• Opposition claims Syrian army preparing to attack Homs
• Former Lebanese PM "proudly" backs Syrian uprising
• Muslim Brotherhood boycotts constitution council
Posted by
Matthew Weaver
Friday 9 December 2011 09.12 GMT
guardian.co.uk
Article history
Black smoke rising from an oil pipeline in Homs. Photograph: Sana/EPA
8.36am GMT / 3.36am EST: Welcome to Middle East Live. The central Syrian city of Homs is the focus today as the opposition fears the army is about to launch an assault on the city in an attempt to snuff out the uprising.
Here's a round up of the latest developments:
Syria
• The Syrian army has surrounded Homs and is preparing to launch a "massacre" according to a warning from the opposition Syrian National Council. In a press statement it said:
Evidence received from reports, videos and information obtained by activists on the ground in Homs, indicate that the regime paving the way to commit a massacre in order to extinguish the Revolution in Homs and to discipline by example, other Syrian cities that have joined the Revolution.
It claimed that yesterday's attack on oil pipeline on the outskirts of Homs is being used as pretext for the assault.
• A series of videos from activists show tanks mobilising in and around the city, dissident Ammar Abdulhamid notes.
In a blogpost headline "Prelude to Mayhem" Abdulahamid warns:
>>> Unless world leaders make up their mind and decide that intervention to prevent a crisis is better than intervention to manage, the powder keg that is today's Syria will surely blow and soon.
• Soldiers and activists close to the rebel Free Syrian Army are frustrated by the defensive tactics adopted by the group after talks with the opposition Syrian National Council, according to the New York Times. Abdulsatar Maksur, who helps supply the renegade troops, said: helping to coordinate the Free Syrian Army's supply network, said:
>>> We don't like their strategy. They just talk and are interested in politics, while the Assad regime is slaughtering our people. We favor more aggressive military action.
• Former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri says he "openly and proudly" supports the uprising of the Syrian people, after Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah repeated his support for the Syrian regime. "If Hezbollah openly supports the Syrian regime, we openly and proudly support the Syrian revolution and the Syrian people," Hariri told his Twitter followers, Lebanon's Daily Star reports.
Egypt
• Egypt's new parliament is on course to have no female representatives because the electoral system made it very difficult for women to win, argues Mara Revkin in Foreign Policy magazine. She writes:
>>> At face value, the requirement that each party include a woman on its list looks like a step toward leveling the playing field. But in reality, forcing parties to nominate women has done no favors for female candidates. Parties have dealt with the gender requirement by relegating women to the least desirable slots at the bottom of their candidate lists.
When Salafi parties were required to include women on their candidate lists, they made sure that the candidates' faces were replaced with flowers on campaign materials, because displaying photos of women in public was deemed inappropriate. If the Salafis are already censoring posters, their parliamentarians aren't likely to look favorably on the participation of women in public and political life.
• The Muslim Brotherhood is to boycott an advisory council in protest at the ruling general's decision to give the body the final say on writing the country's new constitution. The Brotherhood accused the generals of trying to undercut the authority of the elected representatives before the house had been fully elected.
• At a press conference on Wednesday General Mukhtar al-Mulla said the council would have the final say because the parliament would not be representative. You can listen to a two hour and ten minute recording of the press conference courtesy of the New York Times.
• The generals don't have the competence, leadership or the "will to power" to rule, argues Issandr El Amrani on his Arabist blog. He makes these points about Scaf's press conference:
>>> • The oddness of making this important statement — the drawing of a red line — to foreigners rather than Egyptian politicians or even the Egyptian public
• That the Scaf has chosen to make this statement indirectly suggests it does not feel confident for a direct confrontation (as over the "supra-constitutional principles") and prefers sending signals at this state
• That this is happening as the new government and its "council of advisors" is being composed, with this council being given powers to guide the appointment of the members of the constituent assembly (a further distancing of Scaf from direct implication in this issue after the failure of the "principles")
• The nonsensical nature of what was said — particularly the idea that the elected parliament does not represent Egyptian society, with the implication that the unelected Scaf does represent that society
• The duelling constitutional challenges of the next few months: on the one hand, parliament seems to have the right to appoint the constituent assembly, but SCAF wants to guide the process; and on the other, SCAF seems to have the right to appoint the government, but the incoming parliament (and Tahrir) want to have a voice in that
Bahrain
• There are growing doubts about the Kingdom's commitment to implement reforms set out by an independent inquiry into the government's handling of the uprising, the BBC reports. Opposition figures dismiss as "window dressing" a committee set up to implement the reforms.
• The Arab Studies Institute's Jadaliyya website claims the original inquiry's recommendations did not match the severity of what it discovered.
>>> For government loyalists, the report was like a bucket of cold water. It effectively told them that they had been lied to. The government's narrative was largely debunked: there was no Iranian involvement, the demonstrations were peaceful, the demands of the opposition are legitimate and did not call for an Islamic republic, military tribunals were wrong, and yes, there was not just systematic but systemic torture. Yet the report adopted the government narrative in some parts, particularly in the chapter about the raids at Salmaniya Hospital and the one about the crackdown at the University of Bahrain, two of the most contentious events.
Iran
• Iran's Revolutionary Guard have displayed an aircraft that they claimed was a US drone brought down over Iranian airspace. They said on Thursday it was downed by electronic means. The US conceded it lost a drone based in western Afghanistan, which American newspaper reports said was part of a intensive surveillance campaign aimed at detecting a covert Iranian nuclear weapons programme. But weapons experts questioned the authenticity of the aircraft put on show by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
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