city:aleppo

Syrie. Les services allemands révisent leur jugement sur la capacité d’Assad à résister. Sans être encore en mesure de vaincre l’opposition, le régime parvient à se renforcer, notamment par l’acquisition d’armes russes.

Report: German intelligence revises estimate, says Assad regime growing stronger.

IAF chief says Syria arming itself with advanced Russian weaponry, including Russian S-300 systems.

By Gili Cohen | May.22, 2013
Ha’aretz

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-german-intelligence-revises-estimate-says-assad-regime-growing-stron

Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reported on Wednesday that German intelligence has revised its previous estimate and now believes the Assad regime has stabilized. Less than a year ago, German intelligence had said the regime’s downfall was imminent. According to the report, the head of Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service, Gerhard Schindler, presented the new estimate to politicians during a confidential meeting.

In the meeting, Schindler presented maps and data illustrating that Assad’s forces have managed to take over supply lines funneling weapons and other military equipment. He said that this new situation allows the Syrian army to attack multiple rebel targets and even retake positions it had lost. According to the new estimate, the Assad regime is not yet strong enough to defeat the rebels, but it is growing stronger (…)

Dexter Filkins : What Should Obama Do About Syria ? : The New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/05/13/130513fa_fact_filkins?currentPage=all

Ce (très long) texte prend pour acquis que le régime syrien a utilisé des armes chimiques.

In May, the senior American official who is involved in Syria policy met me at his office in Washington. When I asked him to predict Syria’s future, he got up from his desk and walked over to a large map of the country which was tacked to his wall. (...)

“What does that sound like? Lebanon. But it’s Lebanon on steroids.” He walked back to his desk and sat down. “The Syria I have just drawn for you—I call it the Sinkhole,’’ he said. “I think there is an appreciation, even at the highest levels, of how this is getting steadily worse. This is the discomfort you see with the President, and it’s not just the President. It’s everybody.” No matter how well intentioned the advocates of military intervention are, he suggested, getting involved in a situation as complex and dynamic as the Syrian civil war could be a foolish risk. The cost of saving lives may simply be too high. “Whereas we had a crisis in Iraq that was contained—it was very awful for us and the Iraqis—this time it will be harder to contain,” he said. “Four million refugees going into Lebanon and Jordan is not the kind of problem we had going into Iraq.” In a year, he estimated, Lebanon alone could have four million refugees, doubling the population of the country. “Jordan will close its borders, and then you will have tens of thousands of refugees huddling down close to that border for safety.”

The rapid growth of Al Qaeda in Syria is deeply troubling, he said. “In February, 2012, they were tiny. No more than a few dozen. Now, fast-forward fourteen months. They are in Aleppo. They are in Damascus. They are in Homs.” In Iraq, he said, “They didn’t grow so fast and they didn’t cover all the big cities. In Syria, they do.” Also, he pointed out, there were no chemical weapons in Iraq, as there are in Syria. “We will have a greater risk, the longer this goes on, that the bad guys—they are all bad guys, but I mean terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Islamist extremist groups—will acquire some of these weapons. How do you plan for that? The longer the war goes on, the more the extremists will gain.” Indeed, the longer the war goes on, the greater the threat that it will engulf the entire region.

The official said that the United States’ quandary was clear enough: “...I know there is a debate on military intervention. I cannot recommend it to the President unless there is a very clearly defined political way back out. People on the Hill ask me, ‘Why can’t we do a no-fly zone? Why can’t we do military strikes?’ Of course we can do these things. The issue is, where does it stop?” ♦

Reported Israeli airstrikes in Syria could accelerate U.S. decision process - The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/reported-israeli-airstrikes-in-syria-could-accelerate-us-decision-making/2013/05/05/72c6eafc-b5c2-11e2-92f3-f291801936b8_print.html

Israel’s reported airstrikes in Syria — and the threat of a retaliatory strike by the Syrian government — are likely to accelerate the decision-making of the Obama administration, which was already moving toward a sharp escalation of U.S. involvement in the two-year-old crisis.

Senior officials said the deployment of U.S. troops to Syria remains unlikely, but they have indicated that a decision will come within weeks on options ranging from the supply of weapons to the Syrian rebels to the use of U.S. aircraft and missiles to ground President Bashar al-Assad’s air power by destroying planes, runways and missile sites inside Syria.

Neither Israeli nor U.S. officials confirmed an attack Sunday morning that reportedly hit a weapons shipment in Syria — including sophisticated missiles and air defense equipment — about to be transferred to Lebanon-based Hezbollah.

But President Obama, in an interview broadcast just hours later Sunday, said Israel is justified in preventing the provision of weapons to Hezbollah.

“We coordinate very closely with the Israelis, recognizing that . . . they are very close to Syria, they’re very close to Lebanon,” Obama said in the interview, recorded Saturday with the Spanish-language Telemundo, after an earlier Israeli attack reported late Friday.

Throughout the Syrian crisis, the administration has repeatedly voiced the belief that Syria is already awash in weapons and that sending more will not tip the balance in favor of the rebels.

Now, in part because of growing confidence in the rebel Free Syrian Army, “the national security team and the diplomatic team around the president” favor increased involvement, and their views are gaining momentum despite the caution expressed by Obama’s political advisers, according to a senior Western official whose government has closely coordinated its Syria policy with Washington and who spoke before the reported Israeli strikes. The official discussed sensitive diplomatic assessments on the condition of anonymity.

Even U.S. lawmakers who have expressed reservations about stepped-up U.S. involvement appeared to now see it as inevitable.

...

The impunity with which the Israelis apparently struck targets in Damascus, McCain said on “Fox News Sunday,” undercut the argument of the U.S. military that Syrian air defenses would pose a formidable impediment to imposition of a no-fly zone over rebel-held areas of Syria.

“The Israelis seem to be able to penetrate it rather easily,” Mc­Cain said. The “red line” Obama drew, promising consequences for Assad if he used chemical weapons, “was apparently written in disappearing ink,” he said.

...

The administration has long exercised caution out of fears that U.S. involvement could worsen the situation. But Obama’s reservations have been challenged by U.S. allies and partners who have urged the United States to take more of a leadership role over their disparate efforts to help the Syrian opposition. At the same time, U.S. confidence has been growing in the cohesiveness of the Free Syrian Army led by Gen. Salim Idris.

Idris, who met with Secretary of State John F. Kerry in Istanbul two weeks ago, pledged that no U.S.-supplied arms would go to Islamist extremist groups fighting for the same cause as the U.S.-backed rebels and said that all weapons would be carefully supervised and returned to donors at the end of the conflict.

...

Deux articles sur l’usage d’armes chimiques en Syrie.
Carla Del Ponte, en charge de la Commission des Nations Unies sur la Syrie, indique ne pas détenir de preuve de l’implication du régime d’Assad dans l’usage d’armes chimiques. En revanche, elle fait valoir que de fortes suspicions pèsent sur l’opposition qui pourrait avoir utilisé du gas sarin. Ali Akbar Salehi, Ministre des Affaires étrangères d’Iran, émet la même hypothèse.

Article 1
U.N. has testimony that Syrian rebels used sarin gas: investigator
Sun, May 05 (2013) 18:13 PM EDT

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE94409Z20130505?irpc=932

GENEVA (Reuters) - U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

“Our investigators have been in neighboring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

“This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she added, speaking in Italian.

Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.

The Geneva-based inquiry into war crimes and other human rights violations is separate from an investigation of the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria instigated by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which has since stalled.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the rebels accuse each another of carrying out three chemical weapon attacks, one near Aleppo and another near Damascus, both in March, and another in Homs in December.

The civil war began with anti-government protests in March 2011. The conflict has now claimed an estimated 70,000 lives and forced 1.2 million Syrian refugees to flee.

The United States has said it has “varying degrees of confidence” that sarin has been used by Syria’s government on its people.

President Barack Obama last year declared that the use or deployment of chemical weapons by Assad would cross a “red line”.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)

Article 2
Iran’s Salehi says chemical weapons ’red line’ in Syria
30 avril 2013

http://tehrantimes.com/politics/107297-irans-salehi-says-chemical-weapons-red-line-in-syria

TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi insisted on Tuesday that use of chemical weapons in Syria would also be a “red line” for Tehran, but suggests rebel forces should be investigated.

According to ISNA news agency, Salehi said the use of chemical weapons “by anybody is our red line.” But he said opposition groups could have used chemical agents and demanded a UN probe.

La Syrie et l’épuisement de la psychologie washingtonienne
►http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_syrie_et_l_puisement_de_la_psychologie_washingtonienne_30_04_2

• Le New York Times met les pieds dans le plat. • Les faucons raisonnent comme des tambours de guerre crevés.

Article apocalyptique dans le New York Times : Islamist Rebels’ Gains in Syria Create Dilemma for U.S.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/world/middleeast/islamist-rebels-gains-in-syria-create-dilemma-for-us.html

Across Syria, rebel-held areas are dotted with Islamic courts staffed by lawyers and clerics, and by fighting brigades led by extremists. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government.

Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.

(C’est moi qui souligne cette dernière phrase.)

Ne pas se méprendre : ça ne veut pas dire que c’est plus vrai que lorsque le New York Times ment dans l’autre sens… Mon intérêt ici, c’est à nouveau de remarquer qu’il y a d’un côté l’habituel discours assez simple et binaire des dirigeants (avec spectaculaire alignement du gouvernement français), mais qu’il y a aussi, quasiment depuis le début, nombre de tribunes totalement contraires dans les médias. Certes loin d’être majoritaires, mais beaucoup plus forts et présents que pour d’autres guerres. Et ces discours hétérodoxes (pendant que les gouvernements occidentaux refont le coup des armes de destruction massive) débarquent au NY Times. C’est assez curieux.

Arts + Culture : Lessons from the Minaret

It was a place to connect to your history, to your identity and to tell others, who were not from Aleppo: “This is where we are from. This is who we are.” This is where you come to face your roots. It was a place that existed forever, a place we thought would exist long after we were gone. But we were wrong.

They say that people make their cities. But if you are from Aleppo, one of the oldest cities in the world, the city has made you much more than you have made it. So when pieces of our history are destroyed one by one, pieces of us are lost, fragment by fragment.

(...)

The lesson of the minaret : every tyrant will fall and the city remains.

#patrimoine #Syrie

http://beta.syriadeeply.org/2013/04/arts-culture-lessons-minaret

Rappel : ça fait un bon mois qu’Israël et ses alliés font monter la sauce chimique en Syrie :
http://seenthis.net/messages/124026

Or, même l’Observatoire syrien des Droits de l’Homme désignait assez clairement les rebelles comme auteurs de l’attaque :
►http://news.yahoo.com/twenty-six-killed-syrian-attack-monitoring-group-124003651.html

“Sixteen Syrian regular army soldiers were killed in Khan al-Assal,” Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Reuters. “Ten more died in hospital but I cannot confirm if they are civilians or soldiers.”

Le Telegraph indiquait également, selon plusieurs témoignages, qu’il s’agissait d’une bombe artisanale fabriquée par des rebelles :
http://seenthis.net/messages/124727

Il est assez charmant de voir la France et ses médias s’aligner, une fois de plus, avec autant de rapidité sur la dernière petite phrase du Département d’État. Vraiment charmant.

The Syrian Heartbreak | Middle East Research and Information Project
by Peter Harling , Sarah Birke

►http://www.merip.org/mero/mero041613

There was a distinctive sense of national pride in Syria. It flowed from the confidence of a civilization dating back to the times of the earliest alphabets and visible in the country’s wealth of archaeological sites, including some of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. It came from the depth of local culture. It stemmed from the music of Syrian Arabic, the elegance of Syrian manners, the finesse of Syrian cuisine and the sincerity of Syrian hospitality. It proceeded from modern geopolitics, too, as Damascus carved out for itself a role bigger and bolder than its scarce resources should have allowed. In particular, and despite tremendous pressure, Damascus stood firm on the Palestinian cause, which Syrians feel more strongly about than anyone, perhaps, except the Palestinians. The regime may have been a conveniently quiescent foe for Israel, but Syria was, on the map of the Arab world, the only state still “resisting.”

Syrie. Haytham Manna, Responsable du Comité National de Coordination des Forces de Changement Démocratique en Syrie, a toujours contesté la politique internationale de soutien au Conseil National Syrien (S.N.C. dans son acronyme anglais), formation de l’opposition syrienne reconnue par la communauté internationale, « les Amis de la Syrie ». Les derniers développements le confirment dans son idée que le Conseil National Syrien a perdu toute capacité à défendre ses idées et son indépendance et qu’il est vain, comme le souhaitent « les Amis de la Syrie » de chercher à le restructurer.
Son argument est que la violence ne pourra qu’accentuer la division des Syriens dont profitera le régime d’Assad: les oppositions politiques ne parviennent pas à réduire leurs dissensions ; l’écart entre la capacité militaire des djihadistes et celle de l’opposition se creuse au détriment de l’Armée Libre Syrienne ; le Front al-Nousra, fort de ses réussites sur le terrain, pourrait bien refuser de participer à l’unification des opposants à Assad ; le président lui-même a beau jeu de créer des divisions en cooptant des islamistes pour former des unités paramilitaires, etc.

The Guardian, Thursday 18 April 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/18/syrians-reconciled-negotiation-violence

Syrians can be reconciled – through negotiation, not violence
By Haytham Manna

Regional interventions have failed, and the opposition SNC is in turmoil. But the solution still lies in a political settlement.
The situation in Syria is the gravest it has been since peaceful protests began in March 2011. Civil resistance has been reduced to relief operations and humanitarian assistance, and the efforts of Syria’s democratic forces are now scattered and fragmented. Foreign support for the Syrian National Coalition and superimpose it as the legitimate representative of the people has weakened democratic civilian organisations’ relationships with a number of western countries. Meanwhile, the military capacity of jihadi groups has increased.

The SNC is fragile, and more likely to implode than become institutionalised. This is highlighted by three issues: the political initiative of its then president, Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib, in proposing talks with the regime; the decision in Istanbul to form a Syrian government in exile; and the fact that Syria’s seat in the Arab League was handed over to the SNC at the recent meeting in Doha.
These three events revealed an alliance between hardline Islamists and Qatar, and demonstrated that the SNC has no ideology, no common vision and no real independence. However, the governments who make up the Friends of Syria are now trying to reform the SNC by giving seats to sectarian groups (Christian, Alawite, and so on) and some secular democratic groups, in order to reduce the Islamists’ influence.

In this critical situation, it is clear the dictatorship is not serious in calling for a negotiated political solution. Bashar al-Assad is confident that the opposition’s political forces no longer represent real power, neither in the arena of military confrontation nor in the eyes of most Syrians. All regional and international attempts to unify the military factions have failed to create a command with a defined political programme. Qatari and Turkish actions – in forming an interim government and giving Syria’s Arab League seat to the SNC – have produced a major rift between the Saudi and Qatari positions, and this is reflected in the military field. The Saudis, ironically, support the more secular forces, while the Qataris support the Islamists.

Al-Qaida has not missed the opportunity to declare its relationship with the Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group and its affiliates. Britain and France can no longer put their heads in the sand. On the ground the Syrian regime is adopting the same tactic used by the Algerians in the 90s: dealing with Islamist groups by creating paramilitary units. This will prolong the conflict by allowing the regime to denigrate the armed opposition and present itself as the protector of security and Syria’s territorial integrity. Not counting remote areas which are being disputed between Jabhat al-Nusra and other fighting groups, Syrian citizens increasingly associate the rise in displacement, murder and destruction with the presence of the armed opposition.
Three questions arise: will Jabhat al-Nusra succeed in preventing any unity emerging between the opposition fighters? Will supporters of the military security solution inside the regime have a monopoly on key decisions in Damascus? And can the democratic civilian opposition continue to act as the prime defenders of a political solution based on last year’s Geneva declaration?

It is tragic that the Friends of Syria is still trying to restructure the SNC when that tactic has evidently failed. It is unlikely that any group in the Free Syrian Army could confront hardline Islamist armed groups unless the opposition were backed by democratic political parties. Foreign involvement will be an obstacle to progress unless there is a broad front that can give the mission of the UN peace envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, practical meaning and produce a reconciliation between the two strongest powers, Russia and the US.
Will the regional contradictions that we are witnessing today strengthen this option or will they cause increased violence and destruction? We must adhere to a negotiated political solution in this difficult phase so as to give every Syrian a chance to see the end of destruction.

The Syrian Heartbreak | Middle East Research and Information Project
►http://www.merip.org/mero/mero041613

...

Despite belated realization of the conflict’s horrendous costs — by the end of the year, aid agencies predict, there will be 3.6 million refugees and 6 million in need inside the country, out of a population of 23 million — outside players show no sign of willingness to agree among themselves to help Syrians find a solution. Much mooted Russian-American negotiations have led nowhere, as Moscow stubbornly continues to back Asad and Washington is unwilling to offer incentives to alter that calculus. Meanwhile, countries united only by their rejection of Asad give priority to their own differing interests and rivalries as they vie to lift their clients above others within the opposition, exacerbating its fissiparous nature.

...

Syria’s all-out civil war, if it comes to that, will no doubt go down in conventional wisdom as an outburst of communal hatred inevitable within a mixed society. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is the product of an international standoff and cannot be rolled back without an international tradeoff. However much Syrians suffer, the war in their country is not in their hands. It is a conflict that disfigures Syrian society more than reflects it. And that is the Syrian heartbreak.

Dans l’article de Jean Aziz, cette mention des attaques contres les commerces des alaouites de Tripoli (événement passé inaperçu ici) :
►http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/syria-conflict-possible-partition.html

On April 10, Sunni jihadists burned large number of Lebanese Alawite shops and businesses in Tripoli. Alawites in the city number some 30,000, or 12% of the population. Most of them live in an area that has become a kind of ghetto. Their businesses throughout the city are now under threat. An Alawite political leader said in an interview, “We are now living in the city between the jaws of pliers. Some deem us traitors and infidels who should be killed and whose property should be destroyed just because we are Alawites.”

Lire absolument: Is Syria Moving Toward Partition? - Jean Aziz
►http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/syria-conflict-possible-partition.html

There are signs and warnings from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as well as the Syrian opposition that Syria may be moving toward partition.

Talk of partition had begun a few months after the outbreak of the war in Syria, as many analysts tried to rewrite Levantine history. They argued that the independent states in the region had been created a hundred years ago by the West during and after World War I, and that a century later, the West is trying to take the region in the opposite direction. Along these lines, they said that between 1915 and 1916, the West had wanted to break up the anti-Western Ottoman Empire and create modern states within its boundaries. After 2013, however, the trend will be to deliver those “failed states” to neo-Ottoman dominance, since Turkey is now allied with the West and will protect its interests.

Rethinking Informality: Design Tactics/Planning Strategies
City Debates
http://webfea.fea.aub.edu.lb/citydebates/2013

Titled Rethinking Informality: Design Tactics/Planning Strategies, City Debates 2013 will address the theme of informal spatial production as it materializes in different scalar levels and within multiple contexts of the Middle-East and beyond. By bringing together scholars, practicing planners and designers, as well as activists engaged in a reflection about the spatial production of informal settlements, their changing position in ever-growing cities, and their relation to both the agricultural and urban landscapes at the intersection of which they often stand, the event seeks to articulate a critical discourse about planning and design that goes beyond the traditional/professional understandings of these disciplines. Case studies will be taken from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt but also India, Columbia, Germany, France, the United States, and more to draw parallels across national contexts. In light of the centrality of forced population displacement movements in our region, special attention is given in refugee camps in the region.

The Pulitzer Prizes | Works
http://www.pulitzer.org/works/2013-Feature-Photography#

Les Syriens ne trouvent pas de refuge en Grèce

LESVOS, Greece—On this Aegean island’s shores, Syria’s refugee crisis is crashing up against Greece’s migrant-policy mess.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324096404578354100202130318.html

#Syrie #Grèce #migration #asile #réfugié #Lesvos

Article de Bruce Riedel qui souligne la montée en puissance de Jabhat al-Nusra en Syrie (un quart des combattants selon lui) réalisant ainsi la prophétie auto-réalisatrice d’Assad qui laissait entendre, au début de la guerre civile, que la contestation syrienne n’était en réalité qu’une guerre menée de l’étranger. (Dans un message publié hier, Abou Bakr al-Baghdadi, responsable d’Al-Qaïda en Iraq, a confirmé que Jabhat al-Nusra était une branche de l’Etat islamique d’Iraq). Riedel voit dans cette expansion une menace directe pour Israël et les pays occidentaux.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/04/jabhat-al-nusra-jihadist-al-qaeda-syria.html#ixzz2PyG1uWek

Jabhat al-Nusra Is Growing Menace To Mideast and Beyond
By: Bruce Riedel for Al-Monitor, Posted on April 8.

“As the Syrian civil war gets ever more violent and destructive, there is a big beneficiary: al-Qaeda and its franchise in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra— which is now the fastest-growing al-Qaeda front in the world, attracting fighters from across the Islamic world. Today it’s focused on destroying the Bashar al-Assad regime but its ultimate goals are much bigger, attacking America and its allies in the heart of the Middle East.

The Syrian franchise gets crucial support from the al-Qaeda core in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri issued a public call in February 2012 in which he urged “every Muslim and every free and honest person in Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon to rise and help their brothers in Syria with everything they have and can do.”
Zawahiri’s call, just after the announcement of the creation of Jabhat al-Nusra and its first major attacks in Aleppo, was clearly coordinated with the fighters on the ground. Since that call, at least one senior member of the al-Qaeda Shura Council in Pakistan has traveled to Syria to further coordinate plans and operations with the core hiding in Pakistan. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton termed the exchanges of messages between al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria as “deeply disturbing” in one of her final interviews in office.”

Bruce Riedel is the director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution. His latest book is Avoiding Armageddon: America, India and Pakistan to the Brink and Back.

Syria says Jordan ’playing with fire’ over assistance to rebels | World news | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/05/syria-jordan-fire-assistance-rebels

Jordan tightens security along Syrian border as tensions soar amid reports of arms shipments to anti-Assad forces

Ian Black, Middle East editor
Friday 5 April 2013

Jordan is facing mounting tension with neighbouring Syria amid signs that it has moved to a more active role in support of the rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The border between the countries was reinforced on the Jordanian side on Thursday after Syrian state media warned the western-backed kingdom it was “playing with fire” and poised “on the edge of a volcano” by backing the opposition.

Recent weeks have seen a spate of reports about arms shipments from Jordan to anti-Assad rebels who have been making gains around Deraa, the Syrian city closest to the border. Opposition sources say the military situation reflects enhanced supplies and training.

Barack Obama discussed the crisis with King Abdullah II in Amman on his Middle East tour last month. Jordan was the only Arab state the US president visited – an indication of the pressure the king is under to be more supportive of the Gulf-driven effort to drive Assad from power.

Diplomats say they have discussed plans for a buffer zone in southern Syria as well as accelerated training for rebel fighters by the US and Jordan. British and French special forces are reported to be involved in training, advice, logistics and intelligence support.

In an apparent reflection of nervousness about the issue, a government spokesman in Amman insisted on Friday that Jordan was “not part of the conflict” in Syria and maintained its support for a “peaceful solution” – the formal stance of all Arab states. The spokesman refused to comment either on the training or the buffer zone, the Al-Ghad newspaper reported.

The Washington Post cited Jordanian security officials this week as saying that a plan to complete the training of 3,000 Free Syrian Army officers by the end of June has been brought forward to the end of April in light of the border victories. The FSA is backed by western and Arab governments as a bulwark against the rise of Salafi or Jihadi-type Islamist groups.

Jordanian sources describe a “double discourse” – an official one that reiterates the formal position alongside clandestine training and Saudi-financed arms supplies delivered with the help of the CIA. Jordan’s powerful Mukhabarat secret service enjoys a close relationship with its western partners, including MI6.

The west’s alliance against Assad is riddled with contradictions
Claire Spencer
The Guardian, Tuesday 26 March 2013 19.36 GMT

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/26/international-community-fails-syria-local-agendas

The tragedy in Syria lies as much in the dysfunctional international response as in the war on the ground
Over the past week there has been much wringing of hands over Syria, and rightly so. At every turn, the Gordian knot has been tightening, with little prospect of it being cut.

Monday’s grim news was that the founder of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the erstwhile Syrian army colonel Riad al-Asaad, was seriously wounded in a targeted car bomb just before the Syrian National Coalition assumed Syria’s seat in place of the Assad regime at the Arab League meeting in Doha.

In war things rarely run smoothly, but the tragedy of Syria lies as much in the fragility of the coalition supporting the rebels as in the inconclusiveness of the rebels’ own political and military battles. Since the Russian and Chinese vetoes at the UN in early 2011, there has been no single “international community” voice on Syria. On team A we have the US, EU, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Russia, China, Iran and sundry others make up team B. Far from resolving the crisis, these competing actors cancelled out each other’s efforts over the ensuing two years. As the main instigators of Libya’s liberation from Muammar Gaddafi, the French and British clearly want to do more than train rebel soldiers in Jordan, or increase humanitarian assistance to refugees. In pushing for arms to reach the FSA in Syria, however, they are failing to manage their own allies, much less the opposing team.

The Arab League, meeting this week, is once again calling for more robust UN action, but this reflects neither diplomatic realities nor developments on the ground. Journalists covering Syria from the inside have revealed how Turkey and the Gulf states are already training, funding and arming rebel groups; but from a Franco-British perspective, they are clearly the wrong ones. Last week’s news that a low-level, chlorine-based chemical weapons may have been deployed from an area controlled by Jabhat al-Nusra, the Islamist militia supported by Qatar, sits uneasily with the more secular FSA’s appeals for hardware from the west.

So far, the US is sitting on the fence – the new secretary of state, John Kerry, having failed to convince President Obama that inserting more weaponry into Syria will save lives down the line. The alliance struck with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey over Syria remains circumstantial. It is not clear that all of team A wants the same thing. Opposing Iranian, or indeed Russian, influence in Syria is not the same thing as securing the best outcome for the Syrian people. With the shadow of 2003 Iraq hanging heavily over western intervention, which lacks domestic support in both Europe and the US, the next best options remain no-fly zones and humanitarian corridors. Neither is anywhere close to being legally viable or practical on the ground.

What worked in Libya in 2011 now looks like a fortuitous sleight of hand. Given the EU’s tensions with Russia over Cyprus, the solid veto of China, and the regional activism of Qatar and Turkey, the Nato-led Libyan campaign may go down in history as one of the last actions of a consensus-based “international community”. The closer the crisis, the more local agendas prevail. Whether this means the Gulf favouring jihadist strongmen over democracy, or Turkey backing some of Syria’s ethnic and sectarian communities over others, it is not the Syrian people who will emerge victorious in any of the senses championed by the US and EU.

Facing up to the dysfunctionality of its own alliance over Syria should now be the priority of any UK-French plan. The alternative is to continue to back one increasingly narrow, divided and poorly resourced set of Syrians against another armed and championed by the west’s own regional allies

Syria accuses rebels of setting fire to oil wells amid internal disputes - Middle East - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/syria-accuses-rebels-of-setting-fire-to-oil-wells-amid-internal-disputes-1.

Syria Comment » Archives » Jabhat al-Nusra Shaikh Promises to Decapitate Every Oppressive Arab Leader
http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/?p=18336

Le pire, c’est le pouce pointé vers le bas qui accueille le premier commentaire.

A rural exodus as drought takes hold of Syria | Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/03/16/a_rural_exodus_as_drought_takes_hold_of_syria.html

A rural exodus as drought takes hold of Syria

Un écho de plus sur une thèse qui revient régulièrement...

La sinueuse parabole syrienne et néanmoins démente
http://www.dedefensa.org/article-la_sinueuse_parabole_syrienne_et_n_anmoins_d_mente_25_03_2013.htm

• Attaque chimique en Syrie ? • Est-ce sûr, et de qui ? • La Syrie sans Assad, paradis des extrémistes ? • Vive les rebelles !

Syria chemical weapons: finger pointed at jihadists
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9950036/Syria-chemical-weapons-finger-pointed-at-jihadists.html

The source said that the town of Khan al-Assal has been in government control since March 13 but - like so much of the area - has been much fought over and parts of the area change hands with relative frequency. Rebel Sunni groups with al-Qaeda sympathies have been attacking the town, where the population is predominantly Shia.

The military’s version of events is that the home-made rocket was fired at a military checkpoint situated at the entrance to the town. The immediate effects were to induce vomiting, fainting , suffocation and seizures among those in the immediate area.

A second source - a medic at the local civilian hospital - said that he personally witnessed Syrian army helping those wounded and dealing with fatalities at the scene. That Syrian soldiers were among the reported 26 deaths has not been disputed by either side.

Islamic law comes to rebel-held areas of Syria - The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/islamic-law-comes-to-rebel-held-syria/2013/03/19/b310532e-90af-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239_story.html

Among those who have fallen afoul of the authority is Othman al-Haj Othman, a respected activist and physician renowned for his role in treating those injured in the shelling and airstrikes that persist on a daily basis. He was detained last week by armed men dispatched by the Hayaa after he removed a poster from the wall of his hospital inscribed with the Muslim declaration of faith and was held overnight in a cell at the former Eye Hospital.

More than 50 people were held in the same cell, he said on his release the following morning, adding that he saw at least three other cells containing a similar number of people. Calling Othman’s detention a “mistake,” Abu Hafs’s spokesman said the authority apologized to him — after an outcry by activists in Aleppo and beyond.

But Othman didn’t seem mollified. “They think the same way as Bashar. There is no difference,” he said, in reference to the Syrian president, as he stepped out of the hospital gates to be greeted by supporters, who had staged a small demonstration to demand his release.

“Those people don’t represent the revolution. They don’t understand the revolution,” he said. “They have power, they have guns, but they don’t have support. When there are free elections, you will see.”

European Commission Bankrolls Anti-Immigrant Policies

http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations-a-states/citizenship-and-nationality/52351-european-commission-bankrolls-anti-immigrant-policies.html?itemi

Observers are concerned that funding from the European Commission is being used to finance policies and procedures that violate the rights of migrants and asylum-seekers in Greece, many of whom are fleeing the violence in Syria. Migrants have allegedly been subjected to arbitrary detainment, mistreatment while in the custody of Greek authorities, and unsuitable detention conditions. Some European political figures note that Europe appear reluctant to aid Greece with its devastating social and economic crisis, but are actively financing anti-immigrant measures. They argue that this arrangement of priorities is incompatible with the EU’s stated commitment to human rights.

#migrations #asile #europe