by Chas Danner
Juan Cole updates us on the Assad regime's assault on Aleppo, which has now started in earnest:
The Baath government’s attack on East Aleppo, a rebel stronghold in the past couple of weeks, began Tuesday night, with an assault by advanced Russian-made tanks. It began with a drive to cut the district in two, and the heavy shelling is said to have left large numbers of rebel fighters dead. Some 20,000 residents of Salahuddin are said to have fled in recent days, some of them living in schools and other temporary shelter elsewhere in the city, some of them fleeing to Turkey or stuck with scorpions and sand in a Jordan refugee camp. In the past 24 hours, some 2400 Syrians crossed to Turkey, including regime officers and troops who were defecting.
His analysis:
The regime has to hope against hope that Aleppines will blame the Free Syria Army for the military operations in their city, rather than blaming Damascus for responding heavy-handedly. So far, from what we can tell, that hasn’t been the case, and more and more of the country has turned against the government as it has become more and more brutal. On Tuesday, the Prime Minister defected to Jordan. If you are a dictatorial regime, you never want to hear the phrase “the prime minister defected.”
From what EA's James Miller has been able to find out, contrary to other reports, the battle lines in Aleppo have not moved, "The FSA appears to be able to defend the city, but they are not in a position to launch an offensive against the nearby Assad troops, soldiers that outnumber them perhaps 3 or 4 to 1." Meanwhile Farnaz Fassihi investigates [WSJ] the kidnapping of 48 Iranian men by anti-regime forces. The Iranian regime originally insisted they were in Syria as "pilgrims":
"Everyone on this trip was either a Guard or a Basij militia. This wasn't a regular tour group," said an employee of the [Iranian] tour agency that organized the trip[.]
Their purpose:
[T]he people familiar with the trip said the men were active members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, on a mission to train Syrian forces in counterinsurgency methods as its armed forces fight a decisive battle in Aleppo. That would represent the strongest suggestion of Iran's involvement in Syria's 17-month uprising and could further dig Iran into isolation in the region, fueled by anger among its Arab neighbors for its support of President Bashar al-Assad.
Reuters reports on the other foreign fighters involved in the conflict – Islamists who formerly fought for insurgencies like the one in Iraq:
Seventeen months into the uprising against Assad, Syria's rebels are grateful for the support of Islamist fighters from around the region. They bring weapons, money, expertise and determination to the fight. But some worry that when the battle against Assad is over they may discover their allies – including fighters from the Gulf, Libya, Eastern Europe or as far as the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area – have different aims than most Syrians.
