Al-Ahram Weekly | Region | Syria plays with fire

A series of explosions have taken place across the Syrian capital Damascus over the last fortnight, with regime and opposition accusing each other of carrying out the attacks, writes Bassel Oudat in Damascus

According to the Syrian ministry of the interior, a suicide bomber blew himself up in a densely populated area with high traffic flow in the Al-Maydan district of the capital Damascus last Friday, killing 26 and injuring dozens of police and civilians.

The bombing, the second of its kind in Damascus within two weeks, followed two similar attacks occurring simultaneously near Syrian intelligence headquarters in the Kafr Soussa district of central Damascus on 23 December, killing 44 and injuring more than 160.

The timing of the bombings coincided with the arrival of Arab monitors sent by the Arab League (AL) to verify whether the regime led by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad was implementing the terms of the Arab initiative that requires it to stop the killings that have been occurring in the country, withdraw military forces from the cities, and release all political prisoners.

The 23 December attacks took place a day after the first monitors arrived in Damascus, while last week's attack happened a day before the holding of an AL ministerial meeting to discuss reports sent by the monitors about conditions in Syria.

Less than one hour after the December double attacks, the Syrian government accused Al-Qaeda of having carried out the bombings, a Syrian foreign ministry spokesman saying that the bombings were similar to other Al-Qaeda attacks.

"Leader of Al-Qaeda Ayman El-Zawahri has declared his support for jihad against the Syrian regime," a government spokesman said, adding that Lebanon's minister of defence had warned his Syrian counterpart a few days earlier that Al-Qaeda terrorists had crossed into Syria through the Lebanese town of Aarsal and that security experts expected further attacks.

However, some senior Lebanese officials denied that Al-Qaeda members had infiltrated Syria through Lebanon, while others, supporters of the Syrian regime, confirmed the reports. Aarsal residents said that there were no Al-Qaeda elements in the town, and the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah, an ally of the Al-Assad regime, accused the US of being behind the attacks in Damascus.

Meanwhile, members of the Syrian opposition accused the regime of having concocted "a blood-soaked welcoming party" for the Arab monitors by itself carrying out the attacks in order to distract attention from the daily protests taking place across the country.

The banned Syrian Muslim Brotherhood described the attacks as being "an expression of the Syrian regime's methods and bloodthirsty logic," adding that the regime was trying to warn the West that it shared a common enemy.

Syrian opposition figures expressed their surprised at how quickly the regime had accused Al-Qaeda of carrying out the attacks, since the government has been unable properly to investigate civilian deaths in the country for months. They added that the bombings, taking place at a high-security location in the capital, were a sign that Al-Qaeda "has become the bogey-man of the dilapidated [Syrian] regime."

The opposition figures further said that Syrian foreign minister Walid Al-Muallim had said at a recent news conference that "any armed terrorist attack in the presence of international monitors in Syria would not embarrass us but would raise our credibility when we say that armed militias are operating in the country."

After pressure from the country's opposition, the Syrian government released the names of those killed in the dual attacks, but within days members of the Local Coordination Committees (LCCs) that are coordinating protests against the regime said that at least five of the names were those of security officers who had been killed earlier.

The authorities had republished their names as victims of the bombings, the LCCs said, documenting them from official government papers, with observers wondering who had been buried earlier. According to some youth activists, those killed in the dual attacks may have been prisoners deliberately taken to the site of the bombings in order to eliminate them.

After last week's bombing, which took place near a police station in the Al-Maydan district of Damascus, one of the Syrian capital's most active revolutionary neighbourhoods, the Syrian regime was not so quick to accuse Al-Qaeda of having carried out the attack.

Instead, it said that the attack "has the fingerprints of Salafist doctrine" on it, and that specialised units had gathered evidence from the site of the bombing, including human remains and remnants of explosive, in order to find out details of "this terrorist attack and arrest the terrorists."

The Syrian minister of the interior declared that Syria would "respond with an iron fist" to any further attacks.

The Syrian opposition has accused the regime of orchestrating all the attacks, warning that it is "hiding behind Al-Qaeda" in order to justify the killings going on in the country and gain international support.

It called for an international investigation into the bombings, since their primary beneficiary had been "the regime, its agencies, militias and thugs." Only the regime had "the capability and tools to carry out" such attacks, it said.

According to the opposition, the attacks were a further sign that the "escalating conflict in Syria between the regime and the people was becoming a bloody confrontation."

The opposition Syrian National Council (NSC) described the attacks as "aiming to spread chaos and distract attention from the savage crimes of killing and destruction" taking place in the country, in an attempt to convince the world that what was taking place in Syria was about terrorism and not a popular uprising of the people against a tyrannical regime.

The opposition cited footage broadcast on Syrian state television to support its claim that the attacks had been carried out by the regime. In one of the films, the camera pans inside a bus that was allegedly the target of an attack, but the chairs do not have any blood on them.

Another recording shows a hand holding a microphone belonging to Syrian state television placing grocery bags next to pools of blood, apparently to support claims that the bags belonged to those killed.

For its part, the Free Syria Army (FSA), an armed opposition group composed of defectors from the Syrian army, said that it had not been responsible for the attacks. Like the rest of the opposition, the FSA said that what was now taking place in Syria was a case of "state terrorism" and that the regime was behind the bombings.

The FSA went on to accuse the regime of "killing people, arresting citizens, destroying homes, inciting sectarian strife and sabotaging the country."

There was also condemnation of the bombings from the international community. US State Department spokesperson Victoria Noland said that Damascus had blamed "just about everyone, the opposition, Al-Qaeda, and the US," for the attacks.

"Right now, we cannot verify what happened, but what we can clearly say is that we condemn the attacks," Noland said.

Observers speculating on the reasons behind the attacks have pointed to those who might benefit from them. Some members of the Syrian opposition have linked the timing of the earlier dual bombings to the attack using heavy artillery on Jabal Al-Zaweya in the north of the country, in which Syrian security forces killed nearly 250 people in two days.

Opposition figures claimed that the regime had carried out the suicide bombings in order to distract from the massacres in Jabal Al-Zaweya.

The opposition also criticised official claims that those killed in the first two bombings had been residents of the Kafr Soussa district of Damascus, local residents saying that no one from the neighbourhood was missing.

Some analysts said that the corpses shown in official television reports of the attacks were not positioned in a pattern consistent with similar bombings, the opposition adding that this would not be the first time that the regime had doctored footage for its own purposed.

A month ago, Al-Muallim showed the international press pictures of what he said were armed confrontations between civilians and terrorists in Syria, it later being revealed that the photographs were in fact of a battle between Alawites and Sunnis in Lebanon.

Whatever the truth behind the attacks may be, the bombings did not seem to frighten protesters against the Syrian government, who continued to demonstrate and call for the overthrow of the regime.

Last Friday, some 490 protests took place across the country in some of the largest demonstrations to have taken place since protests began ten months ago. The bombings also did not affect the work of the Arab monitors, dozens more arriving in Syria even as the country's opposition said that more observers were needed.

Observers of the situation in Syria remain worried that the regime may be trying to play the Al-Qaeda card to discredit the opposition, warning that Al-Qaeda involvement could turn into reality as a result.

The continuing security crackdown in the country and the sectarian incitement in the official media point to further threats to national unity and civic peace, opening the door to a future marked by terrorism and violence.