Sunday, October 30, 2011

My source in Istanbul meets the Cicero of the Syrian opposition

So this is what my source sent me (I cite with his/her permission) about Cicero of the Syrian opposition:  "As'ad if you use this just say 'from a source in Istanbul' and nothing else)
if Abraham Lincoln had this guy's voice and charisma then blacks would still be slaves in america
he says that all the SNC supports foreign military intervention against Syria, except for Burhan Ghalyun. he seemed to be upset that Burhan is against foreign militaries attacking syria
he calls it a no fly zone but he basically admitted that this is a code word for military attacks on syria and said that this has to be explained to the syrian people on TV, and in public, he will not say he supports foreign military intervention, he will just say that he supports sanctions etc but in private he admits they all support foreign military intervention "One of our failures (as the SNC, he means) is we did not make decision calling for supporting foreign intervention" he says He says that the only solution is foreign military intervention but he also admits that the west has no appetite for it he believes that the psychological shock of the west or the UN declaring a no fly zone will convince alawites and syrian senior generals to abandon the regime and support the opposition because they will see that supporting bashar is taking them down and he thinks that as soon as Alawites and senior officers see American ships off the coast of Tartus and Latakia then they will abandon the regime and it will all be over
all this but he admits that the west has no interest in attacking Syria "The whole Alawite community will be massacred if they go to the end," he says, "so he thinks they will make a rational choice and abandon regime. And he wants a "Taif accord" for syria did you know he is a former dentist? anyway I was struck by how he admitted they basically had no plan, they want foreign military intervention but they realize the US and Europe do not want this I guess there best hope is to provoke a massacre to get the west involved. or predict a fake one like what happened in libya he insists they need a no-fly zone but nobody is using planes against the demonstrators. what a silly imitation of libya he also says that 'only' 30 thousand civilians were killed in libya after the NATO intervention and "only" five thousand of those were killed by the rebels. even if that were true thats more than have died in syria so far (official numbers of activists less than 4 thousand) and at first he insisted that NO libyan civilians were killed by NATO

one other interesting point. how stupid are these people? he said he wants the international criminal court to press charges against Bashar and other senior Syrian government officials, but at the same time he admits that the best solution is a Taif accords for Syria like the one they had in Lebanon. so do you want to put Bashar in jail and negotiate with him at the same time? but I was surprised that he admitted they are still willing to negotiate and pursue a Taif accords sort of agreement"