Turkey Deploys Antiaircraft Units Along Border With Syria: Regional tensions surrounding the crisis in Syria tic... http://nyti.ms/NERvS6
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian insurgents struck at high-profile targets in the capital region on Thursday for the third time this week, demonstrating their increasing effectiveness and reach in the conflict.
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Ihlas New Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Turkish military trucks carried missile batteries on Thursday in the province of Hatay.
SANA, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The attack on the pro-government al-Ikhbaria satellite broadcaster began before dawn on Wednesday near Damascus.
The latest was a double bombing — one bomb detonated in the parking garage of the Palace of Justice in downtown Damascus, according to Syrian state television, and the other at a city police station, according to local residents. The day before, anattack destroyed another pro-government television station, and late Monday the opposition Free Syrian Army struck the barracks of the elite Republican Guard, next to the palace of President Bashar al-Assad. These assaults followed a wave of high-level military defections from President Assad’s forces, and a surprise visit by the former head of the opposition Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun, who crossed into Syria and toured what he called “liberated territory” in Idlib, a city near the southern Turkish border.
While none of these developments were militarily decisive, they have helped build a public perception that the opposition, while still clearly underdogs fighting a massive military machine, was finally making some headway.
Even President Assad, who has repeatedly belittled the Syrian insurgency as an insignificant and unpopular movement led by what he calls foreign-backed terrorists, has tacitly acknowledged the tenacity of his opponents, telling the cabinet on Tuesday that the government was engaged in a war.
The Syrian opposition has been far less successful off the battlefield at creating any impression that it has created organized momentum. A bewildering array of groups claim to speak for the movement, including public figures who still cooperate with the Assad government and members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. Abdul Baset Sayda, the current head of the Syrian National Council, an umbrella organization of expatriate dissidents, was chosen from the Kurdish minority in Syria as a compromise figure whom everyone could agree on.
All of Syria’s nongovernment opposition forces are expected to come together at a meeting convened by the Arab League in Cairo on Sunday. That such a gathering is happening for the first time in the 16-month uprising is telling.
“There’s consensus on the essentials,” said Fayez Sara, a prominent opposition figure who has remained inside Syria. “The regime has to be removed.” Beyond that, however, differences are rife. Mr. Sara said he had not yet even decided if he would attend the Cairo conference.
