Message to the world from the revolutionists in Zabadani

 'This is a message to the world from the revolutionists in Zabadani, a lovely city in Syria. Assad Regime is killing us and destroying our city. You are all responsible for our death. Your silence is keeping him strong. Remember, we only wanted to live in a free Syria. Syria for all Syrians.'



 Note 12/5/25, link broken.

Barrel Bombs Are the Greatest Threat to Syrians

 'From the start of the war, the Assad government has pursued a murderous policy toward Syrian citizens who happen to live in areas that have been seized by opposition armed groups. The apparent aim is to kill and terrorize civilians (and destroy civilian structures) so as to drive civilians from opposition-held areas and to send a warning of the misery that attends anyone whose neighborhood is taken by opposition groups. Mr. Assad is thus pursuing the “total war” strategy that the Geneva Conventions and the laws of war flatly prohibit and criminalize.

 Beyond killing civilians, barrel bombs are playing a big part in forcing Syrians from their country. In most wars, civilians can find a modicum of safety by moving away from the front lines. But Mr. Assad’s indiscriminate use of barrel bombs deep in opposition-held territory means that for many there is no safe place to hide. That ugly reality has played a major part in persuading four million people to flee the country.

 Yet the international community has made little effort to stop Mr. Assad’s barrel bombing of civilians. The two governments with the greatest potential to influence Mr. Assad — his principal backers, Russia and Iran — have refused to get him to stop. Western governments have been reluctant to exert strong public pressure on them because of other priorities — Ukraine, in the case of Russia, and the nuclear deal, in the case of Iran. The European Union is putting far more effort into stopping Syrian asylum seekers from reaching the Continent than addressing the root causes of their flight. The United States and Turkey recently announced a plan to make a 60-mile strip in northern Syria an “ISIS-free zone,” but the goal is to fight ISIS militants, not protect civilians.

 Because of Western reticence, too few people understand the extraordinary slaughter that the Syrian military is committing with its barrel bombs. Mr. Assad’s chlorine gas attacks, terrifying as they are, kill a tiny fraction of the barrel-bomb toll, though they have recently attracted more attention than the barrel bombs.

 One reason for soft-pedaling is a fear that ending the barrel-bomb attacks might undermine Mr. Assad’s ability to cling to power, and thus facilitate an Islamic State takeover. But barrel bombs are so imprecise that the Syrian military does not usually drop them near the front lines, for fear of hitting its own troops. They are useful mainly for pummeling civilian neighborhoods.

 President Obama has reportedly been reluctant to act too decisively in Syria for fear that he might then “own” the country and the chaotic mess it has become. But firmer pressure on Syria, Russia and Iran to stop the barrel bombs wouldn’t make the United States responsible for anything other than fewer civilians dead, injured and displaced.'

I Will Always Remember Where I Was When Cecil The Lion Was Killed

 'I often wonder what is wrong with America. You do not hear stories like this in Syria, partly because we already killed all our lions but also because we killed all our dentists.

 The hardest part was explaining to my eldest son why Cecil was killed. He asked if Cecil was a Kurd or a Christian, and I said no, sometimes people and animals are killed for totally unjustifiable reasons.

 I must go now. The Shabiha have surrounded the building to either press gang us into the Army or execute us. No matter. If we die, we die knowing that the infidel dentist has been appropriately punished on Facebook.

 Hopefully I will see Cecil in the afterlife, along with my grandparents who were murdered at the massacre in Hama.

 Hail Cecil!'

Shiite Casualties Show Depth of Iran's Involvement

 'According to open-source data collected from Persian-language accounts of funerals in Iran, 113 Iranian nationals, 121 Afghan nationals, and 20 Pakistani nationals -- all Shiites -- have been killed in combat in Syria since January 2013. (The formidable number of Iraqi and Lebanese Shiite casualties are not included in this survey; for more on that subject, see "Hezbollah's Victory in Qalamoun: Winning the Battle, Losing the War"* and "Iraqi Shiite Foreign Fighters on the Rise Again in Syria.")

 To further complicate matters, the place of death for most of them is listed as "Syria" or "the shrine in Damascus," which is meant to back up the fiction that they were martyred while defending Shiite pilgrimage sites rather than, for example, fighting in Aleppo far to the north.
The Qods Force and its Afghan/Pakistani recruits are spread thin and suffering significant casualties, spurring the deployment of the IRGC Ground Forces to Syria. Even so, Iran is unlikely to abandon its commitment to its proxy regime in Damascus in the short term. The Islamic Republic in general, and the IRGC in particular, have invested so much blood and treasure in the war that they no longer believe they can withdraw their support.'

* 'Given what is at stake in Syria -- the fall of Assad would dramatically complicate Hezbollah's supply lines from its Iranian patrons -- the militia is all in. If the past four years are any indication, the group will continue to hold its own against Sunni rebels along the border and serve as Assad's crack force in strategically important areas. As the war drags on, however, Hezbollah's operational stresses and limitations will become ever more apparent. Bolstered by Tehran and Nasrallah, Assad could hang on for some time, but even his most reliable Shiite allies may not be able to sustain him as the war's attrition increasingly highlights his demographic disadvantage. For better or worse, the only factor that may forestall his seemingly inevitable fall is the estimated $60 billion in sanctions relief that Iran stands to gain after a nuclear deal is inked.'

Nowhere to go, but never at home

 'Turkey has most readily provided Syrians, from all strata of society, with an opportunity to resume a sense of normalcy in their lives. Syrian engineers, agronomists and medical professionals are able to use their expertise to give back to their host country by working in one of the several non-governmental and international organizations that are based in Turkey and provide humanitarian assistance across the border. Others, with considerably lower levels of education, are hired in restaurants or as day laborers where employers can get away with paying lower wages. Even so, compared to the policies of most Gulf countries — Kuwait has banned entry for Syrians altogether – Syrians in Turkey are able to find work and send their children to schools. Refugee camps along the Turkey-Syria border, where more than 217,000 Syrians in Turkey reside, are considered to provide “better living conditions compared to those in other countries.”

Syrians often report being treated with disdain — at best, as guests who must eventually depart or, worse, as intruders who should be expelled immediately. Below the surface of the daily live-and-let-live miracles of Turkey’s support for Syrians as they attempt to restart their lives, one can sense the growing hostility from host communities toward the large Syrian populations living among them. Earlier this year, Turkish parents protested a school’s decision to provide afternoon classes to Syrian children; “Different culture, Different language, Different faith,” they chanted.

Many yet are hopeful they will be able to return to their homes in Aleppo, Idlib, Hama and Homs. While only a few are optimistic about the future, if and when the dust settles, they retain pride in and patriotism for their country and remain resistant. When I asked a Syrian friend of mine if he would like to move to the United States or Europe, his response was emphatic: “We were born in Syria, we started the revolution in Syria and we will die in Syria.” '

Inching towards the end

 'Until early this year two of Syria’s players, the regime of Bashar Assad and Islamic State (IS), were in the ascendant. The tide against both has since turned. Recent analysis by Jane’s, a defence analyst, suggests that after a series of losses to both IS and other, rival rebel groups, the area fully controlled by government forces has shrunk since January by some 16%, to a mere 30,000 square kilometres (11,600 square miles), or barely a sixth of Syria’s territory.

And this was before a recent offensive by a coalition of mostly Islamist militias calling itself Jaish al-Fatah, which on July 28th captured the government’s last salient on the route linking Syria’s second city, Aleppo, to the coast. The advance, which follows the fall in March of a provincial capital, Idlib, and of another big town, Jisr al-Shughour, in April, further consolidates rebel control of Idlib province. Jaish al-Fatah now threatens both the surrounding rich agricultural region and the coastal mountain range that is the heartland of Mr Assad’s own Alawite sect.

Despite the fact that Turkey has long argued for a stronger international effort against Mr Assad, its formal entry into the fray is unlikely to tip the equation decisively against Syria’s regime. Iran, soon to be flush with funds unblocked by the lifting of sanctions, is for now at least still committed to propping up the Syrian leader. Even with better weapons and stronger momentum, Sunni rebels lack both the manpower and unity of command needed for a push towards Damascus, the Syrian capital. Some of their component groups, such as Jabhat al-Nusra, which declares allegiance to al-Qaeda, remain anathema to Western powers who might otherwise be keener to accelerate Mr Assad’s fall.

Despite its success at Palmyra, IS’s “caliphate” is an unhappy place, bludgeoned from the air by coalition strikes and shrinking in size. Kurdish forces have relentlessly expanded since breaking the jihadists’ siege of Kobane last winter, most recently seizing the town of Sarrin on the Euphrates River. While few expect any sudden collapse, many analysts believe that, barring some error by its enemies that would win it a flood of new allies, IS may have already peaked in size and strength.'

It might be said they can't push towards Damascus because the Americans won't allow them to.

Obama's deal with Ankara is a betrayal of Syrian Kurds

 There have been no barrel bomb attacks by Assad in Aleppo for two days, for the first time since 2013*, probably because of the threat of Turkish intervention in the area. Syrian refugees in Lebanon support** the Turkish proposal to create a safe zone in Northern Syria, in the hope they will be able to return home. If you read Patrick Cockburn you will hear none of this, as his project to make the horrors in Syria not about Assad once again requires blaming Turkey.

 'Ankara’s objective is the precise opposite of Washington’s and little different from that of Isis.'

 Get some proportion. ISIS want to set up a brutal caliphate, Turkey wants an end to the genocide in Syria, and the return of the refugees it has generously provided for. There is a bit of a difference.

 'The Turks and their allies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar would like to rebrand the Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, movements, whose beliefs and actions differ little from Isis, as born-again moderates.'

 We've been through this lie before. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have provided support for the FSA Cockburn has spent a lot of time pretending don't exist, but are prepared to acknowledge that groups like Ahrar al-Sham are part of the insurgency and can't be seen as a greater threat than Assad as the Americans do. They were greeted as liberators when they freed Idlib, they didn't chop one head off, they differ quite a lot from ISIS.

 'Al-Nusra abducted Nadeem Hassan, the leader of a small faction trained by the US after careful vetting. And last year, al-Nusra wiped out two groups, the Syrian Revolutionary Front and Harakat Hazm, who were being trained and supplied by the CIA as “a third force” opposed to both Assad and the extreme jihadis.'

 When these groups existed, Cockburn would pretend they didn't. When it was proposed that the US vet rebels, we were told that would be impossible. They weren't being trained as a force opposed to Assad at all, that is why the US cvould only get 54 of them.

 'If US aircraft based at Incirlik are forbidden to attack Isis fighters when they are battling either the Syrian Kurds or the Syrian army, the militants’ two main opponents on the ground...'

 Ignoring the FSA groups who have been fighting ISIS since the start of last year. I can't think of anything more likely to increase support for ISIS than the US acting as Assad's airforce.

 'Close observers of the Syrian armed opposition in northern Syria say that it welcomes the Turkish attack on the PKK.'

 I think we can assume that these close observers are enemies of the Syrian opposition, and no evidence for this lie will be found.

 Richard Spencer has a rather better piece*** suggesting President Obama doesn't want to defeat ISIS until moderate Sunni forces are built up in Iraq and Syria. Joseph Daher has a poor one****, taking all the bad things about Turkey's relationship with the Kurds to pretend that Turkey is encouraging ISIS.
*[https://twitter.com/IbnNabih1/status/627500310571950080]
**[https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/syrian-refugees-in-lebanon-support-safe-zone-proposal/21048]
***[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/islamic-state/11776845/Barack-Obama-does-not-want-to-defeat-Isil-yet.html]
****[https://syriafreedomforever.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/the-terrorist-attack-of-daech-in-suruc-turkey-the-akp-and-the-turkish-deep-state-are-also-guilty/]

A message for Great Britain from Kafranbel

'Haven't you ever heared?'

The Impossible Choices Syrian Refugees Have To Make

 ' "My son is too weak; my body doesn't produce milk (and) ... we can't afford buying milk," says Kutana al-Hamadi, whose 7-month-old son Almunzir suffers from malnutrition. "Our lives are miserable with no food, we only have this not-clean water to fill our stomachs with."

 "We survived the barrel bombs in Syria but I'm afraid we won't survive the lack of health and food," she added.'

Nusra Front abduct leader of US-backed rebels

 Patrick Cockburn this time starts his lies with the headline. The US isn't trying to build an opposition to the régime, but a mercenary force that will fight only ISIS. They've even insisted all recruits sign a pledge to only use US weapons against ISIS and not the régime.

 'A Syrian activist and a second opposition source were quoted by agencies as saying that 54 fighters trained by the US were from Division 30.'

 All 54 of the fighters trained by the US, Cockburn omits to mention.

 'The US has been frustrated by the lack of any moderate military leadership opposed to Mr Assad’s government in Damascus.'

 No, this is another lie. They have tried to get the moderates to fight ISIS and even Jabhat al-Nusra in preference to taking on the régime, without giving them any heavy weaponry, which are two reasons Syrians have seen more Islamist groups as more reliable.

 'It has sought to re-brand itself as being less sectarian and less violent than Isis, saying that Alawites, Druze and other Syrian minorities would not be automatically massacred. But it still insists on their forcible conversion to its fundamentalist variant of Islam which is ideologically close to Saudi Wahhabism.'

 It's four months since the Army of Conquest took Idlib. If there were forced conversions, we'd have heard about it by now. If they were chopping heads off like ISIS, refugees would be streaming away. Cockburn doesn't feel the need for any evidence for his assertions.



 'There are attempts to present Ahrar al-Sham, with between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters, as being anti-Isis, which it certainly is, and a more moderate alternative to the jihadis, which it is certainly not.'

 Again, fact-free.

 'The US is eager not to allow Turkey to relabel Jabhat al-Nusra or its clones as suitable partners in an anti-Assad and anti-Isis front. In practice, it may be some time before any anti-Isis free zone is established because of these differences.'

 So all other anti-Assad rebels are Jabhat al-Nusra clones. That saves the effort of knowing who these people are, they are all mad Muslims, stay away. If an ISIS-free zone is established, and it isn't only inhabited by the mad of the bad, I expect Cockburn will ignore his false prognosis as he usually does.



 There's a more informed discussion of this incident at EA Worldview*:

 'A local activist summarizes the situation for the US-trained rebels:
Sending in the 54 and then bombing JAN a few miles away from their positions — implying the 54 acted as spotters for the US Air Force — looks like constructing a case that “See, all our well-meant support is hopeless”.

 Good folks say the US was totally aware that the solely anti-Islamic State soldiers would find their butts in a Jabhat al-Nusra jail shortly after crossing the border.
There’s only disagreement about the motivation of US actions: evil intention vs. plain stupidity.'

*[http://eaworldview.com/2015/07/syria-daily-did-the-us-abandon-its-54-trained-rebels/]

Iran will not compromise on Syria

 Thomas Pierret:

 'For Iran, what is at stake in Syria is both huge and remarkably narrow: it is Hezbollah. For sure, the alliance with Damascus used to mean more than that for the Islamic Republic, namely, a significant foothold in an otherwise largely hostile Arab state system. Yet, as Syria turned into a failed state beyond repair, its status in regional politics shifted from that of key player to everyone’s battlefield. For Iran, therefore, the only value of those parts of Syria that remain controlled by Asad is that they constitute Hezbollah’s strategic depth.

 There is no political solution in Syria without Iran, but the latter is unlikely to get on board in the foreseeable future. In practice, this leaves Western countries with two options: the first one is to alter the military balance on the ground so as to change Iran’s calculations by making its strategy unsustainable in the short term; the second one is to keep on uttering ritual calls for a negotiated solution during another decade of war.'

Has Syria Been “Sold” To Iran?

 Frederic C. Hof:

 'The truth of the matter is not so attractive. The United States and its P5+1 partners elected to set aside raising slaughter in Syria and Tehran’s decisive role in facilitating with Iran to avoid complicating and perhaps undermining the nuclear negotiations.

 Western leaders, beginning with President Obama, grasp with total clarity the fact that Assad’s scorched earth survival strategy that has made Syria safe for ISIL. They understand with certainty that every barrel bomb, every chemical attack, and every child starved to death is a recruitment lifeline to ISIL, both within Syria and around the world. They fully get it that Tehran’s unconditional support for Assad regime lawlessness highlights the operational bifurcation of Iran’s objectives toward ISIL: kill it in Iraq, where it presents a security threat to Iran and its Iraqi allies; keep it alive in Syria, where it remains Bashar al-Assad’s opponent of choice; their client’s potential ticket back to polite society.

 To “sell” Syria to Iran would, therefore, be to deed much of the country to ISIL. Except when the regime finds itself sitting atop something ISIL wants—an oil field, an airbase, or a desert town filled with priceless antiquities—Assad and the pseudo-caliph find live-and-let-live far preferable to fighting each other. Instead, they focus their respective military energies on eliminating anyone offering an alternative to each. The caliph and Assad want to be the last two parties standing in Syria: Assad so he can confront the West with a “me or them” choice; the caliph so he can recruit around the world as the hero combatting the twin evils of Assad and Washington.

 The other big winner in such a scenario would be Iran: its ability to support Lebanon’s Hezbollah from a secure portion of Syria would be assured. Unlike the canard that the United States is behind the creation of ISIL, the selling of Syria thesis is at least understandable if one appreciates the experiences and perspectives of those willing to reach such a profoundly negative conclusion. Syrians both inside Syria and around the world have felt totally abandoned by the West. They see a senior US official mark the twentieth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre by tweeting, with no sense of irony, “Remember—and never let it happen again.” They watch the Assad regime and Hezbollah do the political equivalent of a victory lap in celebration of what they think their Iranian masters have accomplished for their benefit.

 Mr. Obama has a war to win against ISIL and a vote to win in the US Congress. The common denominator in surmounting both challenges is Iran: specifically, its support of ISIL-sustaining mass murder by the Assad regime. Throwing sand in the gears of Assad’s mass murder mechanisms is essential to winning the fight against ISIL. It may also persuade some fence-sitting Democrats in the US Senate that the administration is not credulous when it comes to Iran.'

On Syria, words don't go far enough

 'More than 11,000 barrel bombs have been dropped since October, according to an announcement for the Security Council meeting, which was called by France and Spain.
Bassam Alahmad from the Violations Documentation Centre in Syria said that 1160 civilians, 290 of them children, had been killed by barrel bombs since Security Council Resolution 2139 passed more than a year ago, calling for an end to these and other indiscriminate attacks.

 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denies that his forces have anything to do with these weapons, but Human Rights Watch says otherwise.

 The government is the only party to the conflict with helicopters.

 The rest of the world is still too divided about who is to blame to do anything to help.'

Turkey-ISIS alliance uncovered

 ' “The oil trade between the jihadis and the Turks was held up as evidence of an alliance between the two,” The Guardian reported on Monday.'

 So the US have raided ISIS, and we are told third hand that their intelligence services have found evidence that they were exporting oil through Turkey with the connivance of some Turkish officials. Compared to the evidence that Assad has not only been buying oil and gas from ISIS, but co-ordinating with them in attacks on Syrian rebels, this seems like a poor attempt to blame Turkey for what is going on in Syria, just as we got the story that Saudi Arabia and Qatar supported ISIS - with the proof that Joe Biden said it - last year, and the year before it was John McCain who supported ISIS, there were pictures to prove it.

The self-government revolution in Syria

 Frederic C. Hof:

 'A young lawyer said something striking: “This is not just a revolution against Bashar al-Assad. It is a revolution for self-government. Replacing Bashar with someone else issuing decrees from Damascus — even someone much better than Bashar — is not acceptable.”

 There are today hundreds of local councils throughout non-Assad parts of Syria. Some operate clandestinely in areas overrun by the so-called Islamic State. Some operate in areas where the Assad regime — with Iran’s full support — unloads helicopter-borne “barrel bombs” onto schools, hospitals and mosques. Some operate in neighborhoods subjected to Iranian-facilitated starvation sieges. These local councils are supported by a vast network of civil society organizations — the kinds of voluntary professional associations that undergird Western democracies. All of this is new to Syria. It is the essence of the Syrian Revolution.

 The alternative to Assad is arising from Syria’s grass roots. That alternative needs to be nurtured and protected by the United States and its partners. And it needs to be connected to external structures recognized by the West as legitimate. Failure to do so to date accounts in part for bizarre concerns vocalized by Obama administration officials that Assad — the mass murderer — may fall too quickly. He cannot fall quickly enough. Yet those in governments who agonize about the seeming absence of alternatives have done far too little to nurture one. They have failed to connect the dots between would-be leaders in exile and those inside Syria who are leading a self-government revolution.'

Out of Aleppo

 ' “We consider ISIS and the regime the same, the regime used to cut the heads of people – what ISIS is doing is not new – the regime burned people and they drowned people. ISIS took the matter of horrific torture from the regime. It’s like they are defying together who is more horrific.”

 Imminent threats led Amin to flee his life in eastern Aleppo, he explains, joining the conversation. Amin was working as a physiotherapist treating civilians and members of the Free Syrian Army when ISIS arrived before New Years Eve last year.

 “Death. Death for everyone,” says Amin, describing what it was like when ISIS arrived in eastern Aleppo.

 “When ISIS arrived all I wanted was to leave. Leave, leave, leave, I felt like my life was threatened and I knew they would condemn me for treating Free Syrian Army people because they had already killed some of my colleagues and medical staff because they used to treat Free Syrian Army, who they consider the enemy.”

 The U.S.-led coalition could bomb ISIS in certain areas, muses J, but are afraid to because of the oil and gas. He says if the international community supported the Free Syrian Army from the beginning, ISIS wouldn’t have formed.

 He also pointed to western media as a source that’s indirectly helping ISIS by repeatedly showing its propaganda in the news, and by neglecting to show the efforts of the Free Syrian Army, and the impact on civilians in Syria.'

Chlorine Attacks Continue To Take A Toll

 'The chemical gas spreads for a few kilometers — not like barrel bombs that hit one house. People are afraid about the life of their children and their [own] life.'

Mr. Assad Regrets

 "This is Salah Tabbaa, Red Crescent aid worker from Damascus. He was detained for 4 months by the Syrian regime. Salah's tortured body was delivered to his family yesterday with an apology: we had the wrong guy with the same name."

One refugee's journey from a Syrian prison to London

 ' "Organising protests through the internet was our weapon at the time in the face of the tanks that had surrounded Daraa and Homs," said Ziyad.

 They had called for a lifting of the siege imposed on the two cities through peaceful protests for six months, until security forces started shooting at protesters, saying that protesters had shot first.

 The protesting youths decided to respond in kind, according to Ziyad, and began arming themselves with pistols, rifles and automatic weapons procured from Arsal in Lebanon.
They began responding to regime fire on protests. However, it was notable that the army did not pursue them for about a month, only later launching a surprise attack against their neighbourhoods and homes.

 However, the protesters overran army checkpoints in the Damascus countryside and seized their weapons. They started planning an operation to storm Damascus.

 The plan did not materialise, as the regime employed a scorched earth policy in dealing with protesters. According to Ziyad, the regime would surround an area with tanks and then launch airstrikes against it. Hundreds of civilians died in this way, he said.



 The father was told to remain silent or he would also be arrested. An unfortunate neighbour who was passing by their house was also arrested, as well as a teenager who asked what was going on.

 Ziyad has suffered from an easily dislocated shoulder since his childhood, and when one of his torturers was dragging him, his shoulder became dislocated again. This discovery amused the soldiers in the room, and they pulled the shoulder out of its socket and replaced it several times just for fun.

 Ziyad and his brother remained in prison for about three months, while their parents did everything they could, contacting influential people and giving around two million Syrian lira (almost $40,000 at the time) in bribes to secure their release.

 The prison cell in which the brothers were held was only a few metres square, but held approximately 60 prisoners - unable to sleep due to the cramped conditions.'

Former Ambassador's Son Threatens Zabadani Residents

 'Haydara Sulaiman, son of the former Ambassador of the Assad regime in Jordan, wrote that on his Facebook account on a photo that shows Zabadani's civilians holding banner that says: " We want safe passage to the cemetery, to bury our martyrs."

 Haydara, who has always been a big fan of Assad, replied to the sign saying (Cynically): "Why safe passage, we will provide you with bulldozers, fuel and matchsticks ... Don't be anxious!!!"

 It's worth mentioning that Zabadani city is completely surrounded by the regime and Hezbollah, after it was the destination of displaced families who fled their houses in other areas. The city is under daily brutal shelling with vacuum missiles, barrel bombs and artillery that killed dozens of civilians, amid fierce resistance shown by opposition forces who are trying to stop regime from capturing the city.'



 Note 11/5/25, original link to Mirror of Syria no longer functional.

Where Do You Go To My Lovely?

 February 2020. President Assad has gone on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands, and leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn is being interviewed by the ever-smarmy Andrew Neil for the Daily Politics, just as the date of the General Election is due to be announced.

 "Mr. Corbyn, President Assad has gone on trial for the most appalling crimes, documented in detail by members of his now fallen régime. You, as chair of the Stop The War Coalition, have denied his responsibility for those crimes, instead blaming Western intervention, and have even called friend his accomplices in Hezbollah. Why should the British people trust the Neville Chamberlain of our day, who would let the worst genocidal maniacs have their way, if he could only claim 'Peace in our time'?"

 Syria is not Germany in 1939, the answer is not world war but to support those Syrians fighting Assad, but once Jeremy Corbyn and his friends in the Stop The War Coalition are finished destroying the credibility of left-wing politics for a generation, you would not know the difference.

 If you're left-wing, and you aren't one of the handful that daily follows the Syrian revolution, you're going to think this is scaremongering. Because either you're part of the majority who still believe the conspiracy theories, like the US backs ISIS, or chemical weapons are just a hoax like Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. You'd all be in for a shock if you really cared about those things when the truth becomes plain in front of your face, but most will pass it off as not their fault, they were just trying to be skeptical or anti-imperialist, you can't blame them for that? The Syrians you didn't care about can, and will, and the region left the worst mess imaginable is partly there because you thought Russia Today, or the more sophisticated rendering of Patrick Cockburn, were a useful counterpoint to the mainstream media and politics driving us into another Middle East War, not realising that Western politicians didn't care about Assad, and the threat of military intervention was itself the hoax designed to stop us caring about Syrians.

 Or you are one of the part-time supporters of the Syrian revolution. These people get very upset if you question what they've done to support the Syrian struggle, because they want to make it very clear that they aren't like those pro-Assad people, at least as long as their interest in Syria lasts. But when it comes to anything else they don't make the link. When it comes to Greece, it doesn't matter if you reprint the views of a supporter of the genocide in Syria. If someone is anti-Israel, it doesn't matter if they back Assad to the hilt. When it comes to British politics, it doesn't matter if Miliband lied when he claimed he stopped a war in Syria. Because Syria is an issue to keep in a box, and as long as you put the right label on it everything will be alright.

 Those who've been following Syria day-by-day know this isn't adequate. Because Syria is different. In terms of the level, institutionalisation, and capitalisation of the violence. This is not just a repressive régime that tortures and murders a number of its opponents. It is one that is daily torturing and starving 150,000 people (and imprisoning another 50,000) more, in the most brutal way imaginable, and then selling survivors back to their families for large ransom payments. A régime like that can never be reformed to become less psychotic, too many of those running it have a stake and a responsibility for the way it is.

 Many of those with a part-time interest in Syria will say they don't need to see atrocity photos, that they know what is going on . But until you know the real scale of the Assad catastrophe, and understand that this goes on daily and has only been getting worse as Assad has been allowed to get away with it, you aren't going to see that the failure to support Syria is going to to come to dominate politics as time goes on, and it is only by bringing out the truth and seeing the links that any sort of progressive politics can be preserved. You can't talk about the crisis of refugees dying in the Mediterranean without pointing out that it is Assad who has driven so many Syrians out of the country, that it is the failure to back his opponents that has left the crisis to spiral out of control, or you are irrelevant. Better than the people still dismissing the torture photos as CIA fakes, but when the right-wing, we'll intervene when we want to, backlash comes, that won't help much in holding it back.

 And I've only talked about torture, there is also the barrel bombing, the chemical weapons, the mass rape, the sieges, the mass burning of crops, and a whole bunch of other crimes to consider.

 I don't know if Jeremy Corbyn is going to be leader of the Labour Party. I don't see some shift to the left that has taken everyone by surprise. Perhaps hordes of Telegraph readers have handed over £3 to encourage the Labour Party down a left-wing road. If it wasn't for Syria, I'd be all in favour of him. I don't think any of his opponents will provide anything other than reheated Blairism. But I do think that anyone who thinks he is going to revive left-wing politics in this country is pissing in the wind. If there is going to be a progressive politics in this country, it will be one that has firmly rejected the politics of Stop The War, and clear that everything needs to be done to support the Syrian struggle, because otherwise we're all going to be portrayed as worse than Nazis.

Talk with Syria’s Ahrar al-Sham

 Robert S. Ford and Ali El Yassir:

 'The administration’s current approach to Syria, however, is helping to ensure the fragmentation of the country; the present trajectory will not produce a future government of a unified Syria. Moreover, lumping Ahrar and Nusra together is intellectually sloppy, especially when they exhibit ideological and political differences.

 This is not to say that the United States has no differences with Ahrar. There are many, with some, such as respect for human rights and respect for Geneva war conventions, quite serious. Ahrar will have plenty of complaints against the United States as well. Nevertheless, the larger question is whether the United States should open channels for dialogue, however difficult the conversation will be. Talking is most certainly not giving military aid or arming. Our refusal even to talk with groups like Ahrar further reduces the little influence Americans still have in Syria.

 As the Assad regime steadily weakens, the administration keeps trying to lead the opposition from behind, hoping for an opposition white knight to appear. Instead, because Islamist groups like Ahrar strongly influence decisions about the fate of Syria, Washington will be left behind.'

Isis could have been 'nipped in the bud'

 This can cut both ways, towards helping the opposition, or to military intervention as the answer. At least the former solution is getting some airplay.

 ' "Some of us did warn that if we didn't deal with President Assad back in 2011-12 and were not seen to support the opposition properly, then more and more people would be drawn to extremist organisations — Al-Nusra, and now Isis," said Richards.

 "We are our own worst enemy. We simply ignore problems," said Robertson, who urged the UK's politicians to do more to convince the public why the government needs to take military action. "Unless people are convinced there are things worth fighting for, then we'll be in trouble. We're faced with Isis now, it's a headline issue, it's horrifying." '

The PM's Churchillian posturing over Syria is misguided

 'Syrian generals have reported back to Damascus that the Western air bombings have been of no use to their own forces in repelling Isis.'

 We can see that Robert Fisk's posture is unashamedly pro-Assad. Syrian generals haven't done much to repel ISIS themselves, perhaps those Western airforces should have been helping the Syrian rebels who do fight them.

 'The Syrians abandoned Palmyra; military personnel left behind were later executed in the Roman ruins.'

 And those Assad had locked up in Palmyra prison and tortured sometimes for decades, were freed, if they hadn't already been moved to another dungeon.

 'It might have been better, needless to say, if we’d asked our Gulf Arab allies to stop sending weapons to the Syrian rebels who were giving them to the Islamists whom, in turn, we were bombing.'

 It's just racism to claim that all these Muslims are the same and will give all their weapons to whoever is most extreme. None of these states or groups was giving weapons to ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, who have been bombed by the Americans, are still using all the weapons they get to fight Assad's forces.

 'There is a Syrian air force, which will now be operating alongside the Americans.'

 Assad's airforce don't bomb ISIS, though they occasionally bomb civilians in ISIS-controlled areas. The Americans aren't yet barrel bombing civilians in Aleppo and Daraa, so this isn't quite accurate.

Assad Intelligence killed veteran actor Khaled Taja

 ' “I have seen crimes cannot be imagined.”

 He told Zaman al-Wasl about regime’s plans to sneak from the Arab Observers’ plans to free prisoners. “toward the end of 2011, we were told by new prisoners that Arab Observers Committee was due to visit Syria to help in freeing prisoners, to escape from that, the regime kept taking us out of the prison daily via buses from 8:00 am till 10:00 pm over 10 days period, we used to be 65 prisoners in a bus.”

 Another incident about the regime’s attempts to escape from promises to free prisoners was when they were put in a basement form hours because the Arab Observers Committee wanted to do an urgent visit to prison. “There I met two old prisoner with long beard, I was shocked to know that they were not aware that Hafiz al-Assad had died and Bashar has become a president.”

 The prisoner who was released on-bail after being accused of terrorism mentioned that he saw Khaled Taja, the well known over seventy years old Syrian actor detained in the same prison, he confirmed that Taja was cruelly tortured and once he saw him hanged from his hands when we were in our way to the bathrooms. He mentioned that he had not believed that Taja was in the same prison till he saw him in his own eyes.'

I'm a Syrian and I fight Isil every day

 'Almost two years ago, the House of Commons met to decide whether to take military action against Bashar al-Assad. Few people would have predicted that the vote by MPs, taken a week after the Syrian dictator attacked opposition-controlled suburbs of Damascus with chemical weapons, would set off a chain reaction in the region and beyond, the cost of which we are only beginning to fathom. Keen to exorcise the ghost of Tony Blair and score political points, the Labour leader Ed Miliband marshalled just enough votes to defeat the Government motion. President Obama quickly developed cold feet about punitive air strikes and the rest, as they say, is history.

 And what a history it has been. Four million Syrian refugees, eight million internally displaced, and three hundred thousand civilians dead, the vast majority at the hands of Assad’s murderous conventional war machine, tells only part of the story. The aftershock of that vote was felt further afield, as far as Moscow in fact, where President Vladimir Putin felt he could capitalise on the West’s lack of resolve to pursue his expansionist policy in Ukraine.

 In Ahrar Al-Sham we have lost 700 of our fighters in battles against IS since January 2014, and we and our allies are holding a 45km front line against Isil in Aleppo. We know what it is like to confront the menace of Isil. But Cameron should be aware that any further undermining of the Sunni Arab interest in the region in favour of Iran and its proxies will only empower Isil. We believe that Isil is not only a security or military threat but a social and ideological phenomena that needs to be confronted on multiple levels and that requires a national Sunni alternative to both Assad and Islamic State.

 Thanks to Ed Miliband’s posturing two years ago, the opportunity to deal an early blow to Assad and bring the conflict to an early conclusion was missed. Two years of inaction have only made things worse. Washington’s current policy of undermining the Sunni interest in the region while pandering to Iran is furthering weakening efforts to defeat Isil, rid Syria of Assad and bring about a political resolution to the conflict. As the RAF readies to join in the military coalition against Isil, Britain’s government would be wise to consider new approaches to fighting the extremist group that goes beyond just dropping bombs.'

How Life Has Been Transformed by Rebel Rule

 'This infighting provokes the anger of residents in the rebel neighborhoods. Many blame these disputes, and the resulting lack of coordination, for halting the rebels’ advance. In more idealistic days, someone drew a mural on a wall in the Al-Ferdous neighborhood—it shows an F.S.A. fighter bleeding. The original caption read: “(People) forgive us if we make mistakes. We, the F.S.A., are dying for you.”

 On it, someone added the word “liar.”

 This anger boils when the sky starts raining barrel bombs.

 Around me, men shouted, their faces strained and their words indistinguishable. Women wept hysterically. Children screamed. A policeman warned the crowd: “Civilians leave now! There’s a helicopter in the sky. He’s going to do it again!” The Syrian air force has a habit of following their first barrel bomb with a second. People say this is to kill first responders. (The government still denies that it uses barrel bombs.)

 Despite this, the crowd did not run away. They dug in the rubble with their bare hands—old men, Civil Defense volunteers, and militants alike—all except the media activists shooting video. When they found a victim, they gathered to help snatch them out, screaming “Allahu Akbar” as they did. Once they laid the victim in an ambulance, they began to dig again.'

Preempting the Worst, Should Assad Fall

 'For Syrians who for years have been on the receiving end of regime criminality, it is no doubt infuriating to see the reality of an ongoing holocaust trumped in Western policy circles by fears of a possible abomination accompanying the fall of a heartlessly cynical and brutal regime. For 12 million Syrian victims of regime atrocities the argument that Assad provides some kind of stabilization service is bewildering. For Syria’s neighbors—awash in refugees—the open-ended continuation of refugee-producing murder and mayhem can hardly be attractive.

 Imagine how articulated fears about Assad “leaving the wrong way” are processed by those who have begged the West for protection, only to be told that their plight does not rise to the “never again” standard; that the absence of United Nations Security Council consensus and the primacy of a nuclear deal with Iran render them unqualified for protection by parties having the ways and means to provide it. Imagine the credibility of the US “train-and-equip” recruiting pitch to nationalist Syrian rebels: pay no attention to those who drop barrel bombs on hospitals, schools, mosques, and bakeries—come help us fight ISIL while we entreat Moscow and Tehran to support political transition in Syria.

 Through barrel bombs, starvation sieges, torture, rape, and pillage they have implanted in minority communities a fear of vengeance; fear designed to bind these minorities to the survival of a regime that steals from them while sacrificing their children.

 The result is that large scale acts of vengeance victimizing innocent civilians cannot be ruled out if the fall of the regime—the family and its inner circle of enforcers—creates a security vacuum. It is not at all clear that the departure of a corruptly incompetent clan would have such an effect. Yet the response to this challenge simply cannot be one of Western action or inaction, tacitly supporting Iranian efforts to keep the mass murder machine in place and well oiled. As long as that machine functions, ISIL will have a recruiting case to make to desperate Syrians. As long as the machinery of industrial scale homicide keeps humming, the peril to those held hostage by the regime will increase.

 The message from Secretary of State John Kerry to his counterpart, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif should be stark: stop the barrel bombing or we will. To avoid taking steps—diplomatic for sure, military if necessary—to protect Syrian civilians from Assad regime mass terror is to promote extremism and to imperil those Assad has taken hostage. Failure to protect Syrian civilians is the policy equivalent of endorsing Assad’s strategy: a strategy that kills the innocent, shames the West, and facilitates the work of ISIL. Only through inaction in the face of this real, ongoing outrage can fears of Assad “leaving the wrong way” receive the ultimate form of validation: the fulfillment of a bad dream.'

The View From Inside Syria

 Montagne: Wow. Well, let me ask you, when we first spoke with you late last year, you were quite angry that the U.S. was paying so much, at that point, attention to ISIS. And what you said was, what about the regime? The Assad regime - more people have been killed by far by them in Syria than by ISIS. I wonder, though - it's been months now - what about ISIS? Or - are they coming into your neighborhood? Is there a threat?

 Al-Batal: Most of the population here, like, do not agree with how ISIS think or act. So they don't have any place to grow any followers here. But what I am afraid is that the more you have been feeling injustice and the more you feel that you have been left alone, that you have been pushed to maybe sometime even make a deal with the devil to get out of here. So we manage to push back those ridicules, but the more the situation get bad, no one knows what going to happen.

 Montagne: How are you getting news, and how much news are you getting about what is happening outside?

 Al-Batal: Most of the people get the news. They have this two hours a day of electricity, and they watch television. But they don't watch it with that much care anymore. They are more interested in the local news because they say that the news here, like, it has been the same for, like, three years. The only thing that's changed is the number of people who die. Nothing major have change. There's always an airstrike. There's always someone dying. Even this morning, we have two airstrikes. So people are walking the street. They hear the plane coming, so they just look up, wait for the bomb to fall, and after that they keep walking normally like nothing had happened. That's one side of human nature - that you can get used to anything. I told you my friend of mine lost all of his family, and he didn't even cry. He was, like, the meaning of death have been changed. And he was like, maybe they are relieved now or out of the siege in the one way that no one can stop them - up to the sky.

Syrian rebels decry Iran's nuclear deal with the west

 Well done again to Kareem Shaheen, for actually reporting what Syrians have to say.

 ' “It is the belief of many on the ground that America and Iran are strategic allies, and all the overt signs of animosity are simply hypocrisy,” said Ahmad al-Alwan, a religious official with the Army of Conquest, an alliance of rebel groups in the north of Syria that scored a series of victories against the regime’s army this year.

 “Iranian assistance has never been severed from Assad and Iran has been aiding Assad above and below the table before the entire world with the tools to kill the Syrian people,” he added. “The nuclear agreement will not change this equation.”

 “We have a real fear that Iran will use the unfrozen accounts for more shameless intervention in the region and enflaming strife and war, as well as providing more support to the Assad regime to prevent its fall and allow it to continue carrying out terrorist massacres against the Syrian people,” said Mohammed Maktabi, the secretary general of the Syrian National Council, the exiled opposition.

 “We know that if America wanted to remove Assad it would have, but America wants to lengthen the conflict in Syria, to manage it, not to end it,” said Alwan.



 “Iran is America’s best partner in the region,” said a source close to Jabhat al-Nusra. “The war in Syria will continue, and the solution for them is a political transition while preserving the regime.”

 “Everyone is feeling resentment: why at this decisive time?” said Ibrahim Noureddine, a spokesman for the First Legion, an opposition faction in the south. Many of the opposition groups in the area, save for Jabhat al-Nusra, are seen as moderate and close to western and Gulf states opposed to Assad.

 “The street and the opposition factions in the south resent this because it is completely against them,” he said. “Iran’s role in resolving the Syria crisis is to leave Syria.” '

Joint action by US and Iran has never felt closer

 Patrick Cockburn isn't lying less because someone else is saying it. Turkey and Saudi Arabia aren't providing military aid to ISIS, or even to anyone affiliated to al-Qaida in Syria. Nor are the Turks encouraging people to cross their border to join ISIS.

 'A senior Shia clergyman called for the US to supply Iraq with modern weapons and to put pressure on Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar to stop providing covert military aid to Isis, and to rebel groups in Syria affiliated to al-Qaeda.'

 The US hasn't really supported the approach of backing the rebels. To actively support their oppressor would be a disaster. And to call them Sunni at every turn obscures their far less sectarian aims and methodology than that of the Islamic Rpeublic of Iran and its proxies. That it is Shia clergymen Cockburn is constantly quoting should give one a bit of pause on that front. I don't see any Sunni imams being given such respect.

 'Shia clerical leaders are cautious, but they hope the US will no longer automatically support the approach of Sunni states like Saudi Arabia and Qatar – its traditional allies, which have backed the Sunni-dominated rebels in Syria.'

 It's probably not true what he's saying about Iraq either, but I'm not an expert on that front.

 'In reality, Iranian control is predominant in only three of the main militia units.'

A Syrian Parody Features the Civil War

 The New York Times wants to blame all sides, but you can see, if you look, that Assad and the rebels are not the same threat.

 'The show skewers President Bashar al-Assad and his government, as well as the religious groups that have taken over much of the uprising. It even mocks the rebels in the Free Syrian Army, who provide security when the show is filmed on location.

 “We make fun of the way they treat civilians, but they have no choice but to protect us,” said Yamen Nour, one of the stars of the show. Mr. Nour, 37, a painter and actor who led demonstrations in 2011, considers his theater and television work a continuation of the revolution by other means.

 “We want to show people that we are still living,” he said. “It’s very difficult to make people smile during war. We want them to forget the war for a moment.”

 Tony el-Taieb, 24, the producer of the series, said he and the 55 or so actors and crew members who work for his company, Lamba Productions, believed that Syria’s original revolutionaries must establish cultural alternatives to those generated by the government in Damascus.

 “Our videos drive the regime crazy, because we show the reality,” Mr. Taieb said. “We can’t leave the field of drama to the regime.” '

Did Saudi Arabia Barter in Christian Lives?

 No. Even the Wikileaks version still makes it sound like the Saudis were threatening Christians, "Saudi to Vatican: Help us bring down Assad and we will ensure Christians are spared from retaliation". In fact what they told the Vatican was this, "All parties who support the Syrian people are committed to the rights of minorities in Syria and, in the event of the fall of the Syrian regime, will not accept for them to be subjected to any acts of retribution."

 Similar elisions in Robert Fisk's latest for the Independent*. '[Iran's] Guard Corps and its Hizballah allies from Lebanon are literally in the front lines against the Islamists.' Not against ISIS, but against those fighting to free Syria from Assad. Similarly, "'Israel has been allowing Iran’s militant Sunni enemies to slip across the Golan from Syria into Israel for medical treatment every few days.' Will it really need him to write that all Sunnis are terrorists before it becomes obvious what Fisk is like?

 Patrick Cockburn** has wrapped up his lies in support of an alliance with Assad into a neater little bundle.

 'Isis, the Syrian army’s main opponent.'

 'Now we apparently want to remove Daesh, but without helping Assad. These two things are incompatible. It is a choice of evils”.'

 'President Bashar al-Assad probably holds another third, though these proportions are a little deceptive because the government still holds most of Damascus, the main cities and the roads linking them.'

 'There is an attempt to rebrand al-Nusra as kinder, gentler jihadis, but those who believe this propaganda should reflect on al-Nusra’s unstinting praise for the perpetrators of 9/11." "Assad may be about to lose the city of Daraa in the south to the Southern Front, an alliance of groups which present themselves as more moderate than Isis or al-Qaeda.'

 'It is Isis and the most extreme Islamist groups that will ultimately benefit from the weakening of Assad and the government in Damascus.'

 'In the case of the Southern Front, often advertised as an anti-Assad force which is not extreme jihadi, its guise may be adopted to hoodwink foreign backers." "Assad’s forces are exhausted but are not close to collapse.'

 'The militarisation of politics in Syria since 2011 has benefited both Isis and Assad: it has left Syrians opposed to Isis and al-Nusra, but even more terrified of Assad’s forces, with no alternative but to fight and die with the jihadis.""You will have heard the opposition slogan “Alawites to the cemetery and Christians to Beirut”.'

Most have some reflection of the truth, but have been elided so far from it as to be unrecognisable. His conclusion that we should ask Assad to stop barrel bombing in return for bombing ISIS that he hardly bothers to fight is a fantasy, and the idea that we will end up supporting Assad if ISIS or al-Nusra threaten Damascus, so we should do so now, is utterly stupid as it will only preserve the disorder of Assad's genocide and encourage the extremist response to it.

*[https://web.archive.org/web/20150717032007/http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/iran-nuclear-deal-however-the-great-and-good-represent-it-america-has-now-taken-the-shia-side-in-the-middle-easts-sectarian-war-10388940.html]
**[http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/isis-in-syria-we-cant-win-a-war-without-taking-sides-10366142.html]

Pan-Arabists and the Iran "deal"

 'You're reading the blog of a bitter and disillusioned man who once cheered for Hassan Nasrallah during the 2006 war and believed that Tehran's 'Axis of Resistance' was the region's only hope. I changed my mind because Syrians were being murdered by the thousands, their legitimate claims dismissed, and their uprising brushed off as a terrorist uprising by a tinpot dictator who would not have survived had it not been for the help of Tehran and Hezbullah. The pan-Arabists were blasé about the news. We were brutalised and the world did nothing. We were tortured, and the world did nothing. We were starved, and the world did nothing. The world looked away when Syria started.

 I'm sorry that Syrians are inconvenient, that we're not being killed by the right type of enemy for you people. I'm sorry we haven't received your stamp of approval. Pan-Arabists are cheering a deal with Iran, because, as they keep reminding us, Israel is the real enemy; Palestine the real goal. Never mind the untold misery, guts and excrement that we are being forced to crawl through in the name of this mythical liberation that hovers on our horizon like a promised paradise for the wretched of the world. Syria is "complicated". Syrians are only to be felt "sorry for", like the victims of some flood or an earthquake. From your glass towers in Dubai you intellectual pan-Arabists can toast a deal with Iran, and celebrate the fact that nothing has been allowed to deviate your attention from the lofty goal of "liberating Palestine".'

Refugees content in Turkey, await Assad's fall to return

 "We will never return to Syria unless the Assad regime is gone. He must be ousted."

 "I was a fourth-grade student and I cannot go to school here. If Assad goes in Syria, I still have a hope of returning. He is a bad guy, but Erdoğan is giving iftar to us."

 "I do not have any hope of returning to Aleppo. I had built my house there with blood and sweat. But Assad's missiles turned it into ruins. I cannot go back."

Documenting Death Inside Syria's Secret Prisons

 ' “I saw his color, and was like, ‘Thank God he wasn’t starved to death.’ He didn’t have his ears taken off or his nose. So, I thought he made them furious enough to kill him right away rather than being tortured on a daily basis. It’s always better to know, is he alive or is he dead.”

 “It was systematic, the regime was using it as a way to quell the revolution.

 There’s a lot of missing Syrian people and a lot of people don’t know the fate of their family members. They hear about it through rumors. They pay money to try and find information and really there’s nothing concrete. And unfortunately there’s nothing more concrete than pictures of dead bodies. So the idea was to open up to help people identify their own family members.

 For an American audience, I think it was shocking. But the sheer … mass production of this, I think, is what overwhelms. They’ve documented it in such detail.

 Syrians inside Syria that had any experience with intelligence [services] automatically knew why the documentation had to happen.

 When there’s an order from above, they need evidence that those orders are being carried out. In a highly corrupt government, where you can pay people to release people, they need the evidence. They needed to keep the evidence to show that you told us this is what we need to do, and therefore, this is what we are doing.” '

Palestinian refugees in rural Damascus appeal for help

 'In a statement published by the the National Working Group for Palestinians in Syria yesterday, the families who live in the neighbourhoods of Duma, Zamalka, Hazzah and Humouriya in rural Damascus said they suffer from a severe shortage of food and medical supplies due to the suffocating siege imposed on them by the Syrian regime since the beginning of September 2013.

 It said the heavy shelling and strict blockade imposed by President Bashar Al-Assad's forces caused Palestinian families to lose their income and stopped them receiving the aid needed for their survival.'

Syrian War Takes Rising Toll on Hezbollah

 'Hezbollah units are now spearheading the fight against opposition rebel groups while the faltering Syrian army plays a supporting role. Although the militia is highly secretive about the size of its footprint in Syria, Western officials and analysts believe it has roughly 6,000 to 8,000 fighters on the ground there.

 The group also refuses to discuss its losses in Syria, but the numbers are substantial and on the rise. Since Hezbollah began taking part in full-fledged combat in Syria in 2013, officials and outside analysts estimate that roughly 700 to 1,000 fighters have been killed or wounded in battle, a substantial loss for the group.

 Losing the border town of Zabadani would be a massive setback for the militia, as the town lies along vital land routes that link up Hezbollah-controlled territory with Syria. In the past, Zabadani served as a logistical hub used to transport Iranian arms to the militia.
Iran, which backs Hezbollah as well as other Shiite foreign fighters in Syria, has doubled down on its gamble on the Syrian regime, expanding shipments of weaponry, ammunition, and other equipment.

 Tehran also has deployed advisors from the country’s Revolutionary Guard force closer to the front, and some have reportedly taken charge of some operations from Syrian army officers, analysts said.

 “They’re running a high-risk, high-reward type of path right now. If it gets to a point where the [Assad] regime looks like it is on its last legs, then Iran has a big decision to make.” '

Syria is caught between bombs and butchery

 'As a Syrian, I feel guilty about warning a child or teenager against a smuggler’s promise to take him to Europe. I know where their thoughts might head if that desperate option ceases to be a possibility. I then wonder how long sane people can resist as the situation deteriorates.

 It is no better in the rest of Syria. Even though ISIL dominates the headlines, the Assad regime remains the top killer in the country by some margin. The daily suffering caused by the regime now rarely makes it to public discussions, but highlighting Mr Assad’s disproportionate violence has practical benefits. Apart from the humanitarian factor, failure to focus on the atrocities committed by both ISIL and the regime distorts the reality and creates a schism between how outsiders and Syrians conceive of a resolution to the conflict.

 Nowhere is this clearer than when America’s train-and-equip programme reportedly failed to attract enough recruits because volunteers are asked to focus on ISIL. A year after Barack Obama announced the programme, no more than 200 Syrians joined it. Moreover, even those who have joined the programme will be treated as mercenaries by fellow rebels as long as the focus is ISIL not the regime. Even before the US officials publicly admitted the challenge, it was apparent.

 As long as the suffering and sacrifices of people on the ground are overlooked, the world should not expect true partners in the conflict. The savagery of the Assad regime is no less than the barbarity of ISIL. On the contrary, it helps perpetuate it.'

Tremseh 'massacre' - Friday 13 July 2012

 'A big number of the young men were killed in the field when they were trying to escape the army attack. Helicopters targeted them by heavy machine guns while they were driving their motorcycles - while they were fleeing the village.

 Today the people of Tremseh opened a house that was burned by troops. They found two people who were burned alive. My sister told me that the only two doctors in the village were targeted by mortar shells. Both doctors were killed in their houses.

 Khalid Saleh, executive member of the Syrian National Council, insisted the reported atrocities were well documented.

  Asked why alleged massacres often coincide with UN security council meetings, he said:

 "From the Assad regime's perspective it is very clear that any political or international solution at this point will mean the end of the Assad regime. I think the Assad regime, in committing all these massacres, is really talking to [its] shabiha, to his forces on the ground. I think these massacres unfortunately increase the morale of the Assad gangs. It is the same thing when they shot down the Turkish airplane.

 Assad doesn't really care about the international community. What he is focused on is winning the battle on the ground, so he is doing all he can to raise the morale of his troops. Unfortunately it is a sad reality that committing massacres like these will increase the morale of the gangs ...

 The Syrian regime has made it very clear that they are killing any chance for a peaceful transition." '

 Three years ago tomorrow. All the elements of the mainstream media narrative are here. The undeniable massacre, the denial by the régime, the splitting the difference by calling the massacre 'alleged', the back-covering condemnation by the UN, the promise of some binoculars by the West to the rebels, amid American fears that guns don't mix well with Muslims, the denial by the Guardian's commentariat that we can possibly know anything. And this, from Brian Whittaker among others, is some of the best of the mainstream reportage.

Assad pummels key rebel province with ship mines

 'Bullets, bombs and explosive barrels have long been a feature of Bashar al-Assad’s campaign to quell dissent in the southern province of Daraa, birthplace of the rebellion against the Syrian president’s brutal rule.

 Residents are now reporting a new, even more potent and indiscriminate instrument of death: naval mines, designed to destroy armoured ships, that regularly tumble from regime helicopters, leaving craters 15ft deep and up to 30ft wide.

 Their explosive power has been a devastating addition to an already brutal bombing campaign directed at the first town to rise up against Assad’s regime. Witnesses to the deployment of the new weapon report that the mines are smaller than barrel bombs and can be distinguished as they fall from above by their bright red colour.'

The consequences of mislabeling Syria’s revolutionaries

 'In December, Secretary of State John F. Kerry stated that “Syrians should not have to choose between a tyrant and the terrorists.” There was, Kerry declared, a third option: “the moderate Syrian opposition who are fighting both extremists and [Syrian President Bashar al-]Assad every day.” Unfortunately, this commendable view has broken down because the United States has defined the term “moderate” in such a narrow and arbitrary fashion that it excludes the bulk of the mainstream opposition.

 The group to which I belong, Ahrar al-Sham, is one example. Our name means “Free Men of Syria.” We consider ourselves a mainstream Sunni Islamic group that is led by Syrians and fights for Syrians. We are fighting for justice for the Syrian people. Yet we have been falsely accused of having organizational links to al-Qaeda and of espousing al-Qaeda’s ideology.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We believe that Syria needs a national unifying project that cannot be controlled or delivered by a single party or group and should not be bound to a single ideology. We believe in striking a balance that respects the legitimate aspirations of the majority as well as protects minority communities and enables them to play a real and positive role in Syria’s future. We believe in a moderate future for Syria that preserves the state and institutes reforms that benefit all Syrians.

 Stuck inside their own bubble, White House policymakers have allocated millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to support failed CIA efforts to support so-called “moderate” forces in Syria. But these “moderate” groups have proved to be a disappointment on nearly every count, not least of all in confronting the Islamic State. Further, the self-defeating policy of regarding the war against the Islamic State as being fundamentally different from, and in some cases diametrically opposed to, efforts to remove Assad from power has brought no end to either battle.

 Despite a disappointing lack of genuine engagement from the international community, we remain committed to dialogue. The issues that need to be discussed are how to end Assad’s reign, how to defeat the Islamic State and how to ensure that a stable and representative government in Damascus puts Syria on the path to peace, reconciliation and economic recovery while avoiding the disintegration of the state. It is not too late for the United States to change course. Kerry’s “third option” exists — but only if Washington is willing to open its eyes and see it.'

When Israel gave Bashar Assad a lifeline

 'Recently, an interesting news item relating to Syria seemed to remain under the public radar. In his book “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide,” the Israeli former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, wrote of how the Russian plan in 2013 to remove Syria’s chemical arsenal, and in that way avoid an impending American attack against the country, originated with an Israeli minister, Yuval Steinitz.

 The reason Steinitz did so is not difficult to understand. The Israelis saw a golden opportunity to get rid of what worried them most in Syria, namely the regime’s chemical weapons. They were far less concerned with seeing Assad and his acolytes punished for having deployed such weapons against civilians. Once the deal was agreed, Oren writes, “the phrase ‘Assad must go’ vanished from [Barack] Obama’s vocabulary.”

 Nothing has really changed since the CIA director, John Brennan, told the Council on Foreign Relations last March that the “last thing we want to do is to allow [ISIS and other jihadist groups] to march into Damascus.” Brennan had added then, “That’s why it’s important to bolster those forces within the Syrian opposition that are not extremists.” However, at the catatonic rate the U.S. is training such forces, the chances that “moderates” will soon change the tide in Syria is negligible.

 Whether we are talking about the United States or Israel, Assad has imposed on both a very successful “either-or” equation – “It’s either Assad or chaos.” That has given the Syrian president and Iran tremendous leverage over Washington and Tel Aviv. This will only increase when, as is likely, the Americans and Iranians reach a nuclear deal. Once that happens, Iranian funds to assist Assad will be freed up and the Obama administration may more firmly recognize an Iranian “sphere of influence” in Syria. That will not sit well with Israel, but the complexities of the situation will most probably expand Assad’s margin of political survival.

 Obama should bear in mind what he said about Assad. Syria’s war will not end while he remains in power. But the U.S. president has seemed unwilling to pursue his own logic in Syria. Bashar Assad has lasted thanks to such incoherence.'