Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basin Ozeti
hoping to ward off the assault. None
called back. The army killed three
people and arrested 70, including his
wife's only brother. He has not been re¬
leased.
When news of the attack reached
Aleppo, General Idris pretended ta his
fellow officers that nothing was amiss.
"I could not tell them that the army
came and destroyed the village they
would have arrested me, accused me of
being a traitor who supported the revo¬
lution."
He had just poured his savings into
building his dream retirement house. It
was destroyed, too. "I had not sat in my
house for even an hour," he said wist¬
fully.
General Idris, soft-spoken and
humble compared with many military
men, said he received hundreds of tele¬
phone calls daily, some angry, from
commanders across Syria.
He dispatches what he can. But he de¬
scribed a mysterious system whereby
unknown donors pay money to arms
dealers within Syria. When he requisi
tions supplies, the black marketers fill
the orders if the accounts are full. He
can usually getthe Kalashnikov bullets,
rocket-propelled grenades and small
mortars that he needs. But if the acr
counts are empty, he gets nothing.
Many rebel -battalion commanders
were civilians before the uprising. Hav¬
ing organized a brigade from a few hun¬
dred men in their villages, they balk at
taking orders and refuse to coordinate
attacks.
"They want everything from the chief
of staff weapons, ammunition,
money," General Idris said. "But if you
ask them what did you do with the am¬
munition and weapons, and how did you
spend the money, well, they don't like
any commander to ask them what they
are doing. But we cannot work in this
way."
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litralb^^feSribimc Tuesday, march 5, 2013
General Idris said he could work with
most of the Islamist factions fighting in
Syria, putting their number at about 50
percent of the rebels. The exception was
al-Nusra Front, blacklisted by the
Syrian rebels seize
BEIRUT
city, reports say
Keeping control of Raqqa
could signal turning point
in other areas of country
BY HANIA MOURTADA,
ALAN COWELL
AND RICK GLADSTONE
Syrian rebel fighters seized much of the
contested north-central city of Raqqa on
Monday after days of heavy clashes
with government forces, smashing a
statue of President Bashar al-Assad's
father in the central square and occupy¬
ing the governor's palace, according to
activist groups and videos uploaded to
the Internet.
If the insurgents manage to gain and
retain control of Raqqa, capital of Raqqa
Province, it would signify a potentially
important turn in the two-year Syrian
conflict. Raqqa, a strategic city on the
Euphrates River, would be the first pro¬
vincial capital completely taken over by
the armed resistance to Mr. Assad.
For the government, the loss of Raqqa
would diminish the prospects that Mr.
Assad's military, now fighting on a num¬
ber of fronts, could retake a vast swath
of northern and eastern Syria from the
rebels.
The Raqqa news coincided with re
ports from Iraq that at least 40 Syrian
soldiers who had taken temporary
refuge from rebels on the Iraqi side of
the border on Sunday were killed on
Monday as thé Iraqi military was trans¬
porting them back into Syria on a bus.
Iraqi officials said the bus was damaged
by bombs and that unidentified gunmen
killed most of the occupants. If con¬
firmed, it would be the most deadly case
of cross-border violence between Iraq
and Syria since the Syrian conflict
began.
Rebel videos posted on YouTube
about the Raqqa takeover included the
destruction of a statue of Hafez al-As-
sad, the former president and father of
the current president, whose family's
four-decade-long control of the country
is now threatened by the insurgency.
Footage showed anti-Assad activists
pulling down the statue down, its head
smashing in the fall.
The Local Coordination Committees,
a network of anti-Assad activists in Syr¬
ia, said the governor's palace in Raqqa
had been seized by insurgents. An activ¬
ist reached by phone in Raqqa, Abu
Muhammad, said he also believed that
the palace had been "completely liber¬
ated." The whereabouts of its loyalist
occupants was not clear.
"The only place still under control of
the regime, in the entire province of
Raqqa, is the military security build¬
ing," the activist said. "Clashes are rag-
United States. He said that they were
helpful in the fight estimating that
they had 3,000 men but it was the only
group he labeled extremist.
For security, General Idris rarely
sleeps in the same place for two nights
running. He takes the dangers he faces
with a little black humor, interrupting
the interview to call his wife "to tell her
that I am still alive."
Over all, General Idris said he
thought the war was progressing well
for the rebels. The government was re¬
sorting to tactics like long-range Scud
missile attacks because it lacked sol¬
diers, he said, but the rebels needed the
supplies promised by Western and Arab
leaders more than ever.
"I would like to say to the decision
makers in these countries, you cannot
only listen to the news about Syria and
watch the TV, to see the massacres and
the destruction and wait," he said. "Ifyou
still delay the decision to support Syria,
you might take the decision when it is too
late. Then Syria will be like Somalia."
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ing there right now between the heroes
of the free army and regime forces."
Raqqa had been under insurgent
siege for days, but a breakthrough came
Saturday when government forces
abandoned the city's central prison. The
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,
a Britain-based anti-Assad group with a
. network of observers inside Syria, said
fighters from Al Nusra Front and other
insurgent units seized the prison and re¬
leased hundreds of inmates.
Earlier Monday, anti-Assad activists
reported heavy fighting was raging be¬
tween rebels and government forces
backed by tanks and warplanes in
Horns, the central Syrian city that had
been relatively quiet recently.
Details of the clashes were imprecise,
but the Syrian Observatory said fight¬
ing flared in several neighborhoods of
Homs after government forces had
launched an offensive to dislodge rebels
on Sunday.
An activist in Homs, contacted via
Skype, who identified himself as Abu
Bilal, said there had been a successions
of "explosions that shook the entire