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Category: Syria

  • U.S. troops arrive in Turkey; rebels battle for airport in Syria – CNN.com

    U.S. troops arrive in Turkey; rebels battle for airport in Syria – CNN.com

    (CNN) — U.S. troops arrived in Turkey on Friday to man Patriot missile defense batteries near the Syrian border, Turkish state media said.

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    The move was made after Syria launched Scud missiles at cities near the Turkish border. In response, the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands have deployed Patriot air defense missiles to the border region to intercept any Syrian ballistic missiles.

    U.S. officials: Syria using more accurate, Iranian-made missiles

    The missiles and troops are under the control of NATO, but the missiles are to be operated by U.S. forces.

    U.S. troops arrive in Turkey

    A group of 27 U.S. troops landed in Gaziantep, Turkey, where they will survey the Patriot deployment, Turkish state news agency Anadolu said.

    U.S. officials did not release any information about the troops’ arrival, but had said last month that forces would be deployed to Turkey.

    “We’ve made very clear to them that we’re going to protect countries in this region,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last month. “We have to act to do what we have to do to make sure that we defend ourselves and make sure that Turkey can defend itself.”

    The fight for a helicopter airport

    Meanwhile, Free Syrian Army fighters tried Friday for the third consecutive day to wrest control of a helicopter base from government forces.

    If successful, the assault on Taftanaz Air Base in northern Syria would shut President Bashar al-Assad’s military helicopter pads and diminish his ability to launch airstrikes in the region.

    Opposition and government sources reported that the extremist Nusra Front, which the United States has designated as a terrorist group, was taking part in the assault on the airport.

    Al-Assad has exacted retribution on the nearby city of Binnish, where amateur video posted on the Internet shows dozens of smoke plumes marking where ordnance has struck.

    Read more: Getting to know Syria’s first family

    On Thursday, rebels posted videos of themselves firing on the air base with truck-mounted machine guns and a captured tank, destroying one government tank and appearing to shoot down a helicopter.

    CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of videos from the Syrian conflict posted online.

    Read more: Patriot missiles a warning to Syria’s al-Assad

    Gas station attack in Damascus

    In Damascus, an explosion at a gas station near a hospital killed 10 people Friday, Syrian TV reported.

    An opposition organization expected the toll to rise as many of the wounded were in critical condition after fire spread to nearby cars and buildings.

    The explosion came from a car bomb, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on its Facebook page.

    Read more: What’s next for Syria

    Appeal for missing U.S. journalist

    A picture taken on November 5 in Aleppo shows U.S. freelance reporter James Foley,

    A picture taken on November 5 in Aleppo shows U.S. freelance reporter James Foley,

    In New Hampshire, the parents of American journalist James Foley appealed Thursday to his kidnappers to release him and inform them of his whereabouts and condition of his health.

    Read more: American journalist abducted in Syria

    Foley’s father choked up while reading a statement directed at the abductors. “We’d like them to contact us,” he said. “I ask the captors for their compassion and James’ quick release.”

    Foley was abducted in November in Syria, where he has worked for a year. He had been detained before while working in Libya but was released by the government.

    Read more: Missing American journalist’s parents: Send our son home

    The rapidly mounting death toll

    At least 129 people were killed across Syria on Friday, according to the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition activist network. CNN cannot independently confirm those numbers.

    The overall death toll in Syria has surpassed 60,000 people, the United Nations said Wednesday.

    That’s roughly the population of Terre Haute, Indiana; or Cheyenne, Wyoming. It’s how many people would fit in Dodger Stadium, and it’s more than the 50,000-plus U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam.

    Read more: U.N.’s Syria death toll jumps to 60,000-plus

    On Thursday, al-Assad’s forces bombed the Damascus suburb of Douma with airstrikes. In videos posted on the Internet, residents could be seen combing through rubble and pulling out bodies.

    CNN’s Amir Ahmed and Joe Sterling contributed to this report.

    via U.S. troops arrive in Turkey; rebels battle for airport in Syria – CNN.com.

  • Turkey, Qatar, KSA behind increasing violence in Syria

    Turkey, Qatar, KSA behind increasing violence in Syria

    The Hezbollah Secretary General says Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are responsible for fueling violence in Syria and the increase in casualties.

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    Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah made the remarks in a televised speech in the southern Lebanese town of Baalbek on the occasion of Arbaeen, which marks the 40th day after the martyrdom anniversary of Imam Hussein (PBUH).

    He said Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are arming and funding militants fighting the Damascus government.

    Nasrollah said the crisis in Syria has a political solution and cautioned that the continuation of the Syrian conflict would have dire consequences.

    “If Syria’s battle continues, it will be long, bloody and destructive,” the Hezbollah secretary general pointed out.

    Nasrallah said Lebanon in the most affected country in the Middle East by the Syrian crisis, calling on Lebanese political factions to refrain from any moves which would throw the country into turmoil.

    He went on to say that the influx of Syrian refugees in Lebanon indicates a major humanitarian crisis, which must not be politicized.

    The Hezbollah secretary general stressed that division is the most dangerous threat the Muslim nations face, saying Takfiri extremists are the product of the US seeking to sow discord among Muslims.

    He said Takfiris are behind countless massacres and bombings in Muslim countries and particularly Syria.

    Nasrallah called on the incumbent Lebanese government to devise a strategy to safeguard the country’s oil and gas resources and said the Hezbollah Resistance Movement is ready to undertake the task of protecting such resources.

    He concluded that despite US and Israeli efforts to “isolate, blacklist and demonize Hezbollah such efforts against the resistance movement will get nowhere.”

    via Turkey, Qatar, KSA behind increasing violence in Syria.

  • Iran-Turkey Partnership on Ice

    Iran-Turkey Partnership on Ice

     

    Co-authored by Fuad Shahbazov, an analyst in the Turkish think tank Strategic Outlook.

    As early as 2010, Iran and Turkey glittered like two inseparable lovers. It was the most astonishing sort of partnership one could imagine: an infatuation between a (Shia-dominated) theocratic republic opposed to the U.S., on one hand, and an (Sunni-majority) ultra-secularist state belonging to the NATO and aspiring to join the European Union (EU), on the other.

    It was as dreamy as it was baffling. What brought them together was a combination of two factors: (a) Growing assertiveness among rising powers such as Turkey to more independently pursue self-interest and diversify foreign relations (ostensibly away from the West and towards the East and South); and (b) Almost perfect bilateral convergence, albeit temporarily, in strategic foresight and ideology, as Ankara’s Islamist leadership found growing reasons to reach out to its influential and resource-rich eastern neighbor, Iran, which also experienced a period of ‘reformist resurgence’ in the same period.

    All was founded upon a simple but profoundly appealing bargain: Turkey needed Iran for energy security and influence, while Tehran needed its neighbor to reverse growing isolation within the Western order. Thus, after centuries of rivalry, the two Muslim powers finally awakened to their mutual interests amidst much fanfare.

    So what went wrong? Syria!

    It seems that growing disagreements over Syria — exacerbated by frustrations with the pace and tone of nuclear negotiations — has not only put Turko-Persian cooperation on key regional affairs on ice, but also placing the two powers on a collision course.

    It’s the Economy, Stupid!

    The Iran-Turkey partnership hasn’t been an empty flirtation, especially since the election of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. It has been a blossoming, multifaceted relationship that has covered a whole host of issues, ranging from trade, finance and energy to cultural exchanges and politico-security cooperation, especially on the nuclear question as well as the Kurdish insurgency in common borders with Iraq.

    On the Kurdish issue, the two countries have been involved in a series of joint military and intelligence operations, where Turkish and Iranian security forces are said to have engaged Kurdish separatist groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK).

    More importantly, Turkey shares Iran’s interest in avoiding another possible military confrontation in the region over Tehran’s nuclear program. This explains why Turkey has played a prominent role as a potential ‘intermediary’ in Iran-West nuclear negotiations. Together with Brazil, Turkey did not only broker a ‘nuclear swap deal’ in 2010, but also, in the following year, voted against Western-backed sanctions on Iran in the U.N. Security Council. Since January 2011, Turkey has hosted two major nuclear talks between Iran and the world powers, or the so-called P5+1.

    However, economic issues have played a central role in cementing bilateral ties. Iran is important to Turkey, precisely because the Turkish economy faces serious energy-security concerns. In 2008, Turkey had an import-dependence of 93 percent in oil and 95 percent in natural gas. On top of it, Turkey has an even more serious diversification-problem. In 2005, Turkey imported 66 percent of its gas from one country alone: Russia. Given Russia’s history of using gas as a tool of foreign policy, as a major NATO member Turkey would seriously consider exploring ‘alternative’ sources of energy-imports.

    Iran is both a major natural gas reserve holder and a possible corridor for trans-regional natural gas pipelines connecting resource-rich Caspian states and the Persian Gulf to Europe and Asia. In turn, Turkey is Iran’s gateway to Europe. This is the regional energy-economic map that both Iran and Turkey have sought to optimize.

    So far, Iran has been Turkey’s second largest supplier of natural gas, with daily gas exports reaching a high of 31.5 million cubic meters in late-2010. In 2011, bilateral trade stood at more than $16 billion, projected to expand up to $30 billion in 2015. Importantly, Turkish companies — prior to the latest series of Western sanctions — were relatively eager to invest in Iran’s vast energy sector.

    And the Skyfall….

    By mid-2011, bilateral relations begun to gradually take a qualitative shift. Coming under increasing Western pressure, Turkey precipitously distanced itself from an increasingly embattled Iran, as the nuclear conundrum proved evermore intractable. Turkey also agreed to station a NATO missile defense shield, ostensibly to neutralize Iran’s ballistic threat — practically nullifying Iran’s prime tactical deterrence against an Israeli-American attack.

    In response, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s (IRGC) aerospace chief, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, retorted, “Should we be threatened, we will target NATO’s missile defense shield in Turkey and then hit the next targets.”

    This was followed by another incident whereby Iranian security-intelligence personnel temporarily detained and interrogated three Turkish academics on charges of espionage.

    Moreover, under U.S. pressure, Ankara has reduced its Iranian oil import by as much as 20 percent and expressed less willingness to act as a financial intermediary — through the state-owned Halk bank — to process Iran’s multi-billion oil trade deals with countries such as India — in effect, contributing to the economic siege on Iran. Although, recent months have witnessed a dramatic peak in Turkey’s gold exports to Iran, apparently to settle earlier lira-based oil payments to Iran.

    Yet it was the Syrian straw — supposedly the strategic linchpin in Turko-Persian relations — that broke the camel of Iran-Turkey friendship’s back. Back in August, in response to Turkey’s growing support for the armed opposition in Syria and constant opposition to the inclusion of Iran in any multilateral framework to facilitate political transition in Syria, Iranian Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Seyed Hassan Firouzabadi ominously warned Turkey, “it will be its turn [if it continues to] to help advance the warmongering policies of the United States in Syria.”

    This was followed by Iran’s suspension of ‘visa free’ arrangements with Turkey, while Tehran hinted at downgrading security cooperation with Ankara (possibly affecting the Kurdish front).

    In return, Turkish officials have accused Iran of hosting PKK rebels and backing the oppression of people in Syria. Earlier this year, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç went as far as saying his country will do ‘whatever is required’ to counter the Iranian threat, despite incessant efforts by Iran’s foreign ministry to ‘damage control’ and downplay statements from the security branches.

    In August, Turkey also practically boycotted the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Tehran by not sending its top representatives, despite a direct letter of invitation by the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

    While Iran is concerned with Turkey’s so-called ‘neo-ottomanism’ — an ambition to reclaim Turkish historical centrality in regional affairs — Ankara is concerned with Iran’s nuclear ambitions as well as its influence on Syria and other radical/resistance elements. It knows that without Iranian pressure, Assad wouldn’t make drastic reforms. Iran knows that without Turkey, the armed opposition wouldn’t have had as much chance to dismantle the regime.

    With Turkish-Syrian tensions culminating in recent cross-border artillery exchanges, threatening a full-scale war, Turko-Iranian ties came under growing pressure. Iran — along with Russia — has also criticized Turkey’s subsequent plans to host Patriot missile-defense systems, fearing Ankara could also use it against Tehran in the future.

    Overall, depending on how the Syrian conflict unfolds, as well as the dynamics of the Iranian nuclear program, we may enter a renewed phase of confrontation between the two powers after almost a decade of rapprochement.

    Suddenly, the two powers have found themselves on the opposite sides of the fence, occasionally exchanging fiery rhetoric and even threats of direct confrontation. We are also witnessing the unraveling of Turkey’s ‘zero problem with neighbors’ policy.

  • Turkey pushing for NATO attack on Syria

    Justification could put Soros-tied New World Order initiative on the march

    TEL AVIV – Turkey, a member of NATO, is pushing for a larger NATO meeting to decide whether to launch an international military campaign against Syria, according to a senior Syrian official speaking to WND.

    Earlier this month, NATO stepped up its support for Turkey when NATO allies decided to deploy Patriot missiles in Turkey to augment the country’s air defenses against Syria.

    The move followed the reported use by Syria of more advanced missiles to target the so-called rebels fighting the embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad.

    Any NATO deployment would likely come under the banner of Responsibility to Protect.

    Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by President Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of “war crimes,” “genocide,” “crimes against humanity” or “ethnic cleansing.”

    The term “war crimes” has at times been indiscriminately used by various U.N.-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops.

    Billionaire activist George Soros’ Open Society Institute is also one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, the group that devised the doctrine.

    Obama’s national security adviser, Samantha Power, helped to found Responsibility to Protect, which was also devised by several controversial characters, including Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

    Power, in April, was named the head of the new White House Atrocities Prevention Board.

    The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, founded by Power, had a seat on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that original founded Responsibility to Protect.

    The commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term “responsibility to protect” while defining its guidelines.
    The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

    Power was Carr’s founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect. With Power’s Carr Center on the advisory board, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.

    Soros-funded

    The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect is the world’s leading champion of the military doctrine.

    Soros’ Open Society Institute is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect. Several of the doctrine’s main founders sit on boards with Soros.

    Activists Ramesh Thakur and Gareth Evans, for example, are the original founders. The two sit on multiple boards with Soros.

    Board members of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu.

    Robinson and Tutu have made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.

    Annan once famously stated: “State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined – not least by the forces of globalization and international cooperation. States are … instruments at the service of their peoples and not vice versa.”

    Right to ‘penetrate nation-states’ borders’

    Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article titled “The People’s Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World’s Most Vulnerable Populations.”

    In the article, Soros asserted, “True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments.

    “If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified,” Soros wrote. “By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states’ borders to protect the rights of citizens.

    “In particular, the principle of the people’s sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict.”

    More Soros ties

    “Responsibility” founders Evans and Thakur served as co-chairmen on the advisory board of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which invented the term “responsibility to protect.”

    In his capacity as co-chairman, Evans also played a pivotal role in initiating the fundamental shift from sovereignty as a right to “sovereignty as responsibility.”

    Evans presented Responsibility to Protect at the July 23, 2009, United Nations General Assembly, which was convened to consider the principle.

    Thakur is a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, which is in partnership with an economic institute founded by Soros.

    Soros is on the executive board of the International Crisis Group, a “crisis management organization” for which Evans serves as president-emeritus.

    New world order

    Doctrine founder Thakur has advocated a “global rebalancing” and “international redistribution” to create a “New World Order.”

    In a piece in March 2011 in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, “Toward a New World Order,” Thakur wrote, “Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution.”

    He was referring to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which it was argued, “Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions.”

    In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.

    “The West’s bullying approach to developing nations won’t work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia,” he wrote. “A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train.”

    Thakur continued: “Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behavior for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations.”

    Thakur contended “the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of ‘superior’ Western power.”

    With additional research by Brenda J. Elliott

    Read more at https://www.wnd.com/2012/12/turkey-pushing-for-nato-attack-on-syria/#K9HMX17L1vzCgvjP.99
  • Turkey Will Pay a High Price After Assad

    Turkey Will Pay a High Price After Assad

    Syrian children from the northern Syrian town of Ras al-Ain are pictured near the Turkish border fence during gunfire is heard between Free Syrian Army and armed Kurds of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party in the Ceylanpinar
    Syrian children from the northern Syrian town of Ras al-Ain are pictured near the Turkish border fence as gunfire is heard between the Free Syrian Army and the armed Kurds of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in the northern Syrian town of Ceylanpinar, Nov. 25, 2012. (photo by REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
    By: Kadri Gursel. posted on Wed, Dec 26.

    If we have to explain Turkey’s fundamental mistake in the Syria crisis, there is no better way than “putting all the eggs in one basket.” This is exactly what Turkey did by putting all its eggs in the basket of the Muslim Brotherhood and locked itself into the parameters of a zero-sum game.

    About This Article

    Summary :

    By throwing its lot completely with Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey will sustain costs whether Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stays or goes, writes Kadri Gursel.

    Author: Kadri Gursel
    posted on: Wed, Dec 26, 2012

    But a zero-sum game couldn’t be played in Syria. For Turkey to emerge from the Syrian conflict as a country collecting all the bonuses, the Muslim Brotherhood has to fully and absolutely dominate the entirety of Syria. The likelihood of this is close to zero.

    Foreign-policy makers in Ankara, while putting all Turkish eggs into the Muslim Brotherhood basket, acted recklessly with extreme self-confidence, confident that the Baath regime will be toppled in a short time.

    One reason why the neo-Islamist elite ruling Turkey today adopted an attitude that was far removed from realities was their underestimation of the institutional resistance capacity of the Baath regime against an uprising. This was a gross misjudgment.

    But that wasn’t the only reason: There were also emotional instincts in play.

    The AKP elite was in an unprecedented euphoria after seeing the Arab uprisings bring the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt, and Islamists in two other Maghreb countries, while Sunnis were marching toward power in Syria. Here we have to take note that the AKP represents the Muslim Brotherhood traditions in Turkey.

    The hope that solidarity among countries dominated by Sunni-based Islam could lead to a new Middle East order in the eastern Mediterranean basin created that euphoria within the AKP elite who lost track of reality. Emotional factors played a significant role in the emergence of Sunni, Islamic and Ottoman elements in Turkey’s foreign policy.

    Now, the general expectation is for Assad to be ousted in near future, one way or the other.

    For the rulers of Turkey, the criterion for the success of their Syrian policy is Assad’s departure. We are expected to applaud the success of their policy once Assad goes. But if we apply concrete assessment criteria, a positive reaction to their wish won’t be possible.

    Before answering the question “What problems await Turkey once Assad goes?” we must ask ourselves “What will be the price of Assad staying in power longer than expected?”

    Turkey has already paid a heavy political and economic price for Assad clinging to power for 21 months despite all overt and covert policies and measures we employed to topple him.

    As an example, we can cite the almost total disruption of our land trade with the Middle East and costs accrued to transport, production and agricultural sectors. Naturally there will be a price AKP has to pay in domestic politics for this situation. The masses of Syrian refugees more or less invited with the hope that they may facilitate setting up a buffer zone did not work. Today, Turkey is carrying alone the financial burden of more than 140,000 refugees.

    As long as Assad remains in Damascus, efforts of the Syrian Kurds to achieve autonomy, seen as a threat by Ankara, will gain momentum. The longer Assad stays in power higher the cost will be for Turkey.

    But don’t think that Turkey’s problems will ease once Assad departs. On the contrary, the problems will be more diverse, more complicated and confusing, the vast majority of which can be attributed to Turkey’s faulty policies.

    Let’s begin with Turkey’s Kurdish issue: Emergence of Syrian Kurds under the leadership of the PYD — seen as Syrian offshoot of the PKK — affixed regional context to Turkey’s Kurdish issue. In this context Iran, Baath, Baghdad, Kurdistan regional government of Iraq and many other elements entered Turkey’s Kurdish equation. A possible intervention by Turkey in this region will bring with it the risk of internationalizing the issue.

    If Syria’s Kurdish issue is solved through peaceful means and Kurds achieve their aspiration of autonomy, Turkey will be exposed as a country with the largest Kurdish population but also a country that has given the minimum political rights to its own Kurds.

    Meanwhile, the PKK, with weapons it will acquire from the army of the Baath regime, will be even a greater threat to Turkey’s security.

    Ankara’s entry to the Syrian conflict as a party supporting the Sunni majority will cause serious problems of confidence in its relations with other minorities of that country. After every massacre and act of brutality against those minorities, there will be attempts to determine Turkey’s part in it. The fact that weapons to Sunni opposition and Jihadist groups were sent via Turkey will burden Turkey with ethical and political responsibility.

    Turkey will also suffer headaches because of the activities of Al Nusra Front and other al-Qaeda-linked groups in Syria.

    And finally we might see the small Syrian Turkmen minority being designated a target of retaliation against Turkey.

    Since Assad’s departure doesn’t automatically mean stability, the problems of Turkey’s Middle East trade because of the Syrian crisis will continue during the transition period.

    Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2012/al-monitor/turkey-syria-muslim-brother.html#ixzz2GG6ryWIj
  • Syria: The descent into Holy War

    Syria: The descent into Holy War

    World View: The world decided to back the rebels last week, but this is no fight between goodies and baddies

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    PATRICK COCKBURN

    It is one of the most horrifying videos of the war in Syria. It shows two men being beheaded by Syrian rebels, one of them by a child. He hacks with a machete at the neck of a middle-aged man who has been forced to lie in the street with his head on a concrete block. At the end of the film, a soldier, apparently from the Free Syrian Army, holds up the severed heads by their hair in triumph.

    The film is being widely watched on YouTube by Syrians, reinforcing their fears that Syria is imitating Iraq’s descent into murderous warfare in the years after the US invasion in 2003. It fosters a belief among Syria’s non-Sunni Muslim minorities, and Sunnis associated with the government as soldiers or civil servants, that there will be no safe future for them in Syria if the rebels win. In one version of the video, several of which are circulating, the men who are beheaded are identified as officers belonging to the 2.5 million-strong Alawite community. This is the Shia sect to which President Bashar al-Assad and core members of his regime belong. The beheadings, so proudly filmed by the perpetrators, may well convince them that they have no alternative but to fight to the end.

    The video underlines a startling contradiction in the policy of the US and its allies. In the past week, 130 countries have recognised the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. But, at the same time, the US has denounced the al-Nusra Front, the most effective fighting force of the rebels, as being terrorists and an al-Qa’ida affiliate. Paradoxically, the US makes almost exactly same allegations of terrorism against al-Nusra as does the Syrian government. Even more bizarrely, though so many states now recognise the National Coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, it is unclear if the rebels inside Syria do so. Angry crowds in rebel-held areas of northern Syria on Friday chanted “we are all al-Nusra” as they demonstrated against the US decision.

    Videos posted on YouTube play such a central role in the propaganda war in Syria that questions always have to be asked about their authenticity and origin. In the case of the beheading video, the details look all too convincing. Nadim Houry, the deputy director for Human Rights Watch in the Middle East and North Africa, has watched the video many times to identify the circumstances, perpetrators and location where the killings took place. He has no doubts about its overall authenticity, but says that mention of one district suggests it might be in Deir el-Zhor (in eastern Syria). But people in the area immediately north of Homs are adamant the beheadings took place there. The victims have not been identified. The first time a version of the film was shown was on pro-government Sama TV on 26 November, but it has been widely viewed on YouTube in Syria only over the past week.

    The film begins by showing two middle-aged men handcuffed together sitting on a settee in a house, surrounded by their captors who sometimes slap and beat them. They are taken outside into the street. A man in a black shirt is manhandled and kicked into lying down with his head on a concrete block. A boy, who looks to be about 11 or 12 years old, cuts at his neck with a machete, but does not quite sever it. Later a man finishes the job and cuts the head off. The second man in a blue shirt is also forced to lie with his head on a block and is beheaded. The heads are brandished in front of the camera and later laid on top of the bodies. The boy smiles as he poses with a rifle beside a headless corpse.

    The execution video is very similar to those once made by al-Qa’ida in Iraq to demonstrate their mercilessness towards their enemies. This is scarcely surprising since many of the most experienced al-Nusra fighters boast that they have until recently been fighting the predominantly Shia government of Iraq as part of the local franchise of al-Qa’ida franchise. Their agenda is wholly sectarian, and they have shown greater enthusiasm for slaughtering Shias, often with bombs detonated in the middle of crowds in markets or outside mosques, than for fighting Americans.

    The Syrian uprising, which began in March 2011, was not always so bloodthirsty or so dominated by the Sunnis who make up 70 per cent of the 23 million-strong Syrian population. At first, demonstrations were peaceful and the central demands of the protesters were for democratic rule and human rights as opposed to a violent, arbitrary and autocratic government. There are Syrians who claim that the people against the regime remains to this day the central feature of the uprising, but there is compelling evidence that the movement has slid towards sectarian Islamic fundamentalism intent on waging holy war.

    The execution video is the most graphic illustration of deepening religious bigotry on the part of the rebels, but it is not the only one. Another recent video shows Free Syrian Army fighters burning and desecrating a Shia husseiniyah (a religious meeting house similar to a mosque) in Idlib in northern Syria. They chant prayers of victory as they set fire to the building, set fire to flags used in Shia religious processions and stamp on religious pictures. If the FSA were to repeat this assault on a revered Shia shrine such as the Sayyida Zeinab mosque in Damascus, to which Iranian and Iraqi pilgrims have flooded in the past and which is now almost encircled by rebels, then there could be an explosion of religious hatred and strife between Sunni and Shia across the Middle East. Iraqi observers warn that it was the destruction of the Shia shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad, by an al-Qa’ida bomb in 2006 that detonated a sectarian war in which tens of thousands died.

    The analogy with Iraq is troubling for the US and British governments. They and their allies are eager for Syria to avoid repeating the disastrous mistakes they made during the Iraqi occupation. Ideally, they would like to remove the regime, getting rid of Bashar al-Assad and the present leadership, but not dissolving the government machinery or introducing revolutionary change as they did in Baghdad by transferring power from the Sunnis to the Shia and the Kurds. This provoked a furious counter-reaction from Baathists and Sunnis who found themselves marginalised and economically impoverished.

    Washington wants Assad out, but is having difficulty riding the Sunni revolutionary tiger. The Western powers have long hoped for a split in the Syrian elite, but so far there is little sign of this happening. “If you take defections as a measure of political cohesion, then there haven’t been any serious ones,” said a diplomat in Damascus.

    Syria today resembles Iraq nine years ago in another disturbing respect. I have now been in Damascus for 10 days, and every day I am struck by the fact that the situation in areas of Syria I have visited is wholly different from the picture given to the world both by foreign leaders and by the foreign media. The last time I felt like this was in Baghdad in late 2003, when every Iraqi knew the US-led occupation was proving a disaster just as George W Bush, Tony Blair and much of the foreign media were painting a picture of progress towards stability and democracy under the wise tutelage of Washington and its carefully chosen Iraqi acolytes.

    The picture of Syria most common believed abroad is of the rebels closing in on the capital as the Assad government faces defeat in weeks or, at most, a few months. The Secretary General of Nato, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said last week that the regime is “approaching collapse”. The foreign media consensus is that the rebels are making sweeping gains on all fronts and the end may be nigh. But when one reaches Damascus, it is to discover that the best informed Syrians and foreign diplomats say, on the contrary, that the most recent rebel attacks in the capital had been thrown back by a government counteroffensive. They say that the rebel territorial advances, which fuelled speculation abroad that the Syrian government might implode, are partly explained by a new Syrian army strategy to pull back from indefensible outposts and bases and concentrate troops in cities and towns.

    At times, Damascus resounds with the boom of artillery fire and the occasional car bomb, but it is not besieged. I drove 160 kilometres north to Homs, Syria’s third largest city with a population of 2.3 million, without difficulty. Homs, once the heart of the uprising, is in the hands of the government, aside from the Old City, which is held by the FSA. Strongholds of the FSA in Damascus have been battered by shellfire and most of their inhabitants have fled to other parts of the capital. The director of the 1,000-bed Tishreen military hospital covering much of southern Syria told me that he received 15 to 20 soldiers wounded every day, of whom about 20 per cent died. This casualty rate indicates sniping, assassinations and small-scale ambushes, but not a fight to the finish.

    This does not mean that the government is in a happy position. It has been unable to recapture southern Aleppo or the Old City in Homs. It does not have the troops to garrison permanently parts of Damascus it has retaken. Its overall diplomatic and military position is slowly eroding and the odds against it are lengthening, but it is a long way from total defeat, unless there is direct military intervention by foreign powers, as in Libya or Iraq, and this does not seem likely.

    This misperception of the reality on the ground in Syria is fuelled in part by propaganda, but more especially by inaccurate and misleading reporting by the media where bias towards the rebels and against the government is unsurpassed since the height of the Cold War. Exaggerated notions are given of rebel strength and popularity. The Syrian government is partially responsible for this. By excluding all but a few foreign journalists, the regime has created a vacuum of information that is naturally filled by its enemies. In the event, a basically false and propagandistic account of events in Syria has been created by a foreign media credulous in using pro-opposition sources as if they were objective reporting.

    The execution video is a case in point. I have not met a Syrian in Damascus who has not seen it. It is having great influence on how Syrians judge their future, but the mainstream media outside Syria has scarcely mentioned it. Some may be repulsed by its casual savagery, but more probably it is not shown because it contradicts so much of what foreign leaders and reporters claim is happening here.

    www.independent.co.uk, 16 December 2012