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                      Unease with Assad Regime on the Rise

   by Jamie Dettmer

   A growing number of soldiers and civilians in government-controlled
   areas of Syria are expressing rare public disaffection with the regime
   of President Bashar al-Assad -- non-combatants as well as the military
   in traditionally loyal coastal regions are complaining not enough is
   being done to relieve enclaves besieged by rebels.

   There is rising alarm also at the increasing presence of Tehran-backed
   foreign fighters from Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iran, say political
   activists.

   In recent days, foreign Shi'ite fighters along with militiamen in the
   National Defense Force dispersed young protesters by force in the port
   city of Tartus, according to activists working with the pro-opposition
   television station Halab Today.

   The station reported a wave of small-scale demonstrations erupted in
   several coastal towns earlier this week with the focus of the
   protesters' ire on Iran's mounting involvement not only militarily but
   politically in Syria. Clashes were reportedly especially sharp in the
   town of Jablah 25 kilometers south of the city of Latakia.

   Resentment of Iranian forces inside Syria

   Iran, Assad's closest foreign ally, has supplied crucial support to the
   regime -- from arms supplies to military expertise and funding -- and
   the NDF was trained by Iranian revolutionary guardsmen.

   ''The protests aren't the first seen this summer in Tartus and its near
   neighbor Latakia. On August 12, dozens of residents in Tartus staged a
   sit-in calling on the country's leadership to do more to help soldiers
   at a northern airbase currently besieged by Islamic State extremists.
   They displayed banners urging the government to send a relief force to
   Kwaires military airport to the east of Aleppo.

   One banner at the sit-in staged outside the main local government
   building in Tartus read: "We want the bodies of our martyrs; we want
   the injured; break the siege imposed on our resilient heroes." Most of
   the nearly 100,000 residents of Tartus city are members of the
   President's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

   Even members of the Syrian military showing dissatisfaction with the
   war

   Activists with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based
   monitoring groups that gathers news from informants on the ground, say
   there is mounting anger at the airbase among officers and soldiers,
   some of them conscripts from the coast, over their grim plight.

   "They are convinced the regime has no serious plan to lift the siege,"
   according to Rami Abdulrahman, executive director of the monitoring
   group. They fear the regime will let them face the same fate as the
   loyalist forces holed up in Al-Tabqa airbase, which fell last summer to
   extremists of the Islamic State. More than 250 of the defenders were
   butchered by the extremists after the base fell.

   Tartus has been dubbed "the capital of martyrs" because of the high
   number of men from the town who have been killed serving in the army or
   in militia forces loyal to the Assad regime.

   Latakia, Assad's hometown, likewise has seen a series of recent street
   demonstrations. Protests were sparked initially by local anger over the
   slaying of a prominent local Alawite Colonel Hassan al-Sheikh, a senior
   air force officer, who was gunned down in a road-rage incident by one
   of President Assad's cousins, Suleiman al-Assad.

   The dead man's brother, who was in the car, told Syrian radio station
   Sham FM, "[Suleiman] overtook us and then blocked the road." He added:
   "My brother got out of the car and identified himself as an officer;
   the guy cursed my brother and the Syrian army. He then pointed a
   Kalashnikov out of the car's window and shot at us, and that's when I
   saw my brother was killed."

   Initially no action was taken against the president's cousin but with
   local outrage quickly boiling government authorities arrested Suleiman
   al-Assad for murder promising justice would be done.

   War is moving everywhere, no sanctuary any more

   For much of the war the coastal provinces have been insulated, but now
   they are seeing the conflict come to them. Rebel groups as well as
   Islamic extremists are targeting the coast and near the city of
   Latakia, one of the last major towns in Syria under full government
   control.

   It isn't the first time discontent has brimmed over publicly in
   loyalist areas. Last year, following a string of mass abductions and
   slayings by IS of Syrian soldiers, regime supporters poured out their
   anger in a Twitter campaign questioning how many more sacrifices would
   have to be made before the civil war ends. Small protests have also
   been seen in Damascus.

   In several interviews President Assad acknowledged his forces have
   suffered serious reversals in battles with insurgents. During a
   ceremony in Damascus commemorating Martyrs Day, he referred to rebel
   gains as the "ups and downs" of war, but he painted a more sober
   picture of the fighting and urged Syrians to "boost the morale" of
   Syrian government soldiers.

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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/unease-with-assad-regime-on-the-rise/2934457.html