Syrian National Coalition Agrees to Peace Talks, But Not Really

Michael Gordon has a story this morning that based on the headline, "Syrian Opposition Leader Says He Would Meet Assad Officials," seems like a real breakthrough. The Syrian Opposition has dropped its opposition to peace talks in Geneva. There only precondition now is that there be a deadline to conclude negotiations. At least that's what is conveyed at the outset of Gordon's report, which is mostly a coming-out in the New York Times for new Syrian National Coalition frontman Ahmad al-Jarba. Read on until the end of story and it becomes clear that the opposition isn't seriously considering negotiating with the Syrian government anytime soon:

Discussing his plans to govern areas that had been wrested from Syrian government control, Mr. Jarba acknowledged that Shariah courts had been set up by Islamist rebels but said his goal was to replace them with civil courts. While saying there were no preconditions for attending the Geneva talks, Mr. Jarba said that the opposition was asking that the Assad government take "positive steps," including the release of prisoners, that the coalition could present to the Syrian public to show that attending the talks was worthwhile. 

Mr. Ghalioun [a Syrian National Coalition member] said the opposition had told Mr. Kerry in their meeting that such steps also needed to include an end to artillery attacks, airstrikes and missile launches by the government forces. 

That, he said, prompted Mr. Kerry to ask what the resistance might do in return, an important question as the opposition coalition does not control all the rebel groups, especially extremist factions like the Al Nusra Front. 

Mr. Ghalioun quipped that the opposition would renounce the use of chemical weapons, which American officials say the rebels neither possess nor can access. 

Mr. Jarba said that Mr. Kerry had mentioned that the opposition could put Mr. Assad on the defensive politically by attending the talks. But Mr. Jarba said he had little confidence that the Geneva talks would yield a breakthrough.

So Kerry jawbones the opposition into agreeing to talks, but the opposition has no real intention of attending. The shift seems to be purely rhetorical.

Speaking of rhetoric, check out the latest somersault from Anne Barnard. Writing about a funeral procession on Straight Street which runs through the Old City District of Damascus, Barnard says,

Trumpets and drums beat out the soaring refrain of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The white coffin, heaped with daisies, spun like a helicopter rotor above the crowd as the pallbearers danced past a mosque to a neighboring church, both centuries-old structures striped with light and dark stone. 

Women ululated and threw rice. The dead man, a Christian, was to have been married, but he and his Muslim driver were kidnapped and killed south of Damascus, two more victims of Syria’s civil war, and the funeral was the closest thing he would have to a wedding. 

“Syria! Syria!” the crowd called, hailing the young man, Fadi Francis, as “a martyr of the neighborhood.”

Note how it's not the opposition, the rebels, that  kidnapped and murdered the young Christian but "Syria's civil war." This is not reporting, it is propaganda.