LITTLE ROCK — Internet service went down Thursday across Syria, and international flights were canceled at the Damascus airport when a nearby road was closed by heavy fighting in the country’s civil war.
Activists said President Bashar Assad’s regime pulled the plug on the Internet, perhaps in preparation for a major offensive. Cellphone service also went out in Damascus and parts of central Syria, they said. The government blamed rebel fighters for the disruptions.
With pressure building against the regime on several fronts and government forces on their heels in the battle for the northern commercial hub of Aleppo, rebels have recently begun pushing back into Damascus after mostly being driven out of the capital after a July offensive. One Damascus resident reported seeing rebel forces near a suburb previously deemed to be safe from fighting.
The Internet blackout, confirmed by two U.S.-based companies that monitor online connectivity, is unprecedented in Syria’s 20-monthold uprising against Assad, which activists say has killed more than 40,000 people.
U.S. State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland condemned the regime’s “assault” on Syrians’ ability to communicate with one another and express themselves. She said the move spoke to a desperate attempt by Assad to cling to power. Regime forces have suffered a string of tactical defeats in recent weeks, losing air bases and other strategic facilities.
Syrian authorities often cut phone and Internet service in select areas to disrupt rebel communications when regime forces are conducting big operations.
The government sent mixed signals about the Internet blackout but denied that it was nationwide. The pro-regime TV station Al-Ikhbariya quoted Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi as saying that “terrorists” have targeted Internet cables, interrupting service in several cities.
Separately, state-run TV said the cutoff was because of a technical failure that affected some provinces, adding that technicians were trying to fix it.
Activists in Syria, reached by satellite telephones unaffected by the cutoff, confirmed the communications problems.
A young Syrian businessman who lives in an upscale neighborhood of Damascus, which some refer to as part of the “green zone” because it has remained relatively safe, sent a text message Thursday that said the Internet had been cut in his area and that mobile phone service was cutting out.
He said he was driving Wednesday through the Damascus suburb of Aqraba, near the airport, and saw dozens of rebel fighters for the first time in the area, riding in pickups and motorcycles and wielding AK-47s.
Their presence so close to the “green zone” may have led to the Internet being cut, said the resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared government reprisal. He said the military was positioned a few hundred yards away from the rebel fighters and had built large speed bumps to enclose the area.
The opposition said the Internet blackout was an ominous sign that the regime was preparing for an offensive.
“I fear that cutting the Internet may be a prelude to a massacre in Damascus,” said Adib Shishakly, a Syrian opposition figure from Cairo. “The regime feels it is being choked off by rebels who are closing in on the capital from its suburbs. It’s a desperate move; they are trying to sever communications between activists.”
Renesys, a U.S.-based network security firm that studies Internet disruption, said in a statement that Syria effectively disappeared from the Internet at 12:26 p.m. Syrian time.
“In the global routing table, all 84 of Syria’s IP [Internet provider] address blocks have become unreachable, effectively removing the country from the Internet,” Renesys said. It added that the main autonomous system responsible for the Internet in the country is the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment, and that “all of their customer networks are currently unreachable.”
Akamai Technologies Inc., another U.S.-based company that distributes content on the Internet, also confirmed the blackout.
Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer at Renesys, said the abruptness of the blackout suggested that it wasn’t because of a severed cable. Syria has several cables that connect it to the outside world, and all of them would have had to be cut at once for a complete blackout. A power failure or an intentional shutdown at central Syrian telecommunications facilities is a more likely cause, he said.
“We saw everything go in three to four minutes, which looks like a light switch,” Cowie said.
He said the profile of the blackout was similar to what the Egyptian government did in January 2011 during the Arab Spring uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak.
Ann Harrison, deputy program director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said in a statement that the group worried that the communications were cut in Syria “to shield the truth of what is happening in the country from the outside world.”
Thursday’s violence appeared to be focused on southern suburbs near the international airport, forcing the military to close the road to the facility. The surrounding districts have been strongholds of rebel support since the uprising began.
At the United Nations, the secretary-general’s office said at least four soldiers assigned to the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force in the Golan Heights were injured in crossfire on the airport road as their unit was heading out for a routine rotation of forces.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the regime has started an offensive around the airport where rebels have been particularly active in recent weeks.
Abdul-Rahman, who relies on a network of activists in Syria, said convoys of government reinforcements were seen heading south toward the airport, which is 15 miles southeast of Damascus. The fighting was concentrated in and around the suburbs of Aqraba and Beit Saham, he said.
The Syrian Information Ministry later said the airport road was secure after attacks by “terrorist groups” on motorists, according to state TV. It was not immediately clear whether the road had been reopened.
The fighting prompted the Emirates airline and EgyptAir to cancel flights to Damascus.
Meanwhile, the United States is moving toward recognizing the Syrian opposition as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people as soon as the opposition fully develops its political structure, U.S. officials said Thursday. The move could be announced at a “Friends of Syria” meeting that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to attend in Morocco on Dec. 12.
A decision on whether to recognize the opposition group is the most immediate that the Obama administration confronts as it considers how to end the Assad government and stop the violence. Britain, France, Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council have already recognized the opposition.
“They are a legitimate representative of the Syrian people’s aspirations,” Robert Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, said Thursday at a conference on the Syrian humanitarian crisis. “They are making real progress, and I expect that our position will evolve as they themselves develop.”
Among the questions being debated within the administration as it weighs recognition are legal issues about the implications of recognition; the effects on the efforts of the U.N. envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, to negotiate a political transition; the attitude of the Russian government; and, most importantly, the state of the opposition.
The United States wants to use recognition as a reward to get the opposition to take the steps it promised at a recent meeting in Doha, Qatar.
The international community is split on how to stop the violence. On Thursday, Brahimi said he had elements for a possible peace plan but they were unworkable while world powers remained divided.
For U.S. options outside the U.N., Ford said providing weapons to rebels remained an option. But he explained why he thought it was still a bad idea.
“Arms are not a strategy; arms are a tactic,” Ford said. “A military solution is not the best way for Syria. Efforts to win this by conquering one side or the other will simply prolong the violence and actually aggravate an already terrible humanitarian situation. Syria needs a political situation.”
Information for this article was contributed by Zeina Karam, Bassem Mroue, Barbara Surk, Matthew Lee, Peter Svensson, Peter James Spielmann, Robert H. Reid, Bradley Klapper and Aya Batrawy of The Associated Press; and by Michael Gordon of The New York Times.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/30/2012