Syrian rebels retake Aleppo base.
Opposition group meets to decide stance on Geneva talks
BEIRUT — Syrian rebels began a counteroffensive in the northern city of Aleppo, recapturing a base near its international airport hours after the army advanced into the area, activists said Saturday.
The fighting came as members of the main Western-backed opposition group began a two-day meeting in Istanbul to decide whether they will attend a proposed peace conference the U.S. and Russia are trying to convene in Geneva.
The Syrian National Coalition has demanded that President Bashar Assad step down in any transitional Syrian government as a condition for going to Geneva. Syrian officials have said Assad will stay in his post at least until his terms ends in 2014 and that he may run for re-election.
In Cairo, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby told reporters that the United Nations-Arab League’s top envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, will hold a meeting in early December to decide on a new date and the attendees of the Geneva conference.
“We were saddened and depressed because of the failure of the latest meetings to decide on a date and participants for the conference,” Elaraby said, referring to a meeting in Geneva last week that many had hoped would call for holding the talks later this month. The Arab League had wanted the peace conference to lead to a cease-fire and secure means to deliver humanitarian aid to Syrians, Elaraby said.
Coalition spokesman Khaled Saleh told reporters in Istanbul at the beginning of its meeting that the Syrian government could demonstrate some good-will measures, such as lifting sieges on rebel-held areas. Government soldiers have prevented food, fuel and medical aid from reaching some opposition-controlled enclaves. Assad’s armed opponents have also similarly punished government-loyal areas in their midst.
But even with good-will measures, many in the coalition will resist calls to attend unless Assad agrees to step down in a transitional government, a highly unlikely development.
In Aleppo, al-Qaidalinked rebels and other Islamic fighters recaptured the Brigade 80 base that had protected the city’s airport, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center said. The government has not confirmed losing the base.
The government-held Aleppo International Airport, which has been closed because of fighting for almost a year, is one of the Syrian rebels’ major objectives.
In other Syria news, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 30 journalists are currently kidnapped or missing in the region, and 52 have been killed since Syria’s civil war began in early 2011.
The widespread seizure of journalists is unprecedented and has been largely unreported by news organizations in the hope that keeping the kidnappings out of public view may help to negotiate the captives’ release.
The group also has documented at least 24 other journalists who disappeared earlier this year but are now safe.
In a report this week, Paris-based Reporters Without Borders cited higher figures, saying at least 60 “news providers” are detained and more than 110 have been killed.
The discrepancy stems from varying definitions of what constitutes a journalist because much of the reporting and news imagery coming out of Syria is not from traditional professional journalists.
Only 10 of the international journalists currently held have been identified publicly by their families or news organizations: four French citizens, two Americans, one Jordanian, one Lebanese, one Spaniard and one Mauritanian.
The remaining missing are a combination of foreign and Syrian journalists, some of whose names have not been publicly disclosed over security concerns.
Jihadi groups are believed responsible for most kidnappings since the summer, but government-backed militias, criminal gangs and rebels affiliated with the Western-backed Free Syrian Army also have been involved with various motives.
By discouraging even experienced journalists from traveling to Syria, the kidnappings are diminishing the media’s ability to provide unbiased insights from inside the country into one of the world’s most brutal and combustible conflicts.
The kidnappings have helped shift the narrative of the war in a wider sense:
What might have at first seemed to many like an idealistic rebellion against a despotic ruler now is increasingly viewed as a chaotic affair in which both anti-Western extremists and criminal gangs have gained dangerous influence
“It is vital that journalists witness and tell the story of the Syrian civil war,” said John Daniszewski, senior managing editor for international news at The Associated Press.
“However, the impunity with which journalists are attacked and kidnapped in this conflict means that we must be doubly cautious. It is not an arena for novices, and extreme care needs to be exercised to obtain the news. At the same time, actors in the civil war must acknowledge and protect the right of journalists to cover it fairly and accurately as a basic human right.”
Recent abductees include Spanish journalist Marc Marginedas, who has not been seen since his car was stopped by armed jihadists Sept. 4 near the western town of Hama, and French journalists Nicolas Henin, Pierre Torres, Didier Francois and Edouard Elias — all missing since the summer.
American freelance photographer Matthew Schrier, who escaped in July from an Aleppo basement after seven months in captivity, said his captors tortured him for his credit-card and bank passwords and used his money to shop on eBay.