Crisis in Syri� #31: From counting victims to counting massacres

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 16:49 schreef wikwakka2 het volgende:

[..]

Christus, wat kraam jij toch altijd onzin uit. Net of de perswoordvoerder van Kim Jong Un aan het woord is.

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 09:25 schreef Veldkamp het volgende:

[..]

Shabiha zijn een illusie.

quote:

PFLP en Hezbollah worden door de VS als terroristisch gezien, maar niet door de internationale gemeenschap als geheel. Integendeel zelfs.

quote:

Jij bent gewoon nogal anti-Assad om andere regionale redenen. Zonder echt eerlijke kennis van zaken.

quote:

Anders zou je de strijd van een legitiem staatsleger nooit gelijkstellen aan stront en terrorisme.

quote:

Aleppo Starves Under Siege

Everywhere you go, everywhere you look, sad eyes and tired faces. A broken city of deserted streets and empty shops, as a dejected population of almost 2 million is being slowly strangled to death. Both sides of the conflict lay the blame on each other, while the truth is that both are equally to blame, wagering the lives of so many in their deadly tug of war, one that has both metaphorically and literally torn this city and its people apart.

Staples like fresh food, vegetables, milk, bread and meat are in very short supply and priced out of the reach of most people. Fruit is now a luxury item, brand-name cigarettes are beyond the reach of any but the rich, the rest make do with dodgy generic-looking packs which taste and smell like burning sawdust. Driving a private car is only for the elite, as a full tank of gasoline now costs two months in wages for an average worker. Public transportation is very scarce, and at double or triple the normal price.

I doubt whether the most cynical of Aleppans could have ever, in their worst nightmares, envisaged what the state of Aleppo has become in the last week. A crippling, deadly siege, just as the holy month of Ramadan — a time of pious worship as well as seasonal culinary traditions in this most ancient and tradition-rich of cities — got under way. The main highway into the city, the Aleppo-Damascus highway, was closed due to clashes, as rebels launched a fresh offensive and took the Rashdeen neighborhood at the western limits of the city. This was a vital artery, supplying western Aleppo with all its needs: food, fuel, medicine and goods as well as passenger buses and coaches.

I borrowed my father’s car, since my car is — surprise — out of gas, to drive around the regime-held areas of the city, looking for any fresh produce to buy, as there were news and rumors on social media that supplies had been trucked in that morning. But as I drove from area to area, everywhere was the same story: A few scarce items such as potatoes, tomatoes and cucumbers were being sold at prices that would make a member of the French Louis dynasty blush.

I bought only the minimum to make a salad for my family’s iftar that day, a luxury I was so ashamed of that I quickly hid the bags away in the trunk. And as I asked around, some told me bitterly, “Yeah, sure the relief trucks came. The Syrian media filmed and photographed them, then they quickly left to be filmed elsewhere. The people standing around hopefully got nothing.” A disgusting farce. People in line at bakeries said regime troops came and took most of the bread, while others who had been standing for hours in the stifling summer heat got none.

Now the only option for the residents of besieged west Aleppo was the main crossing linking rebel-controlled east Aleppo with the regime-controlled west side. The Bustan al-Qasr crossing is aptly named the “death crossing,” as several people making the dangerous trip get picked out, seemingly at random, every day by regime snipers positioned on higher ground. As the siege started and food shortages took hold, people braved danger and crossed over to the rebel side to buy groceries to feed their families. They were beaten and humiliated by the rebels manning the crossing there, the paltry bags of food they had with them taken away or thrown on the ground.

“Let the regime feed you” or “Go lift the siege on Homs first” were some of the things shouted at them, as if those hapless people could ever have any influence on the regime’s crimes.

Several proclamations by the Islamic courts in the rebel areas as well as a huge sign over the crossing expressly prohibited the entry of food, milk or medicine into regime areas. The logic for this was to stop unscrupulous merchants from taking advantage of the lower prices on the rebel side and causing prices there to rise. Nevertheless, this became very controversial as food shortages hit the regime areas, and activists in rebel areas staged a protest at the crossing calling for the bans to be lifted.

The rebels manning the checkpoint met those protesters with violence, firing at them and attacking them with knives, killing at least one and injuring several. This caused a backlash, and most rebel battalions as well as the Islamic courts quickly distanced themselves from those rebels and eased the ban to allow people to carry across limited amounts of vegetables but no meat, milk or eggs. Some people took desperate measures to smuggle food across, some taping meat to their legs or stuffing eggs into their pockets, others trying to smuggle goods out in a TV set. What made this whole ordeal even more humiliating was that the crossing was also manned by some non-Syrians. So basically, a foreigner was prohibiting the people of Aleppo from carrying food across their own city, and hurling insults at them, too.

Afterward, the crossing would sporadically allow people to carry food across at what seemed to be the whim of whatever rebel group happened to be manning the crossing at that time. A neighbor who braved the crossing to buy some vegetables told me of how, as they were running across the 100 meters or so of no-man’s-land beyond the crossing, a regime sniper shot an elderly woman in her neck. The people hit the ground and remained pinned down for half an hour. As her husband tried to reach her, he was shot, too. Truly, making a salad in Aleppo could cost you your life.

And so the people of Aleppo remain stuck in this most deadly of paradoxes, caught between the hammer and the anvil, with both sides more than willing to see them starve to death, to achieve whatever sinister goals they have in mind. The rebels — who are supposedly fighting for the freedom of all Syrians — dismiss the residents of west Aleppo as shabiha and regime sympathizers, even though anyone with half a brain knows that the rebel- and regime-held parts of the city are arbitrary and most certainly do not delineate the allegiance of the people who happen to live there. The regime, cynical as ever, does not care about the fate of its own people, and would happily see them die in its campaign to eradicate the “terrorists” or gain a propaganda boost and blame the other side.

On a final and sad note, one of our neighbors, displaced from her home in a frontline area, begged us for some milk to give to her crying infant son. We had none, so we gave her some yoghurt, which she diluted with some water and sugar. The infant lightened up and smiled, but how many other infants will cry and sleep with empty bellies in Aleppo tonight?

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 21:39 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 21:49 schreef Peunage het volgende:

[..]

Hoe kan dit pas de 4de zijn? Of verwar ik ze nu misschien met de Belgen...

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 21:56 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

De 4de wat precies?

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 21:56 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

De 4de wat precies?

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 21:59 schreef Djibril het volgende:

[..]

Volgens mij wilde hij reageren op sonnyspek

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 21:59 schreef Djibril het volgende:

[..]

Volgens mij wilde hij reageren op sonnyspek

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 21:59 schreef Djibril het volgende:

[..]

Volgens mij wilde hij reageren op sonnyspek

quote:

In Syri� is opnieuw een Nederlandse jihadstrijder gedood. Dat schrijft de doorgaans goed ge�nformeerde website dewarereligie.nl.

Het slachtoffer, dat onder de strijders bekend stond als Abu Walae, is een broer van een andere Nederlander die in Syri� om het leven kwam. Hij werd bij gevechten in Aleppo getroffen door twee kogels en overleed.

In Syri� hebben zich naar schatting enkele tientallen Nederlanders aangesloten bij de rebellen. Ze vechten daar tegen het leger van president Assad en aan hem gelieerde milities. Ook een groep Belgen vecht in Syri� tegen het leger.

In Syri� zijn al vaker Nederlanders om het leven gekomen. Voor zover bekend vielen de eerste twee slachtoffers in maart. Vorige maand werd er ook een Nederlander gedood.

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 16:49 schreef wikwakka2 het volgende:

[..]

Christus, wat kraam jij toch altijd onzin uit. Net of de perswoordvoerder van Kim Jong Un aan het woord is.

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 22:54 schreef sonnyspek het volgende:

[..]

'Dat schrijft de doorgaans goed ge�nformeerde website dewarereligie.nl. '

quote:

Op maandag 29 juli 2013 20:20 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]


Ok�, dan bestaat het gehele Syrische leger uit terroristen, ook goed.

quote:

Uhm nee, de PFLP en Hezbollah wordt heel breed als terroristsche organisatie gezien, know your info. Maargoed, jij vind Al-Nusra dus ook geen terroristische organisatie begrijp ik? Omdat het niet zo wordt gezien door de internationale gemeenschap.

quote:

Ik vergat er ook nog een hoop te noemen, Assad steunde zo'n beetje elke radicale Islamitische terreurgroepen in Palestina. Hamas, Islamic Jihad Group etc.

quote:

En daarmee hebben we het nog niet eens gehad over wat je favoriete oogarts heeft aangericht in Irak. Hij had de grenzen geopend voor Al-Qaida en gaf ze nog eens training ook nog. Meer dan genoeg bewijs voor, lees wikileaks etc. Dat heeft Aloulou je in het vorige topic ook al haarfijn uitgelegd, maar gek genoeg deed je toen net alsof je neus bloedde en negeerde je het

Damascus, Syria from the eyes of ABC news reporter Diane Sawyer (2007)

quote:

Die seculiere staat van je favoriete oogarts is een fa�ade, en is een van de grootste kankercellen van (radicaal Islamitisch) terreur in het Midden-Oosten. Wanneer Assad is opgerot wordt de wereld er alleen maar beter van.

quote:

Een goed gristen mag niet liegen of iemand zomaar beschuldigen jochie. Ik ben heel benieuwd wat voor bewijs je hiervoor gaat aandragen.

quote:

Legitiem? Het Syrische regime heeft zo'n beetje dezelfde legitimiteit als de Afghaanse Taliban 15 jaar geleden.

quote:

Maargoed je zal dit alles wel negeren en de volgende pagina vrolijk verdergaan met je agitprop, zoals je altijd doet wanneer iemand je lastige vragen stelt.

quote:

Op woensdag 31 juli 2013 11:01 schreef sonnyspek het volgende:
https://mobile.twitter.co(...)2489522145071106?p=v

quote:

OM acht potenti�le Syri�ganger ontoerekeningsvatbaar

Het Openbaar Ministerie (OM) heeft woensdag tegen de 24-jarige Syri�ganger Mohammed G. verplichte opname in een psychiatrisch ziekenhuis ge�ist wegens ontoerekeningsvatbaarheid.

Omdat G. last zou hebben van stemmen in zijn hoofd, achtten deskundigen hem eerder al volledig ontoerekeningsvatbaar.

G. stond woensdag in Rotterdam voor de rechter, nadat hij in november samen met twee anderen werd gearresteerd door de Nationale Recherche. Ze waren volgens justitie van plan om naar Syri� af te reizen.

Twee van de drie verdachten hadden al een ticket op zak om van Brussel naar de grens van Turkije te vliegen. Bij de arrestaties vond de recherche onder meer steekwapens, afscheidsbrieven en jihadistische geschriften.

"De officieren van justitie vinden dat de verdachte zich schuldig heeft gemaakt aan een zeer ernstig strafbaar feit, waarvoor een lange gevangenisstraf op zijn plaats zou zijn", meldt het OM.

"Onderzoekers van het Nederlands Instituut voor Forensische psychiatrie en psychologie concluderen echter dat de verdachte ontoerekeningsvatbaar is. Daarom hebben de officieren de rechtbank vandaag gevraagd de verdachte te ontslaan van alle rechtsvervolging en hem voor een jaar te laten opnemen in een psychiatrisch ziekenhuis."

Geesten
Mohammed G. die zich herhaaldelijk op zijn zwijgrecht beriep, zegt zelf dat hij geesten ziet.

De geest van een oude krijger zou hebben gezegd dat hij naar Syri� moet reizen om daar te strijden tegen het regime van president Bashar al-Assad.

Potentieel gevaarlijk
De rechter gaat nog wel bepalen of het strafbaar is, wat G. wilde doen. Jihadgangers die worden tegengehouden, zoals G., zijn volgens de Nationaal Co�rdinator Terrorismebestrijding en Veiligheid (NCTV) potentieel gevaarlijk, omdat ze betrokken kunnen raken bij binnenlandse complotten, zoals eerder in andere landen is gebleken.

G. stond als enige terecht. Over de vervolging van de andere twee, Kaya K. en Aykut K., heeft het OM nog niet definitief beslist. Het tweetal is al geruime tijd op vrije voeten.

quote:

NGO: Syria’s main Kurdish militia calls to arms against jihadists

Syria’s main Kurdish militia on Tuesday issued a call to arms to all Kurds to fight jihadists after the assassination of a Kurdish leader, a watchdog said.

“The Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG) called on all those fit to carry weapons to join their ranks, to protect areas under their control from attacks by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) fighters, Al-Nusra Front and other battalions,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The Kurdish call comes hours after Isa Huso, a member of the Supreme Kurdish Council diplomacy committee, was assassinated as he left his house in the Syrian Kurdish city of Qamishli, a pro-Kurdish news agency said.

The Supreme Kurdish Council is a platform bringing together Kurdish groups in Syria.

The call to arms comes weeks into fighting between Kurds and jihadists in several areas of northern Syria.

Al Arabiya English

quote:

Op woensdag 31 juli 2013 14:14 schreef UpsideDown het volgende:

[..]

NU.nl

Volgens mij geldt dat voor zo'n beetje iedere Syri�ganger.

quote:

Op donderdag 1 augustus 2013 16:39 schreef Kirov het volgende:
http://www.telegraaf.nl/b(...)osie_in_Syrie__.html

[ afbeelding ]

Weet iemand wat voor bom dat geweest is?

شام حمص انفجار ضخم يهز أحياء المدينة جراء انفجار مستودعات الذخير التابعة لجيش النظام 1 8 2013

quote:

Op donderdag 1 augustus 2013 16:44 schreef deleriouz het volgende:

[..]

شام حمص انفجار ضخم يهز أحياء المدينة جراء انفجار مستودعات الذخير التابعة لجيش النظام 1 8 2013

Heeft wel iets weg van een Israelische bom van het type dat ook bij Qassioun nabij Damascus is gebruikt. Men spreekt echter van een ammo opslag (vermoedelijk met enige 'hulp') die de lucht in is gegaan.

quote:

Op donderdag 1 augustus 2013 22:50 schreef Terminator2000bc het volgende:

[..]

BBC... De As van Pedofilie

Best
British
Childmolesters

Hieronder een representatieve kaart van de huidige verhoudingen.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=51b_1375272895

Kan een mod, Sp2c, dit voor mij embedden? Ik weet niet hoe je dat met laifliek-filmpjes doet.

[..]

quote:

Op donderdag 1 augustus 2013 23:06 schreef Terminator2000bc het volgende:

[..]

خطير! تأهب ميلشيات شيعية عراقية للقتال مع الشبيحة في حلب!!!-1-8

Zou je kort kunnen toelichten wie deze mannen zijn en wat er wordt gezegd.

quote:

Op donderdag 1 augustus 2013 23:06 schreef Terminator2000bc het volgende:

[..]

خطير! تأهب ميلشيات شيعية عراقية للقتال مع الشبيحة في حلب!!!-1-8

Zou je kort kunnen toelichten wie deze mannen zijn en wat er wordt gezegd.

quote:

Op donderdag 1 augustus 2013 18:36 schreef Terminator2000bc het volgende:

[..]

Inderdaad. Daarnaast net iets te toevallig dat zo'n haatbaard een halve minuut voor de explosie, _{schijbaar masturberend en alla hakbar roepend,} het filmpje begint op te nemen.

Was jij niet die ene apache-piloot trouwens?

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 00:50 schreef Spanjaard5 het volgende:
Weet iemand meer over het verhaal van een koerdische massaslachting afgelopen week?

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 01:00 schreef expans het volgende:

[..]

Heb alleen berichten gelezen van Koerden zelf op fora, bestond steeds uit ''XX FSA/ISIS dood'' zonder vermelding van doden aan de kant van de PYD. En wat berichten over gevangen genomen burgers.

Maarja, om eerlijk te zijn vertrouw ik die eenzijdige berichten niet :d.

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 06:02 schreef Djibril het volgende:

[..]

Zou ik ook niet doen als ik je was.

Feit blijft wel dat islamisten Koerdische huizen in bezette dorpen hebben opgeblazen, 200 Koerdische burgers in gijzeling hebben genomen, IDs checken in bezette gebieden en zo Koerden oppakken.
En onder deze werkzaamheden zullen of sterker nog zijn en Koerdische burgers vermoord.

quote:

Op dinsdag 30 juli 2013 10:38 schreef Veldkamp het volgende:

[..]

Een belachelijke bewering.

quote:

The Syrian Air Force has repeatedly carried out indiscriminate, and in some cases deliberate, air strikes against civilians. These attacks are serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war), and people who commit such violations with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes.

The 80-page report, “Death from the Skies: Deliberate and Indiscriminate Air Strikes on Civilians,” is based on visits to 50 sites of government air strikes in opposition-controlled areas in Aleppo, Idlib, and Latakia governorates, and more than 140 interviews with witnesses and victims. The air strikes Human Rights Watch documented killed at least 152 civilians. According to a network of local Syrian activists, air strikes have killed more than 4,300 civilians across Syria since July 2012.

“In village after village, we found a civilian population terrified by their country’s own air force,” said Ole Solvang, a Human Rights Watch emergencies researcher who visited the sites and interviewed many of the victims and witnesses. “These illegal air strikes killed and injured many civilians and sowed a path of destruction, fear, and displacement.”

Media reports, YouTube videos, and information from opposition activists show that the Syrian government has conducted air strikes all over Syria on a daily basis since July 2012.

Through the on-site investigations and interviews, Human Rights Watch gathered information that indicates government forces deliberately targeted four bakeries where civilians were waiting in breadlines a total of eight times, and hit other bakeries with artillery attacks. Repeated aerial attacks on two hospitals in the areas Human Rights Watch visited strongly suggest that the government also deliberately targeted these facilities. At the time of Human Rights Watch’s visits to the two hospitals they had been attacked a total of seven times.

quote:

Every day children and civilians are being killed in air bombardments and artillery strikes all over Syria. Amnesty International's Donatella Rovera witnessed the scenes every day.

quote:

Every day children and other civilians are being killed and injured in indiscriminate air bombardments and artillery strikes by government armed forces all over Syria.

quote:

Government-ordered indiscriminate shelling. It means that day after day, civilians have become unwitting players in a conflict that was not theirs, victims of a kind of collective punishment by a regime targeting its own citizens. I’ve seen war before, but I don’t understand this strategy. Citadels of government force lie surrounded by valleys of a rebel population, both martial and innocent. Rebels fire crude artillery toward encircled regime military bases. When the regime fires back, it is erratic, aimed at nothing but people, whoever they may be.

quote:

Paulo Pinheiro told the U.N. General Assembly that “massacres and other unlawful killings are perpetrated with impunity” — most by pro-government forces and some by anti-government armed groups.

quote:

Pinheiro painted a devastating picture of the war-ravaged country: people fleeing to escape bombs from their own government,a collapsing economy and a conflict spilling across borders, “igniting tensions in the whole region.”

quote:

Pinheiro demanded that the government stop using imprecise weapons such as unguided missiles, cluster munitions and “thermobaric bombs” on civilian areas.

quote:

When it comes to men, more than 90 percent of the reports of sexualized violence have been allegedly perpetrated by government forces, which can perhaps be explained by the fact that most of these attacks occurred in detention facilities. Long used as a weapon against prisoners in Syria as in much of the world, rape appears to be utilized during this conflict in horrifyingly soul-crushing, creative ways. Beyond simply raping detainees, shabiha members or Syrian army soldiers have reportedly carried out the rapes of family members or other women front of prisoners.

quote:

Amnesty International is raising urgent concerns today about the threat to civilians living near opposition fighters’ bases in the Syrian governorate of Tartous. In a new briefing, the human rights group said civilians are at risk of extrajudicial executions at the hands of pro-government forces, following the deliberate killing of 13 members of the same family in the village of al-Baydah.

quote:

PFLP en Hezbollah bestrijden samen met het legitieme Syrische leger en op uitnodiging van de legitieme (seculiere) Syrische regering, buitenlandse terroristen.
Beide organisaties worden door Isra�l als terroristische groep gezien, maar dat werd de PLO, Fatah enz. ooit ook.

quote:

Jij herhaalt gewoon de Isra�lische propaganda.

quote:

Er is een enorm verschil tussen buitenlandse en moordende Al Nusra-terroristen en milities die het legitieme gezag helpen op uitnodiging van dat legitiem staatsgezag.

quote:

Wikileaks is geen sluitend bewijs.Wie weet een bewuste lek of gelekte ambtelijke propaganda?

quote:

Assad en Syri� hadden geen enkel belang om Al Qai'da in Irak te steunen.

quote:

When the United States launched Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, the Syrian regime did more than simply denounce the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. Fearful of the impact of an American presence next door on its own internal stability, and wary of the possibility of military action migrating across the Iraqi-Syrian border, the Assad regime launched a concerted—and ongoing—effort to first support Iraq’s army and subsequently fuel the insurgency that has emerged in the former Ba’athist state. As Syrian Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara told the Syrian parliament on March 30, 2003, “Syria has a national interest in the expulsion of the invaders from Iraq.”8
This strategy took on a number of forms. The Syrian regime mobilized Muslim public opinion in an effort to encourage jihadi infiltration into Iraq. It did so by creating religious sanction for instability in Iraq, with Syria’s senior cleric, Grand Mufti Ahmad Kaftaro, issuing a fatwa (religious edict) calling on Muslims “to use whatever means possible to defeat the [U.S.] aggression including suicide bombings against the Zionist Americans and British invaders.”9 Indeed, the Syrian regime made good on its policy by providing the Iraqi regime with military equipment including night-vision goggles and allowing jihadis to cross the border into Iraq to kill Americans.
Syria’s unhelpful role has also ratcheted up tensions between Damascus and Baghdad. In mid-2005, Iraq’s defense minister, Saadoun al-Dulaimi, criticized Damascus for ignoring Iraqi demands “to stop the infiltration of terrorists” and warned that “when the lava of the exploding volcano of Iraq overflows, it will first hit Damascus.”13 Al-Dulaimi’s criticisms were well-placed; Syria’s support of the insurgency, both direct and indirect, has greatly undermined the security environment in Iraq.

quote:

That said, the huge boost to local businesses along the border with Iraq—mostly illicit, such as the smuggling of goods and persons—also benefited the Syrian regime by generating jobs and income and freeing the central government from having to invest in remote areas during difficult economic times. In the immediate term, following the fall of the Saddam regime, supporting such networks may have brought significant dividends. According to Iraqi bank records, for example, Saddam himself withdrew over a billion U.S. dollars from different accounts, and these funds were then smuggled out of the country in cash. "In Syria the money was managed by Saddam's half-brother, Sabawi Ibrahim al-Hassan al-Tikriti, the former head of the feared Mukhabarat [intelligence services]," who was considered at the time by the United States "to be the chief financial facilitator of the insurgency in Syria."
The foreign fighter pipeline in Syria is believed to have benefitted the local populations on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border in the form of jobs, increased cash flow into the local economy, purchase of supplies, staples, and rents. One assessment of the Sinjar documents concludes that individual Syrians would earn more than $3,000 over the course of one year as a result of these activities.[15] This assumes that all thirty-nine Syrian smuggling contacts in the Sinjar records received an equal share of the cut from foreign fighters. Fifty-three of the ninety-three Syrian coordinators identified by name in the Sinjar records were paid by the fighters they transported into Iraq. Of these, Saudi fighters alone made forty-six payments, each averaging $2,535.[16]

quote:

In late October 2008, the US military launched a daring commando raid inside Syria, just several miles from the Iraqi border. The target was a top al Qaeda facilitator known as Abu Ghadiyah. Earlier that same year, the US Treasury Department designated Ghadiyah, a native Iraqi, and three of his family members as major al Qaeda players. They ran a pipeline in Syria for foreign fighters and suicide bombers traveling to Iraq.
Ghadiyah was appointed as the head of this Syrian-based network in 2004 by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the notorious overall leader of AQI until his demise in 2006. After Zarqawi's demise, Ghadiyah went to work for the new head of AQI, Abu Ayyub al Masri, who was also subsequently killed in 2010. Both Zarqawi and al Masri set up shop inside Iraq prior to the March 2003 US-led invasion.

quote:

Following its 2005 expulsion from Lebanon, the Syrian regime used its connections to jihadists to attempt to destabilize the Lebanese government, sponsoring the Al-Qaeda affiliate Fatah al-Islam, which established itself in Nahr al-Barid, a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. According to Lebanese government interrogation reports, captured jihadists reported links with Syrian intelligence.[54] Jihadist cells in Iraq also spoke casually of Syrian veterans of the Jund ash-Sham (Soldiers of Syria) in Lebanon.[55] Until an October 26, 2008 U.S. raid from Iraq killed him, Zarqawi's deputy, Sulayman Khaled Darwish (Abu 'l-Ghadiya), continued to receive safe haven in Syria.[56] Following Darwish's death, Sa'd al-Shammari took over his foreign fighter facilitation network and continued to operate it from inside Syria.[57] The list is long enough to suggest that a Syrian link to Al-Qaeda is more the rule than the exception. By providing a safe haven, the Syrian government is as complicit in assisting the terrorist group as was the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

quote:

Sterker nog, Assad en de Syrische geheime dienst hebben zelfs Al Qa'ida-gevangenen uit Irak in Syrische gevangenissen verhoord voor Amerikaanse en westerse staten. Met harde methoden inderdaad.

quote:

In deze tijd (2003-2009) werd Assad ook verheerlijkt in westerse media en Amerikaanse media. Syri� werd aangeprezen als model voor co�xistentie (wat het ook is). Bijvoorbeeld op ABC News:

quote:

Maar Assads weigering om de Palestijnen en Iran te verraden, deed hem in 2011 de das om. Hij wuifde steeds de Amerikaanse eisen hieromtrent weg. Dat heeft tot de huidige (2011-2013) Amerikaans-Turks-Saoedische islamistenopstand (proxy-agenten) tegen Assad geleid.

Ook stelde Assad steeds duidelijk stevige voorwaarden voor vredesgesprekken met Isra�l: bijvoorbeeld de teruggave van de Syrische Golan en de oplossing van het vraagstuk van de Palestijnse vluchtelingen en hun (door de VN verklaarde) recht op terugkeer naar de ouderlijke woningen en/of recht op financi�le compensatie door Isra�l.

quote:

Hetzelfde geldt voor Kadaffi en diens centrale bank en gouddinar-plannen.

quote:

Goh, hoor ik nu de Isra�lische propagandazenders en Amerikanen ratelen?

quote:

Een seculier pan-Arabisch socialistisch bewind vernietigen en als "kankercel" uitschelden.

quote:

Isra�l, de NAVO, VS en wahabitische Golfstaten steunen, bewapenen en financieren de islamistische radicale terroristen van Vrij Syrisch Leger en Jabhat al Nusra. Turkije is de grootste logistieke steun onder Erdogan.

quote:

En nu is Assad schuldig aan "islamitische terreur".

quote:

Of noem je het Palestijnse gewapende verzet voor het terugkrijgen van hun mensenrechten, vernietigde en gebulldozerde boerderijen, dorpen, olijfgaarden, moskee�n, kerken, kloosters, soefi-heiligdommen enz. "radicaal-islamitisch terrorisme"?

quote:

Ik niet. De Palestijnse strijd - die jij alleen "terroristisch" noemt

quote:

(jouw Isra�l steunt immers de terroristen met ziekenzorg, verpleging en zelfs wapens vanaf de Isra�lisch-bezette Syrische Golanhoogten) - is een andere strijd dan de terreurstrijd van buitenlandse takfiri-terroristen en jihadisten tegen de seculiere Syrische regering van oogarts Dr. Assad.

quote:

Inderdaad steunt Assad de Palestijnse bewegingen en militaire verzetsgroepen van Palestina.

Dus elke vijand van Isra�l is een "kankercel", en de salafisten en terroristen zijn legitieme opstandelingen?

Het is duidelijk waaruit jij handelt.

quote:

Een absurde vergelijking. Tot 2011 (tot 2009) was Assad een lieveling van de westerse staten, Rusland en de internationale gemeenschap. Juist wegens de antiterreuroperaties door de Syrische geheime diensten en juist wegens de Syrische maatregelen tegen takfiri's. Eerder werd Syri� volop gesteund om in Libanon na 1982 orde op zaken te stellen. Als gelijkwaardige (hoewel socialistische en pan-Arabische) staat in de statengemeenschap.

quote:

Syri� en haar huidige systeem zijn nooit illegitiem beschouwd zoals de Afghaanse Taliban altijd grotendeels.

quote:

Ik negeer jouw Isra�lische agitatie en propaganda inderdaad.

Het slaat als een tang op een koosjer varken. Dus nergens op.

quote:

Assad en zijn regering hebben hervormingen doorgevoerd, willen vrijheden herstellen en moeten dat nu ook wel. Dat eisen de Syri�rs die hen steunen nu ook gewoon.

quote:

Isra�l heeft nog geen kans op vrede serieus meer gegrepen, sinds Yitzhak Rabin vermoord werd door een settler. Syri� heeft meermaals vredesbesprekingen gewenst, indien Isra�l de Golan zou teruggeven. Isra�l weigerde. Isra�l wil blijkbaar deze escalatie.

Let op, niet de gewone Isra�lische burgers (Joden en Arabische minderheden), maar wel de extreem-rechtse en militaristisch-financi�le elites binnen de Isra�lische staatstop. Helaas. Rabin was een moedige held die vrede wilde en zou hebben gekregen.

quote:

Assad De Syrische bevolking zal echter niet wijken voor joodse Amerikaanse en Joodse Europese kolonisten criminelen die Palestijnse Syrische dorpen en boerderijen ook nu nog afbreken. Zonder oorlog, zonder Arabische militaire operaties tegen Isra�l zoals in het vroege verleden van de staat Isra�l. Assad De Syrische bevolking is een man volk van principes, van verdraagzaamheid, maar ook van rechtlijnigheid (alhoewel ). Assad Het Syrische volk is geen extremist en is geen terrorist. Het zou hebben onderhandeld, maar met rovers en dieven zonder berouw en zonder vredesbereidheid doet men dat niet. (Isra�l Assad koloniseert en boort nu zelfs naar gas en olie op de door hem bezette Syrische Golan Koerdische gebieden....)

quote:

Nogmaals, ik zou persoonlijk nooit op Assad of diens Baath-partij stemmen, moest ik Syri�r zijn. Ik zou een andere partij verkiezen. Tegelijkertijd vertel ik hier niets meer dan de realiteit, ver af van de medialeugens en -propaganda die de westerse bevolkingen (onze medemensen) worden opgedrongen.

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 16:53 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Je kunt je kop in het zand blijven steken, maar de bewijzen dat Assad Al-Qaida actief heeft gesteund zijn keihard.

quote:

Hezbollah, Hamas agree to disagree on Syria at high-level Beirut meeting

BEIRUT: A high-level meeting grouping Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad was held in Beirut late last month, another sign that tense relations between resistance groups are thawing.

A senior Palestinian source told The Daily Star Friday that the meeting brought together Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, Ramadan Shallah, the secretary-general of Islamic Jihad, and Musa Abu Marzouq, the deputy head of Hamas’ politburo.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the attendees discussed developments in Lebanon, Palestine and other Arab countries.

The three men agreed to take measures to prevent any attempts to foment Sunni-Shiite strife in Lebanon and avoid dragging Palestinian factions in Lebanon into domestic conflicts.

According to the source, the three tackled the divergent views of Hezbollah and Hamas over the Syrian crisis.

They agreed that while each group had its opinion concerning the crisis, their different stances should not adversely impact relations between Hamas and Hezbollah.

The meeting came as ties between Hezbollah and Hamas remained strained due to sharp differences over the war in Syria.

Hamas is a supporter of the rebel-led Syrian uprising, while Hezbollah is a staunch backer of the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Hezbollah announced its heavy involvement in fighting alongside the Syrian army in May. The party played a major role in driving Syrian rebels out of the strategic town of Qusair in June and the district of Khaldieh in Homs last month.

The meeting also comes after the fall from power of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, a major Hamas backer.

Hezbollah and Hamas were close allies prior to the outbreak of Syria’s unrest in March 2011. Sami Shehab, a Hezbollah member, was arrested in Egypt in 2009 after trying to smuggle arms to the Gaza Strip, which is governed by Hamas.

The Daily Star :: Lebanon

quote:

Following the assassination of Issa Hisso, a Kurdish politician, Kurdish forces declared “النفير العام” (“general mobilization”—”nafir” refers to a horn blown for warning or before battle) asking all able people to take up arms. Turkish forces are now in full alert along the border.

Now in a stellar display of unity and cooperation vis-a-vis the Kurds, the FSA, the ISIS, Ahrar al-Sham, and a host of other groups have apparently together issued a joint statement against the PKK. Thanks to A.N. for providing the following translation of the article from عكس السير:

"We, the battalions working in the cities of Minbij and Sirin and Shyoukh and Jarablos:

The revolutionary and military council, Liwaa Al Tawhid, Liwad Jond Al Rahman, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Ahrar Al Sham, Liwaa Ashab Al yamin, Liwaa Al Yarmouk, Liwaa Ahrar Al Shyoukh, Souqour Al Sham:

After we became certain that the PKK is without a doubt a party belonging to the regime of the tyrant criminal Bashar al-Assad—because they hosted delegations loyal to the regime (Naser Qandil) in order to setup plans to destabilize the the safe areas; and received weapons and ammunition by air to execute these plans and help this regime as did Hizb Allat in Qusair; and they pulled their forces from the mountains of Turkey and Iraq and brought them to north Syria; and lately they stopped wheat trucks from reaching the liberated areas; and denied checkpoint passage to the mujahidin heading to the battle fronts with the regime; and the big displacement campaign that they’re running in their areas; and the random apprehensions on their checkpoints; and their attempts to create a ethnic fitna between Arabs and Kurds who lived together for hundreds of years and who share a strong bonds and family ties and compassion towards each other and they turned it into a hostile relationship with hate and resentment that drains a lot of our time, effort, blood and money; and thus achieving the goals of the broken and tired regime giving him enough time to catch his breath and arrange his cards and survive in front of the large advancement of our blessed revolution—and based on that we decided:
1 – Initiation of a full siege of the city of Ain al-Arab and preparations for any acts of treachery by the collaborator party
2 – Cleansing of the pockets of PKK that are among our ranks
3 – Declaration of the Minbij-Hassakah a military road that should be liberated from all PKK checkpoints
4 – Cessations of all negotiations and political meetings between us and any group that represents the PKK
And Thus we say:
First: We send a message to all the Kurdish groups that have no connection to the regime or the regime collaborator PKK that we see you like a brother sees a brother and shares his happiness and sadness and land and water and air.
Second: Any rebel battalion or inhabitant of the liberated areas that makes an agreement with the PKK is a traitor to Allah, the Prophet, and Muslims, and will be punished by all the battalions.
And finally: Our goal is to pleasure Allah and to ensure a safe life for our people in Syria and to maintain the unity of the Muslim Syrian people and to maintain the progress of our blessed revolution until the fall of the criminal regime."

Joshualandis.com

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 16:53 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

-knip-

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 17:42 schreef Charismatisch het volgende:

[..]

Niet alleen de oogarts steunde al-Qaeda. Maar Iran steunt ook bepaalde al-Qaeda groeperingen en leden (en de Taliban in Afghanistan):

The situation in Yemen shows that the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is not strictly sectarian. Indeed, Iran has demonstrated a capacity to reach across religious divides to work with Sunni groups that share an anti-Saudi or anti-US agenda. According to Saudi claims, Iran is providing covert financial support to the Sunni-Wahhabi group Ansar Al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliated militant group in Yemen. This is occurring despite the divergent ideological agendas of the Iranian regime and the Sunni group. Tehran’s aim has been to encourage Ansar Al-Sharia to kidnap more Saudi diplomats to force the monarchy to comply with their demands. Likewise, Iran has provided support to the Taliban in Afghanistan. It has additionally provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda’s most senior leaders, such as Yasin al-Suri, Saif al-Adel and Abu Muhammad al-Masri. Not surprisingly, Iran’s connections with the salafi-jihadist movement have evolved as the once cooperative relations between al-Qaeda and Saudi Arabia have become increasingly hostile.

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 17:42 schreef Charismatisch het volgende:

[..]

Niet alleen de oogarts steunde al-Qaeda. Maar Iran steunt ook bepaalde al-Qaeda groeperingen en leden (en de Taliban in Afghanistan):

The situation in Yemen shows that the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is not strictly sectarian. Indeed, Iran has demonstrated a capacity to reach across religious divides to work with Sunni groups that share an anti-Saudi or anti-US agenda. According to Saudi claims, Iran is providing covert financial support to the Sunni-Wahhabi group Ansar Al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliated militant group in Yemen. This is occurring despite the divergent ideological agendas of the Iranian regime and the Sunni group. Tehran’s aim has been to encourage Ansar Al-Sharia to kidnap more Saudi diplomats to force the monarchy to comply with their demands. Likewise, Iran has provided support to the Taliban in Afghanistan. It has additionally provided sanctuary to al-Qaeda’s most senior leaders, such as Yasin al-Suri, Saif al-Adel and Abu Muhammad al-Masri. Not surprisingly, Iran’s connections with the salafi-jihadist movement have evolved as the once cooperative relations between al-Qaeda and Saudi Arabia have become increasingly hostile.

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 18:49 schreef Schurkenstaat het volgende:

[..]

Leuke poging, maar stuk voor stuk geen sterke argumenten. Dat komt omdat HRW e.d. de zgn. vrijheidsstrijders juridisch gezien meestal als burgers kwalificeren. En niet heel onterecht, omdat dit geen geuniformeerde strijders zijn en dus ook lastig te identificeren zijn.

Nogal logisch dat Assad via die redenering het vooral op zgn. burgers gemunt heeft.

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 21:51 schreef Peunage het volgende:
Iran heeft samen met de VS tegen de Taliban gevochten in Afghanistan.

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 22:12 schreef Charismatisch het volgende:

[..]

Klopt. Als dank voor hun services werden ze door Bush als As van het Kwaad bestempeld. Daarna ging Iran toch maar weer steun verlenen aan de anti-Amerikaanse milities in Afghanistan en Irak.

quote:

Assad’s no enemy of al-Qaeda


Last week, General Salim Idris, the head of the Supreme Military Command, made this point for the first time in a little-noticed interview he gave to al-Arabiya, about a fortnight or so after one of his deputy commanders was shot in the chest by the coastal emir of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, the Iraqi-based al-Qaeda syndicate now highly active in Syria. In the course of explaining how these “foreigners” were generally fucking up the noble rebel cause, Idris let slip this comment: “We refuse them strongly because unfortunately they work with the regime of the criminal Bashar al-Assad.” A cynic would pause only momentarily before concluding that this was little more than a shrewd propaganda trick for Idris to perform, desperate as he is for long-promised and long-deferred U.S. weapons. After all, there is a budding crisis between the moderate Free Syrian Army forces under his command and al-Qaeda. What better way to convince Washington that you’re the kosher sort of rebel than by signposting as both a happy antagonist of the latter as well as the regime?

According to those close to Idris, this interview deviated from his usual talking points in the press, where he’s been careful to distance himself from jihadists, but hasn't repudiate them outright since Supreme Military Command units partner militarily with the Islamic State and the other, older al-Qaeda iteration in Syria with which it has lately merged, Jabhat al-Nusra. Few were expecting Idris to effectively denounce the Bin Ladenists as collaborators with Damascus, which in revolutionary terms is about as bad as declaring all-out war against them, which no one this senior in the FSA has yet done.

At the most literal level, Idris is correct. The Guardian in May quoted a Western official who said that the regime is indeed cooperating with Jabhat al-Nusra, the other al-Qaeda syndicate in Syria, which technically merged with the Islamic State after pledging allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, because al-Nusra controls the oil fields in Deir Ezzor. According to a Muslim Brotherhood-linked rebel fighter, the regime “pay[s] more than 150m Syrian lire [�1.4m] monthly to Jabhat al-Nusra to guarantee oil is kept pumping through two major oil pipelines in Banias and Latakia. Middlemen trusted by both sides are to facilitate the deal and transfer money to the organisation.”

Occluded in the carefully scripted and produced reinvention of the regime as a mortal enemy of al-Qaeda is the fact that it was once the chief facilitator and egger-on of al-Qaeda and may in fact retain vestiges of this old relationship even unto the present day. Every Syrian revolutionary I’ve ever met or spoken with believes that, at some level, the Machiavellian who used to send “ratlines” of al-Qaeda fighters into Iraq and provide newly arrived jihadist recruits with safe houses in the Jazira, is still working with these erstwhile allies, even at the cost of seeing his own military and security installations blown up in suicide or car bombings. The purpose is to advance a perception that has in fact gained considerable traction in the international press in the last year or so; namely, that Assad is enjoined in the global war on terror and that his enemies are American and Western enemies who should not be aided or armed in any way. (The FSB, Russia’s successor agency to the KGB, has been credibly accused of staging false flag terrorist bombings in and outside of Moscow in 2000 order to rally domestic and international opinion for the Second Chechen War. Because Syria’s intelligence and military elite have all been trained in the former Soviet Union or in post-Soviet Russia, I’d wager that Moscow has been more than a curious bystander in helping Assad realize the propaganda value to be mined from such a perception.)

This would probably be easily dismissed as a conspiracy theory but for the fact that former regime officials have said much the same thing. So have al-Nusra defectors, one of whom told a colleague of mine in Idlib recently that it was absolutely the case that the mukhabarat continues to maintain close ties with the organization now blacklisted by the United States.

To date, the most prominent regime defector to make this allegation was Nawaf al-Fares, the former Syrian ambassador to Iraq, who turned against his embassy and his government in June 2012. Al-Fares is the chief of the Oqaydat tribe, a major clan in Deir Ezzor, and is thus familiar with the terrain that abuts Anbar Province and was used as the gateway for 90 percent of the foreign fighters joining al-Qaeda in Iraq during the height of that country’s civil war. He told The Sunday Telegraph a year ago that that jihadi units he himself helped send into Iraq were immolating themselves in Syria, at the behest of the regime. One such spectacular, Fares said, was against the military intelligence complex in al-Qazzaz, Damascus in May 2012 (just a month prior to his defection) in which 55 people were killed, and 370 wounded. “I know for certain that not a single serving intelligence official was harmed during that explosion, as the whole office had been evacuated 15 minutes beforehand,” he said. “All the victims were passersby instead. All these major explosions have been perpetrated by al-Qaeda through cooperation with the security forces.”

Of particular interest in al-Fares’ exposure of this alliance was his mention of a U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) raid in October 2008 into the village of al-Sukariya near the border town Abu Kamal to kill Abu Ghadiya, or Badran Turki al-Mazidih, a smuggler in his late twenties who helped funnel explosives and personnel into Anbar Province. At the peak of his success, Abu Ghadiya was moving 100 or so fighters per month, all with the complete knowledge and likely consent of Assef Shawkat, Assad’s now-assassinated brother-in-law. Fares told CNN that the camp hit by the JSOC team in an operation remarkably similar to the one that would later kill Bin Laden in Abbottabad was not only under the control of Shawkat, but that Shawkat actually visited the scene an hour after Abu Ghadiya’s death. (When then-British Foreign Secretary David Miliband confronted Assad personally in Damascus about Abu Ghadiya’s presence in Syria under obvious mukhabarat patronage, the dictator not only lied and said the man was never there, but then, as is his logical wont, angrily claim that Abu Ghadiya’s snuffing by the Americans was a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.)

The details of this raid, as recounted by Fares, were not only confirmed by an unnamed Obama administration official cited by CNN at the time but then later substantiated and expanded upon in an essay for Foreign Policy published several months later – in October 2012 – and written Michael R. Gordon and Wesley S. Morgan, based on an excerpt from Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor’s book, The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. (In a further sign of al-Fares’ credibility, he also told the BBC shortly after his defection that not only would Assad use chemical weapons if he felt severely threatened by the opposition but he’d likely already done so.)

This accusation of complicity with al-Qaeda was corroborated recently by another regime defector in an interview scarcely noticed by the Western press. Affaq Ahmad, the former right-hand man of General Jamil Hasan, the head of Syria’s Air Force intelligence and one of Assad’s most brutal and trusted henchman, defected after the regime’s kidnapping and murder of Hamza al-Khatib in 2011. He first went to Jordan and now is based somewhere in France. He said that the mukhabarat has thoroughly infiltrated jihadist and non-jihadist rebel groups in Syria at the command level and – even more significant – that it controls several brigades that have simply stopped fighting regime forces altogether. Ahmad’s comments are worth quoting at length:

The infiltration usually is focused on the sponsors, the grand Sheikh, or the top leaders of the groups, and mainly via manipulating the sources of financial support.

Currently, there are more than 25 brigades in the Free Syrian Army [Ahmad appears to use this term to encompass both jihadists and non-jihadists –ed] in Aleppo, and Hama that do not get close to the regime forces, nor get in fights with them. They also decline to get into fights in the coastal areas due to an agreement between them and the regime that had been brokered by the financial backers of these brigades.

Actually, the jihadist groups and brigades were very useful for the regime because they provided a justification for the regime’s insistence on a military solution, and provided some legitimacy under the cover of the War on Terror.

These groups did not cross the red lines that were agreed on by the regime and their sponsors. This included the regime accepting the killing by those groups of Alawis and Druze in order to use that to convince these minorities to rally around the regime and hold on to it.

Which is certainly barbaric enough a plan for Assad to take up. The Palestine Branch of Syrian military intelligence and the Special Operations Division of Air Force intelligence, headed by Colonel Suhail Hassan, are the mukhabarat bureaus in charge of overseeing the infiltration effort, Ahmad explained.

Elizabeth O’Bagy of the Syrian Emergency Task Force relayed the following anecdote to me. A few FSA commanders recently went to one of the tribal authorities (not on anyone’s side in the revolution but its own) and complained about al-Nusra’s parlays with the regime and tribes of Deir Ezzor designed to divvy up the profits from the Syrian oil sector. The tribal authority confirmed everything but told the FSA commanders not to raise a fuss because “we’re making a lot money on oil sales.” O’Bagy also said that al-Nusra and the Islamic State is rumored to have cut a deal with the regime not to participate on front-lines of battles and reduce spectacular attacks in exchange for being allowed to govern their own territories in the north.

“That is what happened in Raqqa,” O’Bagy said. “It was a negotiated solution.”

What this means is that al-Qaeda’s rampage through Syria, now the latest obsession of counterterrorism and Pentagon officials, is not really a simply case of “blowback”; it’s more like a controlled demolition by an extremely savvy contractor. This should also complicate one of the more brittle cliches you continue to hear Washington, which is that we don’t really know who’s who in the opposition. That may be true, but the more important question is: do we even remember who’s who in the regime?

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

quote:

Op zaterdag 3 augustus 2013 22:11 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Amnesty, HRW, journalisten en de VN die rebellen voornamelijk als burgers beschouwen? Ik weet dat Amnesty etc weleens de waarheid kunnen verdraaien, maar dat het zo ver zou gaan is nieuw voor me. Volgens het oorlogsrecht is het ook zo dat je niet meer als burger kunt worden beschouwd wanneer je de wapens oppakt. Dus ik zou daar graag een bron voor zien.

quote:

Op zondag 4 augustus 2013 00:10 schreef mr_jack het volgende:
Abu Sakar. rot in hell

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

quote:

Syri� verbiedt gebruik buitenlands geld

Iedere Syrische handelaar die zijn waar verkoopt tegen buitenlandse valuta kan voortaan tot 10 jaar gevangenisstraf krijgen. Dat staat in een nieuw decreet dat de Syrische president Bashar al-Assad zondag heeft uitgevaardigd. .

Het decreet verbiedt het gebruik van iedere andere munteenheid dan de Syrische pond. Die munt staat ernstig onder druk sinds de burgeroorlog, die sinds 2011 het land in zijn greep heeft.

Het besluit versterkt reeds bestaande verboden op het handelen in buitenlandse munteenheden. Handelaren verwachten echter niet dat deze ingreep zal voorkomen dat men zijn toevlucht zoekt tot de stabielere Amerikaanse dollar.

quote:

Op zondag 4 augustus 2013 09:55 schreef Schurkenstaat het volgende:

[..]

Ze verdraaien de waarheid niet. Het zijn geen offici�le strijdkrachten (de organisatie kan ongetwijfeld niet goed worden aangetoond, want men draagt geen universele kleding en/of kenmerken). De gesneuvelden hebben zodoende de militaire en juridische status van "burgers".

Het verdraait echter wel het beeld van het conflict.

quote:

Op maandag 5 augustus 2013 00:30 schreef Charismatisch het volgende:
Interessant artikel dit, geeft een totaal ander beeld van het conflict. Wat doet Bandar "Bush" in Moskou?

The Syrian Problem: Saudi Prince Bandar and Putin meet in Moscow
http://www.syrianews.cc/syrian-problem-saudi-bandar-putin/

twitter:

Charles_Lister twitterde op maandag 05-08-2013 om 23:44:48 The Syrian Coalition has issued a statement confirming and congratulating rebels for seizing Minagh airbase this evening. #Syria #Aleppo reageer retweet

twitter:

Charles_Lister twitterde op maandag 05-08-2013 om 23:44:48 The Syrian Coalition has issued a statement confirming and congratulating rebels for seizing Minagh airbase this evening. #Syria #Aleppo reageer retweet

quote:

'Assad heeft nieuwe gifgasaanval gepleegd'

Legertroepen van de Syrische machthebber Bashar al-Assad zouden opnieuw chemische wapens hebben ingezet tegen de opstandelingen.

Volgens een Syrische mensenrechtenorganisatie in Londen heeft het leger dit weekend gifgas gebruikt toen het probeerde posities van de rebellen in te nemen ten noordoosten van de hoofdstad Damascus.

Tientallen inwoners van de plaats Adra moesten worden behandeld tegen misselijkheid en ademnood. Ook zeker 30 strijders kampten met klachten.

Het regime en de rebellen beschuldigen elkaar geregeld van het gebruik van gifgas in de ruim 2 jaar durende burgeroorlog. Een team van de Verenigde Naties zal ''zo snel mogelijk'' naar het land reizen om de zaak te onderzoeken.

quote:

Rebellen Syri� rukken op in gebied Alawieten
Syrische rebellengroepen zijn een offensief begonnen in het gebied waar de familie Assad vandaan komt.

Oppositiegroepen stellen dat strijders oprukken in de richting van Latakia, de belangrijkste havenstad van het land.
De aanval heeft los van dat strategische doel ook symbolische betekenis. Rebellen naderden maandag de plaats Qardaha. Dat is het geboortedorp van Hafiz al-Assad, de vorige president en vader van huidig heerser Bashar al-Assad. In het gebied in het westen van het land wonen veel Alawieten, de religieuze minderheid waar de Assads toe behoren.
Volgens een woordvoerder van een tv-zender van de oppositie hebben de rebellen voordeel van het bergachtige landschap. ''In dit ruige terrein hebben tanks weinig nut voor het regime.'' Op videobeelden, waarvan de oorsprong overigens niet gecontroleerd kan worden, was te zien dat rebellen anti-tankwapens afvuren en later bidden naast een verlaten tank.
Al-Qaeda
Onder de aanvallers zouden twee aan de terroristische organisatie al-Qaeda verbonden groepen zijn. Onder hun leden zijn onder meer zelfmoordcommando's. Die zouden ook een rol hebben gespeeld bij een andere overwinning die de Syrische rebellen maandagavond meldden. Ze claimden de verovering van een militair vliegveld in de buurt van de grens met Turkije. De basis was acht maanden lang belegerd.

nu.nl

quote:

A gruesome video has emerged on the Internet, showing foreign-backed militants in Syria setting three Syrian Kurds on fire.

quote:

Op dinsdag 6 augustus 2013 16:03 schreef expans het volgende:
Is een oud filmpje uit Irak.

quote:

Volgens een Syrische mensenrechtenorganisatie in Londen

quote:

'Assad heeft nieuwe gifgasaanval gepleegd'

quote:

Rebellen Syri� rukken op in gebied Alawieten

quote:

Op dinsdag 6 augustus 2013 19:37 schreef Kesefkesef het volgende:
Ondanks het feit dat Isra�l en Syri� in oorlog zijn behandelen diverse Isra�lische ziekenhuizen toch Syrische gewonden. Veelal mannen in de leeftijd tussen de 20 en 30 die gewond raken in de strijd, maar steeds vaker worden ook kinderen en vrouwen binnengebracht.

Dat schrijft de New York Times.

Omdat beide landen in oorlog met elkaar zijn, blijven de grenzen gesloten voor vluchtelingen. Toch wordt de medische zorg door de autoriteiten gehonoreerd. In totaal zijn sinds maart zeker 100 Syri�rs behandeld in ziekenhuizen in Noord-Isra�l. De kosten zijn voor de Isra�lische staat.

Onder de gewonden is op dit moment een 13-jarig meisje die al ruim een maand in het ziekenhuis verblijft. Samen met haar 9-jarige broertje ging ze naar de supermarkt in haar dorp waar ze getroffen werden door een granaat. Haar broertje kwam om het leven, het meisje is overgebracht naar een Isra�lisch ziekenhuis waar ze intensieve operaties onderging aan onder meer haar gezicht en armen.

De familie wist lange tijd niet waar het meisje was. Nu is haar tante bij haar in het ziekenhuis en mag ze binnenkort terug naar haar geboorteland. Haar tante: “Ik zeg niet dat we in Isra�l zijn geweest, ik ben bang voor de reacties”.
http://www.refdag.nl/nieu(...)he_gewonden_1_759572

http://www.nytimes.com/20(...)s-wounded.html?_r=1&

quote:

Op dinsdag 6 augustus 2013 19:43 schreef Peunage het volgende:

[..]

Ze behandelen niet alleen gewonde 13 jarige meisjes. Ze begonnen met gewonde FSA strijders.

quote:

Syri� spreekt bevroren tegoeden aan om voedselcrisis aan te pakken

Syri� spreekt zijn bevroren tegoeden aan om de uitgeputte voedselvoorraden aan te vullen. Brussel en Washington stemmen daar, met het oog op de ernst van de humanitaire crisis, mee in. Dat meldt persbureau Reuters.

Door de burgeroorlog, die al meer dan twee jaar voortduurt, heerst er een ernstig voedseltekort in Syri�. Het land ervaart de belabberdste graanoogst in drie decennia en de economie lijdt onder de bevroren tegoeden. President Bashar al-Assad heeft nu echter een manier gevonden om die tegoeden aan de spreken, namelijk door ze in te zetten om de grootschalige voedselcrisis in zijn land aan te pakken.

quote:

Op dinsdag 6 augustus 2013 17:35 schreef Djibril het volgende:

[..]

uhm, nee

Ik snap dat het als Turk moeilijk is om te zien dat Koerden steeds meer macht krijgen in Syrie maar je kan de feiten niet blijven ontkennen.
Paar posts terug zei je al dat het vooral propaganda is van de Koerden maar nu krijg je beelden en nog ga je het ontkennen.

quote:

Oppositie: tientallen rebellen Syri� gedood

Tientallen opstandelingen zijn woensdagochtend vroeg omgekomen toen zij in de buurt van de stad Adra, ten oosten van de Syrische hoofdstad Damascus, in een hinderlaag van het leger liepen. Dat heeft het Syrisch Observatorium voor de Mensenrechten, dat de oppositie in Syri� steunt, vanuit de Libanese hoofdstad Beiroet laten weten.

Er zouden 62 opstandelingen zijn omgekomen. Het staatspersbureau SANA bevestigde dat er een aanval is geweest, maar noemde geen dodental. Alle opstandelingen zouden zijn gedood.
De opstandelingen zouden hebben behoord tot al-Nusra, een beweging die banden heeft met het terreurnetwerk al-Qaeda

quote:

(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has offered Russia economic incentives including a major arms deal and a pledge not to challenge Russian gas sales if Moscow scales back support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Middle East sources and Western diplomats said on Wednesday.

The proposed deal between two of the leading power brokers in Syria's devastating civil war was set out by Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan at a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week, they said.

Russia has supported Assad with arms and diplomatic cover throughout the war and any change in Moscow's stance would remove a major obstacle to action on Syria by the United Nations Security Council.

Syrian opposition sources close to Saudi Arabia said Prince Bandar offered to buy up to $15 billion of Russian weapons as well as ensuring that Gulf gas would not threaten Russia's position as a main gas supplier to Europe.

In return, Saudi Arabia wanted Moscow to ease its strong support of Assad and agree not to block any future Security Council Resolution on Syria, they said.

A Gulf source familiar with the matter confirmed that Prince Bandar offered to buy large quantities of arms from Russia, but that no cash amount was specified in the talks.

One Lebanese politician close to Saudi Arabia said the meeting between Bandar and Putin lasted four hours. "The Saudis were elated about the outcome of the meeting," said the source, without elaborating.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, could not immediately be reached on Wednesday for comment about the meeting. A Saudi Foreign Ministry official was also not immediately available to respond.

Putin's initial response to Bandar's offer was inconclusive, diplomats say. One Western diplomat in the Middle East said the Russian leader was unlikely to trade Moscow's recent high profile in the region for an arms deal, however substantial.

He said Russian officials also appeared skeptical that Saudi Arabia had a clear plan for stability in Syria if Assad fell.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

However, in a possible sign of greater flexibility by Moscow, other diplomats said that in the run-up to the meeting Russia put pressure on Assad to allow in a U.N. mission to investigate the suspected use of chemical weapons.

The U.N. team is expected to visit Syria next week.

"This was one of those unannounced meetings that could prove much more important than the public diplomatic efforts being made on Syria," one diplomat said.

A senior Syrian opposition figure said there had been a "build-up of Russian-Saudi contacts prior to the meeting".

"Bandar sought to allay two main Russian fears: that Islamist extremists will replace Assad, and that Syria would become a conduit for Gulf, mainly Qatari, gas at the expense of Russia," he said. "Bandar offered to intensify energy, military and economic cooperation with Moscow."

Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Muslim powers have been strong supporters of the mainly Sunni rebels battling Assad, from Syria's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. The rebels have been joined by foreign Sunni jihadis.

Assad has enjoyed military support from Iran and fighters from Hezbollah and Iraqi Shi'ites.

Russia has maintained military sales to Syria throughout the two year conflict in which 100,000 people have been killed, and helped block three U.N. draft resolutions criticizing Assad's crackdown on the mainly peaceful protests against him in 2011.

The Security Council has been considering a possible resolution on aid for Syria for several months and a shift in position by Moscow could alleviate this.

Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based defense think tank CAST, said he had no direct knowledge of the offer, but he would not be surprised if a contract to supply Saudi Arabia with 150 Russian T-90 tanks were revived.

"There was an order of T-90s that was stopped for mysterious reasons, and if this is a resurrection of that order then we could suspect that the Saudis want something in return and that something could be linked to Syria," said Pukhov, who is close to Russia's Defense Ministry.

"If the Saudis want Moscow to outright drop Assad, they will refuse the deal, but they may have a more nuanced position, which they could possibly agree to."

Russia and Saudi Arabia penned an arms contract in 2008 for 150 T-90s as well as more than 100 Mi-17 and Mi-35 attack helicopters as well as BMP-3 infantry fighting vehicles, but the contract has stalled for years.

Russian newspaper Kommersant reported at the time that the contract was concluded to persuade Moscow to curtail its ties with Iran, though the Kremlin denied that report.

quote:

BEIRUT — Moscow has rejected a Saudi proposal to abandon Syria's president in return for a huge arms deal and a pledge to boost Russian influence in the Arab world, diplomats told AFP.
On July 31, President Vladimir Putin, a strong backer of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, met Saudi Arabia's influential intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, after which both Moscow and Riyadh kept a lid on the substance of the talks.
"Every two years, Bandar bin Sultan meets his Russian counterparts, but this time, he wanted to meet the head of state," said a European diplomat who shuttles between Beirut and Damascus.
"During the meeting at the Kremlin, the Saudi official explained to his interlocutor that Riyadh is ready to help Moscow play a bigger role in the Middle East at a time when the United States is disengaging from the region."
Bandar proposed that Saudi Arabia buy $15 billion (11 billion euros) of weapons from Russia and invest "considerably in the country," the source said.
The Saudi prince also reassured Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it will be "completely" in the Saudis' hands and will not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports, the diplomat said.
In 2009, Assad refused to sign an agreement with Qatar for an overland pipeline running from the Gulf to Europe via Syria to protect the interests of its Russian ally, which is Europe's top supplied of natural gas.
An Arab diplomat with contacts in Moscow said: "President Putin listened politely to his interlocutor and let him know that his country would not change its strategy."
"Bandar bin Sultan then let the Russians know that the only option left in Syria was military and that they should forget about Geneva because the opposition would not attend."
Russia and the United States have been trying for months to organise an international peace conference between Assad's regime and the opposition to take place in Geneva, but so far to no avail.
Asked about the Putin-Bandar meeting, a Syrian politician said: "As was the case before with Qatar and Lavrov (in talks), Saudi Arabia thinks that politics is a simple matter of buying people or countries. It doesn't understand that Russia is a major power and that this is not how it draws up policy."
"Syria and Russia have had close ties for over half a century in all fields and it's not Saudi rials that will change this fact," he added.
The meeting between Bandar and Putin came amid tension between Moscow and Riyadh over the conflict in Syria, as Russia has accused the Saudis of "financing and arming terrorists and extremist groups" in the war which has killed more than 100,000 people since March 2011.
While there was no official reaction to the meeting, Russian experts also said Putin had apparently turned down the Saudi offer.
According to military expert Alexander Goltz from online opposition newspaper Ejednevny, "such an agreement seems extremely improbable."
"Support for Assad is a matter of principle for Vladimir Putin," he said. "Even the bait of $15 billion, a huge sum that represents two years' turnover for Rosoboronexport (Russia's arms exporting agency), will have no effect."
Independent security expert Andrei Soldatov, who runs the Agentura.ru website said: "This disinformation is aimed more at destabilising Assad and his entourage.
"Assad's position is growing stronger and stronger, and the Kremlin knows this. Turning against them in this situation would be very stupid ... And don't forget that in general the Saudis take years to keep their promises."

quote:

Op donderdag 8 augustus 2013 19:14 schreef IPA35 het volgende:

[..]

http://www.france24.com/e(...)drop-assad-arms-deal



Hebben de Saoedi�rs niks beter te doen? Het het stenigen van autorijdende vrouwen of zo...

Overigens hoeven we ons heen zorgen te maken over een offensief in Latakia hoor. De meeste van die paar dorpjes zijn inmiddels heroverd en de strijders die daarbij zijn gedood waren hoofdzakelijk buitenlanders.

Het was dan ook gewoon achterlijk om juist daar een offensief te starten zeker nu zij hun manschappen hard nodig hebben in Homs en Idlib. Dan daarbij zijn Salafisten niet bepaald welkom in Latakia.

http://sana.sy/eng/337/2013/08/08/496361.htm

quote:

Op vrijdag 9 augustus 2013 00:57 schreef rakotto het volgende:

[..]

Alsof Syrie nu niet in de handen is van Rusland en Iran. Onder Assad of na Assad (mits in handen van andere landen) is niet echt iets om trots op te zijn.

quote:

Op vrijdag 9 augustus 2013 18:45 schreef expans het volgende:
Goddamn, reallife cod dit.

جبهة فتح العاصمة ضرب رتل دبابات على جبهة كرجات العباسيين 6/8/2013

جبهة فتح العاصمة : مميز جدا استهداف دبابة من قبل المجاهدين 7/8/2013

quote:

[....zie bron...]Het oostelijke deel van de stad is grotendeels in handen van gewapende milities, terwijl het Syrische leger het westelijke deel van Aleppo controleert. Daar bevinden zich de meeste christelijke wijken. Die zijn overbevolkt vanwege een vluchtelingenstroom. De inwoners van dit deel van de stad dreigen van de honger om te komen.

De gewapende Syrische oppositie is een blokkade begonnen. Aleppo is omsingeld en voedsel kan de stad niet meer bereiken. Met als gevolg dat fruit, groente en vlees niet langer voorradig zijn en de enkele producten die nog te verkrijgen zijn, worden verkocht tegen astronomische prijzen. Binnen enkele dagen dreigt er ook geen brood meer beschikbaar te zijn, omdat er bijna geen tarwe meer voorhanden is.
Geen maaltijden

De gevolgen zijn dramatisch. De christelijke liefdadigheids�organisatie al-Ihsan moest haar werk stoppen. Zij verstrekte dagelijks maaltijden aan 35.000 mensen. Een soortgelijke door de jezu�eten geleide organisatie staat op het punt haar maaltijdvoorziening aan armen en vluchtelingen te staken. De arts uit Aleppo schrijft dat vrijwel alle inwoners van de stad tussen de 8 en de 18 kilo aan gewicht hebben verloren.

Inwoners van Aleppo wachten wanhopig op protesten van Europa en de Verenigde Staten. Zij hopen dat ge�ist wordt dat de blokkade wordt opgeheven. Een bevolking van 2,5 miljoen zielen wordt uitgehongerd, maar in het westen blijft het oorverdovend stil. Er dreigt in Aleppo een humanitaire crisis van ongekende omvang en de plaatselijke kerken staan totaal machteloos, schrijft de arts.[...zie bron]

quote:

Air strikes by the Syrian military killed at least 20 people in the northwestern province of Latakia overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights group said on Saturday.

"The toll in several air strikes on the town of Salma in Jabal Akrad rose to at least 20 people," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Abdel Rahman said 10 of those killed were believed to be civilians, although many of the bodies were so badly disfigured that it was not immediately possible to identify them.

At least six of those killed were Syrian rebel fighters, while four were foreign volunteers, he added.

"The number of deaths is expected to rise because of the number of wounded and those in serious condition among them," he said.

Latakia province is a stronghold of the Alawite minority of President Bashar al-Assad.

In recent days, rebel forces have captured a number of villages in the Jabal Akrad, a mountainous district in the north of the province.

The army has hit back, sparking fierce fighting that has left dozens dead on both sides, according to the Observatory.

In Aleppo province, further east, government troops stormed a village overnight, killing 12 people, the Observatory said.

Fierce fighting also erupted during the night between government troops and rebels in the Barzeh neighbourhood of Damascus, the Britain-based watchdog said.

The army shelled both Barzeh and the Jubar district of the capital, it added.

quote:

The Opposition Advances in Damascus

Despite significant gains in Homs province, Syrian government forces are struggling against opposition forces on other fronts. In Damascus, opposition forces have mounted a major offensive, entering many government-held areas and gaining new ground. Although the government has gone on the counter-offensive, opposition forces have been able to maintain their advance and prevented government forces from storming a number of critical areas in the city. These gains reveal the extent to which the opposition is able to adapt to changes in the operating environment, and prove that the Syrian government lacks the capacity to conclusively defeat the insurgency despite increased assistance from external allies.

The media is focused on the battle for Homs, and consequently the Syrian government appears strong with current momentum moving in its favor. The government’s imminent victory at Homs is indeed significant for efforts to consolidate its primary line of communication from the coastal region through Homs to Damascus; however, reports of government strength are misleading as indicators of the overall campaign for Syria. Such reports overlook critical opposition victories across other fronts. The Syrian government has had to consolidate resources and reinforcements in Homs province, and have diverted attention from important opposition activities, particularly in Damascus. At a time when the opposition is reeling from the loss of Homs and struggling to counter the impacts of greater Hezbollah and Iranian support, it has nonetheless made significant gains in Damascus, proving that the Syrian government lacks the capacity to conclusively defeat its insurgency.

Beginning on July 24, rebel forces launched a major offensive in Damascus city. Despite the Syrian government’s continuous bombardment of Jobar, Barzeh, and Qaboun, rebels managed to push into the Jobar neighborhood, and from there began a concerted drive into government-held districts in the city.[1] After major clashes between government and rebel forces, the opposition took control of the Abbassiyeen garages, an important government-controlled facility.[2] Continuing their push, rebel forces then took control of a major electrical facility just south of Ruken al-Din, and are now laying siege to a large tank park belong to Branch 211 in southern Qaboun using homemade rockets. In Barzeh, the opposition has also advanced on regime positions with major clashes occurring near the Military School and main government managerial buildings.[3] Although clashes are still ongoing in many of these neighborhoods, the opposition has moved into government-held territory previously thought to be impenetrable. While the overall operational value of such victories may be limited, the area has a large military presence and is symbolically important as it nears the Defense Ministry and the Officer’s Club.

By July 26, the Syrian government increased its aerial bombardment of the Jobar, Qaboun, and Barzeh neighborhoods in an attempt to push back the rebel offensive. The next day, government troops conducted a counter-offensive into Barzeh in an attempt to push back the opposition. However, rebel forces were able to hold their ground. The regime offensive has stalled as the opposition has blocked all attempts to storm the neighborhood.[4] Since this time, government and opposition forces have been engaged in major clashes with significantly higher numbers of casualties on both sides than is typical for battles in Damascus.[5] The scale and duration of fighting in these neighborhoods point to the limited capacity of the government, security forces especially as it has had to divert reinforcements to Homs province. This marks the first time that opposition groups have been able to push into three different government-held areas, achieving significant gains in each, while simultaneously maintaining its current operations against major regime targets in the city including Damascus International and Mezze airports.

quote:

Op zaterdag 10 augustus 2013 08:54 schreef paddy het volgende:
Nieuws van 6 augustus wat ik toevallig tegenkwam

[..]

Bron

Ik zocht eigenlijk iets anders, maar kwam dit tegen. Nergens anders gelezen, maar kan ook aan mij liggen. Weg geweest. Mensen bewust uithongeren door blokkade . Ontvoeringen?

quote:

Dit doet me langzamerhand aan Rwanda denken

quote:

Op zaterdag 10 augustus 2013 19:33 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
[ afbeelding ]

[..]

Het artikel gaat verder

[..]

quote:

Op zaterdag 10 augustus 2013 19:33 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:
Mij meer aan Joegoslavi�.

quote:

Op zaterdag 10 augustus 2013 19:52 schreef TargaFlorio het volgende:

[..]

En die wijken die niet ingekleurd zin?

quote:

Ik wist overigens niet dat de rebellen zoveel gebied in handen hebben.

quote:

Zaterdag dreigde president Masoud Barzani van Iraaks Koerdistan met ingrijpen in Syri�. Hij liet weten Koerden in Syri� te zullen beschermen als blijkt dat de bevolkingsgroep doelwit is van strijders met banden met terreurorganisatie al-Qaeda.

quote:

Iraqi Kurd leader Massoud Barzani issues Syria warning

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

Massoud Barzani said if Kurds were "under threat of death and terrorism" then Iraqi Kurdistan would be "prepared to defend them".

Recent fighting between Kurds and Islamist anti-government forces has left dozens dead in northern Syria.

Kurds make up about 10% of the Syrian population.

Massoud Barzani called for a delegation to visit the Kurdish areas in Syria
They are largely concentrated in the north-east, towards the Turkish border.

The areas have been run by Kurdish local councils and militia since President Bashar al-Assad's forces withdrew last year.

More than 100,000 people have been killed in the 28-month conflict in Syria, with a further 1.7 million Syrians forced to seek shelter in neighbouring countries, according to UN estimates.

'All capabilities'
Syrian Kurdish militia have been engaged in fierce fighting recently with the jihadists of the anti-Assad al-Nusra Front.

Mr Barzani called for a delegation to visit the Kurdish areas in Syria.

He said if the delegation found evidence of "terrorists" killing Kurds, then Iraqi Kurdistan would "make use of all its capabilities to defend the Kurdish women, children and citizens in western Kurdistan".

Mr Barzani gave no details of what form any intervention might take.

Iraqi Kurdistan comprises three provinces in northern Iraq. It has its own military and police force.

Syria's ethnic Kurdish minority has faced decades of discrimination and marginalisation under Assad rule, with Syrian Kurds staging their own anti-government protests after the Syria conflict began in March 2011.

But most of the fighting recently has been against Islamist rebels.

Last month a prominent Syrian Kurdish politician, Isa Huso, was killed by a car bomb in the north-eastern town of Qamishli.

Kurdish militiamen responded with a call to arms to fight jihadists.

quote:

Op zaterdag 10 augustus 2013 20:35 schreef Frikandelbroodje het volgende:

[..]

Onduidelijk, omdat er weinig mensen wonen, of gewoon in handen van het regime.

[..]

In de stad en random Damascus bedoel je? Is al maanden zo. Het kaartje geeft soms wel een beetje een vertekend beeld omdat een groot gedeelte van het bruingekleurde oosten officieel niet bij Damascus hoort maar onderdeel is van Ghouta, zie dit: http://wikimapia.org/#lan(...)n=36.460876&z=11&m=b

Maar dat de rebellen wel degelijk een flinke foothold hebben in de stad Damascus zelf is gewoon een feit.