Operation Ostrava: Month 15, Week 5, Day 2.

Or technically Month 16, Week 1, Day 1 local time.

In the last few hours today (6/6/12) reports are starting to emerge of another al-Houla style massacre in the villages of Qubair and Maarzaf in the Hama province of western Syria. Early reports put the death toll between 70 and 90 and although there is no independent confirmation that the event has actually taken place it is already being blamed on the pro-government "Shabiha" militia.

However as with the al-Houla massacre the timing of this incident is incredibly convenient for the opposition coming on the same day as the launch of the Syrian Business Forum (SBF) in Doha Qatar. The purpose of the SBF it to address the fundamental problem that the Saudis and the Qataris have had in getting the insurgency to gain a foothold in Syrian society. Up until now the insurgency has been carried out by the Sunni criminal underclass of gun-runners and smugglers but has not spread to what you would class the normal society made up of the Alawite political class and the Sunni merchant class. Throughout the conflict the insurgents have been trying to turn it into a sectarian conflict by pitting Sunni Arabs across the middle-east against the Alawites who they see as heretics which is why we've seen the emergence of Jihadist groups like the Nafusa or "Salvation" Front. Therefore you would think another Alawite atrocity against Sunnis would help separate the Sunni merchant class from the Alawite political class with the merchants joining the SBF causing normal Syrian society to fracture into an Iraq-style sectarian blood bath.

It would though be an absolutely stupid for the Syrian government to carry out such a massacre the day after they agreed to allow international humanitarian groups unsupervised access to the county and the Saudi Irregular Army (SIA) completely rejected the Joint Special Envoy's six point plan.

Edited at around 11:10 on 7/6/12 to add;

With events at Quabir and Maarzaf still far from clear Foreign Ministers from the anti-Syria coalition made up the US, Turkey, UK etc are today meeting at a counter-terrorism summit in Istanbul. Meanwhile Russia, China and Iran who have been dubbed the "Shanghai Bloc" will be meeting at an Asian security summit in China. Later today Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan will be breifing the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on Syria in New York.

So it seems to me there is one sure fire way to stop all these massacres; Renew the United Nations Supervision Mission In Syria (UNSMIS) at the end of June but drop all reference to the six point plan. This will allow UNSMIS to support the Syrian government in humanely ending the insurgency creating the security space for a political process.

Edited again at around 21:55 on 7/6/12 to add;

At the open United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Syria that proceeded the closed Security Council (UNSC) the representative from the Arab League (LAS) called of Egypt and other LAS members to take Syrian television off the air. This along some nudges and winks from the BBC makes me think it's my duty to report that today my FreeviewTV supplied via the digital aeriel stopped working. If I didn't have several fall backs this would have been quite disruptive and a bit annoying.

Also at the UNGA the UN Secretary General announced that UNSMIS observers came under small arms fire as they attempted to enter Qubair. This would be consistent with the bomb attacks on UNSMIS observers in Deraa on 9/5/12 and Kahn Sheikhoun on 15/5/12 and seems to be part of the SIA's deliberate strategy to attack the observers in order to force them to militarise their presence through the use of armoured vehicles and eventually weapons.

One of the possible solutions to the situation apparently being circulated at the UN meetings is to set up a contact group on Syria including Russia, China and Iran. However I am struggling to see how this differs from the Syria Contact Group that Russia, China and Iran have already declined to join because the groups main aim is regime change which is prohibited by the UN's own charter and a host of other international conventions.

Also people are talking about the failure of the Special Envoy's six point because Syria in sliding into sectarian conflict. This is of course nonsense because the fact that Syria has already slipped into sectarian conflict means that the six point plan is achieving precisely the objective it was designed for.