The Syria Analysis Thread

Cadavre Exquis Friday 28 Jun 2013

Syria conflict: 'Suicide bomb' in Damascus Christian area

A blast in an old Christian quarter of the Syrian capital Damascus has left four people dead, in what Syrian state TV describes as a suicide attack.

Several people were injured in the attack in the Bab Sharqi neighbourhood, near a church. Rebel sources confirmed the number of dead, but said the attack was caused by a mortar bomb. More than 90,000 people have died and millions have been displaced by Syria's two-year conflict, the UN says.

Reports say that the bomber was wearing a suicide belt and blew himself up outside the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox church. Some shops were damaged in the blast.

No-one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

There have been consistent but unverified reports of violence directed against Christians in Syria since the uprising began in March 2011, including attacks on churches. Syria's Christians are believed to make up about 10% of the population, but despite their minority status they have long been among Syria's elite.

They were at first reluctant to take sides in the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad but have gradually been drawn into the conflict on both sides.

The Salafis will eventually push the bulk of Syria's Christians into supporting Assad and allying with the Shia.

Stubby Saturday 29 Jun 2013

Today at 2:52 PM - Angocachi :
the christians are tasting what theyve fed the sunnis

yeah that makes sense, cunt

Mike Sunday 30 Jun 2013

In the last two days, this has been ignored by the Western press except for the Catholics and independent news outlets like the Canadian Digital Journal .

Mike Sunday 30 Jun 2013

^Correction--the LA Times gives a passing mention in the following article. The beheaded priest is described as being "slain ... when Islamic militants attacked the monastery where he was staying". I guess you could say that.

The Christians of Sednaya are only too aware of what happened to the ancient Christian community of neighboring Iraq, where, after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Islamic militants unleashed a reign of terror against Christians, bombing churches, burning shops and assassinating community leaders.

"I have a question for you," Azar asks a visiting U.S. reporter. "Why does America want all the Christians out of the Middle East?"

This rather mildly worded article is still probably the best press that the minority Syrian communities have gotten from an American outlet in quite a while, at least from what I can remember. It even somewhat rebukes US actions in the region, if you carefully connect the dots.

Two Syria shrine towns: Worlds apart yet united in battle

Sednaya is Christian and Sayyida Zainab is Shiite Muslim, both famous for their shrines. And both say they face constant threat from Sunni rebels hoping to evict or kill them.

Visitors head for the Convent of Our Lady of Sednaya during a Syrian government-organized tour early last year. “Syria’s Christians are not running away anywhere,” one Sednaya man said recently. “We are fighting.” (Bassem Tellawi, Associated Press / January 31, 2012)

By Patrick J. McDonnell
June 29, 2013, 10:27 p.m.

SEDNAYA, Syria — This prosperous hillside town north of Damascus appears a universe away from another capital suburb, Sayyida Zainab, a cluttered, frenzied urban patch off the road to the international airport.

Sednaya is a Christian mountain bastion ringed by monasteries; Sayyida Zainab is a lowland Shiite Muslim island in the midst of a largely Sunni Muslim nation.

But, in war-ravaged Syria, the two are in a similar position: Both are renowned shrine towns whose residents say they live under constant threat of attack — even annihilation — by Islamist Sunni rebels active in the outskirts of each locale.

And both are fighting back.

INSIDE SYRIA: More Times coverage

Here in Sednaya, a cadre of Christian militiamen armed with AK-47 rifles and other weapons staff checkpoints and closely scrutinize everyone who comes and goes, day and night, coordinating closely with the Syrian military. The militia chief is a burly pizza shop owner who goes by the moniker "the Whale."

About 12 miles away, on the southeast fringes of the capital, Shiite militiamen, including a contingent of fighters from the Lebanon-based Hezbollah movement, head the defense of the golden-domed shrine said to house the remains of a granddaughter of the prophet Muhammad.

"We will forfeit our blood and lives for Sayyida Zainab," says a brown-uniformed volunteer manning the checkpoint leading to the mausoleum, one of the most revered sites in the Shiite world.

From their bases in Turkey and Egypt, representatives of the U.S.-backed opposition coalition frequently proclaim that the mostly Sunni rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad do not target Syria's Christian and Shiite minorities or their religious symbols. Several Christians are prominent in the exile-based leadership.

But reports of rebel sectarian onslaughts are mounting. According to both pro-opposition and government reports, rebels this month targeted an isolated Shiite community in the eastern Syrian town of Hatla, where dozens of civilians were reported killed, their homes burned and a Shiite shrine destroyed.

***

Near Sednaya, in the insurgent stronghold of Adra, rebels this year dug up the remains of a revered Shiite figure, Hujr ibn Adi, a companion of Muhammad, and destroyed his shrine, long a pilgrimage site. The desecration unleashed a furor in Shiite communities across the globe.

In Qusair, the Roman Catholic Church of St. Elias was defaced during a more than yearlong rebel occupation of the town near the Lebanese border. During a recent visit, a reporter saw vandalized images of saints and Christ and graffiti scrawled on church walls berating "infidels."

Residents of minority communities, such as the Christians of Sednaya, predict that eviction or death will be their fate if they do not resist now. They don't buy the talk about democracy coming from Washington and other foreign capitals that support the rebels.

"If the terrorists come here, none of us will be left alive," says Hussam Azar, a.k.a. the Whale, who heads the self-defense effort here. "They will kill us all."

An epidemic of kidnappings has already traumatized Syria's Christian community, which is less than 10% of the population. Two Christian bishops remain missing since being abducted in April while driving in rebel territory near Aleppo. Last week, a Catholic priest, Francois Murad, was slain in northern Syria when Islamic militants attacked the monastery where he was staying, according to Agenzia Fides, the Vatican news agency.

Though the opposition demonizes Assad as a killer, residents here and in other minority communities often view the embattled president and his army — complemented by a growing contingent of loyalist militiamen — as the last bulwark preventing so-called sectarian cleansing.

The Christians of Sednaya are only too aware of what happened to the ancient Christian community of neighboring Iraq, where, after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Islamic militants unleashed a reign of terror against Christians, bombing churches, burning shops and assassinating community leaders. Much of Iraq's Christian population fled, many to Syria, then still a beacon of stability and relative religious tolerance.

"The Christians of Iraq ran away," says Azar, sipping espresso in his restaurant. "But Syria's Christians are not running away anywhere. We are fighting."

Up the hill from the town sits the sublime Byzantine-era Convent of Our Lady of Sednaya, one of the most venerated sites in the Orthodox world, a historic pilgrimage site for solitary monks and celebrated Knights Templar.

Before the warfare, Christians and Muslims alike regularly arrived on bus tours to visit the convent, credited in Orthodox tradition with providing miraculous healing. In an inner sanctum where the walls are covered with images of Christ, Mary and saints, is stored an icon of the Holy Mother and child that is said to safeguard the convent.

"We have survived many wars," says a black-robed nun showing now-rare visitors around the hushed corridors. "God protects us."

As she spoke, thunderous explosions could be heard outside, the result of bombardment by government artillery emplacements built into nearby hills. The shells target rebels entrenched a few miles away. Residents say Sednaya has often been targeted by rebel mortars from nearby villages, occasionally causing casualties.

In one instance, residents say, a rebel mortar shell hit the wall of the convent but failed to explode, leaving only a small hole.

Residents say the mortar attacks and abductions triggered the formation of a self-defense force, which has received weapons and training from the Syrian military, like similar loyalist militias elsewhere in Syria. Militiamen also vow to protect the convent. Many Syrian Christians here and elsewhere in the country are perplexed that the West has taken the side of the rebels, a position that has prompted no end of conspiracy theories in a nation steeped in dark speculation about the motivations of outside powers.

"I have a question for you," Azar asks a visiting U.S. reporter. "Why does America want all the Christians out of the Middle East?"

***

On the other end of the capital, Sayyida Zainab stands like a fortress. Entry is possible only via a checkpoint manned by Shiite militiamen. Fighters guard the perimeter. On several occasions, residents say, rebel mortars have targeted the shrine, never scoring a direct hit.

Battles still rage in mostly Sunni Muslim towns nearby. Before reaching the turnoff for Sayyida Zainab on the airport road, motorists from Damascus pass a stretch where apricot orchards alternate with rows of rubble-strewn streets and the hulks of destroyed apartment blocks, a testament to the ferocity of the fighting. Rebels have kidnapped some shrine-bound pilgrims, including a busload of Iranians, who were later released in a prisoner swap with rebels.

Once past the shrine's outer security cordon, a visitor is transported to another world, a miniature version of Karbala and Najaf, the Shiite holy cities of Iraq. Rentals catering to the now-much-diminished pilgrim traffic boast extravagant names like the Lights of the Mehdi Hotel, referring to a Messiah-like figure in Shiite theology, and the Voyage of Hussein Suites, alluding to the revered Shiite Imam Hussein, a grandson of Muhammad and a central figure in Shiite belief.

From storefronts waft recorded ballads mourning the violent death of Hussein more than 1,300 years ago. Likenesses of the late Ayatollah Khomeini , founder of the Islamic Revolution in Shiite Iran, stare down from posters. In the Hezbollah heartland of southern Lebanon, color posters in villages depict "martyrs" killed defending the shrine near Damascus.

The shrine itself, situated behind concrete walls, is a breathtaking assemblage of marble columns, mirrors, turquoise tiles and elements of gold and silver. Directly below the golden dome is the crypt thought to hold the remains of one of Muhammad's granddaughters. The pious, including militiamen in fatigues, pray as they touch a railing that surrounds the tomb.

At the exit, a smiling security guard thanks a Western journalist for visiting and adds, "Please write that it's nonsense that we kill and slaughter people."

Back at the Christian enclave of Sednaya, Azar the militia leader says he empathizes with the people of Sayyida Zainab, whose religious practices are so different than his.

"We are both the same thing," he says of the two shrine towns. "We are being attacked every day because we are loyal to the regime, and so are they."

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

Special correspondent Nabih Bulos contributed to this report.

Mike Sunday 30 Jun 2013

Patrick Cockburn doesn't offer too much here that will be controversial to subscribers of this thread, but he puts it nicely and it's good to see straightforward media-skepticism in the MSM itself. The takeaway:

Slogans replace policies: the rebels are pictured as white hats and the government supporters as black hats; given more weapons, the opposition can supposedly win a decisive victory; put under enough military pressure, President Bashar al-Assad will agree to negotiations for which a pre-condition is capitulation by his side in the conflict. One of the many drawbacks of the demonising rhetoric indulged in by the incoming US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and William Hague, is that it rules out serious negotiations and compromise with the powers-that-be in Damascus. And since Assad controls most of Syria, Rice and Hague have devised a recipe for endless war while pretending humanitarian concern for the Syrian people.

Patrick Cockburn
Sunday 30 June 2013
Foreign media portrayals of the conflict in Syria are dangerously inaccurate
World View: It is naive not to accept that both sides are capable of manipulating the facts to serve their own interests

Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First World War. I can't think of any other war or crisis I have covered in which propagandistic, biased or second-hand sources have been so readily accepted by journalists as providers of objective facts.

A result of these distortions is that politicians and casual newspaper or television viewers alike have never had a clear idea over the last two years of what is happening inside Syria. Worse, long-term plans are based on these misconceptions. A report on Syria published last week by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group says that "once confident of swift victory, the opposition's foreign allies shifted to a paradigm dangerously divorced from reality".

Slogans replace policies: the rebels are pictured as white hats and the government supporters as black hats; given more weapons, the opposition can supposedly win a decisive victory; put under enough military pressure, President Bashar al-Assad will agree to negotiations for which a pre-condition is capitulation by his side in the conflict. One of the many drawbacks of the demonising rhetoric indulged in by the incoming US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and William Hague, is that it rules out serious negotiations and compromise with the powers-that-be in Damascus. And since Assad controls most of Syria, Rice and Hague have devised a recipe for endless war while pretending humanitarian concern for the Syrian people.

It is difficult to prove the truth or falsehood of any generalisation about Syria. But, going by my experience this month travelling in central Syria between Damascus, Homs and the Mediterranean coast, it is possible to show how far media reports differ markedly what is really happening. Only by understanding and dealing with the actual balance of forces on the ground can any progress be made towards a cessation of violence.

On Tuesday I travelled to Tal Kalakh, a town of 55,000 people just north of the border with Lebanon, which was once an opposition bastion. Three days previously, government troops had taken over the town and 39 Free Syrian Army (FSA) leaders had laid down their weapons. Talking to Syrian army commanders, an FSA defector and local people, it was evident there was no straight switch from war to peace. It was rather that there had been a series of truces and ceasefires arranged by leading citizens of Tal Kalakh over the previous year.

But at the very time I was in the town, Al Jazeera Arabic was reporting fighting there between the Syrian army and the opposition. Smoke was supposedly rising from Tal Kalakh as the rebels fought to defend their stronghold. Fortunately, this appears to have been fantasy and, during the several hours I was in the town, there was no shooting, no sign that fighting had taken place and no smoke.

Of course, all sides in a war pretend that no position is lost without a heroic defence against overwhelming numbers of the enemy. But obscured in the media's accounts of what happened in Tal Kalakh was an important point: the opposition in Syria is fluid in its allegiances. The US, Britain and the so-called 11-member "Friends of Syria", who met in Doha last weekend, are to arm non-Islamic fundamentalist rebels, but there is no great chasm between them and those not linked to al-Qa'ida. One fighter with the al-Qa'ida-affiliated al-Nusra Front was reported to have defected to a more moderate group because he could not do without cigarettes. The fundamentalists pay more and, given the total impoverishment of so many Syrian families, the rebels will always be able to win more recruits. "Money counts for more than ideology," a diplomat in Damascus told me.

While I was in Homs I had an example of why the rebel version of events is so frequently accepted by the foreign media in preference to that of the Syrian government. It may be biased towards the rebels, but often there is no government version of events, leaving a vacuum to be filled by the rebels. For instance, I had asked to go to a military hospital in the al-Waar district of Homs and was granted permission, but when I got there I was refused entrance. Now, soldiers wounded fighting the rebels are likely to be eloquent and convincing advocates for the government side (I had visited a military hospital in Damascus and spoken to injured soldiers there). But the government's obsessive secrecy means that the opposition will always run rings around it when it comes to making a convincing case.

Back in the Christian quarter of the Old City of Damascus, where I am staying, there was an explosion near my hotel on Thursday. I went to the scene and what occurred next shows that there can be no replacement for unbiased eyewitness reporting. State television was claiming that it was a suicide bomb, possibly directed at the Greek Orthodox Church or a Shia hospital that is even closer. Four people had been killed.

I could see a small indentation in the pavement which looked to me very much like the impact of a mortar bomb. There was little blood in the immediate vicinity, though there was about 10 yards away. While I was looking around, a second mortar bomb came down on top of a house, killing a woman.

The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, so often used as a source by foreign journalists, later said that its own investigations showed the explosion to have been from a bomb left in the street. In fact, for once, it was possible to know definitively what had happened, because the Shia hospital has CCTV that showed the mortar bomb in the air just before it landed – outlined for a split-second against the white shirt of a passer-by who was killed by the blast. What had probably happened was part of the usual random shelling by mortars from rebels in the nearby district of Jobar.

In the middle of a ferocious civil war it is self-serving credulity on the part of journalists to assume that either side in the conflict, government or rebel, is not going to concoct or manipulate facts to serve its own interests. Yet much foreign media coverage is based on just such an assumption.

The plan of the CIA and the Friends of Syria to somehow seek an end to the war by increasing the flow of weapons is equally absurd. War will only produce more war. John Milton's sonnet, written during the English civil war in 1648 in praise of the Parliamentary General Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had just stormed Colchester, shows a much deeper understanding of what civil wars are really like than anything said by David Cameron or William Hague. He wrote:

For what can war but endless war still breed?

Till truth and right from violence be freed,

And public faith clear'd from the shameful brand

Of public fraud. In vain doth valour bleed

While avarice and rapine share the land.

Fitz Monday 1 Jul 2013

Russia Withdraws Remaining Military From Syria

Jun 27, 2013
UPI

Russia has removed the last of its military personnel from Syria, including those stationed at its naval base in Tartus, military officials said.

While Russian officials confirmed the evacuations Wednesday, there has been no official confirmation of a claim from the rebel Free Syrian Army that a Russian plane was shot down and its pilot capture in the Aleppo area, Britain's The Guardian reported.

A 16-ship Russian naval task remains in the eastern Mediterranean Sea after the evacuation of the facility in Tartus, Russia's only naval base in the Middle East.

Cyprus has made its ports available to the Russian fleet, The Guardian said.

Russia is one of the few major allies of Syrian President Bashar Assad. It repeatedly blocked U.S.-led attempts in the United Nations to sanction Assad's regime.

News Russian forces pulled out of Syria first became public last week in an interview Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov gave to the newspaper al-Hayat.

"Today, the Russian Defense Ministry does not have a single person in Syria," he said during the interview.

Russian business daily Vedomosti quoted an unnamed ministry official as saying there were "neither servicemen nor civilians in Syria any more. Or Russian military instructors assigned to units of the Syrian regular army, for that matter."

Vedomosti said technical experts hired by the Syrian government to train its army to use Russian-issued weapons would remain.

Russia Today, the Russia-based television news network, said the withdrawal was prompted "not only by the increased risks caused by the ongoing military conflict, but also by the fact that in the current conditions any incident involving Russian servicemen would likely have some unfavorable reaction from the international community."

Russia has been evacuating its citizens from Syria for weeks. Interfax news agency reported 128 Russians and citizens of other former Soviet republics left Syria Wednesday.

Bogdanov said about 30,000 Russians live in Syria.

Niccolo and Donkey Thursday 4 Jul 2013

Schadenfreude.....

Syria's Assad declares fall of 'political Islam'

Syrian President Bashar Assad said the massive protests against his Islamist Egyptian counterpart brought the fall of "political Islam," in statements posted on Wednesday on his official Facebook page.

"What is happening in Egypt is the fall of what is known as political Islam," Assad said in an interview with Syrian state newspaper Ath-Thawra, excerpts of which were posted on the Internet.

"After a whole year, reality has become clear to the Egyptian people. The Muslim Brotherhood 's performance has helped them see the lies the (movement) used at the start of the popular revolution in Egypt."

The full, pre-recorded interview is due to be published on Thursday, a day after massive street protests in Egypt ended with the ouster of the Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi.

There is long-standing animosity between the Damascus regime and the Muslim Brotherhood, and membership in the group has been punishable by death in Syria since the 1980s.

The Syrian branch of the Brotherhood today plays a key role in the exiled opposition National Coalition, which is recognized by more than 100 states and organizations as legitimate representative of the Syrian people.

In the same interview Assad claimed that countries conspiring against Syria have "used up all their tools" in their campaign to overthrow his regime.

Assad rejected the idea that what has been happening in Syria since more than two years is a revolution. Instead, he insisted it is a conspiracy by Western and some Arab states to destabilize his country.

"The countries that conspire against Syria have used up all their tools ... and they have nothing left except direct (military) intervention," Assad said in the interview, adding that such an intervention would not happen.

Niccolo and Donkey Friday 12 Jul 2013

Shades of the Spanish Civil War as the FSA and the Islamists are headed towards a civil war within the civil war.

Free Syrian Army threatens blood feud after senior officer killed by jihadists

Commanders of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have reacted with fury to the assassination of a senior FSA officer by a jihadist group, warning that the killing would lead to further violence between the disparate factions battling to oust the president, Bashar al-Assad.

Kamal Hamami, a member of the opposition's supreme military command, was killed and his body mutilated after he was lured to a planning meeting on Thursday with fighters believed to be foreign jihadists in the Jebel al-Krud region, north of Latakia.

The killing – the first internecine targeting of a ranking member of the mainstream Syrian opposition group – follows rising tensions between the exclusively Syrian militia and jihadi fighters, including increasing numbers of foreigners who see the civil war in Syria as part of a global jihad.

Rebel leaders in northern Syria said on Friday that the assassination had shattered trust between the two sides and set off a blood feud.

"This will not go unpunished," said a former officer of the Syrian army who now commands a mainstream opposition militia near Idlib province. "They are trying to assert themselves, to make us bow to them. They need to be taught a lesson."

Since they entered northern Syria in mid-July last year, jihadist groups have become the most effective fighting force in the land, renowned for their prowess on the battlefield and skill in obtaining weapons.

Blighted by ill-discipline and infighting, the FSA has meanwhile struggled to assert itself as its fight against the Assad regime stagnated and more battle-ready militants seized the initiative during raids on military bases that yielded crucial hauls of guns and ammunition.

Recently, however, the jihadists have been accused of the same shortcomings as discipline gives way to power grabs and growing tensions between Syrian and regional al-Qaida leaders.

The main homegrown group, Jabhat al-Nusra, has been undermined by a power struggle between its nominal leader, Abu Muhammad al-Golani, and the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has led the terror group in its revitalised insurgency against Iraq's Shia-led government.

Baghdadi has attempted to combine his group with Jabhat al-Nusra but was rebuffed in May by Golani, who was reported to have instead pledged loyalty to the al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Since then, Jabhat al-Nusra's ranks have split in the same way that the FSA has splintered in the past year.

While it remains a formidable fighting force, it cannot boast the same rigid control over its members and especially over foreign fighters who are increasingly creating their own leadership structures and setting their own rules.

"I've always said that this would become like Anbar," where al-Qaida was driven out in 2006 after earning the ire of local hosts, said a rebel leader in Aleppo. "And I was right. This is now a land of warlords and clans, of foreigners with a perverse form of Islam that share neither our views or goals.

"This is what becomes of a civil war in a place like Syria when help doesn't come the way of the people who need and deserve it."

Niccolo and Donkey Sunday 14 Jul 2013

Syrian rebels' Damascus chemical cache found by Assad army - State TV

The Syrian army has discovered a storehouse belonging to rebels in the Damascus area of Jobar, where toxic chemical substances - including chlorine - have been produced and kept, State TV reported.

Military sources reported that the militants "were preparing to fire mortars in the suburbs of the capital and were going to pack missiles with chemical warheads."

A video shot by RT’s sister channel Russia Al Youm shows an old, partly ruined building which was set up as a laboratory. After entering the building, Syrian Army officers found scores of canisters and bags laid on the floor and tables. According to a warning sign on the bags, the “corrosive” substance was made in Saudi Arabia.

On July 7, the Syrian army confiscated “281 barrels filled with dangerous, hazardous chemical materials” that they found at a cache belonging to rebels in the city of Banias. The chemicals included monoethylene glycol and polyethylene glycol.

Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said that the chemicals were “capable of destroying a whole city, if not the whole country."

Chief UN chemical weapons investigator Ake Sellstrom and UN disarmament chief Angela Kane are expected in Damascus for talks on Monday, following an invitation from the Syrian government.

Longface Monday 15 Jul 2013

FSA to al-Qaeda: Killing of Syria rebel official ‘declaration of war’

The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) said the killing of Kamal al-Hamami, an FSA official, by members of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was a “declaration of war.”

Hamami, also known as Abu Baseer al-Ladkani – was a member of the FSA’s Supreme Military Council. He was meeting with members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the Syrian port city of Latakia on Friday when they killed him, Reuters quoted FSA spokesman Qassem Saadeddine as saying.
In an interview with Al Arabiya, FSA spokesman Louay Almokdad said the Syrian armed opposition’s demand that Hamami’s killers be handed over to the FSA was “a rightful request.”

“A criminal named Abu Ayman al-Baghdadi killed an FSA official in cold blood using his personal gun and in front of eye witnesses that include FSA leaders,” Almokdad said. “We do not threaten, we do not warn and we do not instigate battles with anyone. This murderer must be handed over to a just and fair judiciary, so justice can run its course.”

Almokdad also said that the FSA was still not informed as to why Hamami was killed.
“We are waiting to know the reason why he was killed. It’s been 48 hours now and no clarification has been issued yet,” he told Al Arabiya. “Hamami was killed whilst discovering a Syrian regime position in order to carry out a military operation,” Almokdad said.
“Hamami’s murderers [served] the interest of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Those who murdered Hamami must explain why they did it, otherwise, let them announce that they work with Bashar al-Assad.”

Almokdad also commented on the relation between the FSA and al-Qaeda-linked groups.
“What is currently happening is not tension between the FSA and al-Qaeda groups, because there wasn’t a relation in the first place. They consider us infidels and they [instructed] Abu Baseer’s companion to tell us: “we will kill you all.’”

The Syria Analysis Thread

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