Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press
Revolutionary flags flew in northern Syria on Friday, the typical day of mass protests. The opposition used the day this week to call on other countries to send arms.
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR and ALAN COWELL
Published: March 2, 2012
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian authorities on Friday blocked without explanation an officially sanctioned Red Cross convoy laden with food and medical supplies from entering a devastated neighborhood in the central city of Homs, one day after the army overwhelmed the main rebel stronghold there after a brutal monthlong siege.
There were unconfirmed reports that Syrian security forces were conducting house-to-house searches and summary executions in the neighborhood, Baba Amr, while the convoy of seven Red Cross trucks was parked at the edge of the neighborhood, where military sentries refused to grant it entry despite official approval 24 hours earlier.
It was unclear why the Syrian military had blocked the convoy. But the convoy organizers said officials had told them that the Baba Amr neighborhood was still not safe. There was possibly a legitimate concern about mines and other booby traps, organizers said, but they were not given a precise reason.
The Red Cross angrily rebuked the Syrian government in a statement that reflected the growing international frustration with delays on funneling help to civilians whose lives have been upended by the uprising in Syria, which is now nearly a year old.
“It is unacceptable that people who have been in need of emergency assistance for weeks have still not received any help,” Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said in a statement from its headquarters in Geneva.
He said the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society, which together had sent the convoy to Homs in the morning, waited all day to enter Baba Amr. “We are staying in Homs tonight in the hope of entering Baba Amr in the very near future,” Mr. Kellenberger said. “In addition, many families have fled Baba Amr, and we will help them as soon as we possibly can.”
He said the “humanitarian situation was very serious then, and it is worse now.”
The convoy’s arrival in Homs came as at least 12 people, including children, were killed in an apparent rocket or mortar attack by the Syrian Army on antigovernment protesters in Rastan, another central Syrian city roiled by the uprising. Graphic video posted online showed hundreds of people protesting, then fleeing in panic at the rocket explosion, which sent body parts flying.
If it succeeds in entering Baba Amr, the relief convoy will give international officials an opportunity to make a detailed assessment of the fighting there since dissident forces withdrew on Thursday. The retreat set the stage for elite government soldiers to turn their attention, and superior firepower, to other insurgent redoubts farther north, despite the increasing international pressure for a cease-fire.
The seven-truck convoy was the fourth in the last two weeks sent by the Red Cross to Homs in conjunction with the Red Crescent Society, which has 10 distribution points across the city. But the violence in Baba Amr had prevented the establishment of one there.
There were only sketchy details of what was actually needed because communications were so poor, organizers said. “We don’t have any concrete information about what is going on inside,” said Hicham Hassan, a Red Cross spokesman.
Friday has traditionally been the day for mass protests across the country, and they even took place in some Homs neighborhoods despite the violence. With all the talk by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others of providing arms to the opposition, demonstrators chose the collective name this week of “The Friday of Equipping the Free Syrian Army.”
A heavy security presence in central Damascus kept the city completely shut down, with no buses or other mass transportation vehicles allowed downtown. Similar restrictions were imposed on the suburbs, but several demonstrations erupted that were quickly dispersed by government thugs, the shabeeha, witnesses said.
“The Assad regime wants to frighten us by making big massacre in Baba Amr,” said Subhi, 24, a protester in the suburb of Midan who gave only one name because of fear of retribution. “I want to say to Bashar, if you kill more, we will demonstrate more. We will not return to our homes after a year of uprising. “
In more distant suburbs like Saqba, hundreds managed to gather to demonstrate, and an activist reached by telephone in Aleppo said numerous small protests had been scattered around the city, Syria’s largest. He said the security services had gathered around mosques to prevent any demonstrations and that four tanks were deployed on the main highway leading into Aleppo from the north.
France, meanwhile, became the latest Western nation to close its embassy in Damascus in a gesture of protest directed at President Bashar al-Assad.
The fighting in Syria has spurred deep international division, with China and Russia vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution, promoted by Arab and Western nations, that called on Mr. Assad to step aside.
There were new signs on Friday, however, that even Russia’s patience with Mr. Assad was wearing thin. In an interview with six foreign newspapers in Moscow, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia distanced himself somewhat from Mr. Assad, refusing to answer the question of whether he could survive as a leader.
“I don’t know. I can’t make this kind of assessment,” he said. “It is perfectly obvious that there are serious domestic problems. The reforms that were proposed obviously should have been implemented long ago. I don’t know whether Syrian society — the government forces and the opposition — can come to an agreement, find some consensus that is acceptable to everyone, but that would have been the best solution.
“The first thing that we should do now is to end the armed conflict and bloodletting,” he said, accusing the West of siding with the Syrian opposition against Mr. Assad.
Two French journalists who had been smuggled out of Baba Amr on Thursday as resistance collapsed, Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro and the photographer William Daniels, were flown out of Beirut on Friday and returned home.
Ms. Bouvier was wounded in the attack last week that killed Marie Colvin, an American war correspondent working for The Sunday Times of London, and the French photographer Rémi Ochlik. The bodies of Ms. Colvin and Mr. Ochlik have been turned over to the Red Cross and the Red Crescent and were taken to a Damascus hospital, where they will be stored awaiting repatriation, said Mr. Hassan, the Red Cross spokesman.
Neil MacFarquhar reported from Beirut, and Alan Cowell from London. Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad and an employee of The New York Times from Beirut; an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria; J. David Goodman and Rick Gladstone from New York; Maïa de la Baume from Villacoublay, France; Ellen Barry from Moscow; and Paul Geitner from Brussels.
A version of this article appeared in print on March 3, 2012, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Syria Blocks Red Cross From Taking Aid to Devastated Rebel Enclave in Homs.
74 Comments
TonyOak Park, IL
Why haven't President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Cameron spoken out against the slaughter of innocents in Syria as they did in Libya? Why is there no united front to oppose the killings? There are many things short of war that can be done to stop the violence. Why are our leaders silent? President Obama spoke out months ago saying that Assad should step aside and his silence now speaks volumes.
March 3, 2012 at 9:52 a.m
Jack JersawitzAtlanta, Georgia
It should be obvious but apparently it is not. Everyone of the so-called Western democracies developed out of repressive regimes necessary to weld together a "modern democratic" nation out of disparate tribes and communities. Actually that is what Locke was referencing when he spoke of coming in out of the cold.
If the developing nations of the Mid-East and other such regions are run by repressive regimes that is so because those nations required repression of different tribal and religious groupings in order to come together and drive out the imperialist crusaders who deliberately set tribe against tribe, religion against religion, even today.
That is why it is necessary for those living in the home imperialist countries to support, against imperialism, the Husseins, the Gadaffis, the present Iranian government, etc., etc. This of course is if you are a revolutionary socialist, a Marxist, a Leninist, a Trotskyist. Internally it may be another matter but not when, as is clear in many of the color revolutions, the Libya "uprising," and similar events the operative hand behind those "uprisings" is that of imperialism.
Current economic events make clear the need to replace capitalism with socialism and a planned economy that produces for need not profit.
In these circumstances the defeat of our own imperialist governments in their colonialist adventures sets the stage for our own revolutions and a socialist future.
Jack Jersawitz
404-892-1238
bigjackjj@yahoo.com
March 3, 2012 at 9:31 a.m
doctor noneither here, nor there
the syrian army apparently learned something from the libyan episode when they hid weapons with the humanitarian aid.
March 3, 2012 at 9:15 a.m
Something elseSomewhere
OK, let's say we agree to start arming the rebels.
A few problems. You may have noticed that the times makes no mention, even in its biased coverage, of the Syrian Air Force being used. We are all so used to only ground action being mentioned (as in Libya) that you probably didn't notice that. The reason the Syrian military is putting butts on the line is because it really doesn't want to bomb Homs to the stone age. That would cost money to rebuild, and also kill good citizens and taxpayers along with the murderous rebels. Not good. So they don't do that, they clear the rebels out manually. Another difference between Homs and, say, Fallujah, Syria isn't using really nasty stuff like napalm or depleted uranium. Maybe it doesn't have the latter, but it could turn the place into a firestorm. After all, we did that to Dresden.
Second, it doesn't matter what arms you give them, you also have to train them in them. Where do you do that, when the rebels have no territory? And what weapons can you give them that make up for absolute Syrian air superiority?
So, arming them isn't going to work. But doing so vests us in the struggle, and when it is clear it ISN'T going to work, the neocons such as the times will start saying stuff like well, we can't let Syria do that to us, and, well, you know, the same arguments that are keeping us in Afghanistan three more years.
Then the war will come. Because only NATO can beat Syria. And that's going to kill a lot of people.
March 3, 2012 at 8:49 a.m
Maggie2
May I remind those whose believe that the uprising in Syria is due to foreign influence that it was only 30 years ago that Assad's father, the brutal Hafez Al-Assad, ordered a similar slaughter of over 10,000 Syrians in the city of Hama. Like father like son, the Syrian dictator will stop at nothing to remain in power. In the meantime, he has lost what little legitimacy he might have had both in his own country and within the international community, and sooner or later he will be forced to give up power.
March 3, 2012 at 8:48 a.m
SCWedeman Arlington, VA
The plight of Syria's people is one of long standing. My dad was a US diplomat stationed in Damascus in about 1980 when Assad, the father, was in power. Simultaneously, he was busy slaughtering the people of Homs, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and anyone else who engendered a frisson of anxiety about his hold on power.
This conflict is not going to go away, even if Assad succeeds in wiping out the entire population. While the geopolitical situation is complicated, the truth is not. To stand by, dithering, as a despot murders his own people - men, women, and children alike - is morally wrong. These courageous people deserve our support and help, no matter what.
March 3, 2012 at 8:43 a.m
kao Penisular
Now that's a crime against Humanity. Game over Assads, you swine.
March 3, 2012 at 8:16 a.m
partlycloudymethingham county ga
For pete's sake, send the rebels some guns and ammo! The USA does everything wrong. We invade Iraq and create a disaster, but we won't help freedom fighters in Syria. We let a whole city be destroyed there.
Give the rebels arms and ammo now.
March 3, 2012 at 8:16 a.m
john michelcharleston sc
What a sad and sickening story. The rest of the world should share the blame for lack of support to the rebels. That imbecile weirdo monster Assad will meet with a bad end though. Unfortunately, many struggling, unfortunate people will be killed by his bully toy military before it's over.
March 3, 2012 at 7:53 a.m
SabbaYpsilanti
One thing must be noted: To support the insurgency is to support civil war, and a full blown civil war could lead to a regional war involving America. And who can stomach that when panic alarms are being sounding about a few officers and soldiers killed because of the Quran burnings.
March 3, 2012 at 7:52 a.m
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