Russian Official: “NATO Prepares Invasion In Syria”

Russian Carrier

The head of the Russian Security Council on Thursday was quoted by Bloomberg to have said that the NATO countries and some of the Gulf allies are preparing an intervention in Syria after the failure of the Arab League mission to bring the regime in Damascus to end the bloodshed that has been going on for 10 months now.

Nikolai Patrushev, who is also a former director of Russian Federal Security Service, said that Turkey would play a key role in this development, and that along with the United States army is planning to install a no-fly zone over Syria in order to protect the rebels. The no-fly zone would be executed according to a Libya-like scenario, Patrushev said.

The Russian officials have spoken of such plan over the last months, when Dmitry Rogozin, Russian ambassador to NATO, said that an invasion in Syria was imminent, and that it would happen in two weeks (since the moment he spoke about it).

Rogozin pictured this intervention as a means to prepare a larger scale attack on Iran, the archenemy of the Western countries in the region. The fact that Syria continues to have ties with Iran is at the same time a reason to invade it and a reason to stay away from it.

The prevision proved to be wrong for that moment, but the plans for an invasion were never completely discarded.

Turkey spoke of a major role it should play in the region earlier this week, when it warned that Syria was sinking into civil war. Patrushev said that this invasion won’t have France or Britain as starring actors in it, but the Turkish forces, which are the second-largest force of NATO and the largest in the Middle East.

Turkey said last year that any possible scenario for Syria must take it into consideration, because the Syrian problem is an “internal problem,” referring to the long term cultural, political and religious ties between the two countries, which were part of the Ottoman Empire up until modern times.

Russia has sent a flotilla in the Syrian port of Tartus, led by a aircraft carrier, in what seems a gesture of solidarity to an old friendly nation. Russia has systematically opposed any sanctions against Syria at the United Nations, considering that a repetition of the Libyan scenario in this Arab country was unacceptable.

On Wednesday, the US State Secretary Hillary Clinton advised the Arab League ministers to terminate their mission of peace in Syria, after failing to convince Assad to stop killing people. 400 people were reported killed since the Arab League arrived in Syria.

The same day, Syrian opposition rejected the accusation that the “armed terrorist” fire would have killed the French journalist Gilles Jacquier in the city of Homs, saying that it was a mortar shell which killed him as it was fired by the security forces.

Jacquier is the first Western journalist to die in Syria since the unrest began ten months ago. He was attending a pro-governmental rally in Homs, as part of the tour in the restive city, when he was hit by a shell fired by the security forces. Eight Syrians also died on that occasion.

The Syrian Revolution General Commission, which is a group of 40 opposition factions united in Istanbul, Turkey, in order to create a democratic society in the post-Assad era, said that the security forces have fired two shells from a vehicle at journalists gathered for the event.

The organization also said that 24 people were killed in Syria on Wednesday alone, while hundreds were injured. Local Coordination Committees said that the death toll was of 25.

The death of the French journalists coincides with the shocking appearance of the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in front of the people gathered in Damascus in a rally in his favor.

Assad appeared relaxed and wearing a jacket and no tie, told the people he was drawing strength from them, announced them that the conspiracy against the nation was one step from failing in its purpose. Thousands of people in Damascus seemed ready to believe the story of the man who is accused of having slaughtered 5,000 people over the last 10 months.

Assad’s appearance in public was a rare one, but judging by what they chanted one could be assessed that the public was made mainly of the Alawite people, the members of the religious sect to which the presidential family pertains.

His participation at a rally comes a day after the speech he delivered on national television, on which occasion he spoke of defeating the conspiracy, rebuilding the country, bright future, and about the fact that he did not give the order to the security forces to shoot people.

His plea comes at a time when the former president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, was accused of having given the order to shoot with live ammunition in the unrest in Egypt last January.

The lawyers of the 800 families who lost dear ones on that occasion are close to proving that the president was at least aware of the orders to shoot to kill and did nothing to stop the bloodshed, and demanded the death penalty for him and six collaborators of his.

President Assad reiterated that he gave no such order to his security forces, and that under the constitutional provision no one had a right to shoot unless they were in self defense or entrenched in a clash with someone who had fired upon them.

In an interview last year for an American television channel the Syrian president said that only a madman could order the security forces of his country to shoot at the people. He explained the number of deaths, which in his opinion was grossly exaggerated by the Western media, by personal mistakes, that is those people got shot due to the over-zeal of the people with the guns in their hands.

Anyway, Assad believes that most of the people who died in Syria since the unrest started were security forces and police, who died in the line of duty. According to him, those who died and were not security officers, were “thugs” or bystanders killed by the bullets shot from the “thugs’” guns.

On Wednesday, as the president of Syria was promising the crowds that he would use an iron fist against those who want to hurt the country, an observer for the Arab League mission in Syria said that the mission was a farce intended to give Assad’s regime the credibility it lost when they started shooting people in the streets.

The observer was a Tunisian, and refused to continue to work for a mission that was under the criticism of the Syrian opposition since day one, because of its leader, a Sudanese general under suspicion of having at least known about the genocide in Darfur, and because of the areas it visited, peaceful neighborhoods with people minding their daily business.

The Arab League last week determined that the mission would go on, and that its presence there would be helpful in preventing the government from continuing on this course of action. The AL mission is proud that its presence in the field helped release 3,000 political detainees, but the opposition charges that 25,000 still remain in custody.