‘United States will increase aid to Syrian opposition’

The United States will increase aid to Syrians and the Syrian opposition in an effort to speed a political transition in Syria, a White House spokesman said yesterday.

“We are constantly reviewing the nature of the assistance we provide to both the Syrian people, in form of humanitarian assistance, and to the Syrian opposition in the form of non-lethal assistance,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters at a briefing.

Washington has sided with the Syrian opposition in seeking the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power.

“We will continue to provide assistance to the Syrian people, to the Syrian opposition, we will continue to increase our assistance in the effort to bring about a post-Assad Syria,” Carney said.

The Washington Post has reported that the White House was considering a shift in policy toward the nearly two-year-long conflict in Syria and may send the rebels body armour and armed vehicles, and possibly provide military training. According to the report, US officials still oppose providing arms.

Meanwhile the capital city of Syria, Damascus, is besieged by both sides. In a city lived in for seven millennia, it may take more than two years of civil war to put a full stop to the genteel round of dinner parties and walks in the park for the affluent folk of downtown Damascus.

But from out in the grim suburbs, rebels incensed at their prosperous neighbours’ passivity lob in more bombs and President Bashar al-Assad’s forces make their presence ever more heavily felt around his stronghold, disrupting comfortable old routines and setting fear gnawing at Damascenes’ cocoon of civilisation.

Many feel trapped between an unloved authority in the form of the 43-year-old Assad dynasty and hungry revolutionaries at the gates, who resent the city’s privileged lifestyle.

Though fighting has turned parts of the outer sprawl of the capital of more than 1.5 million into an urban battlefield, especially since major rebel advances last summer, and though some 70,000 Syrians have been killed since protests began two years ago, central areas of Damascus long remained untouched.

But that is changing as frontlines encroach and as troops and the shabbiha militias loyal to Assad reinforce the garrison around his power base. Noticeable too is how people who have fled homes in the suburbs have been camping in downtown parks.

Then last week three car bombs exploded in central Damascus, killing dozens. Hours later, mortars fell on the wealthiest district of Maliki, where dozens of high-ranking government officials and the prosperous merchant class live.

One landed next to the home of the foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, a few minutes walk from the private residence of the President himself. Another fell on a building formerly owned by Assad’s uncle, Rifaat, now banished in exile. From the building, which houses top officials, hangs a portrait of the President.

Outgunned by forces dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels have made little headway in reaching the centre. After the devastation suffered by the suburbs from rockets, rebel attacks on the city centre are sparse in comparison. But those living there see them as an outlet for mounting resentment among the Sunni poor on the outskirts over what they see as sympathies for Assad among the wealthy downtown, not just among Alawites but also prosperous Sunni merchant families.

Rebels have repeatedly called on downtown Damascenes to join them, even if only through turning their backs more firmly on the Assads, in civil disobedience. Many feel let down, even by those in the city who would welcome change, suspecting them of putting fear of revolution ahead of their dislike of Assad.