southern districts every minute yesterday morning. Helicopters were attacking the Hajar-al-Aswad district, one of the last rebel strongholds in the city after days of street fighting, opposition activists said. After a major assault on rebels in Damascus last week, the army has turned to Aleppo, reinforcing troops there with an armored column that had been operating in a northern province, apparent evidence of the government’s aim not to lose control of Syria’s commercial capital, a city of 2.5 million.

Fierce clashes raged in the early hours of Thursday in Aleppo, and an activist said rebels now controlled half of the city, a claim that could not be independently verified.

“There was shelling this morning on the Salaheddine and Mashhad districts,” said Aleppo activist Abu Hisham. “Now it has stopped, but helicopters are buzzing overhead.”

Activists said 24 people were killed in fighting in and around Aleppo on Wednesday, swelling a national death toll of about 18,000 since the revolt against Assad began 16 months ago.

In the Syrian capital, a resident in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp reported heavy shelling, particularly near the southern Hajar Al-Aswad district. She said the army seemed to be targeting sites on the edges of the camp, firing shells every minute. The bombardment started around 7 a.m. (0400 GMT) and was still going three hours later.

As hostilities have intensified in the north, in and around Aleppo, Turkey closed its border posts to commercial traffic on Wednesday, but not to refugees fleeing Syria. At the Syrian town of Azaz, a few miles south of the Turkish border, rebels appeared in control after heavy clashes over the past month in which they succeeded in driving government forces out of what had become a rubble-strewn ghost town, a Reuters correspondent who visited the town said.

Military experts believe an overstretched Syrian army is pulling back to concentrate on Aleppo and Damascus, while leaving outlying areas in the hands of rebels.

In its most recent comment on the fighting, state-run Syrian television said on Wednesday that government troops were imposing security and stability in and around Aleppo.

“The terrorists are suffering terrible losses. Groups of them are throwing their weapons away and giving themselves up. Others are fleeing for the Turkish border,” the television said.

Assad himself has not spoken in public in more than a week since the Damascus bomb attack on his inner circle, confining himself to appearing at formal televised events.

General Tlas, a former friend of Assad’s who could play a role in any transition of power, said he had not defected from Syria in order to play a leadership role.

“I am discussing with ... people outside Syria to reach a consensus with those inside,” he told Thursday’s edition of the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat. “I left (Syria)...to try to help the best I can to unite the honorable people inside and outside Syria to set out a road map to get Syria out of this crisis.”

Tlas, who is in Jeddah and has been interviewed by a Saudi-owned newspaper and a television station, appeared to have tacit Saudi support for his stance. The general, a Sunni Muslim member of Assad’s mostly Alawite inner circle and a senior officer in the Republican Guards, defected earlier this month.

“I will cooperate with every honorable person who wants to rebuild Syria, be it the National Council or the (rebel) Free Syria Army,” he said.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syrian envoy to Cyprus defects
2012-07-26
Syrian charge d'affaires to Cyprus Lamia al-Hariri has defected, becoming the second diplomat to leave her post in July, Al Jazeera has learned.

Al-Hariri's defection on Tuesday comes just weeks after Nawaf Fares, the ambassador to Iraq, quit his post.

Tuesday's defection deals a harsh blow to the Syrian government as the regime battles a near 17-month-old uprising. In an interview with Al Jazeera, Bassam Imadi, a former Syrian ambassador to Sweden, said that Hariri's defection is also significant because she is the niece of Farouk al-Sharaa, Syria's vice-president.

"It must be very embarrassing to the regime that one of his [Sharaa's] closest officials is defecting," he said.

Imadi added that other Syrian ambassadors, including the envoys to Germany, the Czech Republic, and Belarus, had defected, but have not announced it publicly due to fears over government reprisals.

Another top defector, Brigadier General Manaf Tlass, called on Tuesday for the Syrian military to denounce what he described as crimes committed by President Bashar al-Assad's forces. "I address you...as one of the Syrian Arab Army's sons who reject the criminal behaviour of this corrupt regime. The honourable people in the military would not accept these crimes," Tlass said in a televised statement on al-Arabiya television.

Tlass, a friend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and a son of a former defence minister, said that Syrians should work together to build a new, democratic country. It was his first public appearance since he left Syria earlier this month. His long silence raised questions about whether he had joined the anti-Assad uprising or merely fled the civil war.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syria Defector Tlass Urges Transition, Slams Army Attacks
2012-07-18
[An Nahar] General Manaf Tlass, a key military defector and ex-ally of Bashir al-Assad, called Tuesday for a political transition in Syria and condemned military attacks on civilians in a statement sent to Agence La Belle France Presse.

In his first statement to the media since his defection was announced on July 6, Tlass said the regime held "the majority of responsibility" for the crisis and confirmed he was in Gay Paree.

As heavy fighting
... as opposed to the more usual light or desultory fighting...
raged in the Syrian capital Damascus
...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
, Tlass expressed anger that security forces were being used to suppress dissent.

"I sincerely hope that the blood stops flowing and that the country emerges from the crisis through a phase of constructive transition that guarantees Syria its unity, stability and security, as well as the aspirations of its people," Tlass said.

"I am ready like any other Syrian, with no other ambition, to fulfill my civic duty to contribute to a better future for my country, as much as I can, and like all those... who have already made many sacrifices," he said.

However,
the difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits...
 he did not specifically call for Assad to step down or say that he was joining the Syrian opposition. French officials had earlier said he was "in contact" with the opposition.

Tlass, 48, is the highest-ranking military officer to have abandoned the Syrian regime, as a member of the inner circle of power and a childhood friend of Assad.

"I cannot but express my anger and pain at seeing the army pushed to carry out a fight that is against its principles, a fight directed by security forces and in which the people, including the soldiers, are the victims," he said.

"When I took a position and refused to take part in the security action, I was isolated, accused and even labeled a traitor," he said.

"But my conscience, my deep conviction, pushed me to challenge this destructive action and to distance myself."

A general in the elite Republican Guard charged with protecting the regime, Tlass is the son of former defense minister Mustafa Tlass, a close friend of Assad's late father and predecessor, Hafez.
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Manaf Tlass: From Golden Boy to Dissident
2012-07-07
[An Nahar] Syria's Manaf Tlass, a top general with close ties to Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs...
, has been transformed from a "golden boy" of the Damascus
...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
 regime into a member of a growing dissident movement with his defection.

The change comes after the regime brutally repressed dissent in his hometown of Rastan in Homs province of central Syria.

An attractive man of 48, Tlass is married to a woman from the Damascus upper middle class. An enthusiast of fancy cars, he smokes cigars and is a regular at fashionable cafes in Damascus. His favorite holiday spot is the French Riviera.

Born into Syria's inner circle of power, Tlass' father Mustafa was a close friend of Assad's late father and predecessor, Hafez, who ruled the country for 30 years until his death.

Manaf became a close friend of Bassel, the strongman's eldest son and heir apparent before he died in a 1994 car accident.

The two men embarked on a military career, just like their fathers had in the 1950s, after meeting at a military academy in Homs. The two joined the elite Republican Guard, the country's top military force.

"Mustafa Tlass made a wise decision: he raised his eldest son Manaf to be an army man, and his second-eldest Firas to join the business sector," Syria expert Fabrice Balanche told Agence La Belle France Presse.

Firas went on to "take charge of the company MAS, which supplies the Syrian army with food, clothing and medicine. It was a monopoly handed to the Tlass family by Hafez al-Assad because Mustafa was one of the regime's Sunni guarantors," he said.

Both members of the ruling Baath party, Hafez al-Assad and Mustafa Tlass were posted in Cairo from 1958 to 1961 for the duration of the United Arab Republic of Syria and Egypt, whose existence they both opposed.

When Assad took power in 1970, Tlass became defense minister.

The only difference between them was that Assad was an Alawite -- an offshoot of Shiite Islam, accounting for 10 percent of the population. Tlass, on the other hand, is a Sunni Mohammedan, a member of Syria's largest community.

Manaf was the eldest of a family of four children. A general in the Republican Guard, he was sidelined more than a year ago because he was deemed unreliable, according to a source close to the regime.

Tlass undertook several unsuccessful reconciliation missions between regime loyalists and rebels in Rastan and the southern province of Daraa.

Months later he gave up his military uniform and opted for civilian clothing. He set up residence in Damascus, where he let his beard and hair grow long.

Another source in Damascus told AFP that Tlass' ties with the authorities became irreconcilable after the regime's fierce assault on the Homs district of Baba Amr in February that cost hundreds of lives.

Tlass reportedly refused to lead the unit tasked with reclaiming the former rebel stronghold, and Assad subsequently told him to stay at home.

The source said Tlass was furious when Assad refused to promote him from brigadier general to divisional general or commander, when the yearly promotion list was published on July 1.

Sources close to Tlass say his family is now in Dubai, including his brother Firas. After the uprising against Bashir al-Assad broke out in March 2011, the businessman wrote a blog post supporting the uprising.

Tlass's cousin Abdel Razzak defected from the military several months ago, and heads the rebel Free Syrian Army's Farouk Battalion in Homs.

"The Tlasses were pampered by the regime because they were the guarantors of Sunni loyalty in central Syria," Balanche said.

"But when they were no longer able to fulfill this role, there was no longer any cause to hold on to them, especially given that their predatory attitude was contributing to the explosive situation in Rastan."
Link


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Assad’s childhood friend, a trusted military chief, defects
2012-07-06
‘Gravest blow yet’ to Syrian regime

Manaf Tlas, one of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s closest friends and most trusted military colleagues, who is also the son of the Assad regime’s former long-serving defense minister, has defected from the Assad regime and fled to Turkey, in what one analyst described Thursday as the gravest blow yet to Assad’s regime.

Manaf Tlas and Bashar Assad have been friends since childhood, and the Tlas family, who are Sunni Muslims, have played a critical role in maintaining support for the Alawite Muslim Assads within the Syrian Sunni community. Colonel Tlas was a battalion commander in Assad’s elite Republican Guard.

According to Israel’s Channel 2 news, Tlas’s father Mustafa, who was the Syrian army’s chief of staff from 1968-1972, and then served as minister of defense from 1972-2004, has also abandoned Bashar Assad, though more discreetly. “He had slipped quietly away to Paris,” said Channel 2′s Ehud Yaari, a respected Arab affairs analyst.
Likely a stop in Zurich along the way...
Many other members of the Tlas family hold senior positions up to and including the rank of general in the Syrian army, Yaari said, and it was hard to imagine that they would long continue in those positions now that Manaf Tlas had defected.
If they're smart they're already in Paris...
Manaf Tlas held failed talks with Syrian opposition leaders soon after anti-Assad unrest erupted in March of last year, the BBC reported at the time. Tlas was quoted then as saying that while Syria needed reform, Bashar Assad was the reformers’ best hope.

Manaf’s brother, Firas, is a billionaire businessman and part of the Sunni merchant class who have hitherto widely supported the Assad regime, Yaari noted. Now based in Dubai, Firas has lately been in contact with the Syrian opposition, Yaari said.
Dubai isn't Paris but it'll do...
Yaari said Syrian state media briefly reported online on Manaf’s defection earlier Thursday, calling him a traitor, but then removed the item and had since issued no official comment.
Link



Warning: Undefined property: stdClass::$T in /data/rantburg.com/www/rantburg/pgrecentorg.php on line 132
-12 More