Zitat:Syria’s war in miniature: meeting the Christians driven out of Qusayr
Events in one Syrian town cast light on the nation’s strife
Paul Wood 10 August 2013
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It started happening after foreign jihadis arrived, said Ilyas. ‘Syrian Muslims are not extremists. It’s outsiders who made this conflict sectarian.’ Ilyas was told to demonstrate his loyalty by carrying a weapon to fight the regime. Still clinging to the idea of a peaceful revolution, he refused, and was threatened by the foreign fighters. His friends in the rebel army couldn’t help him. ‘The FSA couldn’t mount any military operation without the extremists: they had the training, the weapons, the money.’

As the town’s native Sunnis suffered more losses, so their attitude towards the Christians started to harden. One local man formed an Islamist brigade (its ranks filled with foreign fighters) and last summer, he commandeered the mosque’s loudspeaker to announce that all Christians should leave. He was one of those who finally forced Ilyas from his home, last December. ‘I had known him ten years,’ Ilyas said sadly. ‘We used to walk arm-in-arm at the protests.’
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At first, she said, their Sunni neighbours tried to protect them. ‘But after a while, the Christians were left with a choice: fight alongside the rebels, or leave Qusayr. Masked gunmen came to our house and shouted for our men to come out. We could see our relatives, already captured, sitting in cars.’

The head of the FSA’s military council in Qusayr, Abu Arab, was incoherent with rage when I asked why he had failed to protect the Christians. It wasn’t his fault, he said. The West had stood by while the jihadis got arms and funding and corrupted the revolution. ‘The revolution was abandoned by its friends in the West,’ he said. ‘We were left to descend into chaos.’
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The lesson of Qusayr is that conflicts evolve, and as they do so, they change the people involved in them. Friends mutate into mortal enemies. No wonder western governments struggle to keep up. British military planners were in neighbouring countries to see how and where arms would be sent to the rebels, one official told me. Now they have been returned home, the official said. ‘We may all have to eat humble pie and learn to live with Assad.’ Western governments signed up to help a popular uprising, not to get involved in a sectarian civil war. Syria is not that quite yet. But Qusayr is a warning. It could become the kind of war the West does not want to fight.

Paul Wood is a BBC correspondent covering Syria

Zitat:Free Syrian Army commander celebrates victory with al Qaeda affiliate
By Bill RoggioAugust 10, 2013 10:38 AM

In this New York Times article on the influx of foreign fighters into Syria (more than 6,000 foreign fighters are now estimated to be fighting with jihadist groups) is a report of a Free Syrian Army commander celebrating the capture of the Minnigh airport in Aleppo with a leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an al Qaeda affiliate. The ISIL is known to have led the charge to take control of the airport after FSA units failed to capture it during an eight-month siege. The video of the celebration is reproduced above
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Read more: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2013/08/free_syrian_army_commander_cel.php#ixzz2bbpoQNQ3">http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-ma ... z2bbpoQNQ3</a><!-- m -->

Zitat:Iraqi Kurd leader Massoud Barzani issues Syria warning

The president of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region has threatened to intervene to defend the Kurdish population caught up in Syria's unrest.

Massoud Barzani said if Kurds were "under threat of death and terrorism" then Iraqi Kurdistan would be "prepared to defend them".
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Zitat:New Saudi-supplied missiles boost rebels in south Syria
AMMAN | Thu Aug 15, 2013 11:45am EDT

(Reuters) - Rebels in southern Syria have fired newly acquired anti-tank guided missiles supplied by Saudi Arabia in a significant boost to their battle against President Bashar al-Assad, rebel, intelligence and diplomatic sources say.
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Rebels and military experts say the Konkurs, with a range of four km (2.5 miles), offers a strategic edge over Assad's better equipped forces which rely on hundreds of Russian T-72 tanks and older models to launch ground attacks and control cities.

Other experts say rebel fortunes could be tied to how many more portable missile systems the rebels can get in the coming months, such as the Konkurs, Kornet anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM) and Red Arrow 8 missiles.

"If the weapons arrive in the right quantities they will affect the situation on the ground," said retired Jordanian general Fayez al Dwiri.

The Saudi-financed missile shipments arrived in the last few weeks through Jordan after months of quiet Saudi pressure to prod Amman to open a supply route.

Jordanian officials privately say they are caught between appeasing the Saudis and the danger of reprisals by Assad, who earlier this year warned Amman it "would be playing with fire" if it supported rebels.
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experts say there are signs that recent deliveries may be the start of a major supply line to southern Syria led by Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally and foremost of several regional Sunni Muslim powers backing the mainly Sunni rebels against Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
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Zitat:Wed Aug 21, 2013 4:21
Leader's Top Military Aide: Turkey, Arabs Defeated in Proxy War on Syria
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the US and Israel as well as their Turkish and Arab proxies in the war on Syria have been defeated and Bashar al-Assad is just inches away from complete victory.
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40,000 mercenaries [...] infiltrated [...] Syria via the country's borders with Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan [...] were Al-Qaeda members trained and backed up by Qatar and Saudi Arabia during the Afghan war.
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"But [...] now the terrorists have been almost defeated from the military perspectives and lost a major part of their positions and controlled areas to the Damascus army," he said.

Gen. Safavi described the 50,000-strong popular resistance movement formed by the Syrian government as a main contributor to the Damascus victory over the rebels.
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"What is left is the Geneva II conference. On one side, there will be the US, Israel, France, England, Turkey and some Arab states which supported the opposition," he said and explained, "As a result of its domestic issues, Turkey has now realized its strategic mistake and left the front. Saudi Arabia is dealing with its Egypt project. The rest of the front is present but defeated."

"But on the other side of this front, there reside Russia, China and Iran which aided Syria. Of course, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah aided Syria politically and internationally as they support restoration of peace, stability and tranquility to Syria," Ayatollah Khamenei's military aide said.
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Zitat:Bürgerkrieg in Syrien: Opposition berichtet von mehr als tausend Giftgasopfern

Die syrische Opposition erhebt nach dem mutmaßlichen Giftgasangriff östlich von Damaskus massive Vorwürfe gegen das Assad-Regime. Bei dem Bombardement sollen bis zu 1300 Menschen gestorben sein. Das Militär weist die Vorwürfe zurück, auf Facebook feiern Assads Anhänger.
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Zitat:22. August 2013 18:37
Syrien
Neue Dimension der Grausamkeit

Fotos und Videos aus Syrien zeigen Menschen mit blaulila Lippen, von Krämpfen geschüttelt oder mit Schaum vor dem Mund. Einiges spricht dafür, dass Regierungstruppen Giftgas eingesetzt haben, zweifelsfrei bestätigen lässt es sich noch nicht. Die Menschen in Syrien fragen sich, was noch passieren muss, bis ihnen jemand hilft.
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Zitat:Syrien
Frankreich droht mit „Reaktion der Stärke“

22.08.2013 · Angesichts der Hinweise auf einen Giftgasangriff der Armee in Damaskus hat Frankreich indirekt mit einem militärischen Eingreifen in Syrien gedroht. Das kündigte Außenminister für den Fall an, dass sich die Vorwürfe gegen das Assad-Regime erhärten sollten.
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Zitat:Bürgerkrieg in Syrien: Russland drängt Assad zur Aufklärung des Giftgasangriffs

Was geschah wirklich bei dem Giftgasangriff in Syrien mit Hunderten Toten? Diese Frage will jetzt auch Russland geklärt haben - und verlangt von der Assad-Regierung Kooperation. Uno-Experten im Land müssten ungestört ermitteln können.

Moskau - Die russische Regierung schaltet sich in die Ermittlungen um den mutmaßlichen Giftgasangriff in der syrischen Region Ghuta ein. Man habe das Regime von Baschar al-Assad aufgefordert, mit den angereisten Uno-Waffenexperten zu kooperieren, erklärte Außenminister Sergej Lawrow am Freitag. [...] Ein Team von Chemiewaffen-Experten im Auftrag der Uno hält sich seit Sonntag in Syrien auf. Die syrische Regierung hat den Experten bislang nur den Zugang zu drei Orten gestattet, an denen in den vergangenen Monaten angeblich Chemiewaffen eingesetzt worden sein sollen.

Zitat:... Die Außenminister von USA und Russland verkünden ein "gemeinsames Interesse" an einer Untersuchung der Giftgasvorwürfe.
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Zitat:23. August 2013 12:14
Mutmaßlicher Angriff mit Chemiewaffen
Zivilisationsbruch vor Damaskus

Es ist eine Frage des Willens: Die USA oder Russland könnten dank ihrer Spionagetechnik schon lange wissen, wer in Syrien Chemiewaffen gegen wen einsetzt. Die Welt sollte ein dringendes Interesse daran haben, dies herauszufinden. Denn wenn Assad wirklich diesen Zivilisationsbruch begangen hat, dann darf niemand mehr dieses Regime stützen oder mit Waffen beliefern.
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