Dexter Filkins writes: Just after midnight on April 25th, a Syrian medical technician who calls himself Majid Daraya was sitting at home, in the city of Daraya, five miles from the outskirts of Damascus, when he heard an explosion. He ran outside, and, on the southern horizon, he saw a blue haze. “I’ve never seen a blue explosion before,” he remembers thinking. Seconds later came another blast, and another blue haze. Majid, who used a pseudonym to protect his identity, told me that his city had become a violent and unpredictable place; for five months, it had been the scene of heavy combat between forces loyal to the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the rebels who have been fighting for more than two years to drive him from power.

Within a few minutes, Majid said, his eyes began to burn, and he felt sick to his stomach. He decided to walk to the local hospital, where, as an anesthesia specialist, he spent most of his daytime hours. When he arrived, dozens of people were streaming in, choking, vomiting, crying, saliva bubbling out of their mouths. About a hundred and thirty people were treated for similar symptoms; ten of them, Majid said, were in “dangerous” condition, though none died. The victims were suffering from chemical poisoning, but there wasn’t much that the doctors could do except try to alleviate the symptoms. “We don’t have medicine to cure that kind of poisoning,” Majid said, in a telephone interview. (We had been introduced by the Syrian Support Group, a pro-opposition organization in Washington, D.C.) “The people were terrified, because no one could help them.”

On the way home, Majid saw birds and other animals—goats, chickens, stray dogs—writhing on the ground. Others were dead. “All these birds and chickens were dead around us,” he told me. “I can’t describe the fear that people felt.” A statement by the rebel-led city council said that the regime had used sarin and possibly chlorine gas. The council members held the Syrian government responsible and called on the international community to “find out the truth about the killing machine.” Majid directed me to a macabre gallery of photographs and videos, posted online by opposition leaders in Daraya. “It was poison gas,’’ he said. “It affected the birds and the animals and the humans in the same terrible way.”

Since March, there have been reports of at least four similar attacks, including one in Ateibeh, a contested area near Damascus, and one in Khan al-Assal, a town outside Aleppo. The reports indicated that the attack in Khan al-Assal had killed twenty-two people and injured forty-eight, and that the one in Ateibeh had contaminated as many as twenty-five people. Majid’s account could not be independently confirmed. An American intelligence official told me that he had learned of the purported attack, and others, by monitoring rebel Web sites. Like the other attacks, the one in Daraya was shrouded in ambiguity. What was the gas that Majid described? Was it a substance banned by international treaty, like sarin or VX? Or was it something less virulent? Had the attack been ordered by Assad, or had it been carried out by a Syrian military unit operating on its own authority? (Although the regime has accused rebels of such attacks, American officials believe that they don’t have chemical weapons.) And, if the incidents reported by Majid and other Syrians did amount to a use of chemical weapons, what could be done to prevent the next one?

On several occasions, President Obama has declared that if the regime used chemical weapons, or even prepared to use them, it would be crossing a “red line.’’ But the Administration has taken care not to make the line too sharp, referring not just to chemical weapons but to “a whole bunch” of chemical weapons, used in a “systematic” way. And though Obama has said that such attacks would be a “game changer,” he has stopped short of saying that they would be cause for military force.

Joseph Holliday, a former Army intelligence officer who has studied the conflict for the Institute for the Study of War, in Washington, suggested that the regime was attempting to use the weapons in a way that would frighten the rebels but wouldn’t cross the red line. “Assad has been extremely calculating with the use of force, increasing the levels of violence gradually, so as not to set off alarm bells,” he said. “First it was artillery. Then it was bombing. Then it was Scuds. A year ago, he wasn’t killing a hundred people a day. He’s introducing chemical weapons gradually, so we get used to them.” The attacks in March and April took place in areas that were either contested or held by the regime, and they killed relatively few people, at a time when, elsewhere in the country, a hundred people were dying every day. “If it’s not a big attack, it’s not easy to determine whether chemical weapons have been used,” a Senate aide told me. “The cloud disperses—there’s no mushroom cloud. Maybe Assad bombards the area afterward to cover up the evidence.” Indeed, some experts said that the regime was using the attacks specifically to gauge the resolve of Obama and the West. “Assad appears to be testing the tactical value of his chemical arsenal,” Gary Samore, who until February was President Obama’s chief adviser on weapons of mass destruction, said. “But he’s testing the political limits, too.”

Senior Israeli officials and Republicans in Washington, as well as British and French intelligence officials, have argued forcefully that the regime used chemical weapons. The Administration’s response has been characterized by caution, indecision, and reluctance to speak publicly about the subject. Officials said in late April that they believed chemical weapons had been used at least twice, but that they could not definitely tie the attacks to Assad. The White House said that it was not entirely clear who was in control of the weapons, leaving open the possibility that the attacks were accidental or unauthorized. “Given the stakes involved, and what we have learned from our recent experience, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient,” the White House wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. Instead, the Administration would rely on the United Nations, which planned to send in experts to test soil and take samples from victims. Assad refused to allow the experts into the country.

A White House aide told me, “There is no question in our minds that the regime would be willing to use these weapons, is able to use these weapons, and is increasingly likely to use these weapons as things continue to go badly for them.” But, at a recent meeting at the State Department, according to a person who attended, “No one wanted to say that Assad had crossed the line, because no one wants to deal with it.” [Continue reading…]

BBC News reports: The UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria has sought to distance itself from comments made by one of its members that there was evidence of the nerve gas sarin being used by rebels.

Carla Del Ponte said testimony from victims and doctors had given rise to “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof”.

But the commission stressed that it had not reached any “conclusive findings”.

The commission’s press release says:

The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic wishes to clarify that it has not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties to the conflict. As a result, the Commission is not in a position to further comment on the allegations at this time.

The Chair of the Commission of Inquiry, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, reminds all parties to the conflict that the use of chemical weapons is prohibited in all circumstances under customary international humanitarian law.

In line with its mandate, the Commission is currently investigating all allegations of violations of international law in the Syrian Arab Republic and will issue its findings to the Human Rights Council on 3 June 2013, as mandated by resolution 22/24.

Update: See Louis Proyect’s comment below. Carla Del Ponte has herself been a target of an earlier investigation over her handling of witnesses during Balkan war crimes cases. “During her eight years as chief prosecutor,” she was “a combative and divisive figure,” Ian Traynor wrote in 2010.

Sir Geoffrey Nice, who was a deputy prosecutor at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic in the Hague, says: “Given her behaviour in the Haradinaj case, her colleagues should be very cautious when considering any of her contributions in the investigation [in Syria].”

Reuters reports: U.N. human rights investigators have gathered testimony from casualties of Syria’s civil war and medical staff indicating that rebel forces have used the nerve agent sarin, one of the lead investigators said on Sunday.

The United Nations independent commission of inquiry on Syria has not yet seen evidence of government forces having used chemical weapons, which are banned under international law, said commission member Carla Del Ponte.

“Our investigators have been in neighbouring countries interviewing victims, doctors and field hospitals and, according to their report of last week which I have seen, there are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated,” Del Ponte said in an interview with Swiss-Italian television.

“This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she added, speaking in Italian.

Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general who also served as prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, gave no details as to when or where sarin may have been used.

Reuters reports: The United States was not given any warning before air strikes in Syria against what Western and Israeli officials say were weapons headed for Hezbollah militants, a U.S. intelligence official said on Sunday.

Without confirming that Israel was behind the attacks, the intelligence official said that the United States was essentially told of the air raids “after the fact” and was notified as the bombs went off.
[…]
While the air raids raised fears that America’s main ally in the Middle East could be sucked into the Syrian conflict, Israel typically does not feel it has to ask for a green light from Washington for such attacks.

Officials have indicated in the past that Israel sees a need only to inform the United States once such a mission is under way.

At Syria Comment, Aron Lund writes: The Islamic Ahrar al-Sham Movement, which is the leading faction of the Syrian Islamic Front (SIF) and probably the biggest salafi group in Syria, has issued a statement about Jabhat al-Nosra’s recent declaration of allegiance to al-Qaida’s Ayman al-Zawahiri. The Ahrar al-Sham statement is available in Arabic on Aaron Zelin’s Jihadology, always the go-to place for source material on jihadi groups.

The background is as follows. In early April, Zawahiri issued a statement in support of the revolution in Syria and called for an Islamic state there. This was followed by a message from the emir of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI, i.e. al-Qaida in Iraq), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who finally acknowledged the long-known fact that Jabhat al-Nosra was an ISI offshoot and that they would henceforth work under a common name and flag as “the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria”. The day after, Jabhat al-Nosra’s leader Abu Mohammed al-Joulani issued a surprisingly sharp rejoinder. He admitted that Jabhat al-Nosra had indeed been supported by the ISI from the very beginning, and was thankful for it, but he also said he hadn’t been consulted on Abu Bakr’s announcement and denied that the groups would merge. On the other hand, Abu Mohammed took the occasion to formally “renew” his pledge of allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top emir of al-Qaida.

This procedure, “al-bayaa” in Arabic, is not mere rhetoric; rather it is loaded with religious and political significance for hardcore Islamists like these. It essentially means that Abu Mohammed, and by extention Jabhat al-Nosra, promises to follow every order from Zawahiri as long as this does not contravene sharia law. It is a step in the same process that al-Qaida in Iraq went through, when Abu Moussaab al-Zarqawi first declared his allegiance to Osama bin Laden. His group, al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, was then renamed al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, after Bin Laden responded by formally blessing their union, to signify that it was now a bona fide al-Qaida wing (it then folded into the ISI in 2006, but that’s another matter). Later, the GSPC of Algeria and Shabab al-Mujahedin of Somalia went through the same steps to become formal al-Qaida branches, and now Jabhat al-Nosra is doing it.

The new Ahrar al-Sham statement, signed May 4, 2013, criticizes both Abu Mohammed el-Joulani and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. According to Ahrar al-Sham, their statements were divisive, lacking in realism and “put the interest of the group before the interest of the Umma”, i.e. the Islamic nation as a whole.

Ahrar al-Sham warns that Jabhat al-Nosra’s open affiliation to al-Qaida will help the regime and that it will “regionalize” the crisis by bringing other parties into the conflict, presumably in reference to US and European hostility to al-Qaida.

While frank and critical, the Ahrar al-Sham statement is not really hostile to Jabhat al-Nosra or al-Qaida. Rather it is written in the tone of honest advise for an ally who has committed a damaging mistake. [Continue reading…]

Robert Fisk asks: If the Syrian air force can use their MiGs so devastatingly – and at such civilian cost – against their enemies inside Syria, why couldn’t they have sent their jets to protect Damascus and attack the Israeli aircraft? Isn’t the Syrian air force supposed to be guarding Syria from Israel? Or are the MiGs just not technically able to take on Israel’s state-of-the-art (American) hardware? Or would that just be a step too far?

Much more important, however, is the salient fact that Israel has now intervened in the Syrian war. It may say it was only aiming at weapons destined for the Hezbollah – but these were weapons also being used against rebel forces in Syria. By diminishing the regime’s supply of these weapons, it is therefore helping the rebels overthrow Bashar al-Assad. And since Israel regards itself as a Western nation – best friend and best US military ally in the Middle East, etc, etc – this means that “we” are now involved in the war, directly and from the air.

The Los Angeles Times reports: Recent Israeli strikes inside Syria may have exposed weaknesses in the regime’s air defenses and could embolden the U.S. and its allies to take more steps to aid rebels fighting the regime there, said lawmakers on Sunday.

“The Russian-supplied air defense systems are not as good as said,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Leahy, who heads the appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations, said the Israeli defense forces were using American-made F-16 Fighting Falcon jets to launch the missiles against Syrian targets.

“Keep in mind the Israelis are using weapons supplied by us,” Leahy said. “They have enormous prowess with those weapons.”

The New York Times reports: Syrian state television said the explosions confirmed government contentions that the rebels are part of an American-Israeli conspiracy to topple Mr. Assad for his support of Palestinians and his opposition to Western policies in the Middle East.

While being seen as allies of Israel could tarnish the rebels in Syrian eyes, the opposition could point to the strikes as proof of their government’s hypocrisy. A frequent refrain among fighters and activists has been that although the government’s security forces and military failed to prevent the Israeli strikes — and for that matter have not clashed with Israel since 1973 — they have killed tens of thousands of Syrians and jailed many more in order to hold onto power.

Some rebels say openly that they consider Mr. Assad a higher priority target than Israel, while making clear that they do not embrace Israel. The main exile Syrian opposition coalition walked that line carefully in a statement issued after the bombings, blaming the government for allowing attacks by “external occupying forces.”

“The regime has used its forces to suppress the popular demands of the people for change, weakening Syrian defense, and thus allowing external occupying forces to hit Syrian locations,” the statement said. “Israel’s actions, including its pre-emptive attacks to weaken Syrian defenses, demonstrate a fear of losing the years of peace that the Assad regime provided for Israel.”

Jonathan Marcus writes: Back in January of this year, Israel struck a weapons convoy that intelligence sources suggest was carrying SA-17 advanced surface-to-air missiles that were to be transferred from Syria to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

That strike was a warning, an effort to dissuade the regime of President Bashar al-Assad from contemplating any similar transfers to his allies in Lebanon.

These latest strikes suggest that this hoped-for deterrent effect has not been achieved. They demonstrate the Israeli Air Force’s ability to hit targets well inside Syria, but they could be the first of many – a regular pattern of attacks that at any moment could risk provoking Syria, along with Hezbollah, into a regional war. The nightmare of a major spill-over of the Syria crisis would have become a reality.

So what is Israel’s concern? While a good share of Israel’s and indeed Washington’s attention is taken up by fears about Syria’s chemical arsenal falling into the wrong hands, these latest air strikes underscore Israel’s equal worry about sophisticated conventional weapons being passed to Hezbollah. This includes sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles, anti-shipping missiles, or accurate long-range ground-to-ground missiles. Such concerns are longstanding. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Israel carried out its second air strike in days on Syria early on Sunday, a Western intelligence source said, in an attack that shook Damascus with a series of powerful blasts and drove columns of fire into the night sky.

Israel declined comment but Syria accused the Jewish state of striking a military facility just north of the capital – one which its jets had first targeted three months ago. Iran, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and an arch-enemy for Israel, urged states in the region to resist the Israeli attack.

People living near the Jamraya base spoke of explosions over several hours in various places near Damascus, including a town housing senior officials: “Night turned into day,” one man said.

The Western intelligence source told Reuters the operation hit Iranian-supplied missiles headed for Lebanon’s Hezbollah, a similar target to the two previous strikes this year, which have been defended as justifiable by Israel’s ally the United States:

“In last night’s attack, as in the previous one, what was attacked were stores of Fateh-110 missiles that were in transit from Iran to Hezbollah,” the intelligence source said.

In this week alone, based on the numbers of casualties being compiled by the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, 1,075 people have been killed. The worst atrocities are alleged to have taken place in Banias and Bayda.

The Observer reports: The pictures appear to tell a familiar story. In one a pile of bodies lies on a street corner, shot down, apparently where they were gathered. Among them is a girl in a red blouse, perhaps five years old, spreadeagled among a dozen other family members, some covered in sheets. A baby’s legs are visible and a crumpled man has apparently been shot through the spine.

According to Syrian opposition activists, these killings happened in the coastal city of Banias, a Sunni family gunned down in the midst of the Alawite heartland, the Shia minority sect largely loyal to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Although the pictures could not immediately be verified, video and other pictures appeared to confirm reports of whole families being killed in two massacres by a pro-government militia in the past two days, prompting thousands to attempt to flee the area. In a statement, the US State Department said it was “appalled” by the latest reports.

According to reports, the first incident is alleged to have taken place in the village of Bayda on Thursday, while overnight fresh killings were reported by activists inside Banias itself, blamed on gangs of pro-regime loyalists. Images claimed to have been taken in Bayda on Thursday showed the bodies of several men, some apparently blindfolded, lying in the street.

Confirming violence in the area, Syrian state television said it had fought back against “terrorist groups” to restore security and showed what it said was a large cache of weapons seized during the fighting. A video posted online by activists appeared to show what was said to be the bodies of 20 people in the town, all from the same family, killings blamed on the National Defence Forces, a new paramilitary group made up mostly of fighters from minorities that back Assad.

Along with the cities of Tartus and Latakia, Banias – which has seen relatively little violence – is at the centre of the Alawite “heartland”, referring to the minority Shia sect of which Assad and many of his closest supporters are members. Some analysts have speculated that, in the event of the breakup of Syria, the Assad regime and Alawites might attempt to set up their own mini-state in this coastal strip.

According to some sources, Sunni families were being blocked from fleeing south to the town of Tartus at government checkpoints. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: U.S. President Barack Obama said on Saturday that Israel has the right to guard against the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah a day after Israel attacked a Hezbollah-bound missile shipment in Syria.

Israel has long made clear it is prepared to resort to force to prevent advanced Syrian weapons from reaching Hezbollah or jihadi rebels. Israeli warplanes went after the shipment inside Syria, where a two-year civil war is raging.

Obama, in an interview with the Spanish-language network Telemundo as part of a three-day Latin America tour that ended in Costa Rica, would not comment on whether the airstrikes had in fact taken place.

“I’ll let the Israeli government confirm or deny whatever strikes that they’ve taken,” he said.

But Obama, who visited Israel in March, made clear such strikes would be justified.

“What I have said in the past and I continue to believe is that the Israelis justifiably have to guard against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. We coordinate closely with the Israelis recognizing they are very close to Syria, they are very close to Lebanon,” he said.

The New York Times reports: The airstrike that Israeli warplanes carried out in Syria was directed at a shipment of advanced surface-to-surface missiles from Iran that Israel believed was intended for Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese organization, American officials said Saturday.

It was the second time in four months that Israel had carried out an attack in foreign territory intended to disrupt the pipeline of weapons from Iran to Hezbollah, and the raid was a vivid example of how regional adversaries are looking after their own interests as Syria becomes more chaotic.

Iran and Hezbollah have both backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war, now in its third year. But as fighting in Syria escalates, they also have a powerful stake in expediting the delivery of advanced weapons to Hezbollah in case Mr. Assad loses his grip on power.

Israel, for its part, has repeatedly cautioned that it will not allow Hezbollah to receive “game changing” weapons that could threaten the Israeli heartland after a post-Assad government took power.

Israel, for its part, has repeatedly cautioned that it will not allow Hezbollah to receive “game changing” weapons that could threaten the Israeli heartland after a post-Assad government took power.

And as Washington considers how to handle evidence of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government, a development it has described as a “red line,” Israel is clearly showing that it will stand behind the red lines it sets.

“The Israelis are saying, ‘O.K., whichever way the civil war is going, we are going to keep our red lines, which are different from Obama’s,’ ” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. [Continue reading…]

BBC News reports: Hundreds of Syrians have fled coastal areas where activists accuse government forces of carrying out massacres in a campaign of sectarian cleansing.

Footage of mutilated and burned bodies, allegedly from the town of Baniyas, have been posted online.

Activists said at least 77 people – 20 from the same family – were killed, a day after 72 died in nearby al-Bayda.

The government said it had fought back “terrorist groups” and restored peace and security to the area.