"Assad’s Brother Seen Linked to Syria Chemical Attack! (Who Knows..but this is Put Out There)
Assad’s Brother Seen Linked to Syria Chemical Attack
By Terry Atlas & Sangwon Yoon - Aug 28, 2013 8:32 AM ET
The powerful brother of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is suspected of authorizing the chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of Syrian civilians, according to a United Nations official who monitors armed conflicts in the region.
Enlarge image Assad’s Brother Seen Linked to Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, right, and his brother Maher al-Assad, left, attending their father's funeral in Damascus in this June 13, 2000 file photo. Photographer: Ramzi Haidar/AFP via Getty Images
Maher al-Assad, the younger brother of the president, commands the regime’s Republican Guard and controls the Syrian Army’s 4th Armored Division, an elite unit that the opposition says launched the Aug. 21 attack on the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital, Damascus.
The use of chemical weapons may have been a brash action by Maher al-Assad rather than a strategic decision by the president, according to the UN official, who asked not to be named.
Identifying the chain of command behind the chemical attack would go into calculations about who, what and how to strike in any retaliatory action, the UN official said. If Maher al-Assad is the culprit, for example, a Republican Guard stronghold may be targeted rather than a presidential facility, the official said.
Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, doubts that such an important action -- openly defying U.S. President Barack Obama’s “red line” against the use of chemical weapons -- would be done without Bashar al-Assad’s approval.
“It’s inconceivable to me,” Landis said in a phone interview. “There has been nothing to indicate that Bashar is just a figurehead.”
Shadowy Figure
For now, Maher’s role is largely a matter of conjecture. He’s a shadowy figure with a reputation for loyalty to his brother and brutality toward their opponents. Early in the uprising, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly denounced his “savagery.”
“I don’t doubt that he is ruthless, but I also don’t doubt that Bashar is ruthless,” said Landis. “Is he more ruthless than Bashar? I think that is a useless line of inquiry because they are both killing people with abandon.”
The opposition says as many as 1,300 people, many of them women and children, died and many more were injured in the pre-dawn attack after rebel advances in the area. UN inspectors visited the area on Aug. 26 to gather evidence from victims and the attack scene to help determine whether and what kind of chemicals were used. Their mandate doesn’t extend to determining who was responsible.
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation today said the Syrian government must be held “legally and morally” accountable for the “heinous” crime, according to a statement issued by the group.
Odd Timing
The timing of the attack was surprising because the UN chemical-weapons inspection team was already in Damascus, initially assigned to investigating several previous small incidents. Also, it came at a time when the regime, bolstered by Iran and the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia, has strengthened its position and recaptured some lost ground.
The Assad brothers are bound together in a effort to maintain their family’s four-decade rule in the face of an uprising by the dominant Sunni population and an influx of radical Islamist fighters allied with al-Qaeda. More than 100,000 people have died since the uprising began with peaceful protests in March 2011, according to the UN.
Their father, Hafez al-Assad, who took control of Syria in a 1970 coup, established a security structure that relied on loyalty from family, those who shared their minority Alawite faith, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and some members of the country’s Sunni elite, as well as some Christians and members of the Druze sect.
MUCH MORE AT this LINK:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-27/assad-s-brother-seen-linked-to-syria-chemical-attack.html
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