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| Syrian soldiers show their loyalty to the regime. Defections are understood to have risen sharply since the massacre in Houla. |
A senior Syrian military officer has described how he defected
to opposition forces after witnessing hundreds of pro-regime militiamen
carry out the now infamous massacre of more than 100 civilians in the
town of Houla one week ago.
The account of Major Jihad Raslan comes as the United Nations' special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, yesterday warned of an increasing risk of imminent war in Syria. "The spectre of an all-out war with an alarming sectarian dimension grows by the day," Annan told an Arab League gathering.
His concerns follow warnings delivered on Friday by the United States, Britain and the UN Human Rights Council, which voted overwhelmingly to condemn the Syrian regime for the Houla killings.
The killing of so many civilians, among them 49 children and at least 20 women, continues to galvanise international anger against regime officials and their loyalist militias, which have widely been blamed for what took place.
Raslan served until last Saturday in the Syrian Air Force in the strategically vital port city of Tartous. He had been in Houla on leave when the town was shelled just after 1pm last Friday, then invaded by a civilian militia, known as the Shabiha, in the worst single atrocity of the Syrian uprising.
The officer's account to the Observer of what took place is among the most important of the testimonies to have emerged since the massacre, the aftermath of which appears to be causing fresh turmoil inside Syria 16 months after the first stirrings of revolt inspired by the Arab spring.
Raslan said he was in his house, around 300 metres from the site of the first massacre in the village of Taldous, when several hundred men whom he knew to be Shabiha members rode into town in cars and army trucks and on motorbikes.
"A lot of them were bald and many had beards," he said. "Many wore white sports shoes and army pants. They were shouting: 'Shabiha forever, for your eyes, Assad.' It was very obvious who they were.
"We used to be told that armed groups killed people and the Free Syria Army burned down houses," he said. "They lied to us. Now I saw what they did with my own eyes."
He said the killings in his area were over in around 15 minutes. However, the rampage in other parts of Houla continued until the early hours of Saturday, according to eye-witnesses and survivors.
"Those victims who were slaughtered are people that I knew well," Raslan said. "These children I knew well, personally. I ate with their families. I had social ties with them. The regime cannot lie about these people, who they were and what they did to them. It was a brutal act by the regime against people who were with the revolution," he said.
Raslan said that he served on a missile base in Tartous, removed from the grinding everyday savagery of Syria's uprising. "I knew they had been lying, but I had not been exposed to the effects of it. This was the first time I had seen anything like this."
He said defections had increased sharply in the days following the massacre and he claimed to know of five defectors who were shot dead as they tried to flee through olive groves not far from Houla the day after the killings.
"Many more want to leave," he said, "but they can't. All holidays have been cancelled by the military. It is a very serious risk if anyone tries to flee now. I was only allowed to go on leave because of exceptional family circumstances."
A second defector from Houla, a first lieutenant who was serving in nearby Homs city last weekend, said that Houla had changed the thinking of soldiers and officers like him who did not support the regime crackdown on dissent but had been too afraid to leave.
The lower ranks of the Syrian military are largely made up of Sunni Muslims, who account for around 70% of Syria's population and who now dominate all ranks of the Free Syria Army.
Senior officers in the loyalist military are mostly drawn from the Alawite sect, which uses an uncompromising police state to maintain its iron-clad grip on Syrian society.
"There were no Sunni soldiers around Houla itself [when the massacre took place]," the former officer said. "They are all Alawites there, the officers and the soldiers. "[Houla] is a very sensitive area. Many of the Shabiha in Syria come from here. They won't defect from here."
The officer said he had regularly seen Shabiha groups work alongside regime forces, but said they appeared to take orders from intelligence officers, particularly the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, which has played a frontline role in the regime crackdown. "The military give them weapons and cover, and escort them in tanks," he said. "But they sometimes work independently."
Few cracks have appeared among Assad's core support base, with the upper ranks of the military remaining supportive of the crackdown, which is being portrayed by Damascus as a battle against foreign-backed Sunni jihadists who are trying to overthrow the regime.
"In other places away from Houla, it is not impossible that the Alawites might defect," the officer said. "They are starting to be worried now, starting to fear that Bashar [al-Assad] might leave.
"I want to get my two brothers to leave. It is a very sensitive, dangerous situation for my family. Everyone is at risk. From the beginning we knew that they were lying. Everything was a lie. But my family is the most important thing. We need to protect each other."
Shelling has continued on most days since the massacre and Raslan said Houla residents believed that regime forces were targeting houses where massacres had taken place. "They want to destroy the evidence," he said. "They want to kill the witnesses."
US state department says photos taken over Syria show mass graves being dug after regime loyalists killed more than 100
The account of Major Jihad Raslan comes as the United Nations' special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, yesterday warned of an increasing risk of imminent war in Syria. "The spectre of an all-out war with an alarming sectarian dimension grows by the day," Annan told an Arab League gathering.
His concerns follow warnings delivered on Friday by the United States, Britain and the UN Human Rights Council, which voted overwhelmingly to condemn the Syrian regime for the Houla killings.
The killing of so many civilians, among them 49 children and at least 20 women, continues to galvanise international anger against regime officials and their loyalist militias, which have widely been blamed for what took place.
Raslan served until last Saturday in the Syrian Air Force in the strategically vital port city of Tartous. He had been in Houla on leave when the town was shelled just after 1pm last Friday, then invaded by a civilian militia, known as the Shabiha, in the worst single atrocity of the Syrian uprising.
The officer's account to the Observer of what took place is among the most important of the testimonies to have emerged since the massacre, the aftermath of which appears to be causing fresh turmoil inside Syria 16 months after the first stirrings of revolt inspired by the Arab spring.
Raslan said he was in his house, around 300 metres from the site of the first massacre in the village of Taldous, when several hundred men whom he knew to be Shabiha members rode into town in cars and army trucks and on motorbikes.
"A lot of them were bald and many had beards," he said. "Many wore white sports shoes and army pants. They were shouting: 'Shabiha forever, for your eyes, Assad.' It was very obvious who they were.
"We used to be told that armed groups killed people and the Free Syria Army burned down houses," he said. "They lied to us. Now I saw what they did with my own eyes."
He said the killings in his area were over in around 15 minutes. However, the rampage in other parts of Houla continued until the early hours of Saturday, according to eye-witnesses and survivors.
"Those victims who were slaughtered are people that I knew well," Raslan said. "These children I knew well, personally. I ate with their families. I had social ties with them. The regime cannot lie about these people, who they were and what they did to them. It was a brutal act by the regime against people who were with the revolution," he said.
Raslan said that he served on a missile base in Tartous, removed from the grinding everyday savagery of Syria's uprising. "I knew they had been lying, but I had not been exposed to the effects of it. This was the first time I had seen anything like this."
He said defections had increased sharply in the days following the massacre and he claimed to know of five defectors who were shot dead as they tried to flee through olive groves not far from Houla the day after the killings.
"Many more want to leave," he said, "but they can't. All holidays have been cancelled by the military. It is a very serious risk if anyone tries to flee now. I was only allowed to go on leave because of exceptional family circumstances."
A second defector from Houla, a first lieutenant who was serving in nearby Homs city last weekend, said that Houla had changed the thinking of soldiers and officers like him who did not support the regime crackdown on dissent but had been too afraid to leave.
The lower ranks of the Syrian military are largely made up of Sunni Muslims, who account for around 70% of Syria's population and who now dominate all ranks of the Free Syria Army.
Senior officers in the loyalist military are mostly drawn from the Alawite sect, which uses an uncompromising police state to maintain its iron-clad grip on Syrian society.
"There were no Sunni soldiers around Houla itself [when the massacre took place]," the former officer said. "They are all Alawites there, the officers and the soldiers. "[Houla] is a very sensitive area. Many of the Shabiha in Syria come from here. They won't defect from here."
The officer said he had regularly seen Shabiha groups work alongside regime forces, but said they appeared to take orders from intelligence officers, particularly the Air Force Intelligence Directorate, which has played a frontline role in the regime crackdown. "The military give them weapons and cover, and escort them in tanks," he said. "But they sometimes work independently."
Few cracks have appeared among Assad's core support base, with the upper ranks of the military remaining supportive of the crackdown, which is being portrayed by Damascus as a battle against foreign-backed Sunni jihadists who are trying to overthrow the regime.
"In other places away from Houla, it is not impossible that the Alawites might defect," the officer said. "They are starting to be worried now, starting to fear that Bashar [al-Assad] might leave.
"I want to get my two brothers to leave. It is a very sensitive, dangerous situation for my family. Everyone is at risk. From the beginning we knew that they were lying. Everything was a lie. But my family is the most important thing. We need to protect each other."
Shelling has continued on most days since the massacre and Raslan said Houla residents believed that regime forces were targeting houses where massacres had taken place. "They want to destroy the evidence," he said. "They want to kill the witnesses."
(Guardian Ed) Syria: a hasty intervention could be deadly
The decision to discuss the Syrian crisis before the UN's General Assembly is to be welcomed
The question of what should be done about President Bashar Assad and his brutal Syrian regime is not a new one. For over a year, his security forces and the violent shabiha gangs allied to his regime have carried out killings and abductions with impunity.
What has changed in the last week following the murder of more than 100 people in Houla, including dozens of children, is that a new urgency and disgust has been injected into an escalating crisis that has brought the country to the verge of civil war.
Outrage is the easiest part of responding to Assad's crimes because what have not altered are the intractable complexities of confronting the issue. The challenges are both specific to Syria and its immediate neighbours. They also reflect a world that is more cautious after a decade of problematic, western-led, military interventions, founded on better and worse premises.
These have led to several hundred thousand civilian lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan primarily and, in Libya; they have resulted in the deaths of several thousand allied troops, and have cost trillions of dollars. The results of these interventions have been disappointing at the very least.
It is not unsurprising then that neither political elites nor their voters is clamouring for another war in a difficult neighbourhood bordered by fragile Lebanon on one side and Iran on the other, and one that would involve a modern army well equipped by its principal ally, Russia.
Indeed, when US secretary of state Hillary Clinton spoke on Syria during a visit to Denmark last week it was as much to stress the difficulties of intervening as to raise the prospect that it might happen.
It is a recognition that while it is easy to demand that "something must be done" in response to the latest horrific bloodletting in Syria, what that something should be is much harder to articulate.
Echoing Clinton, Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, set out conditions for any US-led intervention that might follow the now expected collapse of the Annan plan – notably the agreement of Russia and China on a UN Security Council for military action – which make such an expedition highly unlikely in the present circumstances.
Military sources too have been at pains to point out the differences between Libya – where a western-led coalition did intervene in an air campaign – and Syria. The reality is that in Libya the opposition, which had seized heavy weapons in the first days of the uprising, had quickly secured large areas of territory from which to operate.
An intervention in Syria would be much more difficult. Much of the conflict during the last year has not been in open desert but in large population centres in a state in which the geography of conflict is much more tightly enmeshed. As Israel discovered during its protracted adventure in Lebanon, with its complex sectarian rivalries, which mirror Syria's to a degree, it is an easy neighbourhood in which to become intractably bogged down.
They are rivalries that feed into wider regional tensions and competitions, not least those involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, a factor that makes many of the west's leaders even more wary.
If a full-scale military intervention either to topple Assad or protect civilians with ground troops seems off the menu of options for now, a second option – the wholesale training and arming of Syria's rebels – seems equally problematic. Syria's opposition is divided and fractious, with the body prosecuting most of the fighting – the Free Syrian Army – at odds with a barely representative and fissiparous Syrian National Council.
The suspicion of the presence of some fighters related to al-Qaida can only reinforce that caution. Indeed, the weapons that would make a significant difference are not small arms, but armour and sophisticated anti-armour weapons.
Another suggestion has been the creation of "safe zones" along the country's borders, protected by air power. On paper at least, it is an attractive option that would provide safe havens for those fleeing the fighting. But, as the experience of the archipelagos of refugee camps that sprang up in Afghanistan during the first rule of the Taliban and elsewhere has demonstrated, such places can persist for years, creating their own problems. These include the risk of destabilisation of the host state if the existence of such cross-border havens draws neighbours into an expanding war.
Any solution requires the agreement of Moscow without whom there can be no intervention. As Lord Ashdown wrote recently, the west's history of diplomatic mis-steps in its relationship with Moscow, far from making it harder for Russia to say "no" to a proposed solution, has made it easier.
None of which is to say that perhaps in the future, as occurred in Bosnia after the tipping point of Srebrenica, events might dictate a military intervention.
We are not at that stage and unlikely to reach it while Syrian opposition remains an intractable part of the problem. A mechanism needs to be created for an entity to replace the Syrian National Council that would see the quick departure of its deeply divisive chairman, Burhan Ghalioun, to create a representative and transparent body with direct political responsibility for opposition fighters.
As Lord Ashdown has suggested, international diplomacy needs to become more purposeful, building an effective consensus that includes both Russia and regional players, stripped of moral posturing. That must include an insistence that Russia and other regional players with an influence take on a greater role in the search for an end to the violence, rather than fuelling it.
In this light, the decision to discuss the crisis before the UN's General Assembly, thereby widening the scope of the debate, is to be welcomed, not least if it leads to even more punitive sanctions against the Syrian regime and a widening of the threat of prosecution to all and any involved in war crimes.
With the growing threat of regional conflagration, a cessation of hostilities and exit strategy will cost fewer lives in the long run than a chaotic slip to an ever-wider war. What is certain is that a rush to military intervention, without an exit strategy or any notion of what might replace the present regime, will kill more children than those who died in Houla last week. For that is the nature of military interventions and why sometimes the most moral solution is the most complex.
What has changed in the last week following the murder of more than 100 people in Houla, including dozens of children, is that a new urgency and disgust has been injected into an escalating crisis that has brought the country to the verge of civil war.
Outrage is the easiest part of responding to Assad's crimes because what have not altered are the intractable complexities of confronting the issue. The challenges are both specific to Syria and its immediate neighbours. They also reflect a world that is more cautious after a decade of problematic, western-led, military interventions, founded on better and worse premises.
These have led to several hundred thousand civilian lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan primarily and, in Libya; they have resulted in the deaths of several thousand allied troops, and have cost trillions of dollars. The results of these interventions have been disappointing at the very least.
It is not unsurprising then that neither political elites nor their voters is clamouring for another war in a difficult neighbourhood bordered by fragile Lebanon on one side and Iran on the other, and one that would involve a modern army well equipped by its principal ally, Russia.
Indeed, when US secretary of state Hillary Clinton spoke on Syria during a visit to Denmark last week it was as much to stress the difficulties of intervening as to raise the prospect that it might happen.
It is a recognition that while it is easy to demand that "something must be done" in response to the latest horrific bloodletting in Syria, what that something should be is much harder to articulate.
Echoing Clinton, Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, set out conditions for any US-led intervention that might follow the now expected collapse of the Annan plan – notably the agreement of Russia and China on a UN Security Council for military action – which make such an expedition highly unlikely in the present circumstances.
Military sources too have been at pains to point out the differences between Libya – where a western-led coalition did intervene in an air campaign – and Syria. The reality is that in Libya the opposition, which had seized heavy weapons in the first days of the uprising, had quickly secured large areas of territory from which to operate.
An intervention in Syria would be much more difficult. Much of the conflict during the last year has not been in open desert but in large population centres in a state in which the geography of conflict is much more tightly enmeshed. As Israel discovered during its protracted adventure in Lebanon, with its complex sectarian rivalries, which mirror Syria's to a degree, it is an easy neighbourhood in which to become intractably bogged down.
They are rivalries that feed into wider regional tensions and competitions, not least those involving Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, a factor that makes many of the west's leaders even more wary.
If a full-scale military intervention either to topple Assad or protect civilians with ground troops seems off the menu of options for now, a second option – the wholesale training and arming of Syria's rebels – seems equally problematic. Syria's opposition is divided and fractious, with the body prosecuting most of the fighting – the Free Syrian Army – at odds with a barely representative and fissiparous Syrian National Council.
The suspicion of the presence of some fighters related to al-Qaida can only reinforce that caution. Indeed, the weapons that would make a significant difference are not small arms, but armour and sophisticated anti-armour weapons.
Another suggestion has been the creation of "safe zones" along the country's borders, protected by air power. On paper at least, it is an attractive option that would provide safe havens for those fleeing the fighting. But, as the experience of the archipelagos of refugee camps that sprang up in Afghanistan during the first rule of the Taliban and elsewhere has demonstrated, such places can persist for years, creating their own problems. These include the risk of destabilisation of the host state if the existence of such cross-border havens draws neighbours into an expanding war.
Any solution requires the agreement of Moscow without whom there can be no intervention. As Lord Ashdown wrote recently, the west's history of diplomatic mis-steps in its relationship with Moscow, far from making it harder for Russia to say "no" to a proposed solution, has made it easier.
None of which is to say that perhaps in the future, as occurred in Bosnia after the tipping point of Srebrenica, events might dictate a military intervention.
We are not at that stage and unlikely to reach it while Syrian opposition remains an intractable part of the problem. A mechanism needs to be created for an entity to replace the Syrian National Council that would see the quick departure of its deeply divisive chairman, Burhan Ghalioun, to create a representative and transparent body with direct political responsibility for opposition fighters.
As Lord Ashdown has suggested, international diplomacy needs to become more purposeful, building an effective consensus that includes both Russia and regional players, stripped of moral posturing. That must include an insistence that Russia and other regional players with an influence take on a greater role in the search for an end to the violence, rather than fuelling it.
In this light, the decision to discuss the crisis before the UN's General Assembly, thereby widening the scope of the debate, is to be welcomed, not least if it leads to even more punitive sanctions against the Syrian regime and a widening of the threat of prosecution to all and any involved in war crimes.
With the growing threat of regional conflagration, a cessation of hostilities and exit strategy will cost fewer lives in the long run than a chaotic slip to an ever-wider war. What is certain is that a rush to military intervention, without an exit strategy or any notion of what might replace the present regime, will kill more children than those who died in Houla last week. For that is the nature of military interventions and why sometimes the most moral solution is the most complex.
Satellite pictures back up Houla massacre accounts
US state department says photos taken over Syria show mass graves being dug after regime loyalists killed more than 100
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| The composite of satellite and on-the-ground images that the US says show mass burials under way in Houla, Syria. |
The US state department has published satellite photos said to show mass graves in Syria after government forces attacked civilian areas.
A website operated by the department is displaying the photos, taken by a commercial satellite, of what it says are mass graves dug following a massacre near the town of Houla. They also show apparent artillery impact craters near civilian areas of a town called Atarib.
The US says the pictures line up with images from the ground supplied by Syrian opposition forces that purport to show the people of Houla burying victims.
Included on the web page of humanrights.gov, run by the state department, are other pictures that apparently show artillery on 31 May near near three Syrian towns and attack helicopters near the towns of Shayrat and Homs. The Syrian regime has not issued a response to the photos.
More than 100 men, women and children were massacred in Houla on 25 May, most of them shot at point-blank range or slashed with knives.
The UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said the people who died from artillery and tank fire were clearly victims of government shelling while the others were most likely killed by shabbiha militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
Damascus has blamed the massacre on the opposition – which Assad has tried unsuccessfully for 14 months to crush, killing more than 10,000 people in the process according to the United Nations. Russia instead blames Islamist militants for the Houla massacre and has used its veto to stop the UN security council sanctioning Syria.
The state department website highlights what it says are before and after satellite pictures showing mass graves near Houla. An 18 May photo from Tall Daww, a village near Houla, shows what the government says is a square that appears to be a flat dirt clearing. Juxtaposed against this is what the US government says is a 28 May photo of the same square that labels rows of newly turned-up earth as "probable newly dug graves/trenches".
A website operated by the department is displaying the photos, taken by a commercial satellite, of what it says are mass graves dug following a massacre near the town of Houla. They also show apparent artillery impact craters near civilian areas of a town called Atarib.
The US says the pictures line up with images from the ground supplied by Syrian opposition forces that purport to show the people of Houla burying victims.
Included on the web page of humanrights.gov, run by the state department, are other pictures that apparently show artillery on 31 May near near three Syrian towns and attack helicopters near the towns of Shayrat and Homs. The Syrian regime has not issued a response to the photos.
More than 100 men, women and children were massacred in Houla on 25 May, most of them shot at point-blank range or slashed with knives.
The UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said the people who died from artillery and tank fire were clearly victims of government shelling while the others were most likely killed by shabbiha militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.
Damascus has blamed the massacre on the opposition – which Assad has tried unsuccessfully for 14 months to crush, killing more than 10,000 people in the process according to the United Nations. Russia instead blames Islamist militants for the Houla massacre and has used its veto to stop the UN security council sanctioning Syria.
The state department website highlights what it says are before and after satellite pictures showing mass graves near Houla. An 18 May photo from Tall Daww, a village near Houla, shows what the government says is a square that appears to be a flat dirt clearing. Juxtaposed against this is what the US government says is a 28 May photo of the same square that labels rows of newly turned-up earth as "probable newly dug graves/trenches".
