Mayhem in Nasr City + Somalia on Turkey's Southern Border

The sit-in in front of the Republican Guard officers' club in Nasr City where deposed president Mohamed Morsi is believed to be held was fired on. Over 40 people are reported dead. This from David Kirkpatrick and Kareem Fahim, "At Least 40 Die as Soldiers Said to Open Fire on Morsi Backers":

Egyptian soldiers opened fire on hundreds of unarmed supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi early Monday as they were praying before dawn outside the facility where he is believed to be detained, dozens of witnesses said. 

At least 43 civilians were killed, all or most of them shot, and more than 300 wounded, doctors and health officials said. Security officials said one police officer died as well. 

The attack marked a sharp escalation in the confrontation between the generals who forced out the president and his Islamist supporters in the streets. 

Dozens of Islamists who had gathered in vigil for Mr. Morsi denied there was any provocation for the attack. Two bystanders who had supported Mr. Morsi’s ouster also said that the demonstrators were unarmed and ran in terror as the attack began. 

Bullet holes in cars, lampposts and corrugated metal barriers indicated that gunfire was coming from the top of a nearby building where the sandbag barriers around makeshift gun turrets were visible. Bullet casings on the ground and collected by Islamist demonstrators bore the label of the Egyptian Army.

It would be remarkable if this doesn't spark a move by Islamists away from civil protest to civil war in Egypt. David Kirkpatrick reports that Al Nour, the Salafi party that scuttled the naming of Mohamed ElBaradei as prime minister, has withdrawn from negotiations over the composition of the interim government as a result of the massacre. This might be just as well since Al Nour's bottom line is the inclusion of Islamic law in any Egyptian Constitution. Eventually this was going to be a flash point with the other members of the anti-Morsi coalition. The downside is that it removes the Islamic fig leaf from the anti-Morsi coalition, making it harder to argue this isn't about secularism vs. religion in politics.

Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada have a story this morning, "Opposition in Syria Continues to Fracture," covered yesterday by Reuters, about fighting between rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army and the new Al Qaeda franchise on the block, Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham:

Islamist fighters said recently that they had driven a rival rebel brigade out of Raqqa, a rebel-held provincial capital in northeastern Syria, because they had found some of its fighters drinking wine and consorting with women, and because they considered brigade reluctant to fight.

And in the most recent confrontation, in Dana, a rebel-held town in Idlib Province near the Turkish border, members of an extremist Islamist group were accused of beheading two rival fighters and leaving their severed heads beside a garbage can in a town square.

That grim discovery on Sunday followed a protest and clashes in the town, highlighting the antagonism that some Syrian fighters and civilians are beginning to feel toward some of the radical factions. 

Simmering tensions within the insurgency have intensified lately, especially between rebels affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose-knit umbrella group backed by the West, and members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham, the new Syria-based affiliate of Al Qaeda, which includes the well-armed fighters of the Nusra Front.

The disputes that have erupted in provinces like Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo are often centered as much on individual egos and economic resources as on ideology. Still, the frictions inhibit the insurgency from functioning as a single fighting force, and as government forces have appeared to retake control of some rebel-held territory, they are threatening to deepen into a new conflict that would further weaken the rebels on the battlefield.

According to residents, activists and fighters, popular resentment toward radical factions including foreign fighters began sweeping into villages that had been under the control of the Free Syrian Army and trying to impose their strict conception of Islamic law, sometimes even carrying out summary public executions. 

The Nusra and Free Syrian Army fighters have accused each other of profiting from the war, demanding bribes at checkpoints and selling oil from captured wells. The Qaeda-affiliated units are said to be buying up land in Aleppo and Idlib Provinces and trying to monopolize supplies of wheat and fuel, Reuters reported.

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that the SAA has taken the Khaldiyeh district in Homs. There has been intense fighting in the rebel-held areas of Homs. The government appears to be adding territory to its control. And with the news out of Idlib of rebel factions at war with each other and civilians being mowed down in the crossfire, it's time for the warhawk U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to get real and agree to conditions to get talks underway as soon as possible. Otherwise we're looking at a situation where there will be a Somalia-type Hobbesian state on Turkey's southern border.

The Poverty of Elections

Elections are proving not to be the answer. Look at Obama's solid, one might even argue historic, progressive repudiation of a troglodyte conservative Republican Party. Nothing has changed. The economy remains hobbled with too many unemployed; the national security state grows ever stronger. Even Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama's one great promise -- that he'll wind down the wars in the Middle East -- has turned into a lie as we end up where we began 35 years ago -- arming the mujahideen.

Elections that brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt have done nothing to address the nation's ills. The Mubarak security forces remain ensconced in the Interior Ministry; the economy teeters on the brink; and the society is divided between followers of conservative Islam and everyone else. Violence spiked yesterday in the run up to Sunday's huge planned protest. There could be a full-blown civil war in a matter of days.

Iraq is suffering through daily multiple terror bombings.

Al Nusra Front jihadis are claiming to have taken the Binayat checkpoint from the Syrian Arab Army in the southern city of Dara'a. But even the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights doubts the veracity of the claim. According to the story by Hania Mourtada and Rick Gladstone in this morning's paper,

Video posted on the Internet showed what the rebels claimed to be the destruction of a high-rise building at the checkpoint, along with proclamations of victory by fighters of the Nusra Front “and the Islamic battalions who participated in the operation.” 

Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory, said the insurgents had not taken full control of Dara’a. But in remarks quoted by Reuters, he said the Syrian military’s position in Dara’a was under threat and “this could change the balance of power there.”

An anti-Assad activist from Dara’a who is currently in Jordan agreed in a telephone interview that the seizure of the Binayat checkpoint was a setback for Syrian forces in Dara’a, but cautioned that the rebel claims of victory could be overstated. “The Islamic groups are trying to make a big deal behind this operation, a boasting attempt,” said the activist, who identified himself only by his given name, Taysir, for security reasons.

In other words, an attack on a government checkpoint has, thanks to the power of jihadi magical thinking, turned into the capture of an entire city.

The Guardian is reporting stepped up government activity to retake the Khalidiyah district in Homs.

I woke up this morning thinking that what's happening here is that the Wahhabis are making their move to take control of the Middle East. It's hard to think that in this environment the Israelis are going to budge one inch towards a two-state solution. This is a war for survival.

Who is Fomenting Sectarian Hatred?

If there's any doubt who is attempting to broaden the Syrian civil war to engulf neighboring Lebanon, look no further than this morning's story, "Soldiers Clash With Sunni Sheik’s Followers in Southern Lebanon," by Ben Hubbard and Hania Mourtada. 

Sheik Ahmad al-Assir is a Sunni firebrand who has recently achieved notoriety thanks to several blistering speeches criticizing Hezbollah and attacking Hassan Nasrallah. Al-Assir's armed followers attacked Hezbollah offices earlier this month in the southern Lebanese port city of Sidon. The Lebanese Army said it was attacked yesterday by al-Assir gunmen in Abra, east of Sidon. According to the Daily Star, seventeen soldiers have been killed, along with 35 gunmen. The Lebanese commandos seized the al-Assir complex in Sidon as fighting continued for a second day:

Army eavesdropping devices indicated that Assir was still in the vicinity of the complex, the sources said, adding that the fiery sheikh was heard as urging his gunmen not to surrender to the military and "fight to the death". 

The seizure of the complex at noon came after an attempt late Monday by a group of Salafi preachers to mediate a truce reached a dead end, with the Army determined to continue its operations until Assir was captured and his followers crushed, the sources said. 

In overnight fighting, the Army had tightened the noose around Assir and his some 250 gunmen barricaded in the Abra complex, 40 km south of Beirut, the sources said. 

Fighting erupted Sunday after armed supporters of Assir attacked a military checkpoint near the Abra complex, killing three soldiers and wounding several others.

Al-Assir is seen in Lebanon as performing deeds dictated by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, two monarchies who thus far seem to be willing to go to any length, no matter the lives lost or the chaos caused, to oust Bashar al-Assad. I interpret this attack by al-Assir's group as proof that things are not going well for the rebels in Syria. There is a tried and true pattern to the conflict so far: when the opposition is getting its clock cleaned, terrorist attacks spring up in other countries in the region. In all of this, to the extent that the United States is facilitating this Saudi- and Qatari-led destabilization, the Obama administration looks truly feckless.

For a snapshot of this hopelessly confused, conflicted and dithering mindset, read Thomas Friedman's column, "Syria Scorecard," from yesterday. It seems simple to me. If you're from the "realist" school of foreign policy you apply the same standard you applied in Bahrain -- regional stability over ideology. But apparently anti-Shiite/anti-Iranian blinders are securely fastened.

A balanced, sober, lengthy piece, "The Price of Loyalty in Syria," written by Robert Worth, appeared in the New York Times Magazine yesterday. It's worth reading. It provides some insight into what it's like being an Alawite in Syria; also, it makes a convincing argument that anti-Shiite sectarianism crept in quickly to the Syrian Arab Spring uprising. It is commonly stated in the Western media that sectarianism was first introduced by the al-Assad government to raise doubts about the democratic bona fides of the opposition.

West Likely to Arm Syrian Opposition

This morning's New York Times reads like a broadside for Western intervention on the side of the rebels in the Syrian civil war. First, there is C.J. Chivers' frontpage story, "Starved for Arms, Syria Rebels Make Their Own," which describes the makeshift bomb manufacturing supply line set up by the opposition. Fashioning mortars out of a sections of the main gun scavenged from government T-72 tanks, concocting RDX -- a plastic explosive -- from recipes taken off the Internet, cracking open old Soviet aircraft bombs that failed to detonate in order to extract the TNT mix inside, the rebel message is clear, "Give us real weapons and we'll win this war." 

Chivers concludes his piece with the following two paragraphs:

On a front in the arid farmland north of Hama, Khaled Muhammed Addibis, a rebel commander, pointed to a stack of rockets his fighters had tried to fire the previous day. They had failed to launch. Others had veered far off-target in flight. And none had reached their expected range. 

“All we need is effective weapons,” he said. “Effective weapons. Nothing else.”

So that's the first point in the pro-intervention broadside: let's at least get the opposition antitank and antiaircraft weapons. Next up is the story from Mark Mazzetti and Michael R. Gordon, "Syrian Forces Seen Stepping Up Air Attacks on Rebels," which can be read as a hawkish wish for a Western enforced no-fly zone. As Obama officials brute military options, intelligence reports are circulating which point to Syrian government air power as the source of rebels' woes and Assad's renewed momentum.

UK foreign secretary William Hague appeared yesterday with Secretary of State John Kerry to engage in "bosspeak" and decry the Assad regime:

“The regime appears to be preparing new assaults, endangering the lives and safety of hundreds of thousands of Syrians who are already in desperate need,” said Mr. Hague, who added that the brutality of its recent attacks “beggars belief.”

Hague says no effort is being spared to get the opposition and the Syrian government to the negotiating table. But everyone knows that this is a farce. It is the opposition that refuses to attend any peace conference. As Mazzetti and Gordon point out:

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Hague emphasized that they remained committed to a political solution, though the prospects of the international conference, which was first announced in Moscow more than a month ago, have faded. General Idris had said he would not attend until the rebels received fresh arms and ammunition and their leverage in a potential peace conference was improved.

Kerry and Hague were asked about the viability of the opposition, but they responded with "bosspeak," saying Western energies were focused on a "political solution." This was repeated to the point of inducing nausea. Both Kerry and Hague blame everything on Assad and Hezbollah.

Not a word was mentioned about the massacre of Shiites in Hatlah by Al Nusra Front fighters. This is covered by Hania Mourtada and Anne Barnard in "Dozens of Shiites Reported Killed in Raid by Syria Rebels." A useful synopsis of the Syrian civil war up until now is delivered in four paragraphs:

The Syrian conflict began as a popular uprising demanding political rights, but gradually has taken on a more sectarian tone. As the conflict became militarized, with the government cracking down on demonstrators, some of its opponents, mostly Sunni army defectors and others, took up arms. 

Sunni jihadists from across the region have also joined the fight, and extremist groups have been able to count on financing from like-minded private donors, making them increasingly influential on the battlefield. 

Shiite fighters from Lebanon and Iraq have also entered Syria to defend Shiite shrines and fight alongside a government they see as protecting their interests. 

Sectarian tensions grew in recent weeks as Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, fought a full-scale battle in Syria, helping the government to recapture the town of Qusayr last week. Syrian rebels fired rockets at Shiite neighborhoods in retaliation.

David Jolly reports this morning in "Syrian Death Toll Approaches 93,000, U.N. Says" that Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, is saying that 92,901 killings have been documented in Syria through the end of April.

The United Nations study was based on reports of 263,055 killings. Any reported killing that did not fully identify the victim by name, date and the location of death was excluded to avoid the possibility of duplication.

“This extremely high rate of killings, month after month, reflects the drastically deteriorating pattern of the conflict over the past year,” Ms. Pillay said in the statement, and “civilians are bearing the brunt of widespread, violent and often indiscriminate attacks.”

Ms. Pillay called for “an immediate cease-fire,” saying: “Nobody is gaining anything from this senseless carnage.”

She also urged the international community to help broker an end to the conflict, saying: “The only answer is a negotiated political solution. Tragically, shamefully, nothing will restore the 93,000 or more individual lives already lost.”

From today's stories it appears that the West will arm the Syrian opposition.War is here to stay.

Obama's Ultimate Test

The ultimate test of the Obama presidency will be the decision he makes on Syria. Michael Gordon and Mark Landler report this morning in "Rebels’ Losses in Syria Complicate Options for U.S. Aid" that the administration is engaged in a heightened debate about providing military support now that rebel forces are in free fall.

I say Syria is the ultimate test because Obama's support is at root based on a belief held by voters that he is anti-war. It was his anti-war stance, the fact that he spoke out against going to war in Iraq when he was a state legislator in Illinois, that gave him the edge over Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary. And though his stimulus package during the financial meltdown was too small and his health-care overhaul was a massive expansion of a failed status quo, he did pull all the troops out of Iraq.

For Obama to send heavy weapons to the rebels or use the U.S. air force to attack Syria would undercut the source of his appeal with the electorate. Polls show there is no support for military intervention in Syria. But there is clearly support in the State Department, based on a reading of Landler and Gordon's story, for expanding U.S. involvement.

The problem with the State Department's hawkish position is that it doesn't acknowledge that military aid in order to be effective has to eventually end up in battle. And who is dominant on the ground for the opposition? Wahhabi fighters, foreign mercenary religious zealots -- the very enemy we have reconfigured our society to confront since 9/11. This is from Kareem Fahim and Hania Mourtada's story today, "Syrian Teenager’s Public Death Reveals Growing Anger as Civil War Continues":

The condemnations were a measure of the growing anger at the small but assertive cadre of extremists who have joined the rebel ranks, and whose hard-line beliefs have unsettled even pious Syrians. Their influence is being felt in mosques, in schools and in committees and courts intended to enforce a strict version of Islamic law. Disgust with the radicals has peaked in recent months after reports of summary executions, including of government soldiers and men accused of crimes and then punished. 

Last month, antigovernment activists in Aleppo were beaten and detained by armed guards of the city’s Shariah committee, after the activists tried to raise the flag of the Syrian revolution. 

One of them, Seif Azzam, said the Islamists threatened two of his friends by saying they were “infidels who should be killed for the sake of God.” The two were eventually released. 

“The Shariah committee’s behavior is completely identical to that of air force intelligence,” said Mr. Azzam, referring to the most feared government intelligence agency. “We are revolting against Assad’s regime, and the Shariah committee at the same time,” he said. 

The identities and affiliations of the three men remained a mystery. Muhammad’s mother said she thought that two of them were possibly foreigners, but that the third was Syrian. His father, who spoke in a separate video interview, was less sure. “Are they Afghans? I don’t know. There are a lot of battalions nowadays, how can we know?”

That the State Department is actually considering putting heavy weapons into this situation is insanity; it speaks of how absolutely disconnected government is from the basic aspirations of people -- peace, employment, safety. The other thing that goes unmentioned in Landler and Gordon's account of hawkish thinking in the State Department is the lack of acknowledgement that opinion within in Syria has significantly shifted towards Assad. Religiously-motivated murders like that of 14-year-old coffee vendor Muhammad al-Qatta are the reason why the Syrian government enjoys majority support among its Sunni population. If we in the United States go to war with Syria we will be doing so in violation of international law. We will be going to war with the secular-minded people of Syria on behalf of Sunni extremists, a truly upside-down world.

Kareem Fahim also has a detailed story today, "Still More Questions Than Answers on Nerve Gas in Syria," about the various allegations of sarin gas use by the Assad government. After reading the story one is left with the distinct impression of shadow craft by competing intelligence agencies.

Europe to End Arms Embargo on Syria + Wars Spreads in Lebanon

This morning Steven Erlanger has a good summary, "Europe Seeks to Press Russia and Syria on Arms," of the ongoing diplomatic struggles in the Syrian civil war. Earlier in the week, the EU, due to British and French insistence, lifted the arms embargo on Syria:

Britain and France were the prime movers in strong-arming other European Union countries to let the arms embargo on Syria lapse, while other of the union’s sanctions, aimed more specifically at the Assad government, were renewed. 

Part of the debate in a long meeting was to promise that neither Britain nor France would begin to deliver any arms, if they chose to do so, until the beginning of August, to allow the Geneva peace process to get traction, the officials explained.

The lifting of the arms embargo is widely interpreted as a Western ploy to gain leverage prior to the peace conference being planned to take place in Geneva in June. As Colum Lynch points out in his Turtle Bay blog that appears on Foreign Policy's web site:

But the decision to end the embargo in two months hasn't resulted in any immediate calls or plans for arming the opposition. Instead, Russia cited the decision today in defending its own move to deliver S-300 air defense missiles, claiming it would deter foreign intervention. "We consider that such steps will restrain some hotheads from the possibility of giving this conflict, or from considering a scenario that would give this conflict, an international character with the participation of external forces," Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters, according to Interfax news agency. 

Jean Marie Guéhenno, a former French official and under secretary-general for peacekeeping who served as a top advisor to former U.N.-Arab League Syria envoy Kofi Annan, said that the decision to block the maintenance of the European arms embargo has merely provided political cover to Russia and other regime supporters to continue its arms sales. Meanwhile, there's little fresh hope that Western powers will enter the conflict on behalf of the rebels. 

"I think it backfired and exposed the weakness of the West, in general," Guéhenno told Turtle Bay. "This issue of arming or not arming is more a bluff than anything else. It's more about doing something to show you're doing something than actually doing something. It will be seen by the Russians, who are not fools, as a sign of weakness rather than strength."

The Israelis are making thinly-veiled threats of additional bombing runs should Russia make delivery of the S-300s.

Meanwhile on the ground the war spreads. There were more rockets launched on Tuesday against the pro-Hezbollah village of Hermel on the Lebanese border. The source of the rockets was likely the Lebanese town of Arsal, which is mainly Sunni. Arsal was also the source of a border checkpoint attack that left three Lebanese soldiers dead. This from today's story, "Rocket and Gun Attacks Add to Fears That Syria’s Strife Is Reaching Lebanon," by Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada:

Arsal, which is near a porous border that has been used as a conduit for weapons, has in recent months become a hub for Syrian rebels and their supporters, as well as a temporary home for thousands of Syrian refugees. The clash Tuesday was the second in the area this year. In February, gunmen ambushed a Lebanese Army convoy near the town, killing a captain and a sergeant.

General Salim Idris, the head of the West's confected Free Syrian Army, threatened Lebanese president Michel Suleiman with more attacks inside his country if Hezbollah was not prevented from crossing into Syria. This wanton, profligate bellicosity -- you're either with us or against us -- is thoroughly Western. There should be no doubt, and I don't think there is among those who are paying attention, who is responsible for the increase in suffering as the war widens from a civil conflict to a regional conflagration.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Approves Military Support for Rebels

Of particular interest in "Iran and Hezbollah Support for Syria Complicates Peace-Talk Strategy," by Michael Gordon and Steven Lee Myers, is the news that Iranian and Iraqi paramilitaries are fighting alongside Hezbollah with the Syrian army:

According to American intelligence reports, there are some 200 Iranian paramilitary Quds Force personnel in Syria. Qassim Suleimani, the Quds Force commander, recently ordered Iranian artillery and armor officials to help Mr. Assad’s regime, American officials say.

And Mr. Suleimani has also requested that several hundreds fighters from Asaib al-Haq and Kataib Hezbollah, two Iraqi Shiite militias that have been trained by the Iranians, join the war effort in Syria, according to officials familiar with the intelligence assessments. Iran is heavily involved in training thousands of members of Mr. Assad’s militia, the Jaish al-Sha’bi, including in Iran.

Therefore it is likely that there are Western "advisers" on the ground with the rebels. Imagine U.S. Special Forces fighting alongside Al Nusra Front jihadists. Whence GWOT? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted yesterday to supply weapons to the rebels:

In Washington, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which Mr. Kerry was chairman before becoming secretary of state, voted on Tuesday to approve legislation that would authorize expanded assistance to the rebels in Syria, including weapons. 

“I think all of us understand the risks that come with this type of legislation,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee. “But we also know that if we don’t shift the balance there and the moderate groups don’t have the opportunity to be successful the day after Assad, then I think all of us are going to regret we did not play a role in helping make that happen.” 

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to comment on the proposed legislation but said the White House’s policy was clear. 

“We are working urgently to end the conflict in Syria and hasten a transition from Bashar al-Assad to a democratic Syria that is inclusive of all Syrians,” she said.

Working urgently to end the conflict by arming Al Qaeda and thereby creating an inclusive, democratic Syria. How does that smell to you?

Thomas Friedman, though still wedded to his personal fantasy of the magical healing powers of capitalism, sensibly cautions us to think twice before supplying weapons to the Free Syrian Army. In his column today, "Tell Me How This Ends," he lists the likely outcomes of the civil war. It's worth quoting at length:

We can only properly answer the question — should we be arming the Syrian rebels? — if we first answer what kind of Syria do we want to see emerge and what will it take, beyond arms, to get there? 

If we want Bashar al-Assad’s regime to be toppled and pluralistic democracy to emerge in Syria, then we not only need to arm the rebels but we need to organize an international peacekeeping force to enter Syria as soon as the regime falls to help manage the transition. Otherwise, when Assad is toppled, there will be at least two more wars in Syria. First will be a war between Sunnis and Alawites, the sect that Assad represents. The Alawites will fight to defend their perks and turf. After that, there will be a war within the opposition — between the Islamists and more secular fighting forces that have very different visions of a future Syria. Only an outside peacekeeping force could make up for the lack of trust and shared vision and try to forge a new Syria. And it would be a very, very long haul. 

If our goal is to arm the rebels just to serve our strategic interests — which are to topple the Assad regime and end the influence of Iran and Hezbollah in Damascus and not care what comes next — then we need to be ready for the likely fragmentation of Syria into three zones: one Sunni, one Alawite and one Kurdish. 

That might eventually solve the trust and civil war problems, as everyone would be living “with their own,” but I am not sure it would better enable Syrians to address their development challenges.

A third option would be to arm the rebels just to ensure a stalemate — in the hope that the parties might eventually get exhausted enough to strike a deal on their own. But, again, I find it hard to see how any deal that might set Syria on the long, difficult path to a decent, inclusive political system could be implemented without outside help on the ground to referee. 

So let’s do something new: think two steps ahead. Before we start sending guns to more people, let’s ask ourselves for what exact ends we want those guns used and what else would be required of them and us to realize those ends?

In "Syrian Forces and Hezbollah Fighters Press Assault on Key City," Hania Mourtada and Anne Barnard report on the fog of war. The Syrian state news agency, SANA, reports steady gains by government forces in taking control of Qusayr, which is denied via Skype by activists inside the city. Syria says it destroyed an Israeli jeep that had crossed into its territory in the Golan Heights. Israel claims that the jeep was only lightly damaged and it never left its side of the border.

SANA said the incursion was meant to raise the “collapsed morale” of the rebels after the blows they had suffered in Qusayr. It was the second time in two days that the Syrian state news media, aiming to bolster its case that Syria’s opposition was allied with Israel, claimed that it had evidence that Israel had aided the rebels. On Monday, the state news media showed pictures of what it said was an Israeli jeep found in Qusayr, but it appeared to be an old vehicle, and experts said it could have been supplied to Israeli-allied militias in southern Lebanon years ago.

There does seem to be a pattern emerging. Rebel losses on the ground are followed by an Israeli attack. At the beginning of this month government gains in Tartus Province were followed by the Sunday morning mega-bombing outside Damascus. Something to keep an eye on.

Sectarianism in Syria's Civil War

Qusayr, a rebel-held Syrian city on the border with Lebanon, is falling to government forces and Hezbollah fighters. This from today's story, "Hezbollah Aids Syrian Military in a Key Battle," by Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad:

The small city, about 100 miles north of the Syrian capital, Damascus, is crucial to supply routes for both sides. Qusayr is a conduit for rebel supplies and fighters from Lebanon, and it links Damascus to the Mediterranean coast, which is the heartland for Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect. 

The Syrian government appears to be trying to regain as much territory as possible, to strengthen its negotiating position while Russia and the United States try to organize peace talks for next month.

The regional, sectarian nature of the conflict is plainly visible for all to see. It's Sunnis backed by the rich Gulf States, Israel and the West against Shiites supported by Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Russia. The Arab Spring is a fading memory. Bashar al-Assad in an interview with an Argentinian newspaper that appeared over the weekend cast doubt on peace talks that Russia and the United States are organizing; he said that the West doesn't want peace. Assad asserts that Israel is providing logistical support to the rebels.

At the end of last week Ben Hubbard had a story, "Syria Begins to Break Apart Under Pressure From War," about the fractured Syria of the present and likely future. There is a Sunni jihadist state in the north, a Kurdish state in the northeast and a Shiite state in the center of the country. It's a story worth reading. Another noteworthy story from last week is the news that Russia has sent advanced antiship missile batteries to Syria.This will deter the United States from having a carrier group to sit in the Mediterranean to enforce a no-fly zone. Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada had a story last week about atrocities committed by pro-government militias against Sunni civilians who live in the coastal Tartus Province.

The West's position seems untenable. They want the folks at home to be outraged by atrocities and the horror of war, and at the same time they want us to support the widening of the war by supplying weapons to jihadist groups with whom we are supposedly engaged in a life-or-death struggle.

Desecration Hijr bin Adi al-Kindi's Shrine

At the end of a story today by Thomas Erdbrink and Hania Mourtada about the desecration of a Shiite shrine in a Damascus suburb by Syrian rebels readers are treated to a rare unvarnished -- albeit brief -- description of the Iranian perspective on Islamic sectarian conflict:

Iranian officials blamed the United States and Israel, saying they were supporting the Syrian rebels and Sunni extremist forces in the region. 

“They have launched a war between Shiites and Sunnis,” Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Sunday. “They plant bombs in Pakistan and Iraq, and recently the Zionist regime has hit Syria. We should be careful about colonizers and Israel.” 

Iran’s ideological narrative is that there are no real conflicts between the sects, but that Western powers and Iran’s enemies in the region deliberately mislead certain Muslim groups. Its leaders blame ultraconservative Wahhabis and Salafists, who they say are backed by the United States and Israel, through their regional allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar. 

“This Syrian so-called front, Al Nusra, is the symbol of Saudi Arabia and Qatar,” said Mojtaba Bigdeli, a former leader of a Shiite pressure group. “We respect Sunni shrines. We do not desecrate them. We may form self-sacrifice battalions to react to the Wahhabis and Salafists in Syria. For sure we will not remain silent.”

Any regular consumer of the news will have to acknowledge that the Iranian "ideological narrative" is more consistent than the one coming from the United States government. The United States says it acts in support of popular democracy and human rights, but then it tacitly approves a brutal crackdown on Arab Spring activists in Bahrain, not to mention decades of occupation by Israel in the West Bank; its chief allies in the Persian Gulf region are among the most despotic, unegalitarian states on the planet.

What's the rationale for aiding rebel groups in Syria? -- Freedom? Democracy? There are few secular fighters left in the Syrian opposition. So the United States is on the brink of arming the very people we've been engaging in global warfare since 9/11. It's crazy. The U.S. must think that through its gulf state allies it can control the Al Qaeda types. But time and again this has proven to be folly. The desecration of Hijr bin Adi al-Kindi's shrine is the latest example.

Predictably, the United States is sticking to its flimsy story that it is the Assad government not the opposition that is responsible for the use of nerve gas. No proof is supplied, just bald assertion; that and a whispering campaign has begun against Carla Del Ponte. This from today's frontpage story, "White House Holds Firm on Cautious Path in Syria Crisis," by Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt:

The assertion that there is evidence suggesting the rebels have used sarin was made by Carla Del Ponte, a former chief prosecutor for international criminal tribunals that investigated Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia who is now serving on a commission looking into human rights abuses in Syria. 

But that commission later issued a statement clarifying that it had not reached a conclusion about which side used the gas, and the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, added the administration’s doubts. 

“We are highly skeptical of the suggestion that the opposition could have or did use chemical weapons,” Mr. Carney said. “We find it highly likely that any chemical weapon use that has taken place in Syria was done by the Assad regime. And that remains our position.” 

A senior State Department official told reporters that the United States took Ms. Del Ponte’s allegations seriously, but said of the rebels, “We have no information that they have either the capability or the intent to deploy or use such weapons.” 

Another senior official noted that Ms. Del Ponte was not a member of another United Nations panel that is investigating chemical weapons.

With the rebels' desecration of Shiite shrines threatening a huge expansion of the war, I'm not hopeful that Obama is going to do the right thing. At a certain point, when the warhawks get amped up and Israeli bombs are falling, there's not much (apparently) that even POTUS can do.