Syrian War Intensifies Lebanon’s Divisions

Syrian War Intensifies Lebanon’s Divisions

Jabal Mohsen, Lebanon – As violence escalates in Syria, residents of the tiny Alawite enclave of Jabal Mohsen in neighbouring Lebanon brace themselves for the next attack.

“This is now the pattern – whenever anything happens in Syria, we feel the repercussions here,” said Abu Ali, a 34-year-old street commander in Jabal Mohsen.

The Sunni neighbourhoods are ardent supporters of Syria’s armed opposition, and numerous reports have emerged of residents from the area fighting alongside rebels across the border.

The Alawites of Jabal Mohsen, meanwhile, are supporters of Syria’s government and President Bashar al-Assad, also a member of the offshoot sect of Shia Islam.

View from above

“This made the situation on the ground worse, and opened up the battle fronts onto Jabal Mohsen … Now they are declaring jihad on us every other day.”

“We support the [Syrian] regime, yes, but it is also because the Lebanese state has done nothing over the years to help us,” said Abu Ali. “Our children today feel more Syrian than Lebanese.”

The Alawites in Lebanon number about 70,000, but have no political representation in the government.

There are no hospitals or universities in Jabal, the closest based in downtown Tripoli, which are only accessible by passing through the neighbourhoods they consider hostile.

During clashes, entering and exiting Jabal is next to impossible as all entrances are blocked to prevent fighters from neighouring areas from infiltrating the area.

Life under siege

“I had to stop my work in Tripoli, and I haven’t been able to leave for about seven months,” said Fady, a Jabal resident, who gave only one name.

Sitting in a coffee shop smoking arguilleh with a large poster of Bashar al-Assad hanging above a fridge, Fady and his friends explained how they’ve adapted to this way of life.

“When there is a funeral down there, they fire shots at us, and when there is a wedding, they also fire shots at us,” he said. “We don’t let it stop us from enjoying life.”

His 16-year-old son, Firas, was prevented from taking his exams this year as a result of the clashes. “We’re used to this,” he told Al Jazeera with a shrug.

Abu Ali – a street commander since 2007 and in charge of about 100 men – said residents from his area have the most to lose whenever fighting erupts.

“When a battle starts, we die from hunger because we can’t leave. What interest do we have in poking the bear and starting a war?” he asked.

Weapons abound

Yet this does not prevent them from arming themselves and coordinating neighbourhood battalions to fight on the frontline. About 5,000 Alawite fighters are at the ready in Jabal today.

Abu Ali, who lost his 18-year-old brother in clashes last year, said while a large number of their weapons are old Russian arms, they have also bought guns from “the other side” down the hill.

“We offer them [Tabbaneh residents] $ 200 above the asking price of a gun, and they sell it to us,” Abu Ali said, adding his weapon of choice is a B-10 recoilless rifle.

“We’ve learnt how to fend for ourselves, and we look after each other,” said Abu Ali.

The only thing preventing the Alawites of Jabal from being wiped out is the Lebanese Army, he said, which street commanders work with to secure the area.

“In Bab al-Tabbaneh, every 100 metres there’s a different leader, and every month they change, so what takes a few hours in the Jabal will take at least three days in Tabbaneh.”

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged the government in Lebanon to disarm both sides to prevent violence from escalating.

‘Calling us traitors’

To further complicate matters, about 10 Sunni families live in Jabal Mohsen and fight alongside the Alawites to defend themselves from attacks from their neighbours down the street.

Merhej, who has family members living in Tabbaneh, said she often gives them some of the aid she gets, “because I’m being looked after better than they are”.

An old woman with piercing eyes and a grandmother-like demeanor, she gesticulates angrily when describing the constant barrage of attacks she’s forced to endure.

“Now the residents of Tabbaneh are calling us traitors because we live here and refuse to move,” she said. “They’ve banned us from going to the souk [market] and have threatened us.”

For Abu Ali and his crew of fighters, there is no end in sight to the violence, regardless of what happens to the Assad regime in Syria.

“They will keep fighting us until Armageddon,” he said.

By Nour Samaha
http://www.aljazeera.com

Over 530,000 Syrian Refugees in Lebanon

BEIRUT (Xinhua) — The United Nations Higher Council for Refugees said Sunday that the number of Syrians who fled their war-torn country to Lebanon has exceeded 530,000 after an increase of 19,000 in a week.

In its latest report on Syrian refugees, the UN agency said more than 455,000 Syrian refugees have registered with UN offices in Lebanon while over 75,000 others are waiting for their registration process to complete.

The registered refugees are benefiting from aid provided by the UN, the Lebanese government and various nongovernmental aid agencies, according to the report.

The report added 167,900 Syrian refugees have been registered in north Lebanon; 156,500 in the eastern Bekaa region; 77,500 in Beirut and Mount Lebanon and 53,600 in south Lebanon.

Lebanon has called on the international community to help bear its burden of hosting the Syrian refugees, who are expected to exceed 1 million by the end of the year.

Earlier this month, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman sounded the alarm on Lebanon’s incapacity of dealing with the rampant spate of displaced Syrians coming into the country.

UN Higher Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said last month that the number of refugees in Lebanon had surpassed 25 percent of its population and that they were inflicting a huge burden on the government and people of Lebanon.

Syrian warplanes hit Damascus suburbs

Syrian artillery and warplanes have hit rebel-held areas of Damascus, as Russia has warned against any attempt to establish a no-fly zone over the country.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group, said jets and artillery had attacked Jobar, a battered district where rebels operate on the edge of central Damascus, on Saturday.

It said heavy artillery was also shelling opposition fighters in the provinces of Homs, Aleppo and Deir Ezzor.

Fighting was also reported around dawn on the outskirts of the Palestinian Yarmuk camp in southern Damascus, which also came under regime fire along with southern Al-Hajar al-Aswad.

Outside the capital, loyalist troops fired mortar rounds at several areas including western Moadamiyet al-Sham, southern Sbeineh and the region of Wadi Barada, northwest of Damascus.

Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, however, said on Saturday that any attempt to establish a no-fly zone using F-16 fighter jets and Patriot air defence missile systems from Jordan would “violate international law”.

“You don’t have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate international law,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference with his Italian counterpart in Moscow.

Western diplomats said on Friday the United States was considering a no-fly zone over Syria, but the White House said later that it would be far harder and costlier to set one up there than it was in Libya in 2011, stressing that the United States had no national interest in pursuing that option.

Lavrov also scoffed at suggestions that Assad’s regime would use chemical weapons now in light of its apparent growing advantage against the rebels.

“The regime doesn’t have its back to the wall. What would be the sense of the regime using chemical weapons, moreover at such a small quantity?” he said.

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Maronite, Orthodox Leaders Call for Release of Kidnapped Syrian Bishops

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s Maronite Catholic patriarch and Syria’s Greek Orthodox patriarch called for the release of two Orthodox bishops kidnapped in Syria.

“We demand the kidnappers and the countries concerned” to release the two bishops and the two priests kidnapped before them, and all those who have been kidnapped on Syrian territory, said Lebanese Cardinal Bechara Rai, the Maronite patriarch, and Greek Orthodox Patriarch John X in a joint statement from Bkerke, the Maronite patriarchate north of Beirut.

“We express our sorrow and regret for the continuation of the cycle of violence in Syria, which kills people and destroys their homes,” the two religious leaders said in their appeal on behalf of Orthodox Metropolitan Paul of Aleppo and Syriac Orthodox Metropolitan Gregorios Yohanna of Aleppo.

The Orthodox leaders were kidnapped April 22 in northern Syria while on a humanitarian mission.

Cardinal Rai and Patriarch John also urged all Lebanese parties, as well as regional and international powers to end their involvement in the Syrian conflict.

“On the contrary, we appeal to everyone to work for peace, safeguard the history of Syria and its civilization, which dates back to centuries,” they said.

The cardinal and the patriarch called for “a political solution through dialogue and negotiation” to the Syrian conflict that is “fair and equitable for all.” They emphasized that such a solution should be generated internally and not imposed on the Syrian people from outside powers.

They urged countries in the region, the international community and international institutions “to carry out their responsibilities towards displaced Syrians” and to help Lebanon as it struggles to host and accommodate more than 1 million displaced Syrians.

However, they said, what is needed is “the foundation to stop the violence and war, so that the displaced people can return to their homes and lands as soon as possible.”

“We ask God to inspire all consciences … to work to bring about a just and comprehensive peace, and respect for the dignity and sanctity of human life,” they said.

Catholic News Service

Syrian Rebels Reportedly Raid Shiite Village

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels burned homes and killed civilians in a sectarian rampage targeting Shiite Muslims in a village in eastern Syria, activists and officials said Wednesday.

The rebel attack on Hatla, in eastern Deir Elzur province, resulted in the deaths of unspecified numbers of civilians and combatants, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The British-based monitoring group says it documents abuses by all sides in the Syrian civil war.

The official Syrian government press office said “terrorists” attacked Hatla and killed 30 people, including women and children. Anti-government rebels control large swaths of eastern Deir Elzur province.

The Syrian rebels, predominantly Sunni Muslim, stormed and burned civilian homes in the mostly Shiite village, the observatory said. Video posted on the Internet showed scorched homes and rebel fighters hoisting black Islamist flags and decrying Shiite “dogs” and “apostates.”

The attack came a day after rebels seized the village following fierce clashes and bombardment that led to the deaths of 60 civilians and pro-government combatants from Hatla, along with 10 rebel fighters, the observatory said.

Syrian minority groups, including Shiites and Christians, generally support the government of President Bashar Assad, a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Some have formed government-assisted militias to defend their communities from attack. Many Syrian minorities fear that a rebel victory will result in a Sunni Islamist state intolerant of minority beliefs.

Rebels fighting to oust Assad are overwhelmingly from Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority community.

The government blamed the attack in Hatla on Jabat Nusrah, a militant Islamist rebel faction that the U.S. government has designated as a “terrorist” group linked to Al Qaeda. Nusrah is regarded as one of the most effective units among the disparate rebel factions fighting to overthrow Assad.

Each side in the Syrian conflict has repeatedly accused the other of being responsible for massacres of civilians. Neither side has acknowledged committing atrocities.

In May, the opposition alleged that pro-government forces massacred more than 100 civilians, all Sunni Muslims, in and around the refinery city of Baniyas, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. The government said that its forces had clashed with “terrorists” in the area, without providing more details.

In recent weeks, government forces have pushed back rebel fighters in several areas of the country, including the former rebel stronghold of Qusair, a strategic town near the Lebanese border. Still, rebels have disrupted Syria’s daily life, even in Damascus, the relatively secure capital.

On Tuesday, a pair of suicide bombers detonated their payloads near central Marjeh Square in Damascus, killing 14 and injuring dozens.

Also on Wednesday, the Syrian government acknowledged that one of its helicopters had fired on a “terrorist group” that had fled into neighboring Lebanon.

Tensions have been high along the Syrian-Lebanese border. Syrian forces have occasionally pursued and fired on rebel forces seeking refuge in Lebanon. Syrian rebels, meantime, are widely believed to be behind the fired rockets at mostly Shiite areas in Lebanon under the sway of Hezbollah, the Shiite Lebanese militant group. Hezbollah dispatched fighters to assist Assad, its long-time ally, in the almost three-week battle to win control of Qusair.

By Patrick J. McDonnell
Los Angeles Times

Chaldean Synod: Revitalising the Christian Presence in Iraq and Freedom for Syrian Bishops

Baghdad — Creating a “competent” Christian political class, training well-prepared priests, boosting the faithful’s role as a “bridge between cultures” and partner with Muslims, reviving the ecumenical movement by opening a “brave and honest dialogue with the Church Assyrian Church of the East” are but some of the issues mentioned in the final paper issued by the Synod of the Chaldean Church, held on 5-10 June in Baghdad.

As chair of the assembly of Fathers, which brought together all the bishops of Iraq and the Diaspora, except for Mgr Sarhad Jammo from California, the Chaldean Patriarch, His Beatitude Mar Raphael I Louis Sako, used the occasion to present his thoughts on “the bishop’s pastoral work”, whose success depends on “spirituality and prayer,” not on “administrative work alone.”

The Synod, which saw the leaders of the Chaldean Church address a number of issues, ended with a dinner given by the patriarch. Political and religious leaders, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, took part in the repast. The patriarch used the venue to propose a committee to promote dialogue.

In their final paper, the Fathers expressed “regret for the violence in the region, especially in Syria” and said that they would pray that “Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yazigi, the two kidnapped bishops, be released.”

Invoking the blessing of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary “on the children of the homeland and the diaspora,” the prelates said that they supported political action by “lay people” and the establishment of ” cultural and social centres as well as schools where to teach our language”.

They also went along with what Patriarch Sako had already said, namely that the clergy must “engage in priestly vocation and services” and give their support to (Christian) politicians in the defence of “the dignity and rights of the people.”

Renewing the “structures of the Patriarchate” is one of the many challenges that lay ahead. Inspired by the motto “Authenticity, Unity and Renewal” His Beatitude chose at the time of his election, this renewal will affect the way the Patriarchate and all the dioceses, religious orders and church institutions are organised.

With this comes a commitment to train the clergy and nurture religious and priestly vocations. However, “the ordination of priests should not be done in a rush just to fill pastoral vacancies”. Good solid training is needed to avoid “negative repercussions for the Church.”

The Synod Fathers also raised some questions about the practice of moving priests from one diocese to another “without the permission of the bishop”, a practice that “undermines the priestly service”. For this reason, they call on the dioceses not accept “priests without the permission of their bishop.”

Among the topics for reflection, “the Christian presence in Iraq” took centre stage. Even though half of the community left in the past ten years, Christians are and will continue to be “a bridge between communities” and work to “strengthen mutual coexistence and raise the voice of truth vis-à-vis ongoing changes.”

As the last item, Patriarch Sako and the bishops turned to the contents of the letter sent to Pope Francis through the papal nuncio to Iraq, Mgr Giorgio Lingua. In their message, the Synod Fathers “express love” for the Pontiff and “respect for his points of view, which encourage openness and dialogue between nations.”

By Fr. Albert Zarazeer
Asia News

Sunni Clerics Call For Jihad Against Syrian Regime, Allies

Leading Sunni Muslim clerics have called for a holy war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and his allies.

After a meeting in Cairo on June 13, the clerics issued a statement saying: “The flagrant aggression of the Iranian regime, of [Lebanon’s] Hizballah, and of their sectarian allies in Syria amounts to a declaration of war against Islam and Muslims.”

The Sunni clerics said “jihad” must be undertaken “to help our brothers in Syria by sending them money and weapons.”

Those backing the call include Abdulaziz al-Shaikh, Saudi Arabia’s top cleric, Youssef al-Qaradawi, a high-profile Egyptian preacher based in Qatar, and Hassan al-Shafai, a senior scholar from Egypt’s leading religious academy Al-Azhar.

Lebanon’s Iran-backed Shi’ite movement has been fighting alongside the forces of Assad, who is a member of the Alawite offshoot of Shia Islam.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP

Syrian rebels ‘kill scores’ in village battle

Syrian rebels have killed at least 60 people, including civilians and people loyal to the government, in a battle in a Sunni-majority village in the country’s east, activists said.

The fighting in Hatla village over the past few days targetted members of the Shia community, highlighting the increasingly sectarian nature of the country’s civil war.

The opposition fighters reportedly stormed and burned civilian homes in the village in the eastern Deir Azzor province.

The attack is said to be in retaliation for an earlier assault by Shias from Hatla that killed four opposition fighters.

A Syrian government official denounced the attack on the Shia-section of the Sunni-majority Hatla village as a “massacre” of civilians, the Associated Press news agency reported on Thursday.

A video posted online by rebels on Tuesday, entitled “The storming and cleansing of Hatla”, showed dozens of fighters carrying black flags celebrating and firing guns in the streets of a small town as smoke curled above several buildings.

“We have raised the banner ‘There is no God but God’ above the houses of the apostate rejectionists, the Shias, and the holy warriors are celebrating,” the voice of the cameraman says.

One fighter shouts in the video: “This is a Sunni area, it does not belong to other groups.”

Most of the armed rebels in Syria are from the country’s Sunni majority, while President Bashar al-Assad has retained core support among the minorities, including his own Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, along with Christians and Shia.

US debates strategy

Meanwhile, the US has again debated how to help the Syrian opposition, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said.

The US has weighed for months whether to give arms to the rebels, but the issue is now firmly on the table given increased involvement by Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese Shia group, and as Iran backs President Assad on the battlefield.

Government forces are also reported to be preparing for a major offensive on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo.

“We are focusing our efforts now doing all that we can to support the opposition as they work to change the balance on the ground,” Kerry said at a joint news conference with William Hague, UK foreign secretary, in Washington DC on Wednesday.

The Obama administration is meeting this week on whether to arm the Syrian rebels, a topic that Kerry said he discussed with Hague.

The meeting came ahead of a G8 summit in Northern Ireland next week, where leaders will discuss a coordinated response to the Syrian conflict and how to bring the rival sides together at a peace conference.

For his part, Hague said Britain, the US and allies in Europe and the region – a group known as the London 11 that has met in Turkish and Jordanian cities - may need to step up their efforts to help the opposition.

Lebanon clashes

Also on Wednesday, trouble flared on Syria’s borders, with Lebanese police saying that a Syrian helicopter fired rockets on Arsaal, a village in the country’s east, wounding at least two people.

The Syrian army command admitted in a statement that a Syrian helicopter “targeted terrorists who tried to flee to Lebanon, killing several of them and wounding others, while the rest sought refuge in Arsaal”.

Lebanese security sources also reported fierce clashes on Wednesday night between troops of the Hezbollah fighters and the al-Qaeda-linked Syrian rebel group al-Nusra Front in mountains near the border in the eastern Bekaa valley.

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Iraqi Kurdistan Region Struggles To Cope With Syrian Refugees

With the continuously deteriorating security and political situation in Syria, and the growing fighting between government and opposition forces, many Syrian citizens — particularly Syria’s Kurds — have been forced to seek refuge in the Iraqi Kurdistan region. This resulted in a wave of displacement that local authorities in Kurdistan did not expect.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) set up the Domiz camp — which is the only camp for displaced Syrians in the Kurdistan region — to accommodate nearly 10,000 refugees. Yet, with the massive influx [of refugees], the KRG has been forced to continuously expand the camp, while the number of displaced reached 40,000.

In 2004, nearly 4,000 Syrian refugees moved to the camp located in the city of Dohuk, as clashes between the Syrian regime’s forces and Syrian Kurds erupted in the city of Qamishli. These clashes were called the Qamishli events, and resulted in the deaths of a number of demonstrators, and hundreds of arrests by the Syrian regime.

On Monday, June 10, while hosting the French ambassador to Iraq, Denys Gauer, Iraqi Kurdistan Region President Massoud Barzani called on the international community and UN organizations to provide Syrian refugees and displaced persons in the Kurdistan region with international aid and donations.

The presidential statement quoted Barzani as saying that the international community, UN organizations and European countries did not provide Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan region with assistance, and that Barzani asked him to encourage the international community to help the Syrian refugees present in the Kurdistan region.

Dindar Zebari, deputy head of the KRG’s Department of Foreign Relations, told Al-Monitor in a statement that there are more than 145,000 Syrian refugees and displaced persons who are temporarily residing in the three main provinces of the Kurdistan region — Erbil, Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk.

Zebari explained that there are more than 100,000 Syrian refugees in Dohuk province — on the border with Syria and Turkey — more than 30,000 in Erbil, and nearly 15,000 in Salaimaniyah.

Zebari confirmed that the only support they have received was provided by the KRG. So far, it amounts to more than $ 20 million from the KRG budget.

He added, “More than $ 20 million was disbursed from the limited budget of the KRG in two payments; $ 10 million several months ago, and another $ 10 million two weeks ago.”

The KRG receives 17% of the total federal budget of Iraq. In 2013, the Kurdistan region received nearly $ 18 billion.

According to unofficial statistics, the population in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region numbers more than 5 million.

Zebari noted that the local authorities’ support is designed to fulfill basic needs in the main camp in Domiz, the largest Syrian refugee camp in Iraq.

He added, “There is a plan to build two additional camps in both Erbil and Sulaimaniyah, where 15,000 refugees can be resettled in each camp.”

Zebari confirmed, “There is a need for international support, and we, in the KRG, call on the UN and the UNHCR to include the Kurdistan region [among those countries that are recipients of] international donations to be delivered to Syrian refugees.”

He added, “The Iraqi authorities in the federal government have not yet agreed to disburse specific funds to Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan region.”

On international support, Zebari said, “There are conditional international donations for some countries neighboring Syria. Yet, so far there are no international donations to the Kurdistan region and to assist Syrian Kurds who are present in the Kurdistan region. What is available is support by local authorities, while the burden and responsibility fall upon the international community, the UN, and the federal government.”

The Iraqi Kurdistan Region’s citizens complain about the rising number of Syrian refugees in the region, amid an increase in beggars, particularly in major cities.

Zebari added, “I think it is difficult for the Kurdistan region and its three provinces to host an additional number of refugees, yet the border is still open, and displacement continues.”

The Iraqi Kurdistan Region had decided to resettle Syrian refugees there and give them the right to work, and the freedom of movement and education, with the support of the KRG.

Speaking about the shortages in the provision of assistance to Syrian refugees, Zebari explained, “There is a shortage regarding camp management and basic needs. According to expectations, the number of refugees in Iraq will probably reach nearly 300,000 people by the end of the year. I think that the largest percentage [of these refugees], i.e., 95%, are present in the Kurdistan region, and they are a burden on the Kurdistan region and its residents.”

On June 2, an Iraqi official said that more than 7,000 Syrian refugees have returned to the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal in the past few weeks, after the security situation improved there.

Zebari explained that only those refugees in the Qaim district of Anbar were returning, not those in the Kurdistan region. This is because there are complicated procedures and conditions to enter into Iraqi territory, and the Iraqi government requires refugees to obtain a temporary residence permit, which forces those who cannot obtain one to return. This does not happen to refugees in the Kurdistan region.

He stressed, “For the Kurdistan region, there is more openness and a sense of humanitarian responsibility to protect and support the Syrian people. Our border is open, and refugees and displaced persons enter on a daily basis.”

The vast majority of Syrian refugees and displaced people in the Kurdistan region reside in the cities, and among the Kurdistan region’s citizens. On the support provided to these refugees, Zebari said, “Arabic schools in certain areas were open to Syrian families, and support was offered to certain hospitals in areas where [refugees] are present. The ministries of education, higher education, and public health were given instructions to meet the requirements of Syrian refugees in the cities.”

By Abdel Hamid Zebari
AL Monitor

US ‘debating options’ to help Syrian rebels

The US is debating what more it might do to help the Syrian opposition in its conflict with the government, John Kerry, US secretary of state, has said, without giving any details.

The US has weighed for months whether to give arms to the rebels, but the issue is now firmly on the table given increased involvement of Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese Shia group, and Iran in backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on the battlefield.

Government forces are also reported to be preparing for a major offensive on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo.

In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria

The Obama administration is meeting this week on whether to arm the Syrian rebels, a topic that Kerry said he discussed with Hague.

The meeting came in advance of a Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland next week, where leaders will discuss a coordinated response to the ing Syrian conflict and how to bring the rival sides together at a peace conference.

“Secretary Kerry and I are in complete agreement about this, and I also don’t have any new announcement that we’re making today about this, but we are determined that we will address this issue together and do our utmost to create the conditions for a political solution in Syria,” Hague said.

Kerry made that clear that a political solution was the preferred outcome of the US.

“And I think that there’s a unanimity about the importance of trying to find a way to peace, and not a way to war. The Assad regime is making that very difficult,” he said.

New massacre reported

The statements by Kerry and Hague came on a day reports emerged of a raid by a group of Syrian rebels on a predominantly Shia Muslim village in Deir Az-Zor province that resulted in the deaths of about 60 people, including many pro-government fighters.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) watchdog group said Sunni rebels seized the village of Hatla on Tuesday, prompting Shia residents to flee.

It said Assad’s regime had armed hundreds of Shias in the area to fight against the rebels who control large areas in the east. Assad belongs to the Alawite sect, a Shia offshoot.

The Syrian government called the killings a “massacre” and some opposition members expressed concern about the nature of the attack.

The US and other Western nations have been hesitant to arm the outgunned and outmanned rebels because of “Sunni extremists” among their ranks.

Jen Psaki, US state department spokesman, said on Wednesday the US was “appalled by reports that rebels have killed 60 Shia in Hatla village”.

“The motivations and circumstances surrounding this massacre remain unclear, but the United States strongly condemns any and all attacks against civilians,” Psaki said.

Also on Wednesday, trouble flared on Syria’s borders, with Lebanese police saying that a Syrian helicopter fired rockets on Arsaal, a village in the country’s east, wounding at least two people.

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Syrian Missiles Hit Lebanese Town

The Lebanese Army has warned neighboring Syria it will respond to any further cross-border attacks, after a Syrian government helicopter fired three missiles that hit the Lebanese border town of Arsal.

Lebanon’s army issued the warning on June 12 after the incursion.

It said Lebanese military forces deployed in the Arsal area would “respond immediately to any similar violations.”

There were no immediate casualty reports in the June 12 incident.

It’s the first such attack from Syria on an urban area inside Lebanon since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011.

In a separate development, Syrian opposition activists said on June 12 that Syrian rebels have killed dozens of Shi’ite Muslim militants in the village of Hatla, in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the victims in the June 11 attack were pro-government militiamen.

Government officials said there were children and the elderly among the victims.

Most Syrian rebels are Sunnis.

President Bashar al-Assad belongs to the minority Alawite sect, a Shi’ite offshoot.

Based on reporting for Reuters, AP, and AFP

Iraq Increasingly Drawn Into Syrian Battlefield

BAGHDAD (AP) — Signs are growing that stretches of Iraq and Syria are morphing into a single battlefield for militants, exacerbating Iraq’s slide into renewed deadly chaos a year and a half after U.S. troops pulled out.

Iraqi border posts along the Syrian frontier are coming under attack, and Syrian truck drivers have been singled out and shot inside Iraq. Syrian soldiers earlier this year sought refuge across the border, only to be massacred by al-Qaida.

Combat-hardened Iraqi fighters, meanwhile, are crisscrossing the frontier. Al-Qaida-linked Sunni militants are cooperating with hard-line Islamists among the Syrian rebels, while Iraqi Shiite fighters are joining militiamen from Lebanon’s Hezbollah to fight alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s Iranian-backed regime. U.S. officials believe Iranian arms are still being shuttled to Damascus through Iraqi airspace.

“What is going on in Syria has a big, clear impact on us … especially since there are attempts to move the battle to Iraq,” said Ali al-Moussawi, spokesman for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

It’s happening as the deadly drumbeat of violence is growing louder across Iraq. Nearly 2,000 lives have been violently snuffed out across the country since the start of April.

The extent of the killing hasn’t been this bad for half a decade, when Iraq’s last tip toward civil war was easing and American troops were still here to help keep the peace. Attackers killed more than 60 people in a relentless wave of bombings on Monday. Another nine were slain Tuesday.

“The events in the past three or four months prove that the violence in Iraq and Syria are two sides of the same coin,” said Haider Ayed, a 35-year-old math teacher and father of two in Baghdad’s southwestern Bayaa neighborhood. “We are going through a very dangerous period.”

It’s a worrying trend for the United States, which is mulling whether to arm Syria’s rebels even as it adapts to a new relationship with Iraq following a divisive war that claimed nearly 4,500 American and more than 100,000 Iraqi lives.

The spokesman for the American Embassy in Baghdad, Frank Finver, said the U.S. shares Iraqi government concerns about the level of violence in Syria, as well as about extremists who are trying to capitalize on the situation in Syria and incite violence inside Iraq.

The U.S., Finver added, is working with allies and moderate members of the Syrian opposition to isolate extremists and “ensure their violent and divisive ideology does not take root in Syria or spill over into Iraq.”

Iraq officially remains neutral in the Syrian conflict. Al-Maliki has repeatedly called for a peaceful, political solution to the crisis, though he has also warned that a victory for the rebels would unleash sectarian war in Iraq and Lebanon.

On Tuesday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari insisted that Iraq has no official or military role in the civil war, and said Baghdad does not encourage the movement of any Iraqi fighters to Syria.

Still, the cross-border violence continues. An Iraqi border guard was killed and two others were wounded Sunday in clashes with fighters the Interior Ministry said were members of the Free Syrian Army rebel group. Border guards thwarted two other attempts by gunmen and smugglers to sneak into Iraq from Syria, officials said.

The long and porous border runs along Iraq’s Sunni-dominated provinces of Anbar and Ninevah, and was a key conduit for arms and al-Qaida fighters in the years following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Centuries-old cultural and tribal affiliations span the loosely defended desert frontier.

A Western diplomat in Baghdad described Iraq’s control of the border with Syria as limited.

“With all the air power and surveillance the (U.S.-led) coalition had, it did not fully control that border,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly. “On the border area there is a nexus of smuggling and informal links and trade.”

Sadoun al-Shaalan, a provincial councilman in Anbar province, said clashes along the border between Iraqi forces and gunmen from Syria are growing more frequent. He attributed the uptick to a rise in smugglers profiting from the war as well as insurgents shuttling fighters back and forth.

Iraqi army units deployed near urban centers within the province — where anti-government sentiment is strong — are often unwilling to confront insurgents deep in the desert because they lack sufficient aerial support and experience in the harsh, remote environment, he added.

“Most of the time, the gunmen and smugglers have better weapons and equipment than our units,” he said.

Iraq’s isolated western desert was the scene of the country’s deadliest incident of spillover from the Syrian conflict — a March attack in which 51 Syrian soldiers were killed. The Syrian troops had retreated into Iraq after their border post was attacked by rebels, and were later ambushed, along with their Iraqi military escorts, in a highly organized assault involving explosives, gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades unleashed by al-Qaida’s Iraq arm.

The militant group, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, linked the mission directly to the conflict in Syria, saying it planned the raid following “the blessed operations carried out by our brothers in Syria.”

The group has since attempted to frame its cause as part of a broader cross-border battle. Leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi went so far as to announce a merger in April with Syria’s Jabhat al-Nusra, the most powerful rebel force fighting to topple Assad. Al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani quickly distanced himself from that takeover attempt.

Al-Qaida’s central leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, has tried to end the squabbling. He released a statement this week ordering the two groups to remain separate and not to attack one another, while saying both of their leaders could keep their posts.

Syrians were also targeted in Iraq earlier this month when gunmen set up a fake checkpoint on a main highway linking Baghdad to Syria and Jordan. The gunmen killed three Syrian truck drivers and burned their rigs.

Al-Shaalan, the provincial council member, said the attackers managed to operate their checkpoint for a full hour and then got away with several hostages without any resistance from the Iraqi military.

Anthony Cordesman, a longtime observer of Iraq as an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, questions the lack of American attention on Iraq, particularly in light of Washington’s efforts to isolate Iran, Syria’s main patron.

“For all the current attention to Syria, Iraq is the larger and more important state,” he wrote in a commentary this month. A slide toward civil war inside Iraq will push its majority Shiites closer to Iran and Syria, he predicted.

“If Assad survives and the Arab Gulf states continue to isolate Iraq, the largely token U.S. presence in Iraq is likely to become irrelevant and Iraq is likely to become part of a Shiite axis going from Lebanon to Iran,” Cordesman wrote. “If Assad falls … Iran seems likely to do everything it can to replace its ties to Syria with influence in Iraq.”

By Adam Schreck

Associated Press writers Qassim Abdul-Zahra, Sinan Salaheddin and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.

Deadly blasts shake Syrian capital

Two suicide bombers have struck the heart of the Syrian capital Damascus, killing at least 14 people and wounding at least 31 others, pro-government television channel al-Ikhbariya has reported.

Activists said one of the explosions took place inside a police station and that many among the dead were policemen.

A security official quoted by al-Ikhbariya said the suicide bombers struck near a police station in the bustling Marjeh Square in the heart of the capital.

“Two suicide bombers attacked Marjeh Square causing casualties and material damage,” the broadcaster said on Tuesday morning.

The channel screened images showing badly damaged vehicles and bloodied pavements.

“It seems the terrorists have struck again,” said a television presenter, using the government’s term to refer to rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s troops.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists on the ground in Syria, said 15 were killed in the explosions, one of which was caused by a man who blew himself up inside the police station in the square.

The Observatory said the other explosion occurred outside the police station

Suicide and car bombs have become common in Damascus. Some of the deadliest attacks targeting security installations have been claimed by the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra – one of scores of rebel factions fighting the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

Aleppo offensive

Meanwhile, in Aleppo province, the army launched multiple attacks on rebel positions, including rebel-held areas of the key Minnigh military airbase, the Observatory said.

“Parts of Minnigh military airbase were shelled by regime forces… Rebels are in control of large swathes of the airbase,” the Observatory said.

A military source told AFP news agency heavy clashes were raging at the base for a third day, but denied any part of the airport was under rebel control.

He said the fighting was not part of a broader campaign that the regime has pledged to launch to re-take Aleppo city, large parts of which are in rebel hands, and other parts of the province.

But other areas of Aleppo were under fire, two days after pro-regime media said an army campaign in the province would began within “hours or days”.

Regime forces shelled the opposition-controlled villages of Deir Hafer and Al-Bab, and hit the insurgent stronghold of Marea with rockets, the Observatory said.

There were unconfirmed reports of a ground-to-ground missile strike in Aleppo province, the Observatory added.

GCC sanctions

In a separate development, the Gulf Arab states have promised sanctions against members of the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah in retaliation for its intervention in Syria’s ongoing civil war in support of President Assad.

The six Sunni-led members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) issued a condemnation on Monday, according to a statement from the GCC secretariat carried by the Saudi Press Agency.

“The GCC ministerial council has decided to take measures against those enlisted in the party [Hezbollah] residing in the member states, whether with regard to their residencies or their financial and commercial dealings,” it added, without giving any specific details.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both GCC members and US allies, have been explicit in calling for Assad to go, and have been arming the mostly Sunni rebels seeking to oust him and his mostly Alawite regime, members of an offshoot of Shia Islam.

In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria

The rebels suffered one of their biggest setbacks last week when Hezbollah fighters helped Assad’s forces to retake the Syrian border town of Qusayr, which controls vital supply lines.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said last week that Syria and Lebanon faced a common threat from radical Sunni Islamists.

GCC member Bahrain, which has struggled to quell a Shia-led uprising in its own country, has called Hezbollah a “terrorist” organisation and banned its citizens from having any contact with the group.

662

Syrian group urges foreign fighters to leave

A Syrian opposition group has urged all foreign fighters involved in the country’s conflict to leave, regardless of whether they are pro- or anti-government.

The move came as rebels claimed Lebanese Hezbollah fighters have arrived in Aleppo to fight alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Hezbollah were also instrumental in the recent take-over of the city of Qusayr by government forces.

There were also reports that Kurdish fighters have joined the Free Syrian Army in some areas of the northern city.

“The coordination body calls on all non-Syrian parties that are taking part in the fighting on Syrian territory, no matter what party they are fighting beside, to leave the country immediately,” said Hassan Abdul Azim, head of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, at a news conference in Damascus.

Abdul Azim added that the coalition would seek United Nations condemnation of foreign fighters’ involvement.

“The body considers every non-Syrian who kills in Syria as an aggressor,” he said.

The National Coordination Body for Democratic Change is a coalition of non-armed opposition groups and figures based in Syria.

The Gulf Cooperation Council has also condemned the interference of Hezbollah in the Syrian conflict in a statement on Monday.

Aleppo fighting

Fierce fighting is continuing in Aleppo as Syrian rebels make fresh advances in their battle to seize the Minnigh airbase.

“Opposition fighters have seized the radar tower in the Minnigh airbase,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

“Fierce clashes have raged in the airbase since dawn Sunday,” he added.

State news agency SANA said the rebel assault had been repulsed.

“Troops from our heroic army stopped terrorist groups from assaulting the Minnigh army airbase,” it said.

Government troops “stopped terrorists from assaulting the airbase through its eastern and western sides” and captured a rocket launcher and heavy machineguns, the report added.

Rebel fighters have been trying to capture Minnigh for months, as part of a strategy to deny the regime the use of air power across Aleppo province.

The UN estimates at least 94,000 people have died in the Syrian conflict since March, 2011.

The issue of foreign fighters in Syria has been thrown into sharp relief recently with the execution of a Syrian teenager by three foreign rebels who accused him of blasphemy.

Mohammad Kattaa was using a phrase common with Syrians when men speaking classical Arabic picked him up and shot him dead.

417

U.S. Considers Taking in Syrian Refugees

WASHINGTON — Two years into a civil war that shows no signs of ending, the Obama administration is considering resettling refugees who have fled Syria, part of an international effort that could bring thousands of Syrians to American cities and towns.

A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families.

The State Department is “ready to consider the idea,” an official from the department said, if the administration receives a formal request from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which is the usual procedure.

The United States usually accepts about half the refugees that the U.N. agency proposes for resettlement. California has historically taken the largest share, but Illinois, Florida, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia are also popular destinations.

U.N. refugee officials, diplomats and nongovernmental relief groups plan to discuss possible resettlement schemes at a high-level meeting this week in Geneva. Germany already has committed to taking 5,000 people.

“It was probably inevitable that in this crisis, with these overwhelming numbers, governments would start moving in this direction,” said Lavinia Limon, chief executive officer of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a Virginia-based advocacy and service group. “But there will be resistance.”

The Obama administration supports rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad, but is wary of deeper involvement in Syria.

The issue is politically sensitive on several levels.

Congress strongly resisted accepting Iraqi refugees, including interpreters who had worked with U.S. forces, after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Most lawmakers share White House caution about getting more engaged in Syria and may have little appetite for a major influx.

But Susan Rice, President Obama’s new national security advisor, and Samantha Power, Obama’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the U.N., both have been strong advocates for refugees. They may make the White House more receptive to at least a partial opening.

Homeland security officials require careful vetting of refugees, with multiple interviews and background checks before they are allowed to enter the country. Under normal circumstances, the screening process can take a year or longer.

U.S. officials are likely to be extra careful with Syrian refugees. As Islamic militants take a more prominent role in the rebel forces, officials worry about fighters with Al Qaeda ties trying to enter the country. Two resettled Iraqis were convicted of trying to send arms to Al Qaeda from their home in Bowling Green, Ky.

The refugee dilemma is more acute for countries that lie on Syria’s borders.

Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, which have absorbed the bulk of the refugees, worry that a resettlement plan could actually widen the flood if Syrians see a chance for a better life in North America, Europe or Australia.

Jordan and Lebanon each have taken in about 500,000 refugees and Turkey has more than 375,000, according to the U.N. refugee agency. It predicts that the total number of refugees will double to 3.2 million by the end of the year.

Turkey already has demanded that the West take some its refugees, even proposing an airlift to fly them abroad. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has faced angry protests against his government for giving refuge to so many Syrians, declared last month, “We are the first victims of the Syrian situation.”

Some Middle Eastern officials worry they may get stuck housing and feeding refugees for months or years while the West does the vetting, leading to an even longer logjam and more domestic political turmoil.

“Their view is that unless this involves big numbers, it’s not worth doing,” said a European official, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. “You need to be talking about tens of thousands of people.”

Western officials try to discourage poor foreigners who are seeking a more comfortable life or business opportunities in the West. They say resettlement is only for those who can’t go home, and seek to dispel notions that an easy life awaits.

According to a State Department publication aimed at refugees, “Cars are not provided…. Most Americans value self-reliance and hard work. They expect newcomers to find jobs as soon as possible and to take care of themselves and their families.”

Another sensitive issue is who qualifies for resettlement. Western countries often prefer intact, well-educated families with familiar religious backgrounds.

But experts say 80% of the Syrian refugees are women and children, many with war-related injuries or psychological problems that could hamper finding work or going to school.

Kirk Johnson, founder of the List Project, which has pushed for Iraqi resettlement, said it may be difficult to sell Syrian resettlement to Congress. He said it would require an advocacy effort and sympathetic lawmakers, “and I don’t seen either of those necessary ingredients.”

Yet most refugee advocates predict that Americans will ultimately help the Syrians.

“Americans have a long tradition of welcoming refugees,” said Daryl Grisgraber, a Washington-based Middle East specialist at Refugees International, which provides advocacy and services for refugees. “They’ll respond here, too.”

By Paul Richter
Los Angeles Times

U.S. Considers Taking in Syrian Refugees

The Obama administration supports rebels trying to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad, but is wary of deeper involvement in Syria.

The issue is politically sensitive on several levels.

The refugee dilemma is more acute for countries that lie on Syria’s borders.

Another sensitive issue is who qualifies for resettlement. Western countries often prefer intact, well-educated families with familiar religious backgrounds.

But experts say 80% of the Syrian refugees are women and children, many with war-related injuries or psychological problems that could hamper finding work or going to school.

Yet most refugee advocates predict that Americans will ultimately help the Syrians.

By Paul Richter
Los Angeles Times

In Lebanon, Bravado About Syrian Civil War is Replaced By Foreboding

Beirutis like to say that their city thrives on uncertainty. “We’ve been through worse,” is a common refrain. “We’re used to war every few years,” is another.

In the last few months, though, bravado has been replaced by uncertainty and fear. Residents are often heard discussing the steadily deteriorating region in more foreboding tones.

“Is war really coming?” they regularly ask each other. Amid the rumble and whirl of drills and construction cranes, many in Beirut prefer not to draw conclusions. But away from the capital, the countryside resounds to the unmistakable drumbeat of war.

The largely Sunni north has taken on an increasingly heavy burden as Syria has unravelled. Lebanese men have gone to fight on Syrian battlefields, from where hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled to Lebanon.

Two years of sporadic clashes between Sunnis in Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli, and a minority Alawite Shia community barricaded on a residential hilltop have recently taken the shape of a more enduring battle.

Here, the Syrian civil war is unmistakably cast as a sectarian bid, led by Iran, to keep Sunnis away from power in the Levant. Fighting has intensified in each of the last three weeks, as Hezbollah — the Shia militia-cum-political powerhouse — has emerged from the shadows to take a very public stake in Syria’s war.

The speech two weeks ago by Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, announcing his militia’s role in seizing from rebels the border town of Qusair has heightened tensions. There is an undeniable sense that a reckoning now awaits the Shias of Lebanon, and especially their patrons in Tehran and Damascus. Nasrallah’s belligerent speech has done far more than the two-year creep of chaos across the Lebanon ranges to crystallise what is now at stake.

Hezbollah’s victory in Qusair, on behalf of Assad’s regime, is widely viewed as a first step in the escalation of the group’s role on other Syrian battlefronts. Many Sunni communities in the north are increasingly viewing the conflict in straight-up sectarian terms, believing they are being inexorably drawn into a fight that extends well beyond Lebanon’s borders.

The Shia of the south, meanwhile, cast Hezbollah’s role in Syria as a pre-emptive bid to protect them from an ancient inter-Muslim foe, salafists or takfiris — fundamentalist streams of Sunni Islam who the Shia claim are trying to attack them. This mutual demonisation is clearly hardening sectarian positions in the south and north. It is also being felt in parts of the capital, where both sects live alongside each other. Here, tensions run just as high as in the respective heartlands.

In Lebanon’s moribund parliament, though, there seems to be some kind of a detente at play. “Hezbollah sends us messages constantly that they don’t want things to get out of hand here,” said one member of the opposition March 14 political bloc. “We believe them about that. But what has been unleashed could prove unstoppable.”

Meanwhile, Beirut’s construction boom — legacies of contracts signed in better years — continues unabated. Hotels, however, stand largely empty and high-street shopping strips are deserted. Lebanon is not yet a country at war, but nor is it at peace with itself.

By Martin Chulov
http://www.guardian.co.uk

Syrian rebels urge global military action

Syria’s opposition leader has said he will not attend planned US and Russian-backed peace talks in Geneva as he urged the world to act over the conflict.

George Sabra, the acting president of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), said at a media conference in Istanbul on Saturday that the opposition needed military assistance, not talks.

“Now isn’t the time to be thinking about international conferences,” Sabra said.

“What is happening in Syria today completely closes the doors on any discussions about international conferences and political initiatives.”

He said that the continuing conflict was undermining the stability of the region and that the war would result in mass graves all over Syria.

Sabra said that he wanted urgent military assistance to push back Hezbollah and Iranian fighters who were rushing to major cities.

SNC presidential selection

“Iran is working to transform our region into warring groups,” Sabra said.

“We have been warning the entire world of the gravity of the deployment of Hezbollah militias on Syria’s home soil.”

Sabra had said on May 30 that the opposition would not attend a peace conference while Iran and the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah were supporting Syrian troops on the ground.

The SNC urged the international community to act quickly to help Syrian civilians in a post on its Facebook page on Saturday.

“The Syrian Coalition also reiterates its appeal to the international community to quickly pass and adopt a binding resolution through the UNSC to implement practical steps to end the bloodshed, establish humanitarian corridors for aid in affected areas, and to support the revolution and end the ongoing violence in Syria,” the statement said of the UN National Community Council.

Meanwhile, the Syrian National Coalition will hold a meeting on June 12 to choose a new president.

The meeting, sponsored by the Arab League, will be held at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo.

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US condemns assault on Syrian city of Qusayr

The US has condemned the assault on Qusayr by Syrian government forces as celebrations erupted over the routing of rebels who have been battling for control of the southwestern city.

Washington accused the government of President Bashar al-Assad of having relied on Hezbollah fighters from neighbouring Lebanon, backed by Iran, to win the battle for the strategic area.

“The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the Assad regime’s assault on Qusayr, which has killed untold numbers of civilians and is causing tremendous humanitarian suffering,” Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said in a statement.

“It is clear that the regime could not contest the opposition’s control of Qusair on its own, and is depending upon Hezbollah and Iran to do its work for it in Qusayr.”

On Wednesday, Iran congratulated the Syrian government on its victory, with Foreign Minister Hossen Amir Abdolahia calling the rebels “terrorists”.

Syrian troops routed the rebels in Qasayr on Wednesday following a devastating 17-day assault that had left many civilians trapped in the town with no access to water and electricity.

The battle for the city, a conduit for fighters and weapons just 10km from Lebanon and linking Damascus to the Mediterranean coast, left the town in ruins.

Its capture opens the way for forces loyal to Assad to move on the central city of Homs, much of which the rebels still control.

The Arab League, which has given Syria’s seat to the opposition, also condemned the assault, issuing a statement in the Egyptian capital Cairo denouncing Hezbollah.

Carney renewed a call for Hezbollah and Iran to withdraw their fighters from Syria.

Rebels to fight on

Meanwhile, France, one of the UN Security Council members pushing for intervention in the Syrian conflict, has said it has proof Syria used deadly sarin gas – a banned nerve agent – on at least one occasion, and French President Francois Hollande kept up the pressure Wednesday.

“We have provided the elements of proof that now obligate the international community to act,” he told reporters in Paris.

Analysis: The Fall of Qusayr

Britain said it also had evidence of sarin use, but had passed it on to the UN for independent verification a week ago and would wait for its findings.

In Syria, the rebels conceded the loss of Qusayr after controlling it for a year, but George Sabra, interim leader of the opposition, declared they would fight on “until the whole country is liberated”.

The army said the “heroic victory” in the offensive, launched on May 19, served as a warning that it would “crush” the rebels and bring “security and stability to every inch of our land”.

The Syrian conflict began as an uprising in March 2011 and has since degenerated into a civil war, with the potential to suck in neighouring countries.

The UN estimates at least 70,000 have been killed in the conflict while hundreds of thousands have fled to Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.

531

Lebanon Mulls Limiting Syrian Refugee Influx

BEIRUT — Lebanon is considering placing restrictions on Syrian refugee arrivals to the country as it struggles to cope with over a million people who have already crossed its border due to the conflict next door.

The announcement came Wednesday after a meeting at Baabda Palace chaired by President Michel Sleiman, who discussed the issue with top security officials and government ministers.

“The president headed a meeting to discuss the issue of Syrian refugees in Lebanon … as well as the possibility of limiting the number of refugees arriving from safe areas [in Syria],” said a statement issued by Baabda Palace.

The meeting was attended by caretaker Interior Minister Marwan Charbel, caretaker Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour, General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim and other officials.The statement offered no elaboration on how Syrian “safe areas” would be defined, or how the restriction might be implemented in Lebanon.

Previous discussions of stopping refugees from entering Lebanon have generated strong objections from the international community, whose members say such an action violates international norms. Lebanon relies mostly on international aid distributed by the United Nations to help Syrians in the country, while private charities and other groups are also active in the relief effort.

A spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees told The Daily Star anyone fleeing violence in Syria should be allowed entry into the country.

UNHCR official Dana Sleiman also said that putting a ban on refugees arriving from “safe areas” would be somewhat irrelevant, given that the majority of Syrian refugee arrivals in Lebanon are fleeing immediate violence.

“Most people registering [with UNHCR] are from places where it is no longer safe … They are not people coming here by choice,” she said.

She also voiced concern that the imposition of such a restriction by the Lebanese government would likely prove “difficult to manage logistically” due to Lebanon’s long and largely unmarked border with Syria.

Lebanon is the only country bordering Syria to have kept its borders totally open to all persons fleeing Syria. But the cost for caring for refugees and tensions between host communities and refugees have also prompted officials to raise the issue of border closings in the past. Jordan and Turkey have tighter control over refugees entering their countries and where they can go.

According to the statement, the meeting also addressed “means to confront the burdens of the surge of Syrian refugees into Lebanon and the increasing social, security and health problems in Lebanon due to the influx of refugees.”

Lebanon has made an appeal for hundreds of millions of dollars to help the nation support the refugee community, in addition to the millions in aid the U.N. is providing through international donors.

Experts consider Lebanon’s refugee aid programs considerably underfunded for the number of people in the country.

The latest figures from the UNHCR indicate that over half a million Syrians have sheltered in Lebanon after fleeing violence in their country. But the figure covers those who have registered with the UNHCR and those who are waiting to register.

Government officials, aid workers and experts believe that the refugee figure is higher by an additional several hundred thousand people, and it does not include the tens of thousands of displaced Syrians in Lebanon who are well-off or otherwise supporting themselves, and not relying on humanitarian assistance.

Daily Star, Lebanon

UNSC to examine Iraq-Kuwait issues, Syrian crisis

6-4-13 UNITED NATIONS, (KUNA) Security Council members are scheduled to be briefed at a session later on Tuesday about “progress Iraq made in its Chapter VII obligations” towards Kuwait as well as other crucial issues on the international stage.

Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs Oscar Fernandez Taranco is charged with addressing the briefing, due to tackle in addition to the Kuwait Iraq topics, the proposed Geneva II Conference on Syria, the situation in Mali and the wider Sahel, diplomats said.

The “Horizon scanning” briefings are initiated by the UK, the current Council President for the month of June. (Note: UK is in charge of monitoring Iraq-Kuwait progress).

Fernandez Taranco will tell the Council that the Iraq Kuwait Boundary Maintenance Project concluded its work in March, and that Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced on May 30 that Iraq and Kuwait had signed a memorandum of understanding regarding the maintenance of border signs, and agreed to form a joint committee to handle other related issues. Last month, the Council authorized the compensation of Iraqi citizens who had to be relocated, by agreeing to the transfer of compensation funds from the UN to the Iraqi government.

The Council is also scheduled to discuss the mandate of the HighLevel Coordinator on Iraq Kuwait missing persons and property Gennady Tarasov who took another UN job at the end of last December.

Diplomats said Kuwait wrote letters to the Council President and SecretaryGeneral Ban Kimoon last week, indicating that it agreed “in principle” to having Tarasov’s mandate folded into the mandate of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

Today’s Council deliberations are in preparation for the consultations on Iraq Kuwait issues scheduled for later this month when the Council is due to endorse Kuwait’s request, diplomats said.

Unrelated Issues UNSC will Address (Non Iraq)
Fernandez Taranco is also expected to brief the Council on the preparations underway by the US, Russia and Joint Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who will meet tomorrow Wednesday in Geneva, on the proposed Geneva II Conference which has now been postponed till July to map out a political transition in Syria.

The Council will also hear a briefing about the humanitarian situation in AlQusayr, a contested town located
close to the Syrian Lebanese border, and the need to protect its civilians and to evacuate its wounded.

AlQusayr, located on a route linking central and northern Syria, has witnessed bitter fighting between troops of
Bahsar AlAssad regime and opposition groups. Thousands of civilians have fled the town to safer areas but many others have remained inside it, are struggling to survive amid recurring bombardment with diminishing
resources of necessities.

In a related matter, The Free Syrian Army sent a letter to the Security Council President late Monday to
complain that the siege of AlQusayr is being tightened, as the Iranianbacked Hezbollah forces continue to pour
across the SyrianLebanese border, and that the town’s 40,000 civilians remain trapped without food, water or medicine.
“We call for immediate delivery of humanitarian aid to AlQusayr in line with the request of the UN agencies and
the International Committee of the Red Cross. We pledge our readiness to help ensuring safe passage of
humanitarian aid, and call upon the UN to pressure the Assad regime to halt its relentless assaults” on the town, Major General Salim Idriss of the Free Syrian Army said in his letter. He also complained that Hezbollah is
“expanding its invasion” of Syria and is now present in “significant numbers” in the northern city of Aleppo as
well as in areas east and west of Damascus. “We fear that the illegal involvement of this sectarian militia will
destabilize the region. We request that the Security Council take firm action against their aggression. We
demand that international pressure be exerted on the Lebanese government to enact measures to remove
Hezbollah forces from Syrian territory lest we will be forced to turn our fight against the criminal Assad regime
into an extended crossborder conflict,” he warned.

LINK

Dinar Daddy’s Tidbits

Deadly battles rage on in Syrian cities

Fighting in Syria has seen a missile strike near the country’s biggest city, Aleppo, kill 26 people and government fighter jets target the rebel-held town of Qusayr, according to reports.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the activists’ network, said on Tuesday there were numerous dead on both sides but gave no other details.

The SOHR also said shellfire near the Russian embassy in Damascus had killed a civilian and wounded a member of the security forces.

A representative of the Russian embassy in Damascus told AFP news agency two Syrian security guards had received injuries but that no embassy staff had been killed or hurt in the attack.

In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria

US-based group Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, said its mission to Aleppo had concluded that the bodies of 147 men pulled out of a local river between January and March were “probably” executed in government-controlled areas of
the city.

The besieged Syrian town of Qusayr came under renewed missile and air attack on Tuesdasy as fighting there dragged into a third week.

The situation in the strategic town near the Lebanon border prompted fresh calls for humanitarian access to offer some relief to the thousands trapped by government forces.

Syrian soldiers have mounted a fierce onslaught on Qusayr, in Homs province, and also slightly farther north in Dabaa, the site of a disused military airbase partly under rebel control.

Syrian troops backed by Lebanon’s Hezbollah fighters have besieged the town, which controls vital supply routes from Lebanon and access between Damascus and the coastal heartland of President Bashar al-Assad’s minority Alawite sect.

As Syrian government forces try to wear down the rebels in Qusayr, trapped civilians have had to choose between sheltering from the bombs or risking a 100km journey to safety.

“Qusayr itself is described as a ghost town, heavily damaged and filled with the sound of bombs. People are hiding in bunkers or, even worse, in holes that they’ve dug,” Melissa Fleming, UN refugee agency spokeswoman, told a briefing in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday.

“One woman told us that she spent, with her children, one week inside a hole that was dug into the ground.”

Opposition leaders called for the creation of a humanitarian corridor to allow people from Qusayr to flee to Lebanon.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said the Syrian government had said it was willing to grant the agency access to Qusayr once military operations there had ended

A doctor in Qusayr told Al Jazeera this week there were now more than 1,000 injured people in the town and conditions were becoming increasingly dire.

Kassem al-Zein, who coordinates treatment in several makeshift hospitals, said the wounded were being treated in private homes after the town’s main hospital was destroyed.

“Four days ago, some of the injured were taken outside the city but they were hit by the forces of the regime. Some of the injured returned back to us with more injuries,” he said.

“It is a serious catastrophe. The martyrs are more than 200. We have no time to bury them. Some stayed for days in the streets. The smell of death is all over the place, it is not human.

“Where is the world, where are the organisations who are claiming to help the people? We have lost everything.”

547

Syrian Rebels Doing Best They Can to Alienate Supporters

Were the Syrian rebels to win, how different would their rule be from Assad’s?

Syrian rebels-aleppo It’s bad enough that it’s starting to look like Bashar al-Assad won’t be ousted from Syria anytime soon. What’s worse is that even were the rebels to win, the way they’ve been conducting the war suggests their reign wouldn’t be markedly different from Assad’s. In gaining the upper hand, the heart-eaters have compromised the uprising’s values and jeopardized its success.

No one explains this better than a commentator who goes by the name of Edwin Dark in a piece titled How We Lost the Syrian Revolution. We’re excerpting salient passages in hopes of directing you to Al Monitor to read the piece in its entirety. Dark (a pseudonym) begins:

So what went wrong? Or to be more accurate, where did we go wrong? How did a once inspirational and noble popular uprising calling for freedom and basic human rights degenerate into an orgy of bloodthirsty sectarian violence, with depravity unfit for even animals?

He elaborates (emphasis added).

… what we saw on the ground when the rebel fighters entered Aleppo was a far different reality. … To us, a rebel fighting against tyranny doesn’t commit the same sort of crimes as the regime he’s supposed to be fighting against. He doesn’t loot the homes, businesses and communities of the people he’s supposed to be fighting for. [They] would even kidnap for ransom and execute anyone they pleased. …. They would incessantly shell residential civilian neighborhoods under regime control … their snipers routinely killing in cold blood unsuspecting passersby. … tens of thousands became destitute and homeless in this once bustling, thriving and rich commercial metropolis.

As a former rebel himself, Dark asks “So who was ‘us’”?

… the civil grassroots opposition movement in Aleppo, who for months were organizing peaceful protests and handing out aid at considerable danger and risk to our own lives. “We” truly believed in the higher ideals of social and political change, and tried to. … model ourselves on the civil rights movement of the US in the 1960s, Mandela’s struggle against apartheid, and the teachings of Gandhi: precisely what similar civil movements in other Arab Spring countries such as Tunisia and Egypt had done before.

In other words, “we mostly came from the educated urban middle class of the city,” while the rebels were

… the underprivileged rural class who … were out for revenge against the perceived injustices of years past. Their motivation wasn’t like ours, it was not to seek freedom, democracy or justice for the entire nation, it was simply unbridled hatred and vengeance. … Add to that terrible fray, the extremist Islamists and their open association with Al-Qaeda and their horrific plans for the future of our nation, and you can guess what the atmosphere over here felt like: a stifling primordial fear, a mixture of terror and despair.

‘Twas ever thus, the educated element elbowed aside by those driven by revenge rather than replacing tyranny with a just system. Sympathizers are repulsed and the rebellion loses, or it manages to win but reigns like those they drove out.

FPIF Latest Content

Syrian Opposition Fighters Arrested With Chemical Weapons

In a series of raids in the capital of Istanbul and in the southern provinces of Mersin, Adana and Hatay near the Syrian border, Turkish police rounded up 12 members of Syria’s Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front along with chemical weapons materials.

The Turkish media initially reported that police recovered four and a half pounds of sarin, the deadly nerve gas which had earlier been linked to chemical weapons attacks inside Syria.

While widely reported in the Turkish press, the arrests Wednesday have been virtually blacked out by the corporate media in the US. Newspapers like the New York Times, which have openly promoted a US intervention in Syria, citing alleged chemical weapons use by the regime of Bashar al-Assad as a pretext, have posted not a word about the raids in Turkey.

The daily newspaper Zaman reported that “the al-Nusra members had been planning a bomb attack for Thursday in [the Turkish city of] Adana but that the attack was averted when the police caught the suspects. Along with the sarin gas, the police seized a number of handguns, grenades, bullets and documents during their search.”

The city of Adana, approximately 60 miles from the Syrian border, has a sizable Alawite Arab population that is sympathetic to the Syrian government and hostile to the Sunni Islamist forces that have waged the US-backed war for regime change on the ground in Syria.

The Al Nusra Front, which has formally declared its allegiance to Al Qaeda, was declared a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department last December. The United Nations Security Council added the group to the body’s Al Qaeda sanctions blacklist Friday.

The Syrian government had requested that the group be subjected to sanctions as a terrorist organization last month, but the action was initially blocked by Britain and France. Finally, an agreement was reached to declare Al Nusra an alias for Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The Al Nusra Front has been universally acknowledged as the most effective fighting force of the so-called rebels seeking the Assad government’s overthrow. Both Britain and France recently succeeded in overturning a European Union ban on arms exports to Syria, clearing the way for them to ship weapons to the “rebels.”

None of the arrested suspects have been identified. Turkish media reported that five of them were released late Thursday, and seven are still being held for questioning. The government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which has provided extensive material support for the Syrian opposition, has given no public explanation of the police actions.

Adana provincial governor Huseyin Avni Cos denied on Thursday that sarin had been recovered in the raids but did allow that unknown chemicals had been found and were being analyzed.

The arrests come little more than two weeks after twin terrorist car bombings claimed the lives of 52 people in the Turkish city of Reyhanli in southern Hatay province near the border with Syria. The Erdogan government seized upon the incident to blame the Syrian government and call for international intervention to topple Assad. It simultaneously imposed an unprecedented gag order on the Turkish press to prevent reporting on the extensive evidence that the attacks were the work of Syrian opposition groups, which use Reyhanli as a supply base and who have free movement across the Turkish-Syrian border.

Subsequently, authorities arrested an army private on charges of “crimes against the state” for allegedly leaking top secret cables that indicated the government’s prior knowledge that the bombings were being planned by the Al Qaeda-linked forces in Syria. RedHack, the Turkish hacker group which made the cables public last week, denied that it had any contact with the arrested private, who was identified as Utku Kali.

The Adana daily Taraf reported Thursday that police are mounting road blocks and conducting searches in the area for a vehicle loaded with explosives that is believed to have been sent to the area by the US-backed anti-Assad forces.

The discovery of sarin or some other lethal chemical weapons materials in the hands of Al Nusra Front operatives in Turkey prompted calls by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for an immediate investigation. He condemned the continuing failure to send a United Nations inspection team to Syria to investigate a chemical weapons incident last March outside of the city of Aleppo.

“We are highly disappointed that because of the political games, the UN Secretariat failed to respond to that request swiftly,” Lavrov told reporters.

These “political games” refer to demands by Washington and its allies that any UN team be given carte blanche to inspect any and all Syrian facilities and interrogate anyone it chooses, along the lines of the inspection regime created in Iraq in the run-up to the US invasion of 2003.

The Assad government has charged that the March attack, which killed 26 people, 16 of them government soldiers, was carried out by the Western-backed forces.

The Obama administration has repeatedly declared the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government to be a “red line” or “game changer” that would trigger unspecified US intervention. At the same time, Washington and its European NATO allies have turned a blind eye to evidence of chemical weapons use by the Islamist militias.

There have been repeated claims by the Syrian opposition groups, as well as by the British and French governments, of chemical weapons use by the regime. Last month, however, Carla del Ponte, a leading member of the UN commission of inquiry on Syria, stated that the bulk of the evidence indicated chemical weapons use by the rebels.

The latest development in Turkey suggests that the Western-backed Islamist militias were preparing to launch another chemical weapons attack, apparently against a Turkish civilian population, with the aim of producing mass casualties that would be blamed on the Syrian regime and create the conditions for a US-led intervention.

The silence of the US media on the incident only demonstrates that it is prepared to play the same role that it did in Iraq, working to sell a war based upon lies to the American public. The experience of the past decade of unending war, however, has made this task more difficult.

A Gallup poll released on Friday found that more than two out of three Americans (68 percent) oppose any US military intervention in Syria if “diplomatic efforts fail to end the civil war in Syria.”

By Bill Van Auken
http://www.wsws.org

Syrian rebels bolster Qusayr forces

Rebel fighters have broken through army lines to enter Qusayr in Western Syria as the battle for the beset city near the Lebanese border intensifies, opposition activists have said.

Leader of the opposition, George Sabra, said about 1,000 extra fighters from across Syria had penetrated the city near the Lebanese border.

Syrian state media said on Friday that government forces had surrounded the city, and activists reported that regime troops had carried out a deadly attack on a convoy trying to evacuate wounded people from Qusayr.

The upsurge in fighting came as Lebanese politicians postponed a June parliamentary election until late next year owing to instability in neighbouring Syria and political deadlock at home.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that hundreds of rebels had broken through army lines near the village of Shamsinn, northeast of Qusayr, after losing 11 fighters.

The opposition coalition has appealed for the rescue of 1,000 civilians wounded in Qusayr, which Assad’s forces have been trying to seize back in an all-out offensive since May 19.

Qusayr-based activist Hadi Abdullah said the shelling of the convoy had killed nine people and wounded many others.

Abdullah said he was with the convoy evacuating scores of wounded people when troops started firing shells and machine guns, wounding about 80 people. Abdullah said the main makeshift hospital in the town was hit, and a home was turned into a clinic.

Hezbollah’s growing role

The battle for Qusayr has exposed Hezbollah’s growing role in the Syrian conflict that has reportedly killed more than 90,000 over the past two years.

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, said that both sides wanted to win the battle for Qusayr at any price.

Amin said that President Bashar al-Assad could go to next month’s peace conference in Geneva, backed by Russia and the US, feeling stronger and confident after the regime’s recent advancements.

Assad said he was “very confident” of victory in Syria’s conflict and threatened Israel with retaliation for any attack, in an interview aired late on Thursday.

“The opposition on the other hand feel weaker,” Amin said.

She said that was why George Sabra, the acting head of Syria’s opposition coalition, has said it would stay out of the talks as long as Hezbollah’s men were fighting alongside Assad’s forces and who rebels have credited for regime victories.

A confident Assad appeared to imply in an interview with Hezbollah’s Al Manar television on Thursday that Russia had already delivered some of the promised S-300 missiles that have sparked particular concern in Israel.

Rebels’ first

“All the agreements with Russia will be honoured and some already have been recently,” he said.

But Russia’s Vedomosti and Kommersant newspapers said Moscow might not deliver the missile systems to Damascus this year and rejected claims the weapons had already arrived.

Russia could supply 10 ultra-modern MiG-29 fighter jets to Syria under a possible contract being discussed with a visiting delegation from Damascus, the Russian news agency Interfax reported.

The regime and the opposition both value Qusayr, which lies along a land corridor linking two of Assad’s strongholds, Damascus and the heartland of his minority Alawite sect, an area along the Mediterranean coast.

For the rebels, holding the town means protecting their supply line to Lebanon, just 10km away.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Abdullah said that rebels from the northern province of Aleppo managed to enter rebel-held area of Qusayr to help defend it against advancing troops.

In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria

“Individuals have come in the past, but this is the first time that groups of rebels have arrived here,” Abdullah said.

Meanwhile, Lebanese politicians agreed on Friday to postpone a June parliamentary election until late next year.

The election is now expected to be held in November 2014.

Lebanese Prime Minister Tamman Salam said in an interview published in Friday’s edition of French daily Le Figaro that his country should stay out of the Syrian conflict.

“We must at all price preserve national unity,” he said adding: “And obviously, Hezbollah’s military involvement is not helping matters.”

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Syrian opposition to boycott Geneva talks

Syria’s opposition will not participate in proposed international peace talks in Geneva next month, its leader has said.

George Sabra, the head of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), on Thursday said the opposition was suspending their participation until the international community intervened to end the siege in Qusayr, a town in Homs province near the Lebanese border.

SNC’s George Sabra announces boycott of Geneva talks.

“The National Coalition will not take part in any international conference or any such efforts so long as the militias of Iran and Hezbollah continue their invasion of Syria,” Sabra told reporters in Istanbul.

Khaled Saleh, the SNC spokesperson, who addressed the news conference after Sabra, said civilians in the town had been “severely wounded” and Qusayr had been completely cut off by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

“Civilians have no access to water, electricity and the massacre continues minute by minute while the Assad regime continues to use weapons” it receives from allies, he said.

He said the secretary-general of the UN and the Arab League should intervene to stop the killings that the Lebanese group “Hezbollah is responsible for”.

The planned peace talks in Geneva are being brokered by Russia – a key Syria ally – and the United States. The SNC had earlier said it would take part only if a peace process that leads to Assad stepping down is put in place.

Russian missiles

SNC’s announcement to boycott the talks came only hours after Assad said his country would respond to any Israeli attack on its soil.

In an interview to be aired on Thursday by Al-Manar TV station, owned by Hezbollah, Assad also said he had already received the first shipment of an advanced S-300 Russian missile system and would soon get the rest.

In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria

The comments were first published on Thursday by the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar which got excerpts of the interview.

“Syria has received the first shipment of Russian anti-aircraft S-300 rockets,” al-Akhbar quoted Assad as saying. “The rest of the shipment will arrive soon.”

Israel has suggested its military might strike the Russian S-300 missiles.

Gerald Steinburg, a professor of Political Studies at Bar-ilan University, told Al Jazeera that Israel was paying attention “closely” to what is happening in Syria.

But he said Israel was not alarmed by shipments of arms to Syria.

“Mr Assad has got problems dealing with his own survival and that of his regime, so it it is not really a major concern in Israel,” he said from Jerusalem.

Several foreign envoys had participated in the Istanbul meeting to help the opposition arrive at a decision.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said major powers also remain divided on who will take part in the talks or when they will be held.

Ban told reporters “active consultations” were still being held, while Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, said the US government’s “entire foreign policy apparatus” was working to hold the meeting.

The US has also called on Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from Syria immediately.

France says about 3,000 to 4,000 Hezbollah fighters are currently battling alongside regime troops in Syria.

565

Syrian opposition sets conditions for talks

Syrian opposition members meeting in the Turkish city of Istanbul have set preconditions on entering international peace talks scheduled for next month in Geneva.

The Syrian National Coalition (SNC) will meet for a final day on Thursday to see how they can take part in peace talks being brokered by Russia – a key Syria ally – and the United States for ending the ongoing conflict.

The SNC laid out preconditions on Wednesday for the conference, which hopes to bring the Syrian government and opposition together for the first time.

They want, among other requirements, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to quit before they enter international peace talks.

“The participation of the Syrians in any conference is tied to the presentation of a deadline for a solution and giving the necessary binding international guarantees,” said a statement released by the coalition.

“The Syrian Coalition welcomes the international efforts to find a political solution to what Syria has been suffering for two years while being committed to the principles of the revolution.”

Al Jazeera’s Rawya Rageh, reporting from Istanbul, said: “The opposition wants to see guarantees by the international community – binding measures as they say in their own words – that Assad will not be part of any settlement agreement.”

Major powers also remain divided on who will take part in the talks or when they will be held, Ban Ki-moon, the UN chief, said on Wednesday.

The US has also called on Lebanon’s Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters from Syria immediately. Fighters from the Shia militia-party backed by Iran are fighting alongside Syrian forces.

France says some 3,000 to 4,000 Hezbollah fighters are currently battling alongside regime troops in Syria.

Foreign envoys

Several foreign envoys from different countries, including Saudi Arabia, had joined Wednesday’s meeting in Istanbul.

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, participated in the meeting in what was seen as an effort to break the deadlock in talks to push the movement forward.

US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford and a top French diplomat on Syria also attended.

Veteran Syrian dissident Michel Kilo, head of a liberal bloc, also attended the talks at the Istanbul hotel alongside a top Saudi official.

Our correspondent said: “It’s very interesting that Kilo, a secular opposition figure whose internationally-backed bloc has been at the heart of the stalemate, arrived with these foreign officials and diplomats.”

Saudi Arabia wants the Coalition to expand in order to water down the influence of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, and has backed Kilo’s bid to join the opposition group.

Opponents, including the Muslim Brotherhood, have resisted the Saudis’ move.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, France, Turkey and the United States all back the revolt against Assad, but have conflicting visions for the National Coalition.

‘Worst crisis’

“Things are not moving. The opposition has hit its worst crisis yet,” said a Coalition member on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The meeting is supposed to choose a new coalition president, agree on an interim government and vote in new members to join the bloc, as well as reach a decision on the proposed Geneva conference.

Meanwhile, Syria’s foreign minister Walid Muallem told the Beirut-based Arab news channel Mayadeen that the Syrian government would allow its people to vote on agreements made at the so called Geneva 2 meeting.

“If we reach an agreement in Geneva, and I hope we will, it will be put to a referendum and if the people approve what we agreed upon, I can assure you it will be fully respected,” Muallem said.

Muallem has already said earlier this month that the Syrian government will, in principle, send delegates to the Geneva 2 conference.

Also on Wednesday, the US, Turkey and Qatar pushed through a UN resolution demanding a probe into the fighting around the Syrian town of Qusayr, near Lebanon.

698

Britain Reports New Suspected Syrian Chemical Attacks To UN

Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations says Britain has written to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about “new incidents” of suspected chemical weapons attacks by Syrian government forces.

Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said on May 29 that the alleged attacks were in March and April.

Britain and France wrote to Ban earlier this year urging him to investigate three alleged chemical weapons attacks in the vicinities of Homs, Damascus, and Aleppo.

The United Nations has appointed a team of investigators, but they have not been allowed to enter Syria by President Bashar al-Assad.

If confirmed, the suspected chemical attacks would increase pressure on Western countries that support Syrian rebels to intervene in the civil war there.

The United Nations says the conflict, now in its thrid year, has claimed at least 80,000 lives.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP

http://global.christianpost.com

Syrian Syriac National Council Urges Support of Christians in the Country

Bassam Isaac, the Head of the Syrian Syriac National Council, called on different organizations in Syria to pay attention to the immigration of Christians, and stressed the importance of them remaining in the country.

“Christians in Syria and the Middle East are one of the most ancient peoples in the region. They work to achieve justice and peaceful coexistence. They recognize different religions and ethnic groups. If any government wanted to build a strong state, it should recognize the different religions and ethnic groups that exist in this country,” Isaac told Mideast Christian News.

“There are nearly 2.5 million Christians in Syria, affiliated with nine sects. Most of them live in the Syrian governorates of Haska, Homs, Damascus, and Aleppo. We should work together by unifying organizations to plan for their future.”

In addition to the council’s call for more protections for Christians in Syria, Jim Wallace, vice president of the Australian Christian Lobby, urged western nations to take decisive action to protect Syria’s Christians.

“The hardest test of foreign policy is not its intersections at the lofty geopolitical level, but where it inevitably affects ordinary people, and nowhere is this test as difficult as in the Middle East,” Wallace wrote in The Australian on Tuesday.

Wallace explained that after he visited the region to assess the situation facing Syrian minorities it soon became clear to him that the West’s policy for the Middle East “courts a disaster.”

He added that the region has become satiated with alliances, even among enemies, which further muddles the already “excusable” confusion over Middle Eastern politics that the majority of the Western populace seems to have.

“There are reports of heartbreak as people who lived in harmony for decades are suddenly turned into bitter enemies by the radicalisation of previously moderate Sunnis under the influence of the al-Qa’ida proxy Jabhat al-Nusra,” Wallace continued.

“For Christians to be thrown out of Syria after more than 2000 years of history is too much for most. Despite the steady flow of refugees, most will stay. But the cost of staying is extreme,” he added.

Syrian opposition sets conditions for talks

Syrian opposition members face their final day of talks in Istanbul having set out ‘preconditions’ on entering international peace talks scheduled for next month in Geneva.

The Syrian National Coalition, so far deeply divided on how to take the movement forward, will meet for a final day in Istanbul on Thursday.

On Wednesday, they laid out what are being called preconditions for attending a proposed international meeting on Syria, spearheaded by the US and Russia, and which aims to bring the Syrian government and opposition together for the first time.

They want, among other requirements, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to quit before they enter international peace talks.

“The Syrian Coalition welcomes the international efforts to find a political solution to what Syria has been suffering for two years while being committed to the principles of the revolution.”

“The opposition wants to see guarantees by the international community – binding measures as they say in their own words – that Assad will not be part of any settlement agreement,” said Al Jazeera’s Rawya Rageh, reporting from Istanbul.

Foreign envoys

Several foreign envoys from different countries, including Saudi Arabia, had joined Wednesday’s meeting.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu participated in the meeting in what was seen as an effort to break the deadlock in talks to push the movement forward.

US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford and a top French diplomat on Syria also attended.

Veteran Syrian dissident Michel Kilo, head of a liberal bloc, also attended at the Istanbul hotel alongside a top Saudi official.

Saudi Arabia wants the Coalition to expand in order to water down the influence of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, and has backed Kilo’s bid to join the opposition group.

Opponents, including the Muslim Brotherhood, have resisted the Saudis’ move.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar, France, Turkey and the United States all back the revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, but have conflicting visions for the National Coalition.

‘Worst crisis’

“Things are not moving. The opposition has hit its worst crisis yet,” said a Coalition member on Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The meeting is supposed to choose a new coalition president, agree on an interim government and vote in new members to join the bloc, as well as reach a decision on the proposed Geneva conference.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told the Beirut-based Arab news channel Mayadeen that the Syrian government would allow its people to vote on agreements made at the so called Geneva 2 meeting.

“If we reach an agreement in Geneva, and I hope we will, it will be put to a referendum and if the people approve what we agreed upon, I can assure you it will be fully respected,” Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said.

Muallem has already said earlier this month that the Syrian government will, in principle, send delegates to the Geneva 2 conference.

Also on Wednesday, the US, Turkey and Qatar pushed through a UN resolution demanding a probe into the fighting around the Syrian town of Qusayr, near Lebanon, and condemnation of foreign fighters supporting President Assad.

The resolution approved by a vote of 36-1 in the UN Human Rights Council calls for urgent investigation into alleged abuses by government forces and Hezbollah fighters in Qusair, along with more aid access and civilian protections.

Only Venezuela voted against it. Eight other nations in the 47-nation council abstained; two were absent.

643

http://english.alarabiya.net

New Syrian Opposition Group Formed

A group of prominent Syrian activists who favor a civil, democratic state have formed a new opposition group, a member said Tuesday, in a further fragmentation of President Bashar al-Assad’s opponents.

The new grouping, called the Union of Syrian Democrats, includes heavyweight activists such as Michel Kilo, a Christian writer and human rights activist.

It appears to be an attempt to counterbalance the influence of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood inside the National Coalition, the country’s main opposition bloc.

The 250 “members of the group, who come from different political streams, are united on the principal of democracy,” one of its members, Kamal Labwani, told AFP.

He declined to say directly that the group intended to challenge the Brotherhood’s influence, but said it would focus on creating a civil state.

“If the Muslim Brotherhood are opposed to the construction of a civil state, this group is directed against them. If they support this project, they are our allies,” he said.

“Our problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is that they say one thing and do another… they say they want a civil state, but in practice, they don’t.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is the best organized of the groups arrayed in opposition to President Assad’s regime.

But it has been criticized by activists for trying to dominate the opposition, boosted by the support of Qatar.

The group rejects the accusations, but they have only grown since the election of Ghassan Hitto, reportedly the Brotherhood choice, to the post of rebel prime minister.

The Syrian Brotherhood has also been accused of being controlled by Islamist extremeists.

“It is not true that extremists are in charge of liberated lands,” their leader Mohammad Riad Shakfa said at a press conference in Istanbul in April. “The land … belongs to a united front of the opposition.”

Speaking in Arabic, he added: “As far as I know, there is no extremism in Syria.”

The new opposition group, launched in Cairo, will hold a series of meetings in coming months to discuss their structure.

Syrian rebels divided in fight against Assad

For the first time, Al Jazeera has gained access to a frontline view of the stand-off outside al-Raqqa city in northern Syria.

Opposition snipers from the Ahrar al-Sham Brigade, a group that has a reputation for some of the fiercest combat fighters in Syria’s war, are in the forefront of the fight against President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Al-Sham wants an Islamic state in Syria and shares ideology with groups like Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq. That puts Al-Sham ideologically apart from the Free Syria Army, creating a division that is holding back the revolution.

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons reports from al-Raqqa.

103

Syrian Rebel Alliance Openly Threatens Ethnic Cleansing

A spokesman for the primary rebel alliance in Syria, known as the “Free Syrian Army,” threatened that opposition forces could start implementing a broad ethnic-cleansing program aimed at Shia Muslims and especially the Islamic Alawite sect to which dictator Bashar al-Assad belongs. As Obama administration-led Western powers and a coalition of Sunni Arab dictators continue to fuel the increasingly ruthless conflict, the rebel FSA spokesperson said in a TV interview that minority communities would be “wiped off the map” if the regime’s forces managed to capture the city of Al-Qusair.

The genocide announcement came shortly after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blasted his Senate Foreign Relations Committee colleagues for voting to arm the rebels, many of whom openly fight under the banner of al-Qaeda. “This is an important moment,” Sen. Paul said about the vote. “You will be funding, today, the allies of al Qaeda.” While the U.S. government has been supporting the opposition since before open warfare began, Obama has ramped up that support to unprecedented levels. And now, a Senate committee has expressed its backing for arming groups that openly threaten to exterminate minorities.

According to a report in Bloomberg, rebel Free Syrian Army “Colonel” Abdel-Hamid Zakaria made the threat to exterminate minority-denomination Muslims in Syria during an interview from Turkey last week with Al-Arabiya television. “We don’t want this to happen, but it will be a reality imposed on everyone,” Zakaria said during the interview, referring to his alliance wiping certain minority communities off the map if regime forces succeeded in taking Al-Qusair. “It’s going to be an open, sectarian, bloody war to the end.”

The city in question, located in central Syria’s Homs province, is seen as crucial due to its strategic location along a major highway connecting the capital Damascus to the coast. It is considered extremely important by rebel forces, which rely on it to obtain weapons and supplies from neighboring Lebanon. For the regime, the city’s value is obvious as it continues to wage war on foreign-backed Islamists described by officials as “armed terrorist groups.”

Regime-run media outlet SANA reported that most of the city was captured last week, with troops loyal to Assad reportedly seizing vast weapons stockpiles and destroying tunnels used by rebel forces. Dozens of opposition fighters were reportedly killed in the battles. More than 20 members of the U.S. government-designated terror group Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia that has joined Assad in the effort to stop the rebels, were also killed, according to news reports.

Opposition spokesmen said the fight for Al-Qusair was ongoing, though everyone acknowledges that government troops had at least made very significant inroads in re-capturing the city. “The Syrian Coalition warns about the outcome of these distressing developments, which come as part of an organized and predetermined military campaign,” read a statement released by the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition, an opposition umbrella group dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist forces.

Despite the reported near victory of regime troops in Al-Qusair, it remains unclear whether the ethnic-cleansing plot outlined by the Free Syrian Army spokesman in the TV interview has been formally put into effect. As The New American has documented extensively, minority communities — especially Christians — have long been targeted by rebel forces throughout the ongoing war. However, if the brazen threat of extermination is officially implemented, the results will be unimaginable bloodshed and horror beyond even what has been witnessed so far, experts say.

Sunni Muslims, who dominate domestic rebel forces, make up a significant majority of the population in Syria, possibly as much as three-fourths or more of the 22 million people. Minority groups, however — Shiites, Christians, Jews, and others — represent an estimated 20 to 30 percent of Syrians. Members of virtually all minority communities have been targeted by one rebel group or another due, at least in part, to their perceived support of the secular regime, which largely protected minorities from Islamist violence despite Assad’s iron-fisted rule.

It is not the first time that foreign-backed Sunni Islamist rebels have threatened to exterminate minorities in Syria. In fact, earlier this month, an opposition brigade commander ate a body organ from a dead government soldier in front of a video camera and promised to do the same with others, boasting about slaughtering — and eating — members of the Alawite community to which Assad belongs.

“I swear to God, soldiers of Bashar, you dogs — we will eat your heart and livers! Takbir! God is Great!” commander Khalid al-Hamad with the “Independent Omar al-Farouk Brigade” says in the video, words that he later defended in interviews with Western media outlets. “Oh my heroes of Baba Amr, you slaughter the Alawites and take their hearts out to eat them!” After the brief speech, the Sunni rebel took a bite out of the organ in a video that drew international condemnation.

The Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups promptly distanced themselves from the cannibal commander, saying cannibalism was against Syrian values. FSA spokesmen and the SNC called on the rebel leader to be held accountable, and human rights groups around the world said the video was yet more evidence of the exploding horror now being felt throughout much of Syria. Despite strongly worded statements against cannibalism issued by other rebel leaders, the monstrous video was hardly the first example of the barbaric sectarianism that has reared its head in the nation amid the ongoing conflict.

As The New American has been reporting virtually since the start of the war, the ethnic cleansing of Christians by rebel forces began quickly after open hostilities broke out. In April of last year, for example, multiple churches, aid organizations, and human rights groups reported that the Christian minority — estimated at about 10 percent of the population before the war started — was being massacred and driven from its homeland in growing numbers.

At the time, the Syrian Orthodox Church, which represents over half of Syrian Christians, issued a statement saying revolutionary fighters had expelled some 50,000 Christians from the embattled city of Homs. That figure was estimated to account for about 90 percent of the Christian community in the city. Hundreds more Christians — including women and children — were slaughtered, according to charitable organizations operating in the area.

The Orthodox Church referred to the persecution as the “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Christians” by Muslim militants linked to al Qaeda. According to its report, the so-called “Brigade Faruq” was largely to blame, with Islamic extremists going door to door and forcing followers of Christ to leave without even collecting their belongings. Their property was then stolen by rebels as “war-booty from the Christians.”

Christians in Homs were reportedly told by rebels that if they did not leave immediately, they would be shot. Then, pictures of their brutalized dead bodies would be sent to the pro-Syrian-regime-change Al Jazeera — a media broadcaster controlled by the dictatorship ruling Qatar, which is arming and funding the rebels — with a message claiming that forces loyal to Assad had murdered them. It would hardly be the first time opposition fighters perpetrated atrocities and blamed the regime.

Aid agencies also documented the terror aimed at minorities, especially among the church. “Christians are being forced to flee the city to the safety of government-controlled areas,” noted a spokesman for the Christian relief agency Barnabas Fund, which reported that over 200 Christians had been murdered by insurgents at the time. “Muslim rebel fighters and their families are taking over their homes.”

Other reports noted that Christians were being kidnapped by rebels for use as human shields. “Some Christians who tried to escape a week ago were stopped from leaving by the rebels and were instead forced to go to a mosque to act as shields,” a Syrian priest from Hamidiya was quoted as saying by the U.K. Daily Telegraph. “They thought that, because Christians support Assad, the government would not attack them.”

According to reports from sources on the ground, Muslim militias also used churches to attack government forces. “Most of the time militiamen were using the churches and the Christians as shields to protect themselves from shelling,” explained regional director Issam Bishara with the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA). “It is also important to mention that some icons inside the churches were damaged on purpose by the militias.”

Since then, the brutality has only gotten worse, and countless numbers of Christians have been forced to flee into neighboring countries to avoid the brutality and slaughter. The ancient Christian communities, which were protected by the secular Assad regime, feared genocide if the dictatorship were to eventually fall and be replaced by a Sunni Muslim theocracy — as rebels hope. Analysts said those concerns were well founded.

Such a development would also be in line with what has occurred in other nations where the U.S. government has intervened. In Iraq, for example, the ancient Christian communities were all but eradicated following the American-led, United Nations-approved military invasion and occupation. Many fled to Syria. Following the Obama administration-backed so-called “Arab Spring,” Christians are also under fire in Egypt, Libya, and other nations. President Obama’s unconstitutional war on Libya led to ethnic cleansing of blacks by U.S. government-backed “rebels” as well.

The U.S. and Russian governments are currently planning to host an international conference about the Syrian war in Geneva next month, and the Assad regime has agreed “in principle” to participate. Of course, the Obama administration and its allies, including European powers and ruthless Muslim dictators, have been bankrolling, arming, and training rebel forces for “regime change.” On the surface, Russian authorities have been publicly backing the Assad regime, supplying weapons and international support.

While foreign powers continue to pour fuel on the already-blazing inferno raging in Syria, estimates suggest as many as 100,000 people have been killed. An estimated 1.5 million have already fled abroad. The number of tragedies and the ferocity of the human rights abuses, meanwhile, continue to soar, with innocent civilians paying the heaviest price.

Whether rebel forces will openly begin an ethnic cleansing program to eradicate non-Sunni Muslims, as threatened by the FSA spokesman last week, remains to be seen. However, it appears that minority communities in Syria are already the most vulnerable, and if rebel forces do eventually seize power, the future of Christians, Jews, Shias, and Alawites in Syria is uncertain at best.

By Alex Newman
http://www.thenewamerican.com

EU Ministers Meet To Debate Arms To Syrian Rebels

EU foreign ministers are in Brussels to discuss the possibility of providing arms to Syrian rebels.

Britain and France are hoping to persuade fellow EU members to amend a current blanket arms embargo against Syria to allow arms shipments to rebels fighting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague says arming the rebels will force the Assad regime to take peace efforts seriously.

But EU countries like Austria, Finland, and the Czech Republic say they do not support sending more weapons into a 26-month conflict that has already killed tens of thousands of people.

The talks come as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Paris to discuss joint plans for a Syrian peace conference.

‘Appalling Violations’

The United Nations’ human rights chief, Navi Pillay, meanwhile issued a warning on Syria at the opening on May 27 of the UN Human Rights Council’s three-week session in Geneva.

Pillay said the international community has a responsibility to protect Syrian civilians and urged the UN Security Council to take action to stop “appalling violations” of human rights in Syria.

Pillay did not specify what kind of decision the council should take.

The United States, Turkey, and Qatar have called for the council to urgently debate this week the deteriorating human rights situation in Syria, which has been gripped by civil conflict for more than two years.

On June 4, the council is scheduled to hear from its special rapporteur who has been examining the rights situation in Belarus.

Fighting And Suggestions Of Chemical Attacks

Heavy fighting has been reported around the strategic Syrian border town of Qusayr and the capital, Damascus, amid renewed reports of chemical weapons attacks by Assad forces.

Opposition activists said Syrian troops backed by Lebanese Hizballah fighters were advancing on May 27 in areas around Qusayr.

Recent government offensives are seen as an attempt by Assad to strengthen his negotiating position before the U.S.- and Russian-sponsored peace talks next month.

France’s “Le Monde” newspaper, meanwhile, on May 27 published first-hand accounts of purported chemical attacks by Assad’s forces in April.

Each side in the conflict has accused the other of using chemical weapons.

Syria’s SANA news agency reports that a well-known pro-government journalist, Yara Abbas, has been killed by sniper fire in Homs province.

Based on reporting by AFP, AP, independent.co.uk, dpa, and Reuters

Syrian Opposition Shake-up Falters Ahead of Peace Conference

(Reuters) — A crisis in Syrian opposition ranks deepened on Monday when a Western and Arab-backed liberal bloc was offered only token representation in the Islamist-dominated Syrian National Coalition.

To the dismay of envoys of Western and Arab nations who have been monitoring four days of opposition talks in Istanbul, the 60-member coalition thwarted a deal to admit a bloc headed by opposition campaigner Michel Kilo with up to 22 new seats.

His group received an offer of only five seats after a session that stretched nearly to dawn, coalition sources said.

The move kept the coalition controlled by a faction loyal to Qatari-backed Secretary-General Mustafa al-Sabbagh, and a bloc largely influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. That group led resistance to the rule of President Bashar al-Assad’s late father in the 1980s, when thousands of its members were tortured and executed.

Addressing the coalition, Kilo said, “We were talking about 25 names as the basis for our negotiations, then there was agreement on 22 and then the number dropped to 20, then to 18, then to 15, then to five.

“I do not think you have a desire to cooperate and hold our extended hand. … We wish you all the best.”

A source in the Kilo bloc said the group would hold a meeting in a few hours to decide whether to withdraw from the opposition conference.

Coalition spokesman Khaled Saleh described the outcome as “democratic,” but said the coalition could discuss the expansion issue further.

The development occurred hours before the European Union is scheduled at a meeting in Brussels to discuss lifting an arms embargo that could allow weapons to reach rebel fighters in Syria who are seeking to oust Assad.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will also meet privately in Paris on Monday to discuss the details of a peace conference that could be held in Geneva in the next few weeks.

Washington has pressured the coalition to resolve its divisions and to expand to include more liberals to counter Islamists from dominating the coalition.

The Syrian revolt began in March 2011 with peaceful protests against Assad’s autocratic rule that were met with military repression, leading to an armed insurgency.

The war has developed into a sectarian conflict pitting members of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has controlled Syria since the 1960s, against members of the Sunni majority. At least 80,000 people have been killed.

With Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants now openly fighting alongside government troops in Syria, Saudi Arabia is keen to play a greater role in backing the Sunni-led opposition, opposition sources have said.

Qatar, the other main Arab player backing the revolt against Assad, had agreed to let Saudi Arabia play the primary role in opposition politics, and Riyadh had been expected to lead Gulf efforts to back a new provisional government financially, opposition sources said.

Significant expansion of the 60-member coalition would have lessened Qatar’s influence on the opposition.

“What we have seen today is the work of Sabbagh, but I really do not see the wisdom of ticking off Saudi Arabia,” a senior coalition source said.

‘SYRIAN FIRST’

Sabbagh, who has played a main role in channeling money for aid and military supplies inside Syria, has been resisting a Saudi-supported plan to add members to the coalition, the sources said.

“Sabbagh has been told by Qatar that the Saudis are brothers and he should compromise. But he is a Syrian first and he will put the interest of the national opposition above everything,” an ally of Sabbagh in the coalition said.

The coalition’s meeting in Istanbul has been extended by two days to discuss the Geneva conference and a new leadership, including the fate of provisional Prime Minister Ghassan Hitto, who has not been able to form a provisional government since being appointed on March 19.

The coalition has been rudderless since the resignation of Moaz AlKhatib, a cleric who had floated two initiatives for Assad to leave power peacefully.

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

Editing by Peter Cooney.

EU to Discuss Amending Syrian Arms Embargo

(BBC) — European Union foreign ministers are to discuss British and French calls for them to ease sanctions against Syria so weapons can be supplied to the rebels.

At a meeting in Brussels, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague is expected to argue that the current sanctions regime, which is due to expire at the end of this week, is no longer working.

He wants it amended so arms can be sent to “moderate” forces in the opposition.

However, several EU states are totally opposed to ending the arms embargo.

Earlier, Syria’s foreign minister confirmed the government would “in principle” attend an international peace conference which the US and Russia hope will take place in Geneva next month.

Walid Muallem said it would be “a good opportunity for a political solution” to the conflict, which the UN says has left more than 80,000 people dead.

Members of the main opposition coalition are currently discussing whether to attend the conference, but spokesmen have said they would if President Bashar al-Assad agreed to step down.

‘Devastating consequences’

Mr Hague has argued that partially lifting the EU arms embargo, so that weapons could be given to rebel groups, would complement, rather than work against, the peace process because it would strengthen the opposition’s hand in negotiations with President Assad.

Last week, he told British MPs that weapons would be supplied only “under carefully controlled circumstances” and with clear commitments from the opposition.

“We must make clear that if the regime does not negotiate seriously at the Geneva conference, no option is off the table,” he said. “We have to be open to every way of strengthening moderates and saving lives rather than the current trajectory of extremism and murder.”

On Monday, Mr Hague and the French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, will urge other European governments to amend the embargo text to allow weapons to be supplied to the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, or allow more assistance to be sent.

Another possibility is for the existing embargo, which expires at midnight on 31 May, to be extended without amendment for a short period to see if the Geneva conference is successful.

Unanimity is needed, and several countries are opposed, reports the BBC’s Matthew Price in Brussels. They include Austria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden.

One Austrian source told the BBC that allowing lethal weapons to be sent into a war zone would turn EU policy on its head, our correspondent adds.

Many countries are also afraid that anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons given to rebel fighters considered “moderate” might end up in the hands of jihadist militants, including those from the al-Nusra Front, which has pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda.

The lack of a centralised command structure and allegations of human rights abuses by rebel fighters are also sources of concern.

The European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU’s diplomatic service, has cautioned against “any counterproductive move” that could harm the prospects of the Geneva conference. It suggests extending the embargo to allow “more time for reflection”.

Oxfam has warned of “devastating consequences” if the embargo ends.

“There are no easy answers when trying to stop the bloodshed in Syria, but sending more arms and ammunition clearly isn’t one of them,” the aid agency’s head of arms control, Anna Macdonald, said in a statement on Thursday. “International efforts should be focused on halting arms transfers to all sides and finding a political solution to the crisis.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry has been lobbying EU member states hesitant about lifting the embargo, which our correspondent says has forced the debate in Brussels and added weight to the British and French position. Still, a compromise may be impossible, he adds.

Turkey Builds Wall At Syrian Border After Deadly Bombings

ANKARA (Reuters) — Turkey is constructing 1.5-mile twin walls at a border crossing with Syria to increase security at the frontier following three deadly bombings this year.

The concrete walls will be built on either side of the road leading from the Turkish side of the crossing at Cilvegozu to the Syrian border gate and will be topped with barbed wire, the Turkish Customs Ministry said in a statement.

Cilvegozu was the scene of a bombing in February which killed 14 people and this month 51 people died when twin car bombs ripped through the nearby town of Reyhanli. Advertise | AdChoices

Since July, Turkish vehicles have not been allowed to cross at the Cilvegozu gate for security reasons, but it has remained open to allow in Syrian refugees and for humanitarian aid from Turkey to be carried across.

Approved Turkish vehicles are currently allowed into the unoccupied buffer area between the Turkish and Syrian gates to unload goods before turning back.

The Bab al-Hawa gate on the Syrian side fell under the control of rebels fighting to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad last year. February’s bomb struck inside the buffer area very close to the Turkish gate.

Vehicle screening equipment and x-ray machines as well as wire fencing and extra lighting and security cameras will also be installed, the ministry said.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan will visit Reyhanli on Saturday, the first time since the bombings.

By Jonathon Burch

Discord bogs down Syrian opposition talks

Syria’s opposition factions, struggling under Western and Arab pressure to close their ranks and elect a viable leadership, have left a meeting aimed at creating a coherent front key to a proposed international peace conference.

“They have delayed the crucial vote on the expansion of the Syrian coalition ,” said Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelberra, reporting from Istanbul on Saturday.

After three days of meetings in Istanbul, senior coalition players were in discussions late into the night on Friday after Michel Kilo, a veteran liberal opposition figure, rejected a deal by Mustafa al-Sabbagh, a Syrian businessman who is the coalition’s secretary-general, to admit some members of Kilo’s bloc to the coalition, the sources said.

In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria

Kilo has said that his group wants significant representation in the opposition coalition before it will join.

“Kilo is ready to join but his list includes 25 people in a take or leave offer,” said our correspondent, Hashem Ahelberra.

“The problem with the opposition is that if they add the group of secularists into the general committee, they will have a veto power, and right now the current opposition thinks the secularists have been very soft on Assad, and they might undermine the hardliners and the Islamists.”

Much to the frustration of its backers, the coalition has struggled to agree on a leader since the resignation in March of Moaz al-Khatib, a former Damascus religious leader, who had floated two initiatives for Assad to leave power peacefully.

Khatib’s latest proposal, a 16-point plan that sees Assad handing power to his deputy or prime minister and then going abroad with 500 members of his entourage, won little support in Istanbul, highlighting the obstacles to wider negotiations.

“He has the right to submit papers to the meeting like any other member, but his paper is heading directly to the dustbin of history. It is a repeat of his previous initiative, which went nowhere,” a senior coalition official said.

The failure of the Syrian National Coalition to alter its Islamist-dominated membership as demanded by its international backers and replace a leadership undermined by power struggles, appears to be playing into the hands of President Bashar al-Assad.

No let up in violence

By Saturday night, the factions locked themselves up in a room, trying to find a way to work together.

And while they continued their discussions behind closed doors, fighting continues inside Syria in Qusayr, where heavy bombardment has been going on for days.

Interim opposition leader George Sabra spoke at a press conference in Istanbul on Saturday, when he took a harsh tone with Hezbollah as well as Iran.

“Thousands of invaders from the Iranian forces and the terrorists of Hezbollah are still coming to Syria and still killing our people,” said Sabra.

“The killers are blockading, shelling and trying to storm several cities…they are, with the participation of the falling Syrian regime, killing Syrians in so many locations, in all governorates,” said Sabra.

Meanwhile, in a speech on Saturday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Saturday vowed “victory” in Syria, where militants of his powerful Lebanese Shia movement are fighting alongside regular troops against rebels trying to topple
the regime.

“I say to all the honourable people, to the mujahedeen, to the heroes: I have always promised you a victory and now I pledge to you a new one” in Syria, he said at a ceremony marking the 13th anniversary of Israel’s military withdrawal from Lebanon.

Government forces are attacking a key town as Assad’s ally Russia says he will send representatives to a proposed international conference in the Swiss city of Geneva, coalition insiders said.

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Heavy Fighting Reported In Rebel-Held Syrian Town

Reports say fighting in the strategic Syrian town of Qusair has intensified.

State media reported on May 25 that troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad had launched a three-pronged attack on the rebel-held town and were making big advances.

The rebels said they were under heavy bombardment and that elite troops from the army and Lebanese Hizballah fighters were leading the offensive.

In Istanbul, Syria’s opposition resumed talks aimed at creating a united front ahead of a proposed international peace conference in Geneva.

Speaking to journalists in Istanbul on May 25, George Sabra, acting chairman of the Syrian National Council, requested immediate help.

“We are calling our brothers and sisters from the revolution and Free Syrian Army to support and give weapons to their brothers and sisters in Muhayamiya and Qusair and the area around Damascus,” he said.

Sabra described the siege of Qusair by government troops as “terrorism” and criticized the international community for failing to help.

“This is a terrorism that has never happened before in the history of the world,” he said. “And this is happening in front of the whole world and everybody is seeing this. What is going on in Syria now is allowing terrorism and extremism and it is allowing criminals to kill people and it allows barbarians to disrespect humanity.”

The Syrian military began an offensive to recapture Qusair, located between Homs and the Lebanese border, a week ago.

The offensive is seen as an attempt by Assad to secure the coastal region. The area is home to his Alawite minority sect, a branch of Shi’ite Islam.

His regime is supported by Shi’ite Iran and Hizballah against predominantly Sunni rebels backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The United States and Russia are pushing for an international peace conference in Geneva to end more than two years of conflict inside Syria that has left some 80,000 dead.

With reporting by Reuters, dpa, and AFP

Syrian Opposition Leader Says he Doesn’t Know Bishops’ Whereabouts

The leader of the Syrian opposition coalition is backing away from previous reports that he is certain of the location and condition of two Syrian Orthodox bishops kidnapped April 22.

George Sabra, president of the Syrian National Coalition, told World Watch Monitor on May 21 he is not informed of the movement of the bishops from day to day, or of the identity of the captors. This is a change from May 7 statements attributed to Sabra during a meeting of Middle East leaders in Beirut.

Sabra also told World Watch Monitor the coalition is “doing our best” to expel the handful of Muslims who have come from Europe at the urging of jihadist groups with al-Qaeda links who count themselves among the broader Syrian opposition movement.

Yohanna Ibrahim, head of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Aleppo, was kidnapped alongside his counterpart from the Greek Orthodox Church, Boulos Yaziji, after travelling to the Turkish border in an attempt to secure the release of two priests kidnapped in February. Their driver, Fathallah Kaboud, later was killed.

Apart from an early flurry of erroneous reports that the clerics had been released, little was heard about their whereabouts, who snatched them, or why.

That changed May 7 when Amin Gemayel, former president of Lebanon and current leader of its Kataeb Party, held a meeting in his Beirut office.

“The bishops are in good health and are being held by a small group in a town called Bshaqtin, 20 kilometers northwest of Aleppo,” Sabra told Gemayel by phone during the meeing, according to the Lebanon Star.

Attending the meeting were Deputy Bishop of Aleppo Joseph Shabo, Mount Lebanon’s Syriac Orthodox Bishop George Saliba, Beirut’s Bishop Daniel Koriyeh and Syriac League President Habib Afram.

Afram told World Watch Monitor the group had sought the meeting with Gemayel to seek his help securing the bishops’ release. Instead, he said, they heard Sabra tell them he was powerless to help.

“During our meeting, Syrian opposition leader George Sabra spoke with both Cheikh Gemayel and Bishop Saliba over the phone. Sabra claimed that he knows where the abducted bishops are and who the kidnappers are. I find it outrageous that one of the most powerful leaders of the Syrian opposition says he knows where they are but can’t do anything to release them.”

Afram, Secretary General of the Union of Lebanese Christian Leagues and a prominent defender of the fate of Christians in the Middle East, said Sabra’s inability to secure the release of the bishops has troubling implications for the future of Christians in Syria.

“Sabra said things like: ‘This is not giving a good impression of our revolution and we promise to take all possible actions to get them released’. But that is only words,” Afram said. “We emphasized that if he can’t control his own area — the place where the bishops were kidnapped — then how can he claim that he can change Syria for the better? And how will he be able to make Christians remain in Syria?”

Contacted May 21 by World Watch Monitor, Sabra gave a less certain accounting of the bishops than he was reported to give May 7.

“You know that the bishops are moved always day by day or from week to week. So therefore we don’t know the place exactly,” he said.

He also said the coalition isn’t sure who is behind the kidnappings.

“About this we have different information, we have new news that we will check. We have news that they are in Aleppo. We can’t say that this information is real; we have to check.”

When asked how he knows the bishops are moved, if anyone has spoken to them, and if there is any evidence they are alive, he replied: “you know, by our people inside Syria that interrogated the groups.”

“Really we believe that they are alive,” he said. “But there is no clear picture of that. We are doing our best, but right now we didn’t succeed.”

Thousands of Christians have fled the violence in Syria, and church leaders say the abductions have accelerated the exodus. Sabra said he wants Syrian Christians to remain courageous.

“We are aware of the impression this gives to our revolution,” he said. “But we are doing our best. Syrian Christians have been living in the country for thousands of years. And they should be courageous enough to stay in their homeland.”

Sabra, himself a Christian, insisted there is no evidence Syrian Christians are under pressure because of their religion, despite testimony to the contrary from Christians inside Syria and those that have fled to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

“Maybe there are some small events here and there,” he said, “but we have not the right to exaggerate with these events to tell it as a fact, as a truth, of the life in Syria. Really it is not true. And the only way to protect Christians, as to protect other Syrians, is to push Bashar al-Assad’s regime out of power and start a new era in Syria with a civil state, a democratic state, with elections, constitution, a law. This is the only thing which will help all people in Syria to be protected in their country.”

Sabra also rejected any comparisons of the impact of Syria’s drawn-out civil war on Christian nationals to the flight of Christians from neighboring Iraq.

“We have two major principal differences here in Syria,” he said. “Iraq was occupied by foreign troops, and also they have a neighbour considered an enemy to Iraqis for many years: I mean Iran. So the effect of the occupation and the effect of Iranians inside Iraq caused the situation. In Syria we have something different. I’m sure that Christians will stay and live in Syria as they did for hundreds of years. It’s their country. In Syria we have thousands of churches and nobody can prove or give one example of a church being persecuted by Muslims.”

Still, when pressed, Sabra acknowledged one similarity to Iraq of grave concern to resident Christians: the presence of imported Islamist militants, some of them aligned with al-Qaeda. An April report by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, at London’s King’s College, estimates that somewhat less than 10 percent of the opposition fighters are from outside Syria, and that between 7 percent and 10 percent of that fraction come from Europe.

“We are sorry to hear about that,” Sabra said. “We were informed about two young people from Belgium. Believe me, we are doing our best to contact these people and to operate with the European community and the European governments to save their lives and send them back home to their countries safely.”

Meanwhile, Afram said he meets with Christians that have fled Syria every day in his office in Lebanon. “People are kidnapped on a daily basis for ransom or just to scare them to leave,” he said. “Christians are systematically targeted by kidnappings.”

He said if the bishops are alive, Sabra should employ the power of his position to win their release.

“George Sabra should act and he should show leadership capability, or leave,” Afram said. “He should exercise direct involvement, even take risks to go himself with the army of the opposition to negotiate the release of the bishops; make a clear statement regarding his [objection] that bishops were treated like this.”

By Nuri Kino
http://www.worldwatchmonitor.org

Nuri Kino, of Assyrian (Syriac Orthodox) background, is an award-winning TV/radio journalist now living in Sweden. In January 2013 he wrote a report, ‘Between the Wire’, in which he conducted more than 100 interviews with Syria’s minority Christian community. He is co-author of the independently published political thriller, ‘The Line in the Sand.’

http://global.christianpost.com

Turkish Police Foil Second Attack Against Syrian Refugees, Governor Says

[unable to retrieve full-text content](AFP) — Turkish police have arrested six people who were planning attacks against refugees staying in camps near the Syrian border, a local governor said on Wednesday.
Assyrian International News Agency

Syrian Christians’ Safety Threatened By Extremism and Instability, Says Catholic Bishop

Syriac Catholic Bishop Gregoire Melki said the current situation in Syria is very sad and has left people very anxious, and fears the same thing that happened to Christians in Iraq will happen to Christians in Syria.

“Growing extremism in Syria could jeopardize the safety of all Christians,” Melki told the Assyrian International News Agency. “Those who can, escape … For more than two years there has not been a solution (to the violence) we have to pray.”

Though the situation in Syria is grim for all, it is even worse for minorities, such as Christians.

“It is always the minority which is attacked first,” Bishop Melki noted, adding that he hoped this would not mark the beginning of the end of Syria’s Christian community.

“The church in Syria continues to be a victim of the total chaos and war,” Bishop Melki said to a large crowd during the 10th prayer service for reconciliation, unity and peace at the Syriac Catholic Church, attended by the heads of Christian churches in Israel.

Church leaders in attendance participated in the special Syriac blessing of the water ceremony recited over small bottles of water, later distributed to the worshippers, AINA reported.

“We pray fervently day and night for (Christian) unity and peace, especially in Syria, and for the two bishops who have been kidnapped and their release and for others kidnapped elsewhere in the Middle East,” Bishop Melki said to the audience.

Syriac Orthodox Bishop Swerios Malki Murad of Jerusalem also helped lead the prayer service.

“We, both bishops, and all churches here in Jerusalem, are concerned about the civil war in Syria and the terrible impact it is having on the population and also of course on the Christians,” Bishop Melki said.

While the congregation prayed for peace, two members held up a large banner displaying a picture of the two Aleppo archbishops, kidnapped by unknown assailants on April 22.

After the prayer service, Franciscan Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, said, “we are powerless and the only thing to do is to pray and give moral and spiritual support to the Christians there to be strong.”

“We have to remember we can’t always be in winter, it can’t rain continuously. Sooner or later the rain will come to an end, and we have to pray to be strong during this period so we can be ready when the sun comes out,” he concluded.

Syrian Orthodox Archbishop Speaks on the Situation of Christians in Syria

Munich (AINA) — On Saturday, May 18, Eustatius Matta Roham, the Archbishop of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch for Northern Syria, met activists of the newly formed European Christian Relief Organization (ECRO) in Munich, where he came to visit the White Fathers and other Catholic organizations asking for support for the Syriac (also known as Assyrian and Chaldean) Christian people. This was the second meeting with the Archbishop in Germany and the situation in Syria was the main topic of discussion. His last trip to Germany took place in May 2012, when he visited the city of Augsburg for a meeting with the local Head of the Catholic Diocese Bishop, Dr. Konrad Zdarsa, and the local Caritas chapter. The Archbishop was accompanied by the Syrian Orthodox Bishop Selwanos of Homs, who reported on the tragic situation of the displaced Christians in his city.

During the recent meeting Archbishop Roham gave an authentic assessment of the recent situation of the Christians in Syria in general and in the Province of Al-Hassake in particular, where he resides. In addition, the talk evolved around the security and humanitarian crisis in the country and options for supporting the suffering Christians in Northern Syria and the refugees in the neighboring countries of Syria.

After the civil war began in Syria, Archbishop Roham took responsibility for the poor parishioner of his Archdiocese and traveled to many places where the flock of the Syrian Orthodox Church was in despair.

Recently, His Holiness Ignatius Zakka I Iwas, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, sent the Archbishop to Europe in order to assess and manage the problems of the refugees in Greece and in neighboring countries to Syria. He carried a special letter from the Patriarch to Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna to help in bringing the mission to success.

On Friday, April 19, 2013, Cardinal Schönborn received Archbishop Roham, who delivered the letter of the Patriarch. After the meeting Archbishop Roham conveyed the following message to Cardinal Schönborn, saying:

I was deeply touched by your intensive listening to the suffering and risk, which my people and I are facing in Syria during these very difficult days. When hearing Your Eminence offering me a place in your own residency, I felt that I am not left alone and I do have a great brother in Christ helping me in carrying the cross. Your generous offering has reminded me of practicing “Philoxenia,” like our Father Abraham, and your encouraging words have echoed in me the words of Jesus, “I was a stranger and you invited me in” (Matthew 25:35). Indeed, I will never forget how much you cared about the well-being of my suffering people and churches. I will always be grateful to your Christian flowing love and faith.

With regards to the current situation of the Assyrians and other Christians in Hassake province, the Archbishop reported the countryside of Northern Syria, which has borders with Iraq and Tur-Abdin in Turkey, “is now mostly controlled by different rebel groups.”

The government seems to have abandoned the rural areas with little towns while concentrating its focus in the two large towns, namely Hassake and Qamishle. People in these two towns have a great fear that fighting might start at any time in their streets. Hassake is about 80 km from Qamishle, which is located on the Turkish border. “In case fighting will start, a very large number of children, girls, women and elderly people will cross the border to Turkey,” said the Archbishop.

According to the Archbishop Hassake and Qamishle have already welcomed many displaced families from other destroyed areas in Al-Hasske Province, like Dair Al-Zor, Ras Al-Ayn, Thawra, Tabqa, Raqqa, and Shadadi. The Church and a School in Dair Al-Zor were already destroyed in early summer 2012. The faithful left the area and became displaced in many other towns, but most of them have settled in Hassake. In Ras Al-Ayn churches and Christian symbols were destroyed.

In early 2013, some new displaced families arrived from Thawra, Raqqa and Shadadi. Archbishop Roham accepted immediately all their children in Amal Private Schools. “The displaced people of Dair Al-Zor, Ras Al-Ayn, Thawra, Raqqa and Shadadi cannot go back to their home towns, because many of them lost their houses and property,” the Archbishop added.

Archbishop Roham spoke also about earlier activities in his diocese. In January 2013, the three bishops in Hassake — Yacoub Behnan Hendo of the Syrian Catholic Church, Afrem Nathanael of the Assyrian Church of the East and Eustathius Matta Roham — met to discuss many issues of concern, including kidnappings. A protest march was organized with other notables of the region that criticized the government’s stand of inactivity against kidnappings, with most of the victims being Christians.

With regards of the economic situation in Al-Hassake Province, the Archbishop said “the situation is not better than other areas in Syria. For example, the cooking gas costs 5,000 Syrian Pounds. It used to cost less than 400 Syrian Pounds before the uprising. All kinds of food are expensive. People in Al-Hassake Province suffer long hours of electricity cuts. The region has been cut from international communications for more than two months. The private banks are paralyzed, because the internet is not functioning. The systematic kidnapping is still going on, and there is a daily escape of people across the border to Turkey.”

Inflation in Syria has affected all aspects of life. The economy is going down day after day and the prices of food, fuel and all materials are going up. Unemployment has plunged families into poverty. The middle class became poor, and the poor became more poor. The extremely cold winter of 2013 added more suffering to all.

Archbishop Roham has made many contacts with Church and State leaders in Europe in order to help Assyrians at home and abroad.

On May 7, 2013, Archbishop Roham met Monsignor Huber, Father Josef Moser and Mr. Sebastian Bugl in Munich. He thanked them for their great work with his Archdiocese in the past few years. Also, he asked them and all Catholic organizations in Munich, such as Missio, Misereor and Church in Need, to help the poor suffering Christian families in Syria and abroad.

By Abdulmesih BarAbraham

Syriac Bishop: Extremism Jeopardizes Syrian Christians’ Safety

JERUSALEM — Growing extremism in Syria could jeopardize the safety of all Christians, said Syriac Catholic Bishop Gregoire Melki of Jerusalem.

“It is a very sad situation and we are really anxious,” he told Catholic News Service May 18, following a special prayer service in Jerusalem. “We are very anxious when we remember what happened to the Christians in Iraq. We fear the same thing will happen to the Christians in Syria.

“Those who can, escape,” said Bishop Melki, who said he remains in contact with church leaders in Syria. “For more than two years there has not been a solution (to the violence.) We have to pray.”

Although the situation is dire for all Syrians, it is even more so for the Christians because they are a minority, and in such chaotic situations it is always the minority which is attacked first, he said. He said hoped this would not signal the end of the Christian community in Syria.

“We have the hope of Jesus, that is our faith, but if we look at this with human eyes (we see the situation) is dangerous,” he said.

The heads of Christian churches in Israel attended the 10th prayer service for reconciliation, unity and peace as about 200 local Christians and foreign religious packed the tiny Syriac Catholic Church of St. Thomas. The ceremony was broadcast on closed-circuit TV from the small sanctuary to an adjoining sitting room to accommodate the unusually large numbers of people in attendance.

The church leaders took part in the special Syriac blessing of the water ceremony recited over small bottles of water, later distributed to the worshippers.

In his homily, Bishop Melki said the church in Syria “continues to be a victim of the total chaos and war.”

Syriac Orthodox Bishop Swerios Malki Murad of Jerusalem helped lead the prayer service.

As the congregation prayed for peace especially in Syria, two members of the congregation held up a large banner at the entrance of the sanctuary with a picture of the two Orthodox bishops seized by unknown assailants April 22. Their driver was killed during the attack. Two other priests were also kidnapped in February.

“We are powerless and the only thing to do is to pray and give moral and spiritual support to the Christians there to be strong,” Franciscan Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, custos of the Holy Land, told CNS after the service.

By Judith Sudilovsky
Catholic News Service

Syrian opposition continues talks in Madrid

Syrian opposition groups are meeting in Madrid to compile a draft political solution to the conflict.

The talks, which entered a second day on Tuesday, include Moaz al-Khatib, who resigned last week as leader of the Syrian National Coalition.

Khatib cited the failure of the international community to stop the conflict as the reason he stepped down.

The Spanish foreign ministry said “various movements” of the opposition to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad were involved in the talks, in addition to the coalition, which is the main opposition bloc.

Pressed back by army advances, Syria’s opposition is under international pressure to enter into dialogue with Assad’s government.

More than 80,000 people have been killed in the conflict, according to the UN, and 1.5 million people have fled the country since the uprising began in March, 2011.

Among the Madrid meeting’s aims is “to facilitate dialogue between the various movements in the Syrian opposition, thereby aiding its cohesion and its future capacity to ensure unity, stability and democracy in Syria,” the Spanish foreign ministry said.

“The international effort currently under way to this end requires the forming a strong, unified and diverse opposition capable of representing a common front.”

Unity government

Spain in November recognised the coalition as the Syrian people’s legitimate representative, along with several Western and Arab powers.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said last month that Madrid backed the formation of a national unity government in Syria as a way out of the two-year conflict.

The participants made no declarations following Monday’s talks but the ministry said Khatib was scheduled to meet Garcia-Margallo on Tuesday.

The two would review the situation in Syria and international efforts to settle the conflict, it said.

Before resigning, Khatib had faced criticism of his perceived overly moderate position towards the Assad government.

He was pressured to step down after leading members of the coalition berated him for offering Assad a deal, and after the
bloc went ahead with steps to form a provisional government against Khatib’s explicit wishes.

The US and Russia have called an international conference, expected in June, to push for a political solution.

366

Al-Qaeda’s Syrian Wing Takes Over the Oilfields Once Belonging to Assad

Up to 380,000 barrels of crude oil were previously produced by wells around the city of Raqqa and in the desert region to its east that are now in rebel hands – in particular Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda off-shoot which is the strongest faction in this part of the country.

Now the violently anti-Western jihadist group, which has been steadily extending its control in the region, is selling the crude oil to local entrepreneurs, who use home-made refineries to produce low-grade petrol and other fuels for Syrians facing acute shortages.

The ability of Jabhat al-Nusra to profit from the oil locally, despite international sanctions which have hindered its sale abroad, will be particularly worrying to the European Union, which has voted to ease the embargo but at the same time wants to marginalise the extremist group within the opposition.

In the battle for the future of the rebel cause, the oil-fields may begin to play an increasingly strategic role. All are in the three provinces closest to Iraq – Hasakeh, Deir al-Zour, and Raqqa, while the Iraqi border regions are the homeland of the Islamic State of Iraq, as al-Qaeda’s branch in the country calls itself.

It was fighters from Islamic State of Iraq, both Iraqi and Syrian, who are thought to have founded Jabhat al-Nusra as the protests against the rule of President Assad turned into civil war.

Because of sanctions, Jabhat’s oil is largely shipped to thousands of home-built mini-refineries that have sprung up across the north of the country. The crude is distilled in hand-welded vats dug into the ground and heated with burning oil residue.

It is not clear how much money is being channelled back to the group. But all those buying the raw product were aware that Jabhat was profiting.

“Jabhat do not ask for taxes or charges for this trade,” said one of them, Omar Mahmoud, from Raqqa province. “But we are buying the oil from them so they do not need to.”

Syria’s oil output, never as great as that of some of Syria’s Arab neighbours, fell to about 130,000 barrels a day after the outbreak of the revolution against the Assad regime.

However, Jabhat al-Nusra are now putting that to good use. The homes refineries are turning out poor quality but usable — and much-needed – petrol and kerosene for cooking and home stoves.

Their product might not meet the quality, and certainly the health and safety standards, demanded by Shell or ExxonMobil, but it provides a living to thousands of blackened figures willing to risk the business’s inherent dangers.

In parts of north-east Syria, the stills are set up by every road-side, the produce sold like fruit from lay-bys to drivers as they pass. But the unquestioned centre of the industry is the desert outside the small town of Mansoura, a few miles west of Raqqa city and on the other side of the Euphrates River.

Here, the entire horizon is a blighted scene of billowing clouds out of which dark figures occasionally emerge on foot or roaring motor-bikes. Near the road sit oil tankers carrying the raw product.

“I make 3000 Syrian pounds (about £15) a day,” said Adel Hantoush, 19, his legs dripping with crude, a filthy headscarf wrapped around his face. A building site casual labourer in better times, he helps support his father, mother and nine brothers and sisters.

Black smoke blew past his head as colleagues poured fuel into the burning pit under their tank. “The last thing I think about is my health,” he said. “If I don’t do this, my family will die.”

The amateur production process is quite simple, and easily explained in school text books.

The oil is heated slowly, with the different grades of product evaporating at different temperatures. The vapour is fed through pipes channelled through pits filled with water to recondense it as a liquid, which runs out into containers at the other end.

Near Raqqa, they pay 4000 Syrian pounds (£20) a barrel, with the price rising for smaller quantities and as the distance increases. A single refining vat can take six barrels at a time, producing maybe 30 litres of petrol, similar quantities of cooking fuel and higher amounts of diesel.

Abdulwahad Abdullah, a wheat farmer from north of Raqqa who runs a single still through two five-hour cycles a day, says he can make 20,000 pound profit (£100) on a good day.

It is a Mad Max scene, indicative of the chaos the war has unleashed in Syria, creating a landscape ideal for the methods of dominance al-Qaeda learned in post-war Iraq.

General Selim Idriss, the head of the western-backed opposition Military Council, has appealed for Western help specifically to seize the fields from Jabhat, but the forces required – he put it at 30,000 men – make that a pipe dream. Even pro-Western rebel militias in the area admit that the level of support received from the council is at present minimal.

They have promised to take on Jabhat al-Nusra once the fighting is over, but they are split and fighting among themselves, with their lack of money forcing some to turn to looting and extortion to fund themselves, further alienating the local population.

Jabhat have used their greater proficiency at fighting, honed by jihad in Iraq and elsewhere, to take a leading role at the battlefront. “They are more disciplined,” Abu Hamza, a fighter with a rival Islamist rebel brigade in Aleppo admitted. “When they attack, they make a plan first, and then stick to it.”

Their battlefield supremacy has enabled them to seize the economic as well as the military high-ground.

In Raqqa, they also control flour production, earning money from selling to bakeries, some of which they own as well. “Jabhat now own everything here,” one disillusioned secular activist said.

In other places they sell the flour at a loss, further endearing them to the local population.

Until now it has been a virtuous circle. Well-funded anyway from foreign contributions, they are able to avoid levying the fees — some say bribes — to pay their men and for supplies that have made other brigades increasingly unpopular. That in turn has been a major boon to recruitment, with thousands defecting to them.

Jabhat al-Nusra’s rule has not been easy. It has had to fight opposed local brigades, and has begun to face protests over its hardline policies — most recently last week after their public execution of three captured soldiers in Raqqa’s town square. The group said this was revenge for a massacre of civilians by pro-Assad forces in the coastal town of Baniyas.

Ominously, this was done in the name of “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”, suggesting that Jabhat al-Nusra at least in the east is now fully under the control of the murderous Iraqi mother group.

Few are concerned about the downsides, though one man showed huge weals that had grown under his arm which he blamed on his days inhaling the dense black smoke.

One Mansoura man, Mahmoud Ismail, a computer technician who had come to the desert site to visit friends and was watching them pour petrol into barrels to take away, said he had tried the work for a single day. But he then gave it up when he thought about what he was inhaling.

“I came, did it, and then packed up and stopped,” he said. “It just wasn’t worth it.”

With that, he flicked his cigarette on to the ground, and stamped it out.

By Richard Spencer
http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Netanyahu Says Israel Acts To Deny Hizballah Syrian Arms

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is “acting” to prevent Syrian weapons reaching Lebanon’s Hizballah and will continue to do so.

Netanyahu, speaking at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting on May 19, said the Middle East was going through its most sensitive period for decades, with the conflict in Syria at the center of the turmoil.

Netanyahu said Israel is “prepared for any scenario” to protect ‘the security interests of the citizens of Israel in future.”

His remarks came two weeks after Israel carried out air strikes near Damascus, which a senior Israeli source said were aimed at preventing the transfer of sophisticated Iranian weapons to Hizballah, the Lebanese Shi’ite ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Netanyahu on May 14 held talks in Russia on the Syrian crisis.

Russia is Syria’s main supplier of weapons.

Meanwhile, rights watchdog Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Syrian troops backed by fighters from Lebanese militant group Hizballah have launched an attack on the rebel-held central town of Qusayr.

The London-based group said soldiers backed by tanks launched the May 19 assault after heavy bombardment by aircraft and artillery. At least 20 people were killed.

The group said Hizballah fighters “are playing a central role in the battle.”

State television said that the army had “tightened the noose on the terrorists” in Qusayr.

Also on May 19, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in Moscow that he hopes an international conference to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the conflict will be held early next month.

Washington and Moscow have agreed to try to bring Syria’s regime and opposition to the negotiating table, but no date has been set.

Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters

Syrian Oil Becomes Fault Line In War

MALEKIYYAH, Al-HASSAKAH PROVINCE, Syria — The province of Hassakah is the Syrian oil tank. Before the revolution, its 170,000 barrels per day accounted for more than half of the country’s oil production, thus representing the backbone of those oil exports covering a third of national export revenues. Syrian oil engineers working in the province told Al-Monitor that the Democratic Union Party (PYD) — affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) — currently controls around 60% of the oil fields, leaving the remaining 40% in the hands of several factions of the Arab opposition. Since the conflict engulfed the route of the pipelines to the refineries, however, the drills have stopped working.

Despite such a fragmented context, the European Union on April 22 decided to lift the oil embargo on liberated regions in Syria in an attempt to support the opposition. The move, though, is likely to stir up Kurdish-Arab strife and catalyze regime raids on a region that has largely remained immune to the conflict so far. The war for control of Syria’s energy resources has not even started, but mutual allegations are already circulating between the parties involved, which accuse each other of cutting power supplies and dealing with the regime.

Exporting crude oil to Europe would encourage ethnic strife, but Syria’s rebel-held areas urgently need to produce or import fuel, electricity and gas to meet the basic needs of the population under its control, unless the undesirable option of trading with the regime is brought back to the table. For the time being, the few energy resources available remain prey to looting and black-market dealing.

In Hassakah, the response to the European call for oil trade with the Arab opposition’s Syrian National Coalition (SNC) has been largely negative. The PYD doesn’t recognize any SNC power over its territories and sees the proposal as an attempt to encourage Arab offensives against Kurdish-held areas. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) compares it to plundering as long as there is no transitional government on the ground.

“We consider the EU offer as if they are spurring Arabs to seize our regions and sell oil through the SNC,” Aldar Khalil, a veteran PKK fighter and one of the most influential PYD leaders, told Al-Monitor. “For us, the only body entitled to take decisions on oil trade is the KNC (Kurdish National Council).”

“We’re against selling oil before the collapse of the regime or until the formation of a transitional government in Syria,” Maj. Muntasir al-Khalid, commander of the FSA Military Council in Hassakah, told Al-Monitor. “For the moment, oil sales would be an organized theft of the wealth of Syria, as the wells are in the hands of different factions.”

To add further complications, the al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra, believed to be the best organized within the opposition, is not subject to the FSA leadership. Jabhat al-Nusra already controls the Ali Agha well in nearby Rmelan.

The regime is also not likely to accept any initiative in the oil trade. “In order to accept the EU offer, the PYD and the opposition need a no-fly zone, as the regime would shell any oil cargo,” predicted an electric engineer in the Oil Ministry’s department of Hassakah and Rmelan, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

While the door of foreign exports is temporarily closed, the lack of oil has also affected the production of associated gas and, consequently, electricity. The internal supply routes are hindered by hostilities between Kurdish and Arab factions.

“The Sueidia power plant covers around 200 megawatts, so that before the uprising we used to rely on 150 megawatts from the Tabqa power plant in Raqqa to cover the provincial needs,” the electric engineer told Al-Monitor. “But now Tabqa is blocked by the clashes and the power needs have almost doubled, reaching 700 megawatts, due to the lack of government control over consumption.”

The Baathist regime intentionally compelled oil-rich Kurdish regions to rely on power plants and refineries located in other provinces, but now the Arab opposition is accused of adopting similar practices. “Both Tabqa and Mabrukeh power plants are still supplying Deir ez-Zor, whereas they cut electricity in our direction,” PYD’s Khalil said. Such allegations were denied by an employee responsible for the maintenance of the power plant in Mabrukeh when contacted by Al-Monitor. The outcome is that Kurdish-populated cities such as Amuda only enjoy a few hours of electricity per day.

Despite mutual accusations, power cuts affect all regions regardless of their ethnic composition. “Blackouts are not necessarily planned by one side or another. In the Arab-Kurdish Tell Tamr the mills serving the whole city are suffering from power shortages, even if the electricity comes from the [Arab-controlled] South,” Ayman al-Ahmad, an Arab opposition activist from Hassakah told Al-Monitor.

On the other side, the PYD is accused of cooperating with the regime in managing oil resources. On April 16, some government documents published by the Syrian weekly Jisr indicated an agreement between the Oil Ministry, the military intelligence and the PYD to allow the latter to guard the wells in Rmelan.

“The PYD took over the wells on March 1, but oil kept flowing toward the government refinery in Banyas until approximately March 20, when some Arab phalanxes closed the valves in Tell Hamis,” the electric engineer said.

“We have to choose between the current deprivation and the return to drill and pump oil toward Banyas,” Khalil said.

“Everything imported from abroad has a double cost: We paid $ 12 for each gas cylinder coming from Iraqi Kurdistan. The Syrian-subsidized price of a gas cylinder is 425 Syrian pounds (less than $ 3 on the black market), but it’s actually sold at 3,500 Syrian pounds ($ 25) by PYD supporters,” an employee from Sueidia gas plant who spoke on condition of anonymity told Al-Monitor.

The option of keeping the oil flowing toward government refineries is harshly criticized by the Arab opposition as a form of support to the ongoing massacres. Nevertheless, some oil workers claim that even Arab armed groups are easily corrupted by the regime. “We know that the regime happened to pay some factions of the opposition to protect the passage of oil pipelines between Hassakah and Deir ez-Zor,” an oil engineer working for the same government department in Rmelan told Al-Monitor.

Besides the need to boycott the regime without viable alternatives, smuggling is dramatically affecting the availability of petroleum products. “We monitored the distribution of oil fuel (mazout) coming from Iraqi Kurdistan through the Supreme Kurdish Committee between November 2012 and January 2013,” recalled Zorab Ali, a young activist from the Amuda Group (Tajammu Amuda). “Twenty-five thousand families were supposed to receive the tanks, but only 6,000 actually did.”

The mazout is mainly refined at home through rudimentary dangerous techniques. “Homemade refining could lead to diseases caused by the inhalation of hydrogene sulfide (H2S),” warned the oil engineer from Rmelan.

“The international community needs to put pressure on the Syrian regime to allow us to import petroleum products from Iraqi Kurdistan in exchange for crude oil,” the electric engineer in the Oil Ministry said. “Upon the arrival of the hot season, we will risk a cholera contagion without enough fuel to clean the streets.”

By Andrea Glioti
AL Monitor

Video Shows Executions By Syrian Islamist Rebels

A video distributed by a pro-opposition Syrian monitoring organization purportedly shows fighters from an Al-Qaeda-linked rebel group in Syria executing supporters of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The video was distributed on May 16 by the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It seems to show a masked man reading out a statement from the Al-Nusra Front before shooting dead at least nine blindfolded prisoners, one by one.

The executions were said to have taken place in the Deir Ezzor area in the country’s east.

The Observatory said it was not clear whether the victims were Syrian government soldiers or when the executions took place.

The Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front is said to be one of the best-equipped and most active rebel groups fighting against Assad’s regime in Syria.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP