Operation Ostrava: Month 16, Week 2, Day 1-2.

Today (14/6/12) the British based pressure group Amnesty International (AI) released a highly partisan report on Syria entitled; "Deadly Reprisals: Deliberate Killings and Other Abuses by the Syrian Armed Forces." This report covered the period including the al-Houla massacre of May 25th (25/5/12). However it fails to comment on that incident as AI backs down from it's earlier public statements blaming the atrocity on the Syria government. That is because now independent, international investigators have been able to visit the scene a very different picture of the massacre has emerged.

It now looks as though apart from the twenty or so fighters the vast majority of those killed come from just three families; the Mashlab family, the Al-Sayed family and the Abdul Razak family. The head of the Mashlab family, Abdul-Moa'ti was a member of the Syrian Parliament who refused to defect or boycott the recent election. The Al-Sayed and Abdul Razak families had both recently converted from the Sunni sect of Islam to President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect much to the disgust of their Sunni neighbours including the Al-Hallak organised crime family/clan. So what appears to have happened is that members of the Al-Hallak clan went into al-Houla to ethnically cleanse the village by killing all the families loyal to the Syrian government.

Despite the facts not exactly fitting the narrative the Saudi Irregular Army (SIA) still used the al-Houla massacre as a pretext to withdraw from the Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan's six point peace plan on Friday June 1st (1/6/12). Since then off the record United Nations (UN) sources have reported that the SIA have been forcibly conscripting child soldier (under 16 years) and using them to launch a large offensive against Syrian forces in Homs, al-Heffa, Deir al-Zour and Rastan. As of today (14/6/12) Syrian forces seem to have been able to break this offensive without any great trouble. However with both sides fighting it out with heavy weapons there has been a very high death toll with civilians being killed on both sides. The worst single incident occurred on Saturday June 9th (9/6/12) when the SIA killed 88 Syrian soldiers.

Meanwhile Burhan Ghalioun - head of the political wing of the SIA,the Syrian National Council (SNC) - was deposed on Sunday (10/6/12) following months of in-fighting. He has been replaced by Abdulbaset Sayda. What appears to have happened is that a deep sectarian division had emerged within the SNC between the Kurdish minority and the Sunni Muslim majority with the Kurds threatening to leave the group. So the Sunnis who make up the Saudi and Qatari Royal Families who are the SNC's main backers forced the Sunni Ghalioun to step aside in favour of the Kurdish Sayda in order to prevent the Kurds leaving and revealing the SNC for what it is - a Saudi front organisation. These deep divisions within the SNC also demonstrate the fact that if the Syrian government were to fall there is no organisation ready to step into its place creating a Iraq-style power vacuum.

The situation in Syria is now so bad that everyone except the US thinks that Syria is in the midst of a full blown civil war and Israel has been forced to break it's long held silence on the matter. On Sunday (10/6/12) the newly appointed vice-Prime Minister from the Kadima Party Shaul Mofaz explicitially called on the international community to take military action to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad accusing it of crimes against humanity including genocide. This call perfectly echoes the propaganda line - that the violence is all an Israeli plot - the al-Assad government has being using to keep the country united. So by making such an explicit call the Israelis actually seem to be trying to help to shore up the Syrian government meaning that all Israel wants from the situation is stability regardless of who is in charge of their neighbour. The timing of the Israeli call the day before the Israeli President Shimon Peres and the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jointly address the Brookings Institute seems to have been an effort by Kadima to be seen to put pressure on the US to change it's current position because their regional strategy doesn't seem to have been updated to include recent developments like the Arab Spring. For her part Clinton seemed to be attempting to deflect the Israeli criticism by talking about attack helicopters which leads onto a discussion about Wikileaks, Julian Assange and the trial of Bradley Manning but that's probably a much longer story for another day.

As for Syria there seems to be a widespread agreement that something must be done soon to bring the current situation to an end. However I do not see how using western military power to set up safe havens/training camps for the guys even Al-Qaeda and Hamas think are crazy will achieve that objective.