It was late July 2012, the start of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting from dawn to dusk. Manaf Tlass was in Mecca in Saudi Arabia. An unstitched piece of white cloth was wrapped around his body like a Roman toga: it was what all Muslim men must wear while on pilgrimage to the holy city.1 It was Manaf’s first time in Mecca; he was performing a lesser pilgrimage known as umrah. (The more important pilgrimage hajj is required by all able-bodied Muslims at least once in their lifetimes.) Manaf was not particularly religious, but he wanted to project a symbolic break with the past and a cleansing of sins to an opposition constituency that was increasingly under the sway of Islamists, particularly inside Syria.
The temperature had eased from a sweltering 110 degrees Fahrenheit as night fell. A bearded cleric at Manaf’s side explained the rituals of umrah as they were trailed by an entourage of uniformed soldiers, security officers, and minders in traditional Saudi dress. They crossed the gleaming marble esplanade of the Grand Mosque toward the Kaaba, the cubelike monument that is Islam’s holiest site, illuminated by giant stadium floodlights.
Saudi Arabia was the first stop for Manaf on a tour that would also take him to Qatar and Turkey.2 All three regional states were deeply enmeshed in the effort to topple Bashar al-Assad. Saudi kings had always exercised a paternalistic role over countries of the Levant, including Syria. The kingdom’s financial largesse was at times vital for both Hafez and Bashar, but it was also part of a relationship that was marred by periods of estrangement because of the Assads’ alliance with Saudi archenemy Shiite-led Iran and the Assad’s embrace of its agenda in the region. In 2006, Bashar castigated the kingdom’s Sunni rulers, calling them “half men” for opposing his ally and Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, in its war with Israel that year, an insult they never forgave. Still, there were extensive kinship ties between Saudi and Syrian families. One of the many wives of King Abdullah was the sister of the wife of Bashar’s uncle Rifaat. Osama Bin Laden’s mother was Syrian, too. Manaf’s brother-in-law, the arms dealer Akram Ojjeh, held Saudi citizenship.
In the 1980s, Saudi Arabia gave refuge to survivors of Hafez’s massacre in Hama, including figures in the Muslim Brotherhood and their families. While Saudis were not hosting those fleeing the carnage three decades later, they were nonetheless eager to take the lead in shaping the military and political battle against Bashar and what came after. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its seasoned but ailing chief, Saud al-Faisal, was often the one articulating the kingdom’s position in official meetings.
But by the summer of 2012 it was another prince, the newly appointed spy chief, Bandar bin Sultan, who was driving the kingdom’s efforts in Syria, albeit from behind the scenes.3 Bandar was the longtime former Saudi ambassador to Washington and veteran of US–Saudi covert operations, including in Afghanistan. He was a figure in the Iran-Contra scandal. A stop in Saudi Arabia was imperative for anyone seeking a leadership role in the post-Bashar Syria that could emerge from the war’s wreckage.
“Bashar must go, these are the [Saudi] king’s orders,” Bandar told Manaf when they met in the coastal city of Jeddah near Mecca.4
Later, Manaf read a televised statement to the Syrian people broadcast by the Saudi-owned channel Al Arabiya. He was clean-shaven and slightly tanned, with strands of his long salt-and-pepper hair falling on his forehead. His shirt was open at the neck. It was a look he always cultivated—the insider with a rebellious streak.5
Reading from a piece of paper, barely looking at the camera, and speaking haltingly and with poor Arabic diction, Manaf sought to convey anger with the regime for confronting the uprising with bullets, tanks, and warplanes; he also maintained some distance from the opposition, both armed rebels and politicians. His underlying message was that there were “noble” people like him within the regime, army, and Bashar’s Alawite community, and that a way should be found to reach out to them to avert plunging deeper into civil war and to preserve the country’s social fabric and institutions. “I call for doing the impossible to protect Syria’s unity and start rebuilding a new Syria not based on revenge, exclusion, and selfishness. Our duty as Syrians today is to comfort one another and deny the regime and others the chance to fuel conflict between us.”
Manaf said his intentions were purely patriotic—but convincing Syrians that someone whose family was at the heart of the Assad regime and entangled in its crimes was now the nation’s savior and an alternative to Bashar was going to be a long shot, especially with a sober, nuanced message. It was by no means the resounding and definitive split with the regime that many in the Syrian opposition as well as their backers, including the Saudis, were hoping to hear from Manaf.
“I came out to express my rage at the events taking place in my country and did not announce I was with the regime or the opposition,” he said later.6
Bit by bit, Manaf was consumed by frustration, disillusionment, and anger as he tried to overcome the past and struggle with his own demons and limitations.
“Manaf, there’s no Syrian de Gaulle,” Éric Chevallier told him bluntly when he arrived in Paris.7 “You are not de Gaulle; it cannot be you alone. I am sorry—I know you, I know who you are. I think you can be part of the solution, but do not tell me you can be the only one—you have to deal with the others.”
Manaf boasted that there were many senior Alawite officers who trusted him and were prepared to defect from the regime—provided that the leadership proposed as an alternative to Bashar was not going to tear down the state and seek retribution from Alawites and others associated with the Assads.8 This was certainly the most desirable outcome for France, the United States, and other Western countries backing the rebellion.
There were, however, serious doubts whether Manaf could deliver, especially after Bashar and his allies closed ranks within both the regime and the Alawite community following the spectacular assassination of Assef Shawkat and other military and security leaders two weeks after Manaf’s departure.
Moreover, the question was whether Manaf, the son of a man who considered himself a pillar of the Assad family regime, was capable and ready to be just a team member in an already fragmented opposition body that was suspicious of his motives, rejected him because of his past, and saw him as potential competition. He also had to wrestle with crosscurrents within his own family. His wife, Thala, pleaded with him to retreat from the scene and not get involved in the conflict.9 She yearned for privacy for their family and feared for Manaf’s life. French secret service agents were assigned to protect him and his family as they settled into their new life in Paris.
Mustafa Tlass moved in with his Parisian socialite daughter, Nahed, in her apartment in the French capital’s affluent Sixteenth Arrondissement.10 The eighty-year-old general was deeply saddened by the turn of events and Bashar’s choices.11 He might also have regretted Hafez’s decision to make Bashar his successor and his own role in the process, but he was loyal to Hafez’s legacy in every other way. Mustafa decided that the best thing to do was to withdraw and remain silent. There were calls by some Syrians in Paris to put him on trial for his complicity in the regime’s crimes, especially in the 1970s and ’80s,12 but he was immune for the time being.
Notwithstanding the ups and downs in France’s relations with Syria, over the decades the Tlasses had rendered important services to the French state, which had a long tradition of standing by what it viewed as its “third world” allies and clients.13 One call from the French ambassador to Mustafa was all it took to chase away rioters who besieged the French embassy in Damascus in 2006 over the Prophet Mohammad cartoons, republished by the French weekly Charlie Hebdo after running in a Danish paper.14 The cartoons, which included one depicting Mohammad as a terrorist, were reprinted by several European papers, sparking a violent reaction across the Muslim world, where many people found them deeply offensive and blasphemous.15 In Syria, the Danish and Norwegian embassies were burnt to the ground, but the French mission remained untouched, thanks to Mustafa Tlass’s intervention.
It was not only his family’s history with the Assads that Manaf had to contend with but also his elder brother’s political ambitions and rivalry. After moving to Dubai in March 2012, Firas Tlass, one of Syria’s oligarchs who for decades profited from his family’s privileged position, sought to cast himself as an active supporter of the uprising and build a following for himself, including on social media.
“Firas Tlass, an opposition leader—what a joke!” was Manaf’s reaction.16 Similarly, Firas, who had been largely kept in the dark about Manaf’s plans, was lukewarm about any future leadership role for his brother. “I am not promoting anyone,” he said after Manaf’s exit. “The country [Syria] deserves better than just a repackaging of the regime.”17
Bashar himself kept quiet for weeks after Manaf’s defection. He deemed it beneath him to address it and did not want to give the impression that he paid any mind to his friend’s exit. So instead, the first reaction came from Bahjat Suleiman, one of Bashar’s ex-mentors and a former mukhabarat chief who was at the time ambassador to Jordan. His son was married to the sister of Manaf’s wife. Suleiman called Manaf a “deserter” and “traitor” and alleged that he had defected because Bashar did not appoint him defense minister in the new government formed in June 2012. He said it was better for Syria to be rid of “microbes and parasites” like him.18
Bashar finally spoke at the end of August 2012 but did not mention by name Manaf or others who defected that summer. He said he had been fully aware or at least had had strong suspicions that certain people—“the cowardly, weak, and corrupt”—planned to flee. “This is a positive process, a self-cleansing process for the state and homeland,” said Bashar in an interview. “It was conveyed to us that several persons were about to flee Syria. What did we do? We said, ‘Let’s facilitate [his departure], let him go… There was an inclination to stop them, but we said no, stopping them would not be correct. The exit of these people was the right thing.”19
Bashar’s statement only made matters worse for Manaf, fueling the perception that perhaps he had left Syria with Bashar’s knowledge and blessing. There were suggestions that the Tlasses had worked out a deal with Bashar or that Bashar had allowed the Tlasses to slip out of Syria because he felt it was the least he could do for them in return for decades of service and devotion to the Assads. There were some who even believed that Manaf’s defection was staged and that he was secretly still loyal to Bashar and was on a mission to infiltrate and co-opt the opposition. Many people he considered friends and acquaintances kept their distance, just to be safe. A family friend who also left Syria told Manaf, “Before anything, you should redeem yourself. You should publicly ask the Syrian people for forgiveness for your family’s history and role in the regime.”20 Manaf was deeply hurt because he had personally pleaded with Bashar a few years earlier to spare this friend’s husband from arrest by the mukhabarat.
Those who cast themselves as revolutionaries and regime opponents did not want to be seen associating with Manaf, at least publicly. A member of the circle of artists and creative types whom he used to hang out with at bars in Damascus and whom he again encountered abroad did not want to be photographed with him at an opposition gathering in Paris.21 A veteran regime opponent told Manaf: “My advice to the Tlass family is to get out of the scene and politics. It’s impossible for you to have a role after the role you played with Bashar and Hafez. There’s no place for the Assads, Makhloufs, and Tlasses in Syria’s future.”22
Manaf sought council from all his contacts in Paris, including Burhan Ghalyoun, who had recently stepped down from leadership of the main Western-backed opposition body but remained influential. Ghalyoun urged Manaf to work on encouraging Alawite officers in Bashar’s military and security apparatus to defect and join the opposition. He advised that Manaf should return to liberated areas of Syria and show rebels that he was truly on their side. “They have to feel you’re with them, not sitting comfortably in a mansion in Paris while they fight,” Ghalyoun argued.23
Manaf refused flat-out, not wanting to be under the command of another officer, as surely he would be if he joined the rebels. “I am the general who defied Bashar al-Assad!” Manaf told Ghalyoun.24
One opposition leader said Manaf’s biggest problem was his belief that he was the most qualified to lead the opposition, at least the military wing of it, despite serious doubts about his capabilities. Manaf, he said, “was preoccupied with why people were not contacting him and his place in the revolution and military council. He was like a pretty girl waiting for suitors.”25
The opposition was hardly a cohesive body when Manaf left Syria. It was riven by leadership and ideological struggles fueled by the competing agendas of its regional and international backers.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA), for example, despite its central role in the opposition, was a collection of ragtag and loosely linked rebel groups, army defectors, and civilians who took up arms. They had little means initially, but exhibited immense courage and determination in driving out regime forces from their neighborhoods and hometowns.
Many of the defectors who initially fled to Turkey were restricted to camps near the border with their families. Sometimes entire villages fled, fearing harsh reprisals for being associated with defectors. Defected soldiers often moved back and forth—they fought inside Syria and then returned to Turkey for breaks to see their families.
Quickly there were disagreements over who was going to lead the fledgling FSA: defectors or civilians who had taken up arms. There were rifts among the defectors, too.26 There was great mistrust and fear of infiltration, especially after the FSA’s founder, an army colonel who was one of the first defectors, was abducted by the regime when he went back to Syria from Turkey. Backed by Qatar and Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood sought to control the FSA by providing arms and aid to those factions more aligned with its agenda.
By the time Manaf came out in the summer of 2012, Saudi Arabia was actively working to counter the influence of Qatar and Turkey on the ground. Western states like France and the United States, which wanted their regional allies to collaborate rather than undermine one another, pushed for revamping the FSA to give greater say to professional and nonsectarian army officers. For a short while, it seemed that all the regional players were rallying behind a joint leadership for military councils emerging across rebel-held areas in Syria.
The French encouraged Manaf to participate in the efforts underway. Intelligence officers and diplomats from Britain, Germany, and the United States came to Paris to meet with Manaf. He traveled to Jordan, where he met with a hundred recently defected officers in the presence of the Jordanian intelligence services. Almost all were Sunnis like him.27 He talked about the dangers of going too far in embracing Islamist currents in the opposition and told them that Alawite, Christian, and Druze fellow officers were their brothers. An officer whose son was among protesters shot dead in Daraa in the early months of the uprising said that it was hard to forgive Alawites because they had become killers for Bashar.
In Daraa itself, army defections had spiked dramatically, and defectors were carrying out hit-and-run attacks on regime forces; the regime responded by executing those it caught trying to defect and bombing rebellious communities indiscriminately. Every week, thousands trekked for miles to reach the Jordanian border. Families carried meager belongings in plastic sacks or duffle bags. Some children showed up without their parents. Most went to a desert refugee camp in Jordan.
Manaf remained frustrated because Western and Arab officials seemed uninterested whenever he told them that he was in contact with some 120 senior officers from Bashar’s Alawite sect who were ready to defect immediately but needed certain guarantees.28
As regime atrocities deepened sectarian hatred, many in the opposition pressured their regional backers to keep figures like Manaf out of any leadership position. There was a widespread narrative that Western countries including France wanted to rehabilitate and repackage regime insiders like the Tlasses, or worse, bring in an Alawite like the late Assef Shawkat as an alternative to Bashar. “The Tlasses were absolutely hated in rebel communities,” said one member of the rebel leadership council. “When the Syrians told the Qataris his dad was a killer, they said keep him out. The French were the only ones trying to market him. The FSA was already fractured and plagued with many problems. We did not need to add to the mix another problem called Manaf Tlass.”29
Manaf was convinced that his enemies and rivals were waging a smear campaign against him. A deluge of articles, especially in Western media, focused on the background and wealth of his family and its long association with the Assads, suggesting he was frivolous and superficial, a member of the jet-setting elite. The photo that often accompanied these articles showed him chomping on a cigar. A German newspaper called him the “Syrian Alain Delon,” after the 1960s French movie star and sex symbol.30
One of the few Syrian opposition figures championing Manaf was Michel Kilo. Kilo traveled to Moscow from Paris to meet with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, days after Manaf’s defection. He called on Russia to abandon Bashar and said that a national unity government made up of elements of the regime and opposition could lead the country instead and someone like Manaf “with no blood on his hands” could be at the helm for a transitional period.31 The French and their allies thought that this could comfort the Russians, given their warm ties and extensive dealings with the Tlass family patriarch, Mustafa, during his long tenure as defense minister.
Russia’s master, President Vladimir Putin, however was in no mood for compromise with the West.
Putin was just starting to plan his grand Syria gambit; he was on a quest to avenge what he saw as US-led efforts to interfere in his reelection throughout 2012,32 and his ambitions no less than to rewrite the post–Soviet Union and Berlin Wall global order. At the start of his third presidential term in the spring of 2012, Putin increasingly viewed the conflict in Syria and the tumultuous events in the broader Middle East as a unique opportunity to challenge America and project Russian might. Moreover, the idea of citizens in the Middle East rising up to defy longtime despots with the West’s encouragement and support was something that posed a grave threat to his own grip on power, especially given the recent history of the United States backing protest movements and political dissidents in Russia as well as former Soviet republics.33 It was almost inevitable that Putin would use the leverage he had in Syria as part of a broader offensive to combat this perceived threat from the Arab Spring and its potential ripple effects.
In a major foreign policy address delivered on July 9, 2012, Putin assailed what he called “the export of bomb-and-missile diplomacy and intervention in internal conflicts” by the West in the Middle East and North Africa, and he said that Russian diplomats had to adopt a new ethos and be “more active” in influencing situations. It was no longer acceptable to just be “passive observers and follow developments.”34 “I am sure that many of you still have the tragic events in Libya before your eyes,” he said. “We cannot allow a repeat of such scenarios in other countries—in Syria, for example.”35
Muammar Gaddafi had had extensive dealings with the former Soviet Union, and just before the Arab Spring turmoil Putin clinched arms, energy, and infrastructure deals in Libya worth billions of dollars.36 The Libyan dictator’s stunning and brutal demise and the consequent loss of many of these contracts, coupled with Putin’s determination to roll back the wave of regime change sweeping the Middle East, altered his calculus.
In Syria, Hafez had worked to maintain close relations with the Soviets. He built his army with their weapons and advisers, but he was never fully Moscow’s client.37 When the Soviet Union collapsed the Russians largely withdrew from the geopolitical contest in the Middle East, but now Putin wanted to make a comeback—through the Syrian gate. The Russians had a deep and nuanced understanding of Syria; they knew Bashar was no Hafez. The father had made his power while the son inherited it. Bashar was someone who desperately needed Putin—not the other way around.
After agreeing to Annan’s six-point plan in Geneva at the end of June 2012, in mid-July Russia and China once more vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that could at least have given teeth and an enforcement mechanism to this plan, which called on the regime to pull back troops and heavy weapons from populated areas, and on both rebels and the regime to abide by a ceasefire.38 It would have also extended the mandate of a small UN team in Damascus to observe compliance. It was the third veto by Russia and China regarding Syria since March 2011. Annan resigned shortly after.39
As Putin prepared to wade deeper into Syria, Bashar’s principal patron, Iran, was already in battle mode. Iran geared up to provide Bashar with billions of dollars in financial assistance and loans to help the Syrians weather international sanctions and to replenish the regime’s fast-emptying coffers. Iran also stepped up delivery of weapons and ammunition to Syria by air via Iraq, and, along with its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, it began mobilizing sectarian militias to shore up the collapsing Syrian army.40
Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s overseas covert operations, was in Damascus on the day that Bashar’s brother-in-law Assef and his associates were killed in mid-July 2012. Soleimani helped orchestrate the regime’s vicious response to rebel attacks inside Damascus and to the threats of a palace coup by Assef and others.41 After meeting with Bashar the following month, the personal representative of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Saeed Jalili, said, “What’s happening in Syria is not an internal matter but a struggle between the axis of resistance on one hand and the enemies of this axis in the region and world on the other.42 Iran won’t allow under any circumstances the breakup of the axis of resistance, of which Syria is a fundamental part.”
Alarmed by Iran’s deepening involvement in Bashar’s defense, and frustrated by what they saw as the absence of American leadership and Obama’s reticence toward the fast-moving events in Syria, Gulf Arab states led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia lobbied the United States and their European allies to allow them to significantly increase arms supplies and other forms of support to Syrian rebel groups fighting the regime. The Saudis were already frustrated with Obama over the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq at the end of 2011, which they considered a win for Iran, given its influence over the Iraqi government and its support for militias there, too. France’s foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, recalled that “there was tremendous pressure by the [Syrian] resistance and Arab allies that we help them to create a favorable situation” in the war against the regime.43
So when attempts to precipitate a collapse of the regime through defections and the Damascus offensive failed, regime opponents and their outside backers shifted their attention to Aleppo, Syria’s business and industrial center.
Except for scattered protests in poor, working-class neighborhoods that were brutally confronted by regime thugs, Aleppo remained mostly quiet during the first year of the uprising. Loyalist merchants and business owners who were eager to protect their interests and prevent Aleppo from being swept up in the revolutionary fervor paid thugs from two notorious clans, the Berris and Hamidis, to make sure no one dared to rise up.44 Things changed in early 2012 with the influx of families from Homs fleeing regime attacks there. University students organized large and animated protests. Some of the neighborhood protests also started to get larger and bolder, but the response from the thugs and mukhabarat was savage. Protesters were often attacked with truncheons, knives, and swords.45
Meanwhile, swathes of the countryside in Aleppo and the adjacent province of Idlib were already in the hands of rebel factions that included Islamists and Free Syrian Army groups. As the regime was busy dealing with the rebel incursion in Damascus in mid-July 2012, rebels from the countryside around Aleppo overran several military and security positions east and south of the city center. Many of these fighters had until recently worked in factories owned by the city’s prominent families. An Aleppan businessman close to Bashar described it this way: “They got weapons and saw a chance to challenge their masters. This is human nature.”46
The schism between city and countryside was deep in Aleppo. Rebels were welcomed as liberators in several working-class neighborhoods like Salahuddin, where many of the inhabitants hailed from the countryside or were related to the fighters. Rebels took over police stations in several neighborhoods and rounded up those suspected of having been regime collaborators and informants. Several members of the Berri clan, accused of being pro-regime thugs, were captured, tortured, and then lined up against a school wall and executed by rebels in a hail of bullets lasting almost a full minute as a crowd of spectators cheered “Allahu akbar!”—“God is greatest!”47
In response Bashar dispatched large military reinforcements to Aleppo, but instead of dislodging the rebels, the fighting engulfed the entire city, including its architectural gem—the ancient quarter with its maze of vaulted souks, historic mosques, and stone homes at the foot of the famed citadel. Regime forces ransacked and burned most of the shops in the old souks, while rebels looted the factories on the city’s edges.48 The city would settle into four years of grinding, almost primordial warfare, with the regime holding the traditionally more prosperous west side of the city and the airport, and rebels controlling the poorer east side connected to the countryside and their main supply line from Turkey.
The momentum that Bashar’s opponents had that summer from defections by military and civilian regime figures, as well as territorial gains by rebels inside Syria, started to dissipate. Still, the opposition was certainly in no mood for compromise with Bashar, especially as regime atrocities increased. It believed that victory over the regime on the battleground was near and inevitable.
The reality, however, was far more complex. By the summer of 2012, what had begun as a people’s struggle for liberation from their oppressor was becoming a multilayered conflict that more and more drew in outside powers and their agendas.
While rebels seemed sure they were going to topple the regime, some of their backers, particularly the United States, were no longer so confident. Bashar and his allies behind him demonstrated in no uncertain terms how far they were prepared to go to defend Damascus and hang on to power. Aircraft and heavy artillery were deployed; Alawites and other minorities were armed; massacres were committed in rebellious communities and Bashar’s own brother-in-law Assef Shawkat was eliminated by the regime after his loyalty became suspect. According to Obama, Bashar “doubled down in violence on his own people.”49 There was also another development that the world had to contend with: indications in the summer of 2012 that Bashar and his inner circle were weighing the possibility of deploying chemical weapons in battle.
Manaf’s ex-colleague, Republican Guard commander Bassam al-Hassan, was one of Bashar’s main advisers on weapons procurement and his point man in dealing with the Scientific Studies and Research Center, which operates all the sites producing nonconventional arms like chemical weapons.50 Syria had for a long time possessed stockpiles of chemical weapons including mustard gas, nerve agents such as sarin and VX, and blister agents, and had developed the means of delivering them with rockets and missiles.
In the summer of 2012, the United States started receiving intelligence that the regime was moving chemical weapons from some of its sites but said that it was unclear whether this was done to transport them to more-secure locations or to actually use them. “We have been very clear to the Assad regime,” said President Obama, “but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That would change my equation.”51 He went even further, warning of “enormous consequences.”
At precisely the same moment that Obama spoke in mid-August 2012, Bashar began deploying a crude but horrific weapon against civilian populations in rebellious communities. In addition to intensifying airstrikes by the regime’s fleet of Russian-made MiG jets, empty oil barrels loaded with TNT and packed with pieces of steel rods and shrapnel were tossed from helicopters. These so-called barrel bombs were capable of bringing down buildings and tearing the flesh of anyone caught in their path. They were among the weapons used to attack at least ten bakeries and breadlines in Aleppo city and the surrounding countryside in August 2012 alone, killing at least 100 people and maiming dozens.52
That month US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with her Turkish counterpart to discuss the possibility of establishing a no-fly zone at least in northern Syria, which would encompass Aleppo and Idlib provinces, where the overstretched regime was increasingly resorting to helicopters and warplanes.53 This was a concrete way to protect civilians in opposition areas and would also send a forceful and unequivocal message by the United States and its allies in the face of Bashar’s crimes and Russia’s intransigence. Moreover, it could have given Bashar’s opponents the space they needed to demonstrate their ability to govern themselves without being preoccupied day and night with bombs raining from the sky. Turkey, a member of NATO and host to a major US airbase nearby, said it would do everything possible to make the no-fly zone work. The French were also keen, signaling that they would be ready to participate in its enforcement over parts of Syria.
Nevertheless, a no-fly zone in Syria was “not on the front burner” was the response from Washington through Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. He said that the United States could successfully enforce such a zone but it would require a “major, major policy decision.”54
Laurent Fabius, France’s foreign minister, said his government was informed by Washington that such an undertaking required a “significant military commitment.” The French were told that one of the obstacles to implementing a no-fly zone was the need to work out “de-confliction” arrangements with Russia, meaning avoiding the possibility of military confrontation with Moscow while the coalition operated in parts of Syria’s airspace.55 That made little sense, because at the time Russia’s involvement and presence was limited to the weapons it supplied the regime and its military advisers in western Syria, where it had a small naval base on the Mediterranean to repair and refuel ships.
Fabius and other French officials believed that Obama’s unenthusiastic reaction to the no-fly zone idea that summer had more to do with the fact the US president was deep in campaign mode ahead of the November 2012 elections.56 For Obama, intervening in Syria, even in a limited way, was a slippery slope toward another protracted and costly Middle Eastern adventure like the US invasion of Iraq.
Instead of immediate and resolute action by the West to stem the mounting carnage and stream of refugees fleeing Syria, the United States and its European allies stuck with an already bankrupt and failed UN process to deal with the crisis, a decision that bought Bashar and his allies ample time and made the situation on the ground catastrophic and infinitely more complex.
The regime’s grisly message came in the closing days of summer 2012.
After the rebels’ foiled attempt to bring the battle to Bashar in Damascus, there was a particularly gruesome assault on the opposition stronghold of Daraya, next to the capital, that bore all the hallmarks of the take-no-prisoners and kill-them-all solutions inflicted on Hama in 1982 and favored by regime fanatics.
Forces led by Maher al-Assad’s Fourth Division, which was among the army units equipped with the latest Russian-made tanks, helicopter gunships, and rocket launchers, pummeled Daraya nonstop, forcing rebels inside to abandon their resistance and withdraw to the outskirts. In the mop-up operations that ensued and in which Alawite militiamen also participated, mass executions were carried out of civilians who hid in their homes, cellars, and even in the town’s cemetery.57 The focus was on males of all ages. About 500 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the bombardment and executions that followed.58
There was then a concerted effort by the regime to make sure Daraya stood out as a cautionary tale to opponents and Syrians at large, the so-far neutral majority that Bashar often referred to in his interviews and discourse.
The assailants filmed themselves rounding up men for executions. “Shall I liquidate them for you!” shouted a man in military uniform and a baseball cap and speaking with a distinctly Alawite coastal accent as he and another armed man in military fatigues made six Daraya men in civilian clothes lay facedown on the ground. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs.59
A correspondent from Addounia TV, the station owned by Maher’s cronies, was brought in to portray the carnage as the work of “terrorists” and mock those who had protested for freedom. With her camera in tow, Micheline Azar flitted between the dead bodies of men, women, and children who were shot in the head by regime snipers as they attempted to flee Daraya.60
Azar interviewed a dazed and wounded woman in the cemetery about her husband and male children from whom she said she had been separated as they were escaping to Damascus. Azar also spoke to a small girl covered in the blood of her dead mother, who lay in the back of a motorbike rickshaw. A small boy who appeared to be the girl’s brother was still alive and propped up against his mother’s body. A younger child next to them was motionless with what looked like a gunshot wound in his head.61
“This is first and foremost a war of wills… Everybody wishes the job is finished in weeks, days, or hours. This talk is illogical. We are waging a global and regional war and we need time to conclude it,” Bashar told Addounia days later, never once mentioning the Daraya butchery.62