Crisis in Syri� #19

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:28 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Met 'wij' bedoel je onze regeringen? Jammer genoeg niet.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:13 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Het lijkt erop dat de rebellen een Iraans "passagiersvliegtuig" uit de lucht hebben geschoten

مميز اسقاط طائرة تجارية إيرانية فوق مطار دمشق الدولي

إسقاط طائرة مدنية إيرانية محملة بالسلاح -

[..]

Bron

Heeft iemand een goede titel voor het topic?

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:34 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Hij probeert te impliceren dat we voorstander zijn van het schieten op onschuldige vakantiegangers die met vredelievende bedoelingen op een lijnvlucht naar een toeristenoord zijn gestapt.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:41 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

[..]

Wie ben jij om te oordelen wie er in dat vliegtuig zat?
Als je op een passagiers vliegtuig schiet dan ben je gewoon niet goed bezig en ben je geen haar beter als degene die je bestrijd....

quote:

The markings on the plane do appear to be consistent with an Iran Air Force Boeing 747-131(SF)

quote:

Syrian opposition says it is ready for conditional peace talks

Coalition is prepared to negotiate with regime after UN backs its position that Assad will have no role in transitional government

The Syrian opposition has said it is ready for exploratory peace talks with the regime after gaining UN backing for its position that Bashar al-Assad himself "would have no role" in a transitional government.

The developments served to increase the isolation of Russia which remains a staunch backer of the regime in Damascus, and has insisted that Assad stay in place through any future transition to democracy. As senior officials arrived in Munich for a security conference this week, it was unclear on Friday night whether the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, would join the US vice-president, Joseph Biden, and the UN special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, in meeting the opposition National Coalition leader, Moaz al-Khatib.

Despite Syrian opposition claims that Lavrov would take part in a four-way meeting, one of his deputies, Gennady Gatilov, said there were no plans for such a meeting.

Khatib arrived in Munich having survived a challenge to his leadership from Islamists inside the coalition, who objected to his offer, first made on his personal Facebook page, to talk to the regime while Assad remained in power. The objection had been that Assad had to leave office before talks could begin but Khatib defended himself against criticism at an emergency coalition meeting in Cairo on Thursday, saying that the talks would remain conditional on the release of thousands of political prisoners.

The Munich talks will take place as the conflict showed its potential for escalating into a regional conflagration. Israeli warplanes flew over Lebanon again on Friday, two days after air strikes inside Syrian territory, according to a UN official.

Khatib's statement was welcomed by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who called for "a credible process that would lead to a real change, a clear break from the past". A UN source added that the opposition would now have to "walk the walk" in demonstrating its readiness to talk.

However, the opposition and its western supporters won a significant victory in their stand-off with Moscow when Brahimi backed their position that Assad could not participate in any transitional government that might result from peace talks. At a meeting in Geneva last year, western governments and Russia came to an agreement on transition that fudged that critical issue. It said a transitional government had to be chosen "by mutual consent".

In a briefing to the security council, Brahimi said: "The Geneva communiqu� was elegant and creative in that it did not speak of President Bashar Al-Assad and his role in the transition and beyond. I think, however, it is largely understood that 'governing body with full executive powers' clearly meant that the president would have no role in the transition."

A transcript of the briefing was obtained by the UN Report website, and was confirmed as accurate by UN sources. Arguing that in Syria "things are bad and getting worse, the country is breaking up before everyone's eyes", Brahimi put forward a step-by-step peace plan, starting with talks "between a strong, fully representative team on behalf of the opposition and a strong civilian-military delegation representing the government".

He added: "These negotiations should start outside of Syria and take place according to an agreed timetable to enable the process to move – as fast as possible – towards the democratic process which would include the election, constitutional reform and referendum." He pointed out that it would not be hard to transform the current presidential system to a parliamentary system of government.

On Friday, western officials stuck to their analysis that the target of the Israeli air strikes was a convoy of trucks carrying anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Syrian government described the target as a military research centre.

Andrea Tenenti, a spokesman for the UN forces in Lebanon, Unifil, confirmed that there had been continued violations of Lebanese airspace by Israeli forces. "On Tuesday [ahead of the air strike] there were a high number of violations, but since then it has not been unusual," he told the Guardian.

Under UN security council resolution 1701, passed after the 2006 Israel-Lebanese war, Israeli planes are forbidden from flying over Lebanon.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:44 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
Het is "gewoon" een militair vliegtuig onderweg naar oorlogsgebied

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:47 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

[..]

lijkt mij

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:49 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Het is geen militair vliegtuig, maar volgens mij is het volgens het oorlogsrecht gewoon toegestaan om een passagiersvliegtuig neer te schieten wanneer het voor militaire doeleinden wordt ingezet.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:50 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Lekker wetenschappelijk weer

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:51 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Je weet niet wat oorlogsrecht is?

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:49 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Het is geen militair vliegtuig, maar volgens mij is het volgens het oorlogsrecht gewoon toegestaan om een passagiersvliegtuig neer te schieten wanneer het voor militaire doeleinden wordt ingezet.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:53 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Eem vliegtuig hoeft niet groen geschilderd te zijn om militair te zijn. De juiste identificatiekenmerken zijn voldoende.

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:55 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

[..]

En waar kun jij deze kenmerken zo goed zien op dit filmpje?

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:56 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Ik ga af op het gequote artikel.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:57 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

[..]

Dat artikel geeft aan dat het vliegtuig neergeschoten is.
Als je dat ook gelooft zonder het te zien.....

quote:

The markings on the plane do appear to be consistent with an Iran Air Force Boeing 747-131(SF)

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:59 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]



[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 22:01 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Oorlogsrecht hoort bij mijn opleiding inderdaad, alleen nog niet gehad. En ik meende te hebben gehoord dat een civiel doel een legitiem doel wordt wanneer het voor militaire doeleinden wordt gebruikt. Daarom zeg ik volgensmij. Dus niet je gebrek aan begrijpend lezen op mij afschuiven.

[..]

Waarom zou ik?

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 23:12 schreef Peunage het volgende:
De titel van de video in het arabisch zegt dat het om een transportvliegtuig gaat voor goederen. Bedoeld voor de handel.

quote:

Ik weet niet hoeveel mensen hier wel eens geschoten hebben met een wapen, maar met een kalashnikov is het onmogelijk om een Boeing neer te halen.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 23:19 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Wapenhandel?

quote:

Dan is er toch niets aan de hand?

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 22:04 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Bewijs maar dat ik ongelijk heb.

Edit kijk eens aan, regel 3 van het oorlogsrecht:

[..]

Mocht dit vliegtuig inderdaad wapens vervoeren, dan stonden de rebellen volledig in hun recht.

quote:

Op donderdag 31 januari 2013 00:45 schreef Aloulou het volgende:

[..]

Tenenkrommend hoe die pro-Assad Syriers zo graag praten over de rebellen op dit moment en dat ze baarden hebben en graag uit Noord-Afrika komen met wapens gefinancieerd door golfstaten.....maar muisstil blijven over de eerste maanden van de protesten. Toen er nog geen eens extremisten waren en alleen maar demonstraties en Assad vanaf dag 1 (letterlijk ja) dat er massale demonstraties waren mensen zonder genade dood begon te schieten..... als je daar stil over blijft en geen verbanden kan leggen tussen de twee situaties (in chronologische volgorde aub) dan snap je er echt totaal niets van.

En ook tenenkrommend hoe dan wordt gezegd als sussertje "we moeten kiezen tussen twee kwaden en dan toch liever Assad"....dat "twee kwaden" is een soort knievalletje omdat je moeilijk kan zeggen dat Assad helemaal niet zo kwaad is na alles. Maar het feit dat men zo muisstil blijft over de eerste maanden van de demonstraties en Assad's grote misdaden laat wel zien hoe "kwaad" men hem nou eigenlijk echt acht...niet dus. Iemand met echte principes zegt gewoon Assad verdient de kogel vanaf dag 1 dat hij zonder enige genade weerloze mensen liet afknallen....maar de huidige jihadisten verdienen mogen er van mij een extra krijgen. Het is jammer dat deze Syriers zich zo laten kennen en daarmee precies de kern van het conflict aangeven: geen moreel kompas om ook eerlijk naar je "eigen kant" te kijken en openlijk misdaden daarvan te veroordelen. Zo wordt het wel erg een "ik-ben-van-club-A-en-veroordeel-die-dus-niet" verhaal...

De laatste opmerking van Vranckx was het meest treffend na het hele programma...uiteindelijk heeft ingrijpen in Joegoslavie ook de toestand tot een einde gebracht...anders was men nu nog bezig. Soms heb je door alle haat die is gezaaid en meer haat blijft aanwakkeren een buitenstaander nodig die met een grote klap en macht alle partijen tot stilstand brengt.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:49 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Het is geen militair vliegtuig, maar volgens mij is het volgens het oorlogsrecht gewoon toegestaan om een passagiersvliegtuig neer te schieten wanneer het voor militaire doeleinden wordt ingezet.

quote:

Op zaterdag 2 februari 2013 01:34 schreef Slayage het volgende:
dat de rebellen zo dichtbij het vliegveld van damascus zaten wist ik niet

quote:

Joe Biden: 'Assad moet opstappen'

quote:

'Hij is niet langer in een positie om het Syrische volk te leiden. Hij moet gaan', zei Biden zaterdag op een veiligheidsconferentie over Syri� in M�nchen.

quote:

Val Assad volgens Isra�l ophanden
AMSTERDAM - De val van de Syrische president Bashar al-Assad is nabij. Dat heeft de Isra�lische minister van defensie Ehud Barak zondag gezegd.
Hij voegde eraan toe dat het een enorme klap zal zijn voor Iran, Isra�ls aartsvijand.

quote:

Het is een onwerkelijk gevoel om een land te betreden via een grenspost met een enorme poster van �calan daarvoor. Maar sinds 12 november kan het. En de grenswachters tussen Syri� en Irak later er geen misverstand over bestaan: "Wij houden van �calan. Wij willen onze rechten en nemen met niets minder genoegen." Hoewel ze geen strijders van de PKK zeggen te zijn, maar van de Populair Protection Units (YPG), is het onmogelijk om aan de overeenkomsten voorbij te gaan. Overal in de regio hangen posters van martelaren die stierven in de strijd voor de PKK, de beeltenis van �calan hangt bij vrijwel ieder checkpoint die de Koerden hebben opgeworpen en het politieke systeem wat de afgelopen maanden een gezicht kreeg is openlijk gebaseerd op de idee�n van de Turkse ideoloog.

quote:

Momenteel zijn er twee partijen in de Koerdische regio in Syri� die de broze macht delen: De Democratische Unie Partij (PYD) en de Koerdische Nationale Raad (KNC). Hoewel ze in het verleden met elkaar in conflict kwamen, zijn ze sinds zes maanden verbonden in de Hoge Raad. Deze kwam tot stand onder invloed van de Iraakse Koerdische regionale regering (KRG) in Erbil. De KNC werd in oktober 2011 opgericht onder leiding van de huidige president van Iraaks Koerdistan Massoud Barzani. De partij is een combinatie van vijftien partijen en streven een regio na zoals hun Iraaks Koerdische buren dat ook hebben, met vergaande autonomie en democratie. De verschillende partijen die de KNC momenteel bevolken zijn een stuk minder radicaal dan de PYD. Zij zijn sterk ideologisch geladen en streven een samenleving na gebaseerd op de idee�n van PKK leider Abdullah �calan. Ze hebben ook een militaire tak: de Populair Protection Units (YPG). De PYD werd in 2003 opgericht en werkte tot 2010 ondergronds. Hun militaire tak beheerst momenteel de regio, maar staat momenteel formeel onder het bevel van de Hoge Raad. Bij checkpoints is echter overwegend de vlag van de PYD te zien en ze zouden zich geregeld dreigend opstellen tegen KNC leden. De PYD zegt zeventig procent van de steun van de ruim twee miljoen Koerden in de regio te hebben, andere bronnen speken van dertig procent. Veel strijders vochten voordat ze zich aansloten bij de YPG voor de PKK, de Koerdische Arbeiderspartij die in Turkije een gewapende strijd voeren voor Koerdische autonomie en op de terrorismelijsten van zowel de VS als de EU staan. De YPG wordt ook wel beschouwd als de Syrische tak van de PKK.

quote:

Syria rebels fight army inside Damascus military base - in pictures

Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic captured scenes of heavy fighting between Syrian rebels and regime troops inside an army base in the Arabeen neighbourhood of Damascus

quote:

Op zondag 3 februari 2013 15:39 schreef zuiderbuur het volgende:
Een vrij uitgebreid artikel over de toestand van de Koerden in het noordoosten van Syri�.
http://www.mo.be/in-beeld/ocalanistan
Een korte selectie:

quote:

De Turken zien in het gegeven dat Assad de teugels laat vieren voor de Koerden als een bewuste provocatie om de Turken te straffen voor hun steun aan het Vrije Syrische Leger.

quote:

Ahmadinejad: Syri� niet uit crisis door militaire actie

quote:

'Oorlog is niet de oplossing. Er moet geen sectarische oorlog komen in Syri�', aldus Ahmadinejad tegen de Arabische televisiezender al-Mayadeen.

Volgens Ahmadinejad moet het Syrische volk zelf beslissen wie blijft of weggaat. 'Hoe kunnen we ons daarin mengen?'

quote:

http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/21277642/__AIVD__fors_meer_jihadgangers__.html

AIVD: jihadgangers naar Syri� enorm gestegen

Het aantal jihadgangers vanuit Nederland naar Syri� in de laatste maanden overtreft het aantal over het hele jaar 2011.” Dat zegt heeft het hoofd inlichtingendienst AIVD, Rob Bertholee, donderdagavond in Nieuwsuur.

De AIVD waarschuwt al jaren voor de gevaren van strijders uit Nederland, die ervaring opdoen in conflicthaarden overal ter wereld. Vorig jaar, en dan met name in de laatste maanden van 2012, ziet de geheime dienst ineens een grote toename van hen naar Syri�.
Eind november werden drie mannen in Rotterdam gearresteerd, die volgens justitie ook van plan waren om naar Syri� te gaan om te vechten. Volgens Bertholee speelt internet een grote rol in de huidige ontwikkelingen. „Via internetpropaganda wordt het vechten in Syri� enorm geromantiseerd. Ik denk dat heel veel van de strijders vrij snel tot de ontdekking komen dat het minder romantisch is dan voorgesteld. Tegelijkertijd komen ze tot de ontdekking dat er geen weg terug meer is, want die kans krijgen ze niet.”
Bertholee zegt dat er op dit moment tientallen Nederlandse moslims meevechten met radicale moslimgroepen in Syri�. Ze sluiten zich volgens hem onder meer aan bij de terroristische organisatie Jabath al-Nusra.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 21:34 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

[..]

Heerlijk die vrijheidsstrijders....

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 21:39 schreef Kirov het volgende:

[..]

Hopelijk sterven ze allemaal, vieze terroristen.

quote:

From the AFP news agency:

The Syrian army launched an "all-out offensive" on Damascus province on Wednesday, a security official said, as a watchdog reported the fiercest bombardments and fighting in the region for months.

"The province was bombed very badly, in attacks that have not been seen in months. There was also very heavy fighting," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A Syrian security official in Damascus who declined to be named said that "the army has launched a coordinated all-out offensive on all of the areas surrounding the capital."

"All entries to Damascus have been sealed," he added.

Local residents said that "unusually intense bombing" was heard throughout the capital all day on Wednesday. The offensive came as fierce clashes erupted between rebels and soldiers in the northeast and southwest of Damascus, as well as in the southern district of Qadam and eastern Jobar and Qaboon districts in the capital. These areas of Damascus are among the strongest bastions of the rebellion against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 21:58 schreef mr_jack het volgende:
De 1e video heb ik al gevonden :

معركة دمشق وريف دمشق - ساعة الصفر

WTF, daar liggen ze gewoon opgestapeld in huis.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 22:06 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Natuurlijk. Ze moeten ze wel opstapelen, anders kan je niet zo'n mooi propagandafilmpje maken.

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 22:12 schreef mr_jack het volgende:


Hahaha

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 22:25 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 22:48 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

[..]

Aan je hysterische posts te zien moet het slecht gaan met Bashar.

quote:

Op woensdag 6 februari 2013 21:24 schreef Disorder het volgende:
Holy shit: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9aa_1360162295

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 23:06 schreef rakotto het volgende:

[..]

Dat meisje is Jubhat el Nusra. En de rest van de mensen daar ook. Of niet Mr Jack? Of ben je druk bezig met je Usher?

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 23:12 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

[..]

Dat meisje.... Wou je zeggen dat die een verstandige keus gemaakt heeft? Of zou die ge�ndoctrineerd zijn

Verder, een shell inslag bij zo'n demo, waar ook net gefilmd wordt, het zal wel weer....

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 23:15 schreef rakotto het volgende:

[..]

Het zal wel weer indeed. Is niet de eerste keer dat de moslim Bashar en zijn cronies dat doen.

Freedom Syrian Army *FSA* kill's and overkills's citizen mercilessly! Warning disturbing gore!

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 23:21 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

[..]

De tegenhanger moslims van de FSA zijn lieverdjes.....

Freedom Syrian Army *FSA* kill's and overkills's citizen mercilessly! Warning disturbing gore!

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 00:23 schreef rakotto het volgende:

[..]

Dat is heel duidelijk FSA, ja. Een filmpje waar lui militaire kleding aanhebben, GEEN geluid is en disrespect voor de doden. Duidelijk extreme moslims dit.

US & Nato Backed Terrorist FSA Rebels Execute Unarmed Civilian (War Crimes in Syria) (18)

quote:

Op donderdag 7 februari 2013 22:49 schreef Peunage het volgende:
Almayadeen is 1 van de betere nieuwssites btw. Opgericht door Ghassan Bin Jiddo, samen met andere mensen die vertrokken bij Aljazeerah(door partijdigheid van Aljazeerah).

Hij is zelf een Soenniet, maar is getrouwd met een Sjiitische vrouw. Hun nieuwsberichten zijn professioneel en objectief geschreven.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 02:35 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

[..]

Nu met geluid voor ongelovige thomas...

US & Nato Backed Terrorist FSA Rebels Execute Unarmed Civilian (War Crimes in Syria) (18)

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 09:32 schreef Aloulou het volgende:

[..]

Ben Jedou (Tunesisch-Libanees) is ook sjiiet, zijn Libanese moeder is sjitisch en hijzelf een bewonderaar van Hizbullah. Je kan dan alsnog best objectief maar mijn ervaring leert dat bewonderaars van Hizbullah in dit Syrische conflict veelal net zo eenzijdig zijn als anderen. Al vanaf het begin ervan is het een grote conspiracy en extremistish tuig de oppositie...hoe eenzijdiger wil je hebben. Alleen stemmen zij af op hun zenders: Manar TV, Souria, Al Mayadeen en Al-Alaam. En anderen stemmen af op Al-Arabiyya, Al Jazeera en nog wat zenders.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 12:44 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Al-Mayadeen? Serieus? Is dat dezelfde channel die betrapt werd op het doorspelen van militaire informatie naar het Syrische leger? Een paar voorbeelden:

[..]

[..]

[..]

Meer info hier: http://liveblog.egyptindependent.com/node/10244

Wie kijkt deze sektarische rotzooi nou?

quote:

Before joining Al Jazeera al-Horani was an activist in the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad [Al Jazeera]

Syria - Moment of Sniper Killing Al Jazeera journalist Mohammed al-Horani in Daraa

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 14:54 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Er lijkt nu echt iets in het conflict te veranderen. Het lijk erop dat de rebellen in Zuid-Syri� sinds mid-januari dit jaar worden bevoorraad met wapens uit voormalig Joegoslavi�. Voorheen haalden de rebellen hun wapens vooral van veroverde wapens van het Syrische leger van Assad, maar zij hebben deze wapens helemaal niet, dus ze moeten uit het buitenland komen. Een paar weken later doken de wapens ook op in het noorden van Syri� en worden verspreidt naar de provincies in Hama en Damascus. En toevallig zijn de rebellen nu een nieuw en succesvol offensief begonnen in Damascus. Nou winnen de rebellen al sinds eind december terrein in Aleppo, Daraa(z-Syri�), Oost Syri� en Damascus. Dus is er een verband? Waarschijnlijk wel. Maar er zijn meer dingen die opvallen, zoals in de gelinkte artikelen ook wordt beschreven. Het zijn alleen maar de gematigde en seculiere rebellen van de FSA die worden bewapend. Radicalere milities van de FSA, zoals Ahrar al-Sham lijken geen wapens te krijgen en Jabhat al-Nusra ook niet. Nu is dus de grote vraag: Wie bewapent ze? Niemand weet het. Ik heb verschillende idee�n, maar niets weet ik zeker. In ieder geval vind ik dit een fantastische ontwikkeling

Syria - Jundullah Brigades try to take SAA post but something goes really wrong

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 14:54 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Er lijkt nu echt iets in het conflict te veranderen. Het lijk erop dat de rebellen in Zuid-Syri� sinds mid-januari dit jaar worden bevoorraad met wapens uit voormalig Joegoslavi�. Voorheen haalden de rebellen hun wapens vooral van veroverde wapens van het Syrische leger van Assad, maar zij hebben deze wapens helemaal niet, dus ze moeten uit het buitenland komen. Een paar weken later doken de wapens ook op in het noorden van Syri� en worden verspreidt naar de provincies in Hama en Damascus. En toevallig zijn de rebellen nu een nieuw en succesvol offensief begonnen in Damascus. Nou winnen de rebellen al sinds eind december terrein in Aleppo, Daraa(z-Syri�), Oost Syri� en Damascus. Dus is er een verband? Waarschijnlijk wel. Maar er zijn meer dingen die opvallen, zoals in de gelinkte artikelen ook wordt beschreven. Het zijn alleen maar de gematigde en seculiere rebellen van de FSA die worden bewapend. Radicalere milities van de FSA, zoals Ahrar al-Sham lijken geen wapens te krijgen en Jabhat al-Nusra ook niet. Nu is dus de grote vraag: Wie bewapent ze? Niemand weet het. Ik heb verschillende idee�n, maar niets weet ik zeker. In ieder geval vind ik dit een fantastische ontwikkeling

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 15:43 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Lees mijn bronnen eerst voordat je reageert. Ik post ze niet voor niets. Je kraamt voor een groot deel onzin uit.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 14:54 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Er lijkt nu echt iets in het conflict te veranderen. Het lijk erop dat de rebellen in Zuid-Syri� sinds mid-januari dit jaar worden bevoorraad met wapens uit voormalig Joegoslavi�. Voorheen haalden de rebellen hun wapens vooral van veroverde wapens van het Syrische leger van Assad, maar zij hebben deze wapens helemaal niet, dus ze moeten uit het buitenland komen. Een paar weken later doken de wapens ook op in het noorden van Syri� en worden verspreidt naar de provincies in Hama en Damascus. En toevallig zijn de rebellen nu een nieuw en succesvol offensief begonnen in Damascus. Nou winnen de rebellen al sinds eind december terrein in Aleppo, Daraa(z-Syri�), Oost Syri� en Damascus. Dus is er een verband? Waarschijnlijk wel. Maar er zijn meer dingen die opvallen, zoals in de gelinkte artikelen ook wordt beschreven. Het zijn alleen maar de gematigde en seculiere rebellen van de FSA die worden bewapend. Radicalere milities van de FSA, zoals Ahrar al-Sham lijken geen wapens te krijgen en Jabhat al-Nusra ook niet. Nu is dus de grote vraag: Wie bewapent ze? Niemand weet het. Ik heb verschillende idee�n, maar niets weet ik zeker. In ieder geval vind ik dit een fantastische ontwikkeling

quote:

Turkey has set up a secret base with allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar to direct vital military and communications aid to Syria's rebels from a city near the border, Gulf sources have told Reuters.

News of the clandestine Middle East-run "nerve centre" working to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad underlines the extent to which Western powers - who played a key role in unseating Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - have avoided military involvement so far in Syria.

"It's the Turks who are militarily controlling it. Turkey is the main co-ordinator/facilitator. Think of a triangle, with Turkey at the top and Saudi Arabia and Qatar at the bottom," said a Doha-based source.

"The Americans are very hands-off on this. U.S. intel(ligence) are working through middlemen. Middlemen are controlling access to weapons and routes."

The centre in Adana, a city in southern Turkey about 100 km (60 miles) from the Syrian border, was set up after Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud visited Turkey and requested it, a source in the Gulf said. The Turks liked the idea of having the base in Adana so that they could supervise its operations, he added.

A Saudi foreign ministry official was not immediately available to comment on the operation.

Adana is home to Incirlik, a large Turkish/U.S. air force base which Washington has used in the past for reconnaissance and military logistics operations. It was not clear from the sources whether the anti-Syrian "nerve centre" was located inside Incirlik base or in the city of Adana.

Qatar, the tiny gas-rich Gulf state which played a leading part in supplying weapons to Libyan rebels, has a key role in directing operations at the Adana base, the sources said. Qatari military intelligence and state security officials are involved.

"Three governments are supplying weapons: Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia," said a Doha-based source.

Ankara has officially denied supplying weapons.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 15:55 schreef Djibril het volgende:

[..]

Waarom reageer je zo? Hebben we een gevoelige snaar geraakt? Ben je niet zeker van jezelf en ga je maar op de man spelen?

Je bronnen zeggen al 2 jaar lang dat Assad gaat vallen, dus ja die zijn niet meer zo betrouwbaar. Plus Peunage en ik geven je alleen uitleg over watvoor effect het heeft dat ze wapens importeren uit de Balkan.
Waarom zou ik je bronnen doorlezen als je onzin post

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 16:46 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Qatar en SA geloof ik wel, maar Turkije? Reuters vind ik niet bepaald betrouwbaar, vooral een 'Doha-based source?" Effect daarvan heb ik ook nooit gezien.

quote:

Op vrijdag 8 februari 2013 16:46 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Qatar en SA geloof ik wel, maar Turkije?

quote:

Op zaterdag 9 februari 2013 13:52 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Nee, Reuters is verschillende malen betrapt op leugens en fotoshoppen.

Je bron van de BBC ondersteunt je punt niet, heb je het artikel zelf wel gelezen? Ze zeggen alleen dat er blijkbaar fracties van de FSA worden getraind. Nergens staat dat er wapens of geld worden gegeven. Bovendien lijken die genoemde FSA me geen extremisten zoals jij claimt.

Je tweede bron maakt claims die het absoluut niet hard kan maken. Een Russische VN-ambassadeur en DEBKAfile vind ik alles behalve betrouwbaar. En als Amerika de oppositie al sinds december 2011 bewapend, waarom hebben we daar niks van gezien. Enge organisatie ook. Complottheorie�n, communisten etc. Ik ben allergisch voor de hypocrisie van neo-anti-imperialisten.

Waar is het bewijs van je derde bron dat dit in Turkije is.

Je vierde bron is PressTV

Ik vind dat je veel te snel conclusies trekt, je hebt alleen maar dubieuze bronnen, en ik ben dus alles behalve overtuigd.

quote:

Op zaterdag 9 februari 2013 14:37 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Nope. Het lijkt me toch vrij logisch dat ik meer verwacht dan een-van-horen-zeggen. Brown Moses en EA hadden in een week of 3 genoeg bewijs bij elkaar dat bepaalde FSA groepen worden bewapend. Waarom kunnen jouw bronnen dat niet sinds december 2011?

[..]

Niet wanneer dat herhaaldelijk plaatsvind en/of een bron duidelijk belang hebben bij liegen en het verdraaien van de waarheid. Zoals Al-Mayadeen, PressTV, RT, Fox en zo kan ik nog wel even doorgaan. Het zo toch eens handig zijn als je kritischer naar media gaat kijken.

[..]

Je moet je eigen bronnen gaan lezen, bbc zegt niet hetzelfde als Reuters.

[..]

Ik vind trainen of financieren/bewapenen inderdaad een gigantisch verschil.

[..]

En ik las het afgelopen halfjaar vooral de rebellen ontkennen dat ze wapens krijgen.

ShamestreamMedia Mass BS Deception on Libya BBC shows Green Square of India Aug 24, 2011

quote:

Op zaterdag 9 februari 2013 16:31 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Nope.

RT Lizzy Phelan Eyewitnesses dismiss rebel advances on Tripoli as misinformation 21 08 2011

Dit is echt een pareltje of die fotosoep van die zogenaamde 1 miljoen mensen op dat plein, waarvan jij ook dacht dat dat echt was

Tripoli (1 July 2011).flv

quote:

Op zaterdag 9 februari 2013 20:03 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Dat heb ik je al eens uitgelegd, ga ik niet nog eens doen.
Maar je denkt het dus nog steeds?? Jezus wat ben jij dom...

quote:

Homs' displaced residents begin to return after year of sustained bombing

Syrian city is guarded about relative calm as governor calls for unity against al-Qaida and intense fighting continues elsewhere

A year after this city captured the world's attention as the victim of the worst shelling that Syria's civil war had yet seen, Homs has become a – relatively – safe haven. Hundreds of families who fled to other Syrian cities in fear last February have loaded their belongings and returned. Civilians from Aleppo and Deir el-Zour – where fighting is still intense – are moving to Homs because they have heard it is more livable.

"It's the only case I know of in Syria where people are returning after a long period of displacement. Homs may be quieter than Damascus", Khaled Erksoussi, the head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent's emergency response team told me in the capital before I set off on the 100-mile drive north. He was right. The boom of heavy shelling, promptly followed by the screeching of birds in panic, repeatedly fills the Damascene sky. It was in full and murderous throat again when I returned. Yet for 24 hours in Homs I heard only a few explosions, apparently directed towards targets beyond the ring road. In the city centre the street markets are thronged with shoppers. Groups of students wander in and out of the university, or stand around chatting. Checkpoints at several cross-roads create minor traffic jams but the soldiers seem relaxed and perfunctory as they check ID cards and car-boots, no doubt happy to be assigned to minor tasks rather than be sent to risky, remote areas. Homs even boasts a number of armed women in uniform who have volunteered for a newly created home guard.

Homs is Syria's third largest city and local officials estimate about 150,000 of its 2,300,000 people are thought to have left and not returned. In human terms the figure is huge but it is a smaller exodus in proportional terms than Damascus or Aleppo have suffered.

The city's strategic position in the centre of Syria's populated belt meant the government could not allow it to fall, thereby cutting the country in half. The minority Alawites, from whom the ruling Assad family comes, have long considered it their capital. Hence the ferocious army counter-attack when early last year rebels captured the Baba Amr district and were on the verge of seizing several other parts of the city.

Now, the Syrian army is back in control of much of the city and government minders took me in without armed escort, though there were four of them, including one man who introduced himself as a local journalist and took a note of all my conversations.

Almost every shop along Musab bin Zubeir street, one of the main thoroughfares, is shuttered and the facades of the upper floors are riddled with holes from shells and mortar-fire, but life is gradually returning. Children ride bicycles on largely empty streets and a few old men in red and white chequered head-dress sit on chairs by their front-doors.

"When people see us living here, they get courage and start returning", said Sahar Rahmoun, a woman who was walking home with her small daughter past a ruined mosque. She had escaped to her sister's house elsewhere in Homs during the height of last year's shelling, she explained.

When I turned into a busier side-street with more people in view the minders were visibly alarmed but they muttered "follow him" in Arabic rather than ordering me to turn back. The first two families I accosted at random turned out not to be original Baba Amr residents.

Qassem al-Khatib and two of his children were loading bags and suitcases into the back of a pick-up truck. He had been in Baba Amr for six months after escaping from a village north of Homs "because armed groups had come in there", he said. The family was moving from the first apartment they had been occupying in Baba Amr to one they hoped would be better a few streets away. "They say there's electricity and water there," al-Khatib said. "We were guests here and we'll be guests there", he said with a smile. It sounded better than admitting they were squatters.

At a corner shop Fadi al-Jouri said the three-storey building had survived miraculously even though the area had come under regular fire from army and rebel positions at opposite ends of the street. Bullet holes and damage from mortars scarred at least half the houses. At the time he was away doing army service but his family hid inside their home for several days.

In spite of the army's advance into other districts, the narrow streets of Homs' Old City remain in rebel hands. They are surrounded by government positions and are seen to have little strategic value. This may be one reason so far they have not come under severe attack.

Another is that Ahmad Munir Mohammad, a lawyer appointed as the provincial governor last August, favours a softer touch. Independent aid agency officials say hardliners in the government and army have criticised his approach; the government is usually reluctant to let supplies into besieged rebel areas. But on 3 November six staff from the International committee of the Red Cross and 28 volunteers from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were allowed to drive into the districts of Khalidia and Hamidia in the old city with food, baby milk and hygiene items, as well as medical supplies for close to a hundred wounded people.

In an interview the governor said he supports negotiations with the rebels for ceasefires under certain conditions. Unlike most officials, he referred to them not as "terrorists" but with the neutral term "armed groups" or "armed people". His said his policy was to separate the Syrians in the opposition from foreign fighters, jihadis, and the Islamic fundamentalists known as Salafis or Takfiris who reject non-Sunnis as heretics. "I keep telling the militias that all the people of Homs are my sons. We want to follow parallel tracks: military action against the gangs who declare some people to be infidels and social action for the others, by making contact and negotiating", he said. "The problem is not guns as such. The issue is to get rid of guns from people's minds. We ask people to return to civilian life. A number of them have dropped their weapons and joined us in fighting the Salafis and Takfiris".

The governor claimed up to seven thousand fighters were keeping about a thousand civilians hostage in the Old City. But a number of leaders in Khalidia had contacted the government and agreed to change sides to free the area from "al -Qaida," he said.

There was no way to verify the claims but one alleged defector was produced for me. Fares Ghammam said he was with a rebel group in Khalidia until last August. "We had started with peaceful demonstrations and then moved to armed action in self-defence as kind of border-guards to stop the army coming into the district. But then various armed groups appeared, and started fighting for control. There is no single commander and the various groups disagree with each other. Some commanders stole the money that was pumped in to support our revolution, and escaped to Turkey and Germany", he said.

He decided he wanted to leave Khalidia but did not know how. "I was afraid of both sides," he said.

The governor had appointed a reconciliation committee and published its number. Fares Ghammam rang and escaped from Khalidia one night after the army had been alerted not to shoot him. But his troubles were far from over. "The armed groups called me a traitor and put my name and face on the internet.

"As a result I was kidnapped at an armed group's checkpoint at Nabek outside Homs in November. But the reconciliation committee paid a ransom to get me out," he said. He, his wife and four children now live in secret accommodation. He had sent his family out of Khalidia before the government siege began. Until August the army regularly shelled Khalidia. Since the new governor came in, this had almost stopped, he said.

While the rest of his testimony could only be taken on trust, his point that Homs was enjoying a virtual ceasefire was confirmed by many other people I spoke to in the city. Whether this city, which was once a byword for wanton destruction, could one day be a model for the rest of Syria remains to be seen.

quote:

An Egyptian Nasserist Party (ENP) delegation has stirred controversy by visiting Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

“Our visit to Syria in support of Bashar Al-Assad came out of our genuine intention to back the resistance against American and Zionist plans in the region,” Farouq El-Eshri, co-founder of the ENP told Al-Ahram Arabic website.

The delegation had no intention of meeting with the Syrian opposition at the moment, he added.

Around 60,000 people have been killed during an ongoing two-year uprising against the Al-Assad government.

The meeting with Al-Assad on Tuesday did not find any solutions to the Syrian crisis, El-Eshri added, because no one can end it now.

“If Bashar falls, we are left with three scenarios: 1. the fall of ‘Arab Nationalist’ Syria, 2. Syria will fall under the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, 3. It will be a civil war.”

Syria is the last defence line for Pan-Arabism, El-Eshri added.

Bashar Al-Assad is also the leader of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party in Syria.

quote:

Syria's ex-spokesperson breaks silence

quote:

Jihad Makdissi, the former Syrian foreign ministry spokesman, has said he has a neutral stance on the 23-month conflict, as he broke his silence for the first time since leaving the country in December.

"I left Syria because the polarisation in the country has reached a deadly and destructive stage... I left a battlefield, not a normal country, and I apologise to those who trusted my credibility and for leaving without prior notice," he said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

Makdissi, once one of the most recognisable faces of President Bashar al-Assad's embattled regime who disappeared from public view in December, said he was now neither with the government in Damascus nor the opposition, which has been fighting to overthrow the Assad regime for nearly two years.

"I joined no one; I am independent," Makdissi said, adding that he did not possess any state secrets and was not part of the decision-making process in the regime.

"The goals of the popular movement are frankly legitimate - in principle and in essence - and have won the battle for the hearts, because all parts of society always stand with the weak and with the legitimate demands of the people.

"But they have not won the battle for the minds, for many reasons that are common knowledge."

Makdissi criticised his pro-regime critics who "found the time to insult me and immediately accuse me of treason, without respect for the lives of the more than 65,000 Syrian martyrs".

"I wish I could have stayed on Syrian land, but there is no longer room for moderation in this chaos," Makdissi said of the war that began as a popular uprising and steadily militarised under brutal state repression.

quote:

Op woensdag 13 februari 2013 23:07 schreef sonnyspek het volgende:
http://m.youtube.com/#/wa(...)%3DA5G_tA7BkZI&gl=GB
Jongens, horen jullie ook op 2:11 'is ie dood?' en op 2:19 'wat zeg je?'?
Dit kan wek het bewijs zijn dat er daar ook Nederlanders rondlopen.

quote:

Op donderdag 14 februari 2013 18:11 schreef Djibril het volgende:

Bab al-Hawa, Idlib

quote:

Elite Iranian general assassinated near Syria-Lebanon border

Syrian rebels claim responsibility for killing of General Hassan Shateri, a senior figure in the Revolutionary Guards

A senior commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards has been killed while travelling from Syria to Lebanon, according to Iranian authorities.

A man identified as General Hassan Shateri was reportedly assassinated by what Iranian officials described as "the agents and supporters of the Zionist regime" while travelling from Damascus to Beirut.

It was not immediately clear in which of the two countries Shateri was killed but a Syrian rebel commander said an Iranian official was killed in an attack carried out by Syrian rebels in Zabadani in southwestern Syria, close to the Lebanese border.

"General Hassan Shateri was martyred by the agents and supporters of the Zionist regime on his way to Beirut from Damascus," the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted the Revolutionary Guards' spokesman, Ramezan Sharif, as saying on Thursday.

Iran's state English-language television, Press TV, reported that Shateri was killed on Tuesday and described him as the man who "led the Iranian-financed reconstruction projects in the south of Lebanon". By pointing the finger at "Israeli agents", Sharif was probably referring to Syrian rebels whom Iranian officials portray as terrorist armed groups backed by Tel Aviv.

Iran is a staunch supporter of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, providing both with military and financial support. Syria gives Iran physical access to Lebanon and Hezbollah, which is strategically important for Tehran's leaders because of the group's geographical position in respect to Israel. Iran does not recognise Israel as a country and usually refers to it as "the Zionist regime".

After the 2006 war between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, Iran's elite forces bolstered their presence in southern Lebanon, saying they were willing to revamp the region's war-stricken infrastructure. This became a contentious issue for Tel Aviv but boosted the popularity of Iran among Hezbollah supporters.

Mehr said Shateri was a veteran of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war who in recent years "had devoted his time to the reconstruction of damaged areas after the 33-day Israeli war on Lebanon".

Iran's embassy in Lebanon, meanwhile, identified the dead man as Hessam Khoshnevis, leading to confusion that there might be a second death. But the circumstances given about Khoshnevis's death and his job title were similar to those of Shateri.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that Shateri was killed when a rebel group ambushed his vehicle while he was returning to Lebanon from Syria.

On Thursday Iran held a funeral ceremony for Shateri in Tehran that was attended by the foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, and the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari. Ghasem Suleimani, the man who heads the external arm of the Revolutionary Guards, known as the Quds force, members of which usually shun public ceremonies, also attended the funeral.

In May 2012, a senior Quds force commander conceded for the first time that Iranian forces were operating in Syria in support of the Assad regime.

"If the Islamic republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale," Ismail Gha'ani, the deputy head of the Quds force, said at the time.

In February 2012, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, went public to say that the Icountry has provided assistance to Hezbollah and Palestinian group Hamas.

"We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006, and in the 22-day war [in Gaza Strip]" he said at the time.

quote:

Op donderdag 14 februari 2013 19:57 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Op donderdag 14 februari 2013 18:28 schreef UpsideDown het volgende:

[..]

Klinkt als Vlamingen. Maar het is bekend dat jihadi's uit alle windstreken daar heen gaan om te vechten. Hopelijk blijven ze daar ook

quote:

Op donderdag 14 februari 2013 20:22 schreef Slayage het volgende:


ik hoop dat turken hun hoofd koel houden en iig fysiek afzijdig blijven in het conflict itt de iraniers

quote:

How to Start a Battalion (in Five Easy Lessons)
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports from Syria

In the cramped living room of a run-down flat near the Aleppo frontline, two Syrian rebels sat opposite each other. The one on the left was stout, broad-shouldered, with a neat beard that looked as though it had been outlined in sharp pencil around his throat and cheeks. His shirt and trousers were immaculately pressed and he wore brand-new military webbing – the expensive Turkish kind, not the Syrian knock-off. The rebel sitting opposite him was younger, gaunt and tired-looking. His hands were filthy and his trousers caked in mud and diesel.

The flat had once belonged to an old lady. Traces of a domestic life that had long ceased to exist were scattered around the room and mingled with the possessions of the new occupiers. A mother of pearl ashtray sat next to a pile of walkie-talkies. Small china figurines stood on top of the TV next to a box of cartridges. Guns and ammunition lay on the rickety wooden chairs and a calendar showing faded landscapes hung on the wall. In the bedroom next door clothes were piled on the bed next to crates of ammunition. The stout rebel was shifty, on edge and keen to finish what he came to say and leave quickly. The other looked like a man waiting for a disaster to unfold.

But like a couple trying to conduct the business of their divorce with civility they spent a long time on pleasantries: each asked the other about his village and praised the courage and strength of his people. Outside a machine gun fired relentlessly down the street, interrupted only by the occasional thud of a mortar shell.

‘I am taking my cousins away from the front,’ the stout man finally said.

‘Why?’ the young rebel whined, as if one of the mortar shells had smacked him in the head. ‘Did we do anything wrong? Didn’t we feed them properly? Didn’t they get their daily rations? Whatever ammunition we get we divide equally: tell me what we did wrong.’

‘No, no, nothing wrong – but you seem not to have any work here.’

‘But this is an important defensive position,’ the young rebel pleaded. ‘All of Aleppo depends on this hill. If you go, two frontline posts will be left empty. They’ll be able to skirt around us.’

‘I’m sure you’ll take care of it. Allah bless your men, they’re very good.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘A very good man, a seeker of good deeds – he is from our town but he lives in the Gulf – told me he would fund my new battalion. He says he will pay for our ammunition and we get to keep all the spoils of the fighting. We just have to supply him with videos.’

‘But why would he do that? What’s he getting in return?’

‘He wants to appease God, and he wants us to give him videos of all our operations. That’s all – just YouTube videos.’

‘So he can get more money.’

‘Well, that’s up to him.’

They spent some more time on pleasantries but the divorce was done. The stout man walked out. Waiting for him in the cold were half a dozen men, young, earnest, country boys with four guns between them. Their cigarettes glowed in the dark as they walked behind their cousin, their new commander, in his pressed trousers and shirt, who promised them better food, plentiful ammunition and victory. So a new battalion is formed, one more among the many hundreds of other battalions fighting a war of insurgency and revolution against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

*

We in the Middle East have always had a strong appetite for factionalism. Some attribute it to individualism, others blame the nature of our political development or our tribalism. Some even blame the weather. We call it tasharthum and we loathe it: we hold it as the main reason for all our losses and defeats, from al-Andalus to Palestine. Yet we love it and bask in it and excel at it, and if there is one thing we appreciate it is a faction that splinters into smaller factions. Yet even by the measure of previous civil wars in the Middle East, the Syrians seem to have reached new heights. After all, the Palestinians in their heyday had only a dozen or so factions, and the Lebanese, God bless them, pretending it was ideology that divided them, never exceeded thirty different factions.

In Istanbul I asked a Syrian journalist and activist why there were so many battalions. He laughed and said, ‘Because we are Syrians,’ and went on to tell me a story I have heard many times before. ‘When the Syrian president, head of the military junta at the time, signed the unification agreement with Nasser, basically handing the country to the Egyptians and stripping himself of his presidential title, he passed the document to Nasser and said I give up my role as president but I hand you a country of four million presidents.’

For decades, the dictatorship in Syria worked to stamp the people into submission: every pulpit, every media outlet, every schoolbook sent out the same message, that people should be subservient to the ruler. In Syria (as in a different way in Iraq, Egypt and the rest), those in authority – from the president to the policeman, from the top party apparatchik to the lowliest government functionary – exercised power over every aspect of people’s lives. You spent your life trying to avoid being humiliated – let alone detained and tortured or disappeared – by those in authority while somehow also sucking up to them, bribing them, begging them to give you what you needed: a telephone line, a passport, a university place for your son. So when these systems of control collapsed, something exploded inside people, a sense of individualism long suppressed. Why would I succumb to your authority as a commander when I can be my own commander and fight my own insurgency? Many of the battalions dotted across the Syrian countryside consist only of a man with a connection to a financier, along with a few of his cousins and clansmen. They become itinerant fighting groups, moving from one battle to another, desperate for more funds and a fight and all the spoils that follow.

Officially – or at least this is what many would like to believe – all the battalions are part of the Free Syrian Army. But from the start of the uprising in March 2011, the FSA has never managed to become an organisation with the kind of centralised command structure that would allow it to co-ordinate attacks and move units on the ground. Until recently, Colonel Riad al-Asad, the nominal head of the FSA, and his fellow defectors from the Syrian army were interned in the Officers’ Camp, a special refugee camp in southern Turkey – for their protection, the Turks say. All meetings and interviews with the defecting colonel had to go through Turkish intelligence. Towards the end of last year the FSA announced that it had moved its headquarters to the Syrian side of the border, in an attempt to prove its relevance. But battalions are still formed by commanders working and fighting on their own initiative across Syria, arming themselves via many different channels and facing challenges unique to their towns and villages. For these people the colonel was just a talking head and a stooge of the Turks, and the FSA not much more than a label. Another problem emerged when higher-ranking officers started defecting from the army. Who leads the FSA? The officers who defected first? Or the men who outrank them? Parallel organisations of defecting officers started to pop up, but few had any real influence where it mattered.

*

So how do you form a battalion in Syria? First, you need men, most likely young men from the countryside, where the surplus of the underemployed over the centuries has provided for any number of different armies and insurgencies. Weapons will come from smugglers, preferably via Iraq or Turkey. You will also need someone who knows how to operate a laptop and/or a camcorder and can post videos on the internet – essential in applying for funds from the diaspora or Gulf financiers. A little bit of ideology won’t hurt, probably with a hint of Islamism of some variety. You’ll also need money, but three or four thousand dollars should be enough to start you off.

Long before the uprising, Abu Abdullah and his brothers made a fortune running an import/export and cross-border transport business. Their trucks crossed the frontiers of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, all the way to Saudi Arabia, ferrying Turkish vegetables to Iraq and bringing back fuel, taking Syrian fruit across Jordan to the Saudi border. Not all the products they traded in were perishables nor were all legal; subsidised Syrian petrol was smuggled to Lebanon and Turkey.

The brothers, like many other members of the rich business elite, were conservative Muslims, though not radical or Salafist. Thanks to their wealth and religion, they had connections across the mercantile Middle East, the illicit smuggling networks of the region and, more important, links to powerful preachers and religious families in the Gulf. When, very early on, their native town of Homs erupted in an uprising that soon became an armed insurrection it was wealthy – and, usually, religious – Syrians like Abu Abdullah who sent money, ran services, provided food and fuel. They are still central to humanitarian provision in Syria.

Abu Abdullah also used his extensive cross-border network to bring in weapons and ammunition. ‘I had five pick-up trucks filled with weapons and ammunition crossing from Lebanon and ten crossing from Iraq every week. We started with hunting rifles and now we bring anti-aircraft guns. We were the ones who powered the revolution.’

He is tall, well-built and has the confidence of a wealthy man surrounded by poor peasants. He conducts the business of funding and arming the uprising from a small concrete room perched deep inside a pine and olive grove that cascades down the slopes of a mountain in Idlib province. Delegates from across the country would come to sit on the floor beside him. Some asked for weapons, others brought money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars passed through the room. At night he lay on a thin mat on the bare concrete floor. Switching from vegetables to armaments turned out to be very easy, he said. But as the fighting spread and intensified more money and more organisation was needed to push the battle towards a tipping point. A master plan was devised to co-ordinate the flow of weapons.

‘We reached a point in the fighting, in spring 2012, when we needed proper support. We needed heavy machine guns, real weapons. Money was never an issue: how much do you want? Fifty million dollars, a hundred million dollars – not a problem. But heavy weapons were becoming hard to find: the Turks – and without them this revolution wouldn’t have started – wanted the Americans to give them the green light before they would allow us to ship the weapons. We had to persuade Saad al-Hariri, Rafic Hariri’s son and a former prime minister, to go to put pressure on the Saudis, to tell them: “You abandoned the Sunnis of Iraq and you lost a country to Iran. If you do the same thing again you won’t only lose Syria, but Lebanon with it.”’ The idea was that the Saudis in turn would pressure the Americans to give the Turks the green light to allow proper weapons into the country.

Now suddenly, while on the ground the revolution was still in the hands of small bands of rebels and activists, a set of outside interests started conspiring to direct events in ways amenable to them. There were the Saudis, who never liked Bashar but were wary of more chaos in the Middle East. The Qataris, who were positioning themselves at the forefront of the revolutions of the Arab Spring, using their formidable TV networks to mobilise support and their vast wealth to fund illicit weapons shipments to the Libyans. And of course there were the French and the Americans.

‘The Americans gave their blessing,’ Abu Abdullah said, ‘and all the players converged and formed an operations room. It had the Qataris, the Saudis, the Turks and Hariri.’ In their infinite wisdom the players decided to entrust the running of the room – known as the Armament Room or the Istanbul Room after the city where it was based – to a Lebanese politician called Okab Sakr, a member of Hariri’s party who was widely seen as divisive and autocratic. The plan was to form military councils to be led and dominated by defectors from the Syrian army – this in order to appease the Americans, who were getting worried about the rising influence of the Islamists. All the fighting groups, it was assumed, would eventually agree to answer to the military councils because they were the main source of weapons.

At first, the plan seemed to be working. As summer approached military councils sprang up in Aleppo, Homs, Idlib and Deir al-Zour and some major battalions and factions did join in. Better weapons – though not the sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft equipment the rebels wanted – started entering Syria from Turkey. Until this point, most of the weapons smuggled from Turkey had come in small shipments on horseback or carried on foot by intermediaries and the fighters themselves, but these new shipments were massive, sent by truck. Iraq remained the largest single supplier, a legacy of three decades of war, but a lot of the Iraqi ammunition was of bad quality, having been buried in the sand for years. So the new supplies were eagerly received.

In the city of Deir al-Zour, in the early summer I sat with the chief armaments officer of the military council, who had converted his bedroom into an arsenal. I watched as he unzipped travel bags and distributed RPGs to his fighters, the rockets brand-new in their plastic wrapping, along with Austrian rifles (surplus or refurbished), Swiss hand grenades, Australian sniper rifles – the list went on.

A few weeks later, though, the plan started to collapse. In Deir al-Zour, an army defector accused the military council of being dominated by a single tribe and village. He set up a rival council. In Idlib and Homs the council was seen as too weak as rival battalions grew in influence. The Istanbul Room was accused of favouritism. By mid-July it was only in Aleppo that the council seemed to be working and the rebels pushed towards the city.

*

After two weeks of fighting the rebels were in control of large parts of Aleppo, but they soon suffered a serious setback in the Salah al-Din district. The weapons shipments stopped getting through in September. When I went there skirmishes were still taking place on dozens of frontlines criss-crossing the city and shelling and air strikes pounded the concrete residential blocks mercilessly. The air was sultry and oppressive, with an occasional breeze carrying the smell of death and festering garbage and rustling the curtains in broken windows.

Just before dusk a plane that had been circling overhead for hours, driven away only briefly after rebels wasted precious ammunition on it, returned with new determination. With each circle the rebels ran for delusional cover: a bush, a tree, a house – nothing that would stop a bomb, but at least it gave a feeling of protection. The plane circled, swooped down, released a black object and rose up again in a graceful curve like a dancer. The object, a bomb, disappeared behind a building. First there was a cloud – brown, black and grey – and then a thunderous explosion. The plane passed overhead and banked away.

Two officers, members of the Aleppo military council, were policing the frontlines. Captain Hussam – codename Abu Muhammad – was round and tall and always laughing. He drove an old car loaded with ammunition, co-ordinating attacks and supplying the fighters along a stretch of the boulevard. His friend Musbah, or Abu Hussein, was short and agitated. He would rush from one skirmish to another, leading the men through tunnels under apartment blocks, moving through bedrooms and kitchens, picking positions behind lace curtains to snipe at government soldiers.

‘Before we entered Aleppo we were promised ammunition,’ Hussam said. ‘They told us to start the fight here and that they would get us support. Well, we got some.’ Like a provincial pharmacist dispensing his precious tablets individually wrapped, the captain carried out his daunting job frugally and with minute attention. His reserve cache of ammunition, which was to service the whole frontline, had dwindled to one thousand Kalashnikov bullets and six RPG rockets. The fighters harangued him: they needed ammunition but he had none to give.

He had recently been in a meeting with other Aleppo commanders. The cracks between the military councils and the battalions starting to grow. ‘The Islamists at the meeting attacked the councils,’ he said. ‘They’re furious that the officers control the new ammunition. They think we want to bring in military rule, and they consider us infidels because we once supported the regime.’

‘This is a secular nation,’ his friend Musbah said. ‘They want to bring back the days of the caliphate.’

A week later, Musbah was killed, and whatever ammunition he was able to get was gone. The men were complaining more than ever, so Hussam decided to go north to find the leaders of the Aleppo military council to ask about his promised ammunition. He drove for several hours through hayfields and villages, heading close to the Turkish border. He arrived at a luxurious villa with whitewashed walls and a large swimming pool and was led inside. The marble floors were cold and clean. The fridge was stuffed with meat, fruit and even an ice cream cake. A few journalists, French and Arab, lounged around in the marble hallway using the wifi. Maybe it was the heat, the death, the weeks of fighting at the front or maybe the sugar rush from the ice cream cake, but Hussam’s nerves snapped and he started shouting.

‘You guys should really come down and see what’s going on. We’re dying down there.’

The head of the council, a former colonel in combat fatigues with a Vietnam-era flack jacket, arrived along with his assistant and bookkeeper, a former teacher called Ali Dibo, now treasurer of the arsenal. Hussam was taken aside, promised his ammunition again and sent back to Aleppo.

Ali Dibo drove me in his fancy car to another large villa in a nearby village. An old Mercedes truck was parked outside, covered in a tarpaulin. Fighters stood around under the orange trees. Two commanders were waiting to see Ali, now no longer the meek subordinate he’d been in the presence of the head of the military council but sporting the air of supreme commander of the faithful. He interrogated one of the men: ‘Why do you need so much ammunition?’ But he signed the necessary papers and the men under the orange trees started unloading crates of ammunition from the truck into a waiting pickup. The big truck was the council’s mobile armoury, containing 450,000 rounds of bullets and hundreds of RPGs.

Ali Dibo turned to another supplicant. ‘All I want from you is a short video that you can put on YouTube, stating your name and your unit and that you are part of the Aleppo military council. Then you can go do whatever you want. I just need to show the Americans that units are joining the council. I met two Americans yesterday, and they told me we won’t get any advanced weapons until we show we’re united under the leadership of the officers in the military councils. Just shoot the video and let me handle the rest.’

Months later I visited Hussam. He had discovered that the ex-teacher had been running his own show, siphoning off weapons intended for frontline troops and using them to build his own power base. Hussam sank into a sofa in the small apartment where he lives with his wife. Metal spikes stuck out of his leg: not long after he was sent back to Aleppo his car flipped over as he tried to flee an aerial bombardment. One of his close friends was killed – in fact most of his friends were by now either dead or seriously injured. ‘Ali Dibo was building his own personal fiefdom. He was using the ammunition destined for Aleppo to curry favour with other commanders.’ The military council, he said, was now just one more militia among the feuding battalions. ‘The problem is that every time they set up a council to oversee the war effort it turns into a militia. They can’t differentiate between their own personal interests and those of the nation.’

*

Last November, under pressure from the Americans, and with promises of better funding and more weapons from the Gulf nations, all the opposition factions met in Doha. A new council was created, called the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. Under its aegis a new military command structure was supposed to include all fighting groups, commanders inside and outside the country. But the promised flow of weapons never materialised: there were small amounts of ammunition, but no major shipments. Only weapons bought from Iraqi and sometimes Turkish smugglers were still getting through.

I stood with Abu Abdullah on a muddy hill not far from the Turkish border. Nearby was a makeshift refugee camp, with sewage water trickling between the tents and children shivering in front of a water truck, where they were playing with the shiny pots distributed by a relief agency. Some put them on their heads like helmets, others sat on them. The fence separating us from Turkey had collapsed; two Turkish army jeeps rumbled up and down the road.

Abu Abdullah pointed at a Turkish military outpost further down the hill. ‘This is where we did the handovers of shipments: they drove them to the post and we took over from there, but now we’re only getting ten to fifteen thousand rounds a week. It’s nothing. Iraq has been the main provider, but we can’t get anything interesting from there either. I sent people looking for weeks and we only found one anti-aircraft gun.’

After giving up on the Turks and their Armament Room, Abu Abdullah and his friends turned to the Libyans. Libya is both a fervent revolutionary power and a huge weapons market. ‘In Iraq we buy a certain number of bullets but in Libya they sell them by the weight, by the ton, and it’s dirt cheap. But we can’t ship them by sea. Thirteen countries control the waters in the Mediterranean and we need permission from all of them or from the Americans. So the Qataris fly the weapons to Doha and then they ship them down from Turkey.’

We drove along the border looking for a place to cross, but stopped by mistake in front of the wrong gate. A bearded man in a military jacket appeared carrying a Kalashnikov. He waved us in with his flashlight, but then an older man came over and ordered us to halt.

‘We want to cross into Turkey,’ Abu Abdullah said.

‘You can’t, this is private property,’ the old man said in heavily accented Arabic. There were three tents behind him and material for more. ‘You have to leave immediately,’ he said, politely but firmly. This camp, right on the Turkish border, was for foreign jihadis – the only people, as Abu Abdullah complained, who were getting money and equipment these days. Hakim al-Mutairi, a Kuwaiti Salafi preacher, was sending them millions of dollars. ‘I confronted him at a meeting a few weeks ago,’ Abu Abdullah said. ‘I told him you are hijacking our revolution. The jihadis are buying weapons and ammunition from the other units. They have no problem with money.’

At the end of January, I met a friend of Abu Abdullah; he’d once been a wealthy man, a merchant, but he’d seen his wealth dwindle as all his businesses came to a halt. His lips were quivering with anger and he kept thumping the table with his fist.

‘Why are the Americans doing this to us? They told us they wouldn’t send us weapons until we united. So we united in Doha. Now what’s their excuse? They say it’s because of the jihadis but it’s the jihadis who are gaining ground. Abu Abdullah is $400,000 in debt and no one is sending him money anymore. It’s all going to the jihadis. They have just bought a former military camp from a battalion that was fighting the government. They went to them, gave them I don’t know how many millions and bought the camp. Maybe we should all become jihadis. Maybe then we’ll get money and support.’

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/(...)in-five-easy-lessons

quote:

Op vrijdag 15 februari 2013 19:18 schreef Aloulou het volgende:

[..]

De Turken zitten heel diep in het Syrische conflict. Afzijdig kan je het absoluut niet noemen. Ik denk dat je de Turkse steun voor de rebellen en hoe ver die gaat onderschat. Ik denk dat veel Turken (in Turkije) niet eens precies weten hoe diep hun regering bij dit conflict betrokken is.

quote:

Op vrijdag 15 februari 2013 19:21 schreef Aloulou het volgende:
Het volgende zeer grote artikel geeft heel veel goede inzichten in hoe de situatie in Syrie nu is, welke partijen en individuen erbij betrokken zijn en hoe de wapenleveringen tot stand komen en via welke kanalen. Flink artikel maar zeker aan te raden, door de goede Guardian journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad. Meerdere malen langere tijd in Syrie verbleven en ook op de frontlinie.

[..]

quote:

Syria rebels claim northern airbase takeover

quote:

Syrian rebels have captured a military airbase in the north and geared up for a major battle against regime forces as the opposition says it refuses to accept President Bashar al-Assad in talks on the 23-month conflict.

The rebels on Friday said they overran the base in the town of Sfeira, east of Aleppo international airport, and captured a large stockpile of ammunition.

Activists reported intermittent clashes around the Aleppo airport itself as well as around Nayrab airbase and another military complex, as the two sides squared up for a major fight.

"The army shelled the area around Aleppo international airport and Nayrab air base on Friday morning, while rebels used home-made rockets to shell Nayrab," Rami Abdel Rahman, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said.

The Syrian army "is preparing a large-scale operation to take back control of Base 80", he said, referring to a military complex tasked with the security of both Nayrab and Aleppo airports.

Rebels seized the base on Wednesday after a battle that left at least 150 dead from both sides, among them senior army officers, according to the Observatory.

quote:

Syrian rebels being treated in Israeli hospital

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the treatment of seven wounded Syrians in an Israeli hospital "exceptional, isolated cases."
The men were wounded Saturday near Israel's security fence with Syria in the Golan Heights during clashes between the Syrian army and rebel forces in Syria's two-year civil war.
During the regular weekly Cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said of the civil war in Syria: "Yesterday, we saw that the fighting is also approaching our border. We will continue to guard our border and prevent passage and entry to Israel, except for exceptional, isolated cases, every one will be considered on its merits."
Israel Defense Forces soldiers discovered the injured men near the security fence and brought them to Ziv Hospital in Safed, Haaretz reported. The newspaper reported that the men likely are rebels. One reportedly was severely wounded and the rest were injured from bullets and shrapnel, according to Haaretz. The men are being isolated from other patients and are expected to remain in the hospital for one week.
Druze communities on the Golan Heights reportedly have asked the army to allow the men to stay in Israel or be sent to a third country that will accept them as refugees, the Israeli daily Maariv reported.

quote:

'Invasie Hezbollah in Syri�'

DAMASCUS - De Libanese groepering Hezbollah heeft enkele dorpen in Syri� aangevallen. Dat hebben rebellen gemeld die tegen de Syrische president Bashar al-Assad vechten.

Ze spreken van een ''invasie'' van Hezbollah-strijders in Syri�, meldt de BBC.

Zondag kwamen zeker twee strijders van Hezbollah om in Syri�, aldus de oppositie tegen Assad. De rebellen beschuldigen Hezbollah ervan zich in de strijd te mengen tussen hen en de president.

Hezbollah heeft ontkend dat het strijders naar Syri� heeft gestuurd om voor Assad te vechten. Hezbollah heeft nauwe banden met Iran en de Syrische regering.

quote:

Op maandag 18 februari 2013 18:10 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

[..]

Interessant. Chinese wapens had ik niet verwacht. Het blijft ook gissen naar de bron, maar misschien via Pakistan. Maar omdat de gebruikers mij geen extremisten lijken, lijkt Libi� logischer, die kunnen die wapens vast makkelijk uit Sudan halen. Goed nieuws in ieder geval, de luchmacht van Assad is al flink gedecimeerd en rebellen hebben nu ook intacte vliegtuigen in een recent veroverde luchtmachtbasis.

أول مطار في حلب يسقط بيد الثوار

quote:

Het momentum licht nu heel duidelijk bij de rebellen.

quote:

Op maandag 18 februari 2013 19:37 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Naar mijn mening niet meer. De rebellen hebben toch wat overwinningen geboekt de laatste maanden. Veel militaire en luchtmachtbasissen veroverd, grootste dam dat de elektriciteit van Aleppo regelt, terreinwinst in vrijwel elke provincie, kleine delen van Damascus bezet, zijn luchtmacht is flink uitgedund, vliegtuigen zijn veel minder actief en effectief en zijn helikopters zijn zeldzaam geworden etc etc.

quote:

[..]

Leg eens uit.

quote:

Syrian leaders should face justice at ICC, UN says

quote:

Syrian leaders should be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face justice for murder and torture, UN investigators urged on Monday as the EU renewed its blanket arms embargo on both sides in Syria's bloody conflict.

Britain, however, secured the agreement of its partners to make it easier to supply "non-lethal" equipment and training to maintain security in rebel-held areas, which was not previously possible. But it had not sought agreement to send weapons, Whitehall officials insisted, rejecting claims from Brussels that it had.

quote:

In a small corner of Syria, rebels attempt to reconcile

quote:

Our new host is Abu Oday, the commander of the armed opposition in this town in the western corner of Syria, and what we are witnessing is one of the most extraordinary facets of the country's catastrophic civil war: the birth pangs of a truce that has restored calm to one small area after almost two years of violence.

Abu Oday carries no gun, nor do any of the dozen men who stand around us curiously as plastic chairs are drawn up. By agreement they no longer show their weapons while, for its part, the Syrian army has ended the regular hail of mortar fire that terrorised this side of Talkalakh.

The architect of the change is Sheikh Habib or, to give him his full name, Mohammed Habib Fendi. Barely mentioned in Syria's official media, he prefers to keep a low profile even though he seems a rare hero in the country's brutal conflict.

quote:

Bloedbad Aleppo na raketaanval

Syrische opstandelingen zeggen dat een raketaanval van het leger een bloedbad heeft aangericht in Aleppo. Meldingen over het dodental vari�ren van acht tot zo'n honderd.

De raket sloeg in in Jabal Badro, een wijk die in handen is van opstandelingen. Nieuwsuur-verslaggever Jan Eikelboom is in de getroffen wijk: "De verwoeste plek is zo groot als een half voetbalveld. Tussen het puin wordt nog gezocht naar lichamen", twittert hij.

Eikelboom spreekt van afschuwelijke beelden. "Overal lijken, wat een drama filmen we hier."

Een ooggetuige zegt tegen persbureau Reuters dat door de raketinslag van gisteravond drie gebouwen zijn ingestort.

twitter:

janeikelboom twitterde op dinsdag 19-02-2013 om 13:27:40 We zijn Aleppo uit. Omdat ook de dorpen in de omgeving met scuds worden beschoten gaan we vanavond in Turkije slapen. reageer retweet

quote:

Op dinsdag 19 februari 2013 15:08 schreef rakotto het volgende:
Presidentiele paleis in Damascus schijnt aangevallen te zijn met twee raketten volgens Aljazeera. Ik heb geen kennis over raketten/wapens, maar als ik het zo vertaal waren het: HOUN? HAWN? Raketten.

Iemand die weet wat het is of wat het kan zijn?

quote:

Op dinsdag 19 februari 2013 15:15 schreef deleriouz het volgende:

[..]

Volgens mij Google Translate zijn dat mortieren.

quote:

Op dinsdag 19 februari 2013 15:08 schreef rakotto het volgende:
Presidentiele paleis in Damascus schijnt aangevallen te zijn met twee raketten volgens Aljazeera. Ik heb geen kennis over raketten/wapens, maar als ik het zo vertaal waren het: HOUN? HAWN? Raketten.

Iemand die weet wat het is of wat het kan zijn?

quote:

Syria in ruins: civilians suffer as military stalemate drags on

quote:

Every conversation is dominated by the rumble of bombing and the misery it causes as the regime seeks to keep control of "old Damascus", the area that lies inside the ring road and where regime supporters' homes and most government ministries are situated. Beyond it, to the east of the city, the rebels have seized a large area of farmland known as the Orchards, where settlements of low-cost housing have sprung up over recent decades. To the south the rebels occupy Deraya and are fighting in Yarmouk, a once largely Palestinian district.

"When I asked the army why they bomb, the explanation I got was that it bolsters troop morale. It also protects troops from having to go into areas on foot," said a senior government official, now retired. "When I said: 'Isn't it collective punishment of the civilian population?', they said nothing."

The punishment seems to have two variants. The lighter one was described to me by an elderly resident of Qudsaya, a district about five miles north-west of central Damascus. I visited it during an illegal protest last February when some 2,000 euphoric young people paraded through the main street, shouting: "Down with Bashar!" There was no police presence or any sign of regime reaction. Now every shop is in ruins or under slow repair as owners try to rebuild their livelihoods. The wrecks of burnt-out cars litter the street, and many houses have shell-holes in their facades.

My informant recalled the regime's revenge. "At 5am one morning in August the government started firing shells and mortars from al-Areen, an Alawite district on the other side of the valley. About an hour later soldiers and shabiha [pro-government militias] arrived and warned everybody they had an hour to leave Qudsaya. Anyone who remained would be shot," he said.

With his wife he joined hundreds of frantic families, who fled on foot or in their cars. His 27-year-old son stayed behind with some Druze neighbours who had once worked for the defence ministry and seemed to be trusted by the soldiers. According to the son's account, over the next three days the soldiers and militias proceeded to break into houses and smash the metal shutters of shops, loot TVs and other electronic goods, and then set the buildings on fire. An unknown number of people were executed.

Most residents have now returned to Qudsaya, traumatised but apparently having "learned their lesson". The message has gone out to would-be protesters to lie low and to the armed opposition not to come into the area. The same message has been absorbed by people in the districts of Midan and Old Mezzeh, which rebels penetrated briefly last summer before being driven back by a massive army counter-attack. Residents have urged the rebels to keep out and not provoke total destruction.

In the capital's eastern districts and the Orchards area civilians had less chance. Rebels advanced and joined local people who took up guns in Qaboun, Douma, Harasta, and Jobar and the government is still responding with the rain of bombs and shells that you hear in central Damascus. As well as collective punishment it amounts to a "strategy of denial". Recognising that it cannot regain control without risking excessive numbers of soldiers' lives, the regime's fallback is to prevent civilians going home under rebel protection and have the opposition proclaim them as "liberated areas" where normal life is resuming.

The latest district to suffer from this strategy is Adra, a new zone of industrial investment about 20 miles north-east of Damascus. Half the apartment blocks are incomplete, a forest of raw concrete buildings with no doors, windows, water or electricity. This bleak wasteland now houses at least 100,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who have fled from the Orchards.

A fortnight ago the war reached them again. A military airfield is located near the original village of Adra, where another 20,000 people live a few miles from the industrial zone. The rebels have started to make airfields their prime targets throughout Syria and the government feared armed groups were infiltrating Adra in preparation for an attack. It launched bombing and artillery strikes on Adra on 31 January. On 4 February, some 2,000 families set off on foot to the already overcrowded industrial zone. Volunteers from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent broke the locks of five schools and helped them to move in. According to witnesses, less than 20% of these desperate people are male. They fear the army will assume all males are rebels and arrest or kill them.

quote:

Mortiergranaten ingeslagen bij paleis Assad in Syri�

quote:

De aanval is een teken dat de oorlog doordringt op plekken die tot voor kort nog relatief veilig waren.

quote:

Syrische voetballer gedood in stadion

Een Syrische voetballer is woensdag omgekomen toen twee mortiergranaten insloegen in het stadion in Damascus waar hij op dat moment met zijn team aan het trainen was.

Dat meldt de staatsomroep. Ook andere bronnen bevestigen het bericht. Een aantal andere voetballers raakte gewond.

Dinsdag ontploften twee mortiergranaten bij een paleis van president Assad. Toen was er alleen materi�le schade.

quote:

Doden bij zware explosie in centrum Damascus
In het centrum van de Syrische hoofdstad is een zware explosie geweest vlak bij het hoofdkantoor van de regerende Baath-partij. Ook de Russische ambassade ligt in de buurt.

De Syrische staatstelevisie spreekt van een terreuraanval. Op tv-beelden zijn zeker vier lijken te zien. Ooggetuigen zeggen dat een autobom ontplofte tussen het gebouw van de Baath-partij en de Russische ambassade.

Door de explosie hangt er een dikke zwarte rookwolk boven de stad.

quote:

A correspondent for Syrian state television said he saw seven body bags with corpses in them at the scene. He said he counted 17 burnt-out cars and another 40 that were destroyed or badly damaged by the force of the blast, which ripped a crater 1.5 metres deep into the road.

The official SANA news agency said casualties included children at a nearby school in Mazraa, which it described as a busy residential district of the capital.

Activists reported at least two further blasts in the city after the Mazraa explosion. The Observatory said two car bombs exploded outside security centres in the north-eastern district of Barzeh, but there were no details of casualties.

Syrian TV said security forces had detained a would-be suicide bomber with five bombs in his car, one of them weighing 300 kg.

quote:

Syrian health ministry says 53 dead, 235 wounded in Damascus car bombing

quote:

Assad duikt op in Duitse documentaire: 'Ik heb niet voor deze oorlog gekozen'

quote:

De Syrische president Bashar al-Assad laat zich zelden interviewen. Dat was al zo voor de opstand, maar zeker nu er een burgeroorlog aan de gang is. Het is de Duitse documentairemaker Hubert Seipel wel gelukt. In 'Die Syrien-Falle, Deutschland und der Krieg gegen Assad' ontkent de president dat hij verantwoordelijk is voor het bloedige conflict.

Die Syrien Falle - Deutschland und der Krieg gegen Assad

quote:

Op donderdag 21 februari 2013 17:44 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Ik denk dat ze er juist alle belang bij hebben. Assad is niet vies van het sponsoren van terreur en ik heb bij enkele vorige autobommen flink wat bewijs langs zien komen dat de Ba'ath er zelf achter zat. Het is een beetje dezelfde reden als waarom hij woonwijken en bakkerijen beschiet met scuds en raketten. Hij hoopt dat de bevolking zich tegen de rebellen keren omdat ze denken dat zij erachter zitten of omdat de rebellen de aanvallen aantrekken.

quote:

Op donderdag 21 februari 2013 19:30 schreef UpsideDown het volgende:
Is er re�le een kans dat Al-Nusra de gezaghebbende partij wordt in Syri�? In dat geval zal Syri� in de toekomst ge�soleerd worden van het westen en van de regen in de drup belanden. Ik denk dat we serieus rekening moeten houden met dit scenario. Het westen heeft niet overtuigend partij gekozen voor de rebellen dus veel invloed zullen ze straks niet hebben als Assad deze strijd wel gaat verliezen.

quote:

Op donderdag 21 februari 2013 19:41 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Veel sympathie hebben ze toch niet meer. Het is midden in het centrum van Damascus en dus een uitgelezen kans om te laten zien hoe slecht die terroristen wel niet zijn. Zoals ik al zei, Assad heeft het eerder gedaan, dus waarom niet weer?

[..]

Dat is een mogelijkheid. Echter lijkt het gebouw dat het doel was weinig schade te hebben geleden en zijn de slachtoffers burgers(tenminste daar lijkt het op). En het is een soennitische wijk ook nog, dus logischerwijs zijn de slachtoffers dus soennieten. Een ding is zeker, als het een aanslag van Al-Nusra is hebben ze hun doel niet bereikt.

quote:

Op donderdag 21 februari 2013 19:47 schreef Peunage het volgende:

[..]

In moderne landen zoals Syri� maken dat soort partijen maar op 1 manier kans op te regeren;
- Of ze zijn militair gezien het sterkst. In dit geval zouden er andere extremistische brigades bij hen aan moeten sluiten om het sterkst te worden.
- Of ze zijn zeer populair onder de bevolking en hebben een numerieke meerderheid aan volgelingen/aanhangers. En dat is nu niet het geval.

Dus ik denk niet dat ze gaan regeren, maar het is ook gewoon belachelijk dom om te denken dat ze na de val van Bashar de wapens neer leggen en allemaal naar hun eigen land/huis gaan. Daarom vraag ik mij af wat Turkije denkt te doen als Bashar gevallen is. Al-Nusra & co zullen ook een stukje van de cake willen. En wie garandeert dat ze hun pijlen niet op Erdogan richten?

quote:

Jan Eikelboom: geweld in Syri� escaleert

Jan Eikelboom is bij de Syrisch-Turkse grens, net terug van een reportagereis naar Aleppo, en vertelt wat hij de afgelopen dagen zag in Syri�.

quote:

Op donderdag 21 februari 2013 23:15 schreef Pharmacist het volgende:
Mooi inkijk via CNN in de oppositie van Syrie. Dieptepunt op het einde is een klein jochie dat met een vrolijk gezicht zingt hoe hij alle Alawieten zal afslachten, begeleid door steekbewegingen met een mes in zn knuistje. Tsja... Islam.

http://edition.cnn.com/20(...)ndex.html?hpt=imi_t2

quote:

Op donderdag 21 februari 2013 23:28 schreef UpsideDown het volgende:

[..]

Dat filmpje is een paar posts terug al gepost.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 februari 2013 00:10 schreef ATan het volgende:
Zo te zien hebben de rebellen zware wapens in handen gekregen.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c47_1350479333

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 februari 2013 00:21 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

17 oktober 2012

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 februari 2013 00:27 schreef ATan het volgende:

[..]

Ik dacht dat het live was!

quote:

Thousands of Syrians have been killed since the outbreak of an
uprising in mid-March 2011 and dozens of those were murdered with clear
orders from the Syrian regime, “top secret” files obtained by Al Arabiya
have revealed.

Since Al Arabiya began broadcasting a series of Syria leaks last week,
it was the first time on Sunday that the channel disclosed Syrian
intelligence files labeled “top secret.”

A ‘top secret’ file orders an agent to carry out assassinations against activists nationwide. (Al Arbiya)

One file titled “Operational Order” was sent by the operations branch of the Syrian foreign intelligence to agent Samir Haddad to “eliminate” activists in various provinces.

Intelligence agents are often identified in documents by designated
codes instead of names, and the fact that the agent’s name was mentioned
in the file could explain why it was labeled “top secret.”

The document was dated July 29, 2011 and is believed to have played a
role in the several assassinations against top activists who were behind
the outbreak of last year’s uprising.

Dr. Hassan Shalabi, a member of the political bureau of the Syrian
National Front, told Al Arabiya, “the regime knew that there are people
who are the true instigators of this revolution,” but these people are
not specifically identified and that is why open orders were given to
the Shabbiha (thugs) militias and intelligence agents to choose and kill
who they think are “instigators.”

A second ‘top secret’ file orders the ‘elimination’ of activists in Duma. (Al Arabiya)

This led to the assassinations of figures that the regime would not have killed otherwise, Shalabi said.

Ghiath Matar, a young activist who offered flowers and drinking water to
the regime’s soldiers shortly before they detained him, was murdered in
September 2011 in Daria. Matar was known for having sought hard to keep
the uprising peaceful and non-violent. His assassination had a negative
impact and sped up the militarization of the uprising.

Another “top secret” document dated Aug. 5, 2011 and titled “operational
order” was sent to Lt. Col. Mohammed Bilal from the Syrian foreign
intelligence service to go to the city of Duma on the outskirts of
Damascus to “eliminate” activists there.

Dr. Shalabi said Duma was one of the earliest revolting cities in the
country and had produced many activists who played a major role in
spreading the uprising to other parts of the country. He said the regime
was aware of Duma’s danger and tried to silence it by killing its
activists.

Killing of Saria Hassoun

A third ‘top’ secret’ file that orders the assassination of Saria Hassoun, the son of the country’s grand mufti. (Al Arabiya)

A third “operational order” -- signed
by head of branch 291 of the air intelligence, special missions
section, Brigadier Saqr Mannon -- was sent to Lt. Col. Suhail Hassan
asking him to go “immediately and secretly to the northern region,”
which includes Aleppo, to murder Saria Hassoun, son of Syria’s Grand
Mufti, Shiekh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun.

The order was signed on Sept. 28, 2011, and Hassoun was shot dead near
Ibla University on the Idleb-Aleppo highway. Hassnoun was shot with two
bullets, one to his chest and another to his stomach. He was taken to
Idleb National Hospital and he died there.

The Syrian authorities immediately blamed “armed gangs” for the murder
of Hassoun, whose father, the country’s grand mufti, was known for his
pro-regime stances. By Killing Hassoun and blaming the opposition, the
regime was apparently seeking to attract people’s sympathy and support
and turn them against those who seek its ouster.

quote:

Op zaterdag 23 februari 2013 23:58 schreef Pharmacist het volgende:
Las dat elementen binnen de FSA eigenlijk sinds eergisteren al Hezbollah binnen Libanon aanvallen.

http://www.presstv.ir/det(...)-attacked-hezbollah/

Echt apart. Op het Iraanse Press TV denken al die commenters dat de FSA voor Israel werken .

FSA-Israeli Connection: Spiritual Leader of FSA declares his complicity with Israel on Israeli TV

quote:

Op zondag 24 februari 2013 00:33 schreef Peunage het volgende:

[..]

Het is wel apart dat de FSA in Isra�lische ziekenhuizen behandeld worden.

En natuurlijk;

FSA-Israeli Connection: Spiritual Leader of FSA declares his complicity with Israel on Israeli TV

Volgens mij bedoelen de commenters niet dat de Israelische premier elke maand persoonlijk naar Syri� vliegt en elke rebel een cheque uitschrijft. Het zijn gewoon geen vijanden van elkaar. Ze delen zelfs een vijand.

quote:

Op zondag 24 februari 2013 00:33 schreef Peunage het volgende:
Volgens mij bedoelen de commenters niet dat de Israelische premier elke maand persoonlijk naar Syri� vliegt en elke rebel een cheque uitschrijft. Het zijn gewoon geen vijanden van elkaar. Ze delen zelfs een vijand.

quote:

Syria rebels fight for Aleppo police academy

Opposition uses captured tanks to assault strategic facility, as rebel leaders accuse Damascus regime of "genocide".

quote:

Syrian rebels have used captured tanks to launch a fresh offensive on a government complex housing a police academy near Aleppo, sparking clashes with government troops over the strategic facility.

The military on Sunday responded with air strikes against the opposition forces.

Rebels have made a string of strategic victories over the past few weeks, especially in and around northern Syria, where Aleppo is located.

Capturing the complex near Aleppo would be another blow to the regime that has in recent weeks lost control key infrastructure in the northeast including a hydroelectric dam, a major oil field and two army bases along the road linking Aleppo with the airport to its east.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said rebels have been trying for months to storm the complex west of Aleppo in the suburb of Khan al-Asal.

Rebels have also been trying for weeks to capture Aleppo's International Airport.

A senior Syrian opposition leader said on Sunday that the Syrian National Coalition, his political umbrella group, has suspended participation in meetings with its Western backers and their Arab allies because of their indifference over the regime's attacks on the Syrian people in Aleppo and in other cities.

لحظة اطلاق صاروخ على الطائرة واسقاطها في مطار منغ

quote:

The weapon used to shoot down this aircraft does appear to be the Chinese FN-6. The FN-6 was specifically designed to hit low-altitude vehicles, such as helicopters or jets in the midst of dive-bombing or strafing attacks, and is resistant to flares and other possible interference:

The FN-6 is a third generation, passive infrared,[1] man portable air defence system (MANPAD). It is equipped with a digital infrared seeker with a strong resistance to flares, solar heat and heat from the ground. The pyramid shaped nose of the missile houses the four unit infrared seeker. The handle of the launcher houses the batteries and cooling system. An IFF antenna and an optional clip-on optical sight are fitted on to the laucher.

The weapon seems perfectly designed to counter some of Assad's most potent threats. After all, his helicopters, though waning in numbers, have a fearsome reputation, and we still see many videos of Assad's jets swooping low to bomb rebel positions, likely because as far as we've seen at higher altitudes they appear to be extremely indiscriminate in their targeting.

The FN-6 also has a maximum range of 6000 meters, which would not hit a typical commercial airliner flying at cruising altitudes.

In other words, if a foreign supplier wanted to give the rebels a weapon that could counter Assad's airforce while still posing the smallest threat if it landed in the hands of terrorists, the FN-6 would be a good choice.

quote:

Op maandag 25 februari 2013 22:26 schreef Slayage het volgende:
degelijke dingen toch dat chinese spul

لحظة اطلاق صاروخ على الطائرة واسقاطها في مطار منغ

[..]

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 februari 2013 21:34 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Hij probeert te impliceren dat we voorstander zijn van het schieten op onschuldige vakantiegangers die met vredelievende bedoelingen op een lijnvlucht naar een toeristenoord zijn gestapt.

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 04:18 schreef ATan het volgende:

[..]

Hoor ik hem nou in de film vertellen dat ze dat wapentuig van Saudie - Arabie gekregen hebben?

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 11:07 schreef rakotto het volgende:

[..]

Hij zegt niets over Saudi Arabie. Waar hij over praat is dat het in Aleppo is en dat is het zo'n beetje.

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 18:59 schreef ATan het volgende:

[..]

Wat zegt ie dan op 0:47?

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 04:18 schreef ATan het volgende:

[..]

Hoor ik hem nou in de film vertellen dat ze dat wapentuig van Saudie - Arabie gekregen hebben?

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 22:10 schreef Slayage het volgende:
weer een nieuwe levering anti tank wapens

http://brown-moses.blogsp(...)ssile-filmed-in.html

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 22:22 schreef Peunage het volgende:

[..]

Kleine kanttekening. De man in de video claimt dat dit projectiel door het Syrische leger is afgevuurd. Afgevuurd op wat? Hebben de rebellen tanks in Talbisah? Hij zegt dat de projectielen op het vrijheidsplein zijn afgevuurd en dat dit het bewijs is dat Amerika het Syrische regime steunt.

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 22:27 schreef Slayage het volgende:

[..]

klinkt aannemelijk!!!

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 22:29 schreef Peunage het volgende:

[..]

Jup. Die rebellen zijn op eigen kracht Assad, Iran, Rusland en Amerika aan het verslaan.

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 22:15 schreef Peunage het volgende:

[..]
de provincie Haleb(Aleppo. Waarom heet het in godsnaam Aleppo?)"

quote:

Aleppo is the common modern-day English name for the city. It was known in antiquity as Khalpe, Khalibon,[12] and to the Greeks and Romans as Beroea (Βέροια). During the Crusades, and again during the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, the name Alep was used: "Aleppo" is an Italianised version of this.

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 22:22 schreef Peunage het volgende:

[..]

Kleine kanttekening. De man in de video claimt dat dit projectiel door het Syrische leger is afgevuurd. Afgevuurd op wat? Hebben de rebellen tanks in Talbisah? Hij zegt dat de projectielen op het vrijheidsplein zijn afgevuurd en dat dit het bewijs is dat Amerika het Syrische regime steunt.

quote:

Op donderdag 28 februari 2013 10:59 schreef firefly3 het volgende:

[..]

Ze hebben tanks overgenomen, stond pas in het nieuws.

En serieus, je denkt dat Amerika Assad steunt?

quote:

Op donderdag 28 februari 2013 11:43 schreef Peunage het volgende:

[..]

Ik denk het niet. De man in de video zegt het.

quote:

Op woensdag 27 februari 2013 21:00 schreef rakotto het volgende:

[..]

Hij zegt Sawri, geen Saudi. Sawri is revolutionair.

quote:

Op donderdag 28 februari 2013 15:55 schreef mr_jack het volgende:

[..]

Sawri? bedoelt ie niet gewoon "film mij"?

quote:

'VS trekken zestig miljoen dollar uit voor Syrische rebellen'

De Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, John Kerry, wil 60 miljoen dollar vrijmaken voor steun aan de Syrische rebellen die vechten tegen het regime van Assad.

Dat maakt nieuwszender NBC donderdag bekend. De rebellen krijgen vooral hulpgoederen, maar ook ondersteuning in de vorm van onderwijs en beveiliging.

Kerry maakte het nieuws bekend tijdens een bijeenkomst in Rome, waar vooral westerse landen over de kwestie in Syri� in beraad gingen.

De bijeenkomst met vertegenwoordigers van de Syrische oppositie is gericht op directe samenwerking met de oppositie om het niveau van de steun te verhogen, zei de bron.

Donderdag overleggen westerse en Arabische landen in Rome over verdere steun aan de oppositiegroepen in het door een burgeroorlog verscheurde Syri�.

Ook zullen de VS technische adviseurs naar Ca�ro sturen ter ondersteuning van stafmedewerkers van de oppositie.

quote:

Op donderdag 28 februari 2013 17:29 schreef UpsideDown het volgende:
De VS gaat de rebellen extra financieel sponsoren.

[..]

NU.nl

quote:

Moskou laakt hulp oppositie Syri�

_{Toegevoegd: vrijdag 1 mrt 2013, 13:12
Update: vrijdag 1 mrt 2013, 13:30}

De Russische regering heeft kritiek geuit op de aangekondigde hulp van Westerse landen voor de Syrische oppositiegroepen.

Op een conferentie in Rome besloten elf landen gisteren meer "politieke en materi�le hulp" aan de oppositie in Syri�.

De VS stelde 60 miljoen dollar beschikbaar, onder voorwaarde dat het geld besteed wordt aan 'niet-dodelijke' middelen, zoals nachtkijkers en kogelwerende vesten.

Ingrijpen
Volgens een woordvoerder van het Russische ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken leiden de besluiten van de 'Vrienden van het Syrische Volk' alleen maar tot meer bloedvergieten.

Rusland steunt nog steeds het regime van president Assad, onder meer om te voorkomen dat radicale moslims het in Syri� voor het zeggen krijgen.

Omdat Moskou in de VN-Veiligheidsraad vetorecht heeft, is het nog niet tot internationaal ingrijpen in Syri� gekomen.

De Russische regering herhaalde dat het conflict in Syri� alleen via een dialoog opgelost kan worden.

quote:

Syria crisis: European countries expected to start arming rebels

Some European countries are expected to break with Washington and start supplying the Syrian rebels with weapons in the next few months, the representative of the Syrian opposition in Britain has told the Guardian.

The National Coalition's London representative, Walid Saffour, predicted that by the next meeting of the western and Arab Friends of Syria group in Turkey, due in late spring or early summer, "there will be a breakthrough that will end the restrictions of the European countries".

"This would be for the ammunition we require, the quality weapons we need to deter the Syrian regime from using aeroplanes and Scud missiles to bomb villages and bakeries," Saffour said. "We on the ground are advancing steadily but we are suffering from a lack of ammunition. We expect that to change at the next Friends of Syria meeting in Istanbul."

Another opposition figure involved in supplying the rebels said there had been a noticeable relaxation in recent days of the strict restrictions the US and Turkey had put on arms flows over the Turkish border. He claimed a Syrian army helicopter and a Mig warplane had been shot down in the past two days, for the first time by imported missiles.

"These were not weapons that had been captured from Syrian army bases as before. These were released from the Turkish warehouses. These are weapons the opposition had purchased previously but had not been allowed to take across the border," the opposition source said.

"Before, 23mm was the maximum calibre for anti-aircraft guns permitted and we were allowed to bring in RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] but not armour-piercing shells. But there is a major shift on the ground now. The policy is changing.

"I think the shift in American attitudes goes far beyond the official reports. I think that Washington knows it can no longer allow to let the problem fester."

The EU formally changed its arms embargo on Syria on Thursday to allow the supply of armoured vehicles, non-lethal military equipment and technical aid to the opposition. The move came as the US secretary of state, John Kerry, made his first trip to a Muslim nation since taking office, visiting Ankara, where he met Turkish leaders to discuss Syria.

While Saffour did not name the countries he expected to supply arms, the British government, which took the lead in pushing for the relaxation of the sanctions, is expected to act swiftly in reaction to the new EU rules. Foreign secretary, William Hague, is due to make a statement to parliament next week detailing the new equipment and training the UK will give the rebels. The aid is expected to include civilian vehicles – reinforced to provide protection against shelling – of a kind the British government is already supplying to UN aid workers operating in Syria.

On British insistence, the EU embargo will come up for review in June and the UK is expected to push for a further relaxation in what can be provided to the opposition if there is no let-up in the two-year-old conflict, in which more than 70,000 people are estimated to have died.

Speaking at the Friends of Syria meeting in Rome on Thursday, Hague stressed military aid was possible in the future. "That will be an important decision, of course, and has its own risks, and that is why we haven't done that so far. But I don't rule that out," he said.

A British official said: "We are going to keep on raising the pressure on the Assad regime. The Friends of Syria meeting in Rome was not the end of a process. It is the beginning of a process."

Saffour, the National Coalition's representative, said: "If the EU embargo doesn't change, then some of the EU countries will change their policy – if not openly, then quietly." He said US officials had also told the coalition that the White House policy of providing non-lethal aid only would come under review in the next few months, as new members of Barack Obama's administration, such as Kerry and the defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, enter the internal debate.

There have been reports over the past few weeks that the flow of arms to rebel fighters has increased markedly, including some anti-tank weapons made in the former Yugoslavia. The Croatian government has denied reports that its arms industry supplied some of the weapons.

Ivica Nekic, the managing director of the Croatian arms export agency, said: "We would be aware of any sale from Croatia, and no Croatian weapons have been sold to anyone in Syria."

Asked about reports that Croatian arms were supplied through Saudi Arabia, Nekic said Croatia had only sold the Saudi military helmets and was in the process of negotiating a sale of pistols. Asked about other customers in the Middle East, Nekic said: "We sell to more than 50 countries around the world. I can't speculate on every country, and every sale we make. It would not be correct."

Muhannad Hadi, the World Food Programme's regional emergency co-ordinator for Syria and neighbouring countries, said the British donation of armoured cars had already saved the lives of WFP staff delivering food aid on both sides of the lines.

"They turned out to be a life-saving tool. Our weapons were attacked four times in the past several months, by mortar. And the thing is nobody was injured."

The WFP currently supplies food to 1.5 million people in Syria in all 14 of the country's governorates, and in many parts of the country there are pockets with unknown populations which are beyond the agency's reach because of fighting. Hadi said the WFP hoped to increase the number of recipients to 2 million this month and 2.5 million next month, but was facing a critical shortage of funding.

"If we don't have funds in May for Syria, there will be serious problems. There will be breaks in the pipeline. Food needs a lead time to bring it in, with shipping and logistics, so we need the funds very, very soon."

The Guardian

quote:

Iraqi forces attack FSA positions inside Syria

Saturday, 02 March 2013

By Al Arabiya With Agencies

For the first time, Iraqi forces opened fire on Syria shelling the positions of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) days after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warned that a victory of the Syrian opposition would spread chaos in the region.

Al Arabiya correspondent near the Syrian-Iraqi border reported that Iraqi snipers took up positions on buildings near the Rebiya crossing while others forces shelled the positions of the Free Syrian Army.

The correspondent said that large reinforcements were being deployed by the Maliki government in Baghdad near the Syrian borders.

On Wednesday, Maliki warned if victory by Syrian rebels will spark sectarian wars in his own country and in Lebanon and will create a new haven for al-Qaeda that would destabilize the region.

“Neither the opposition nor the regime can finish each other off,” he said. “If the opposition is victorious, there will be a civil war in Lebanon, divisions in Jordan and a sectarian war in Iraq,” Maliki said in an interview with the Associated Press.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 maart 2013 23:28 schreef Slayage het volgende:
Iraqi forces attack FSA positions inside Syria

....“Neither the opposition nor the regime can finish each other off,” he said. “If the opposition is victorious, there will be a civil war in Lebanon, divisions in Jordan and a sectarian war in Iraq,” Maliki said in an interview with the Associated Press.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 maart 2013 23:49 schreef miera het volgende:
In Mali strijden we tegen moslimrebellen, en in Syri� steunen we ze?

Ik snap 't gewoon niet..

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 maart 2013 23:49 schreef miera het volgende:
In Mali strijden we tegen moslimrebellen, en in Syri� steunen we ze?

Ik snap 't gewoon niet..

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 maart 2013 23:45 schreef Aloulou het volgende:

[..]

Libanon is altijd al een teringzooi geweest en constant op de rand van burgeroorlog, en soms zelfs echte oorlog onderling. Irak is al jaren een sektarische oorlog aan de gang, zie de gigantische aanslagen van wahabieten en voormalige baathisten op sjia. En Jordanie is toch al verdeeld en de koning daar (loonslaaf van Amerika en Saudie Arabie) ziet de druk op hem steeds meer toenemen. Met andere woorden....Maliki overdrijft wel een beetje hier. De landen die hij noemt zijn al een puinhoop. Daarnaast wil hij gewoon dat Assad blijft zitten en het is overduidelijk waarom.

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 maart 2013 23:49 schreef miera het volgende:
In Mali strijden we tegen moslimrebellen, en in Syri� steunen we ze?

Ik snap 't gewoon niet..

quote:

Op vrijdag 1 maart 2013 23:56 schreef rakotto het volgende:

[..]

Omdat de extremistische moslim rebellen maar 10% van de rebellen zijn en Mali grondstoffen heeft.