The New York Times reports: State television in Syria issued a withering attack late Monday on a longtime ally, the leader of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, Khaled Meshal, declaring him an ungrateful child and a corrupt traitor, saying he was having a “romantic emotional crisis” over the Syrian uprising and accusing him of selling out “resistance for power.”

The extraordinary reproof, a departure from the blander tone of most Syrian official statements, was the government’s first broadside against Hamas since the organization distanced itself from the embattled President Bashar al-Assad earlier this year, when most Hamas leaders left their refuge in Damascus and shuttered their office there.

The attack was a television editorial delivered by a newscaster in alternately stern and mocking tones, who reminded Mr. Meshal that he was “orphaned” by Arab countries who would not take him in when he fled Jordan in 1999. She implied that he must have sold out to Israel, saying that was the only explanation for the willingness of Qatar, his new host, to accept him.

Damascus seemed to be striking back after Mr. Meshal appeared at a news conference of the party of Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and after Mr. Erdogan and Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi, pointedly declared their shared priorities of opposing Mr. Assad and supporting the Palestinians — a blow to Mr. Assad’s longstanding and domestically compelling persona as the champion of Palestinian resistance against Israel.

Damascus is likely particularly furious that Mr. Meshal has taken up residence in Qatar, one of the countries, along with Saudi Arabia and the United States, that it accuses of bankrolling the insurgency. [Continue reading…]

The Independent reports: Stockpiles of arms, including anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, are being held in Turkey for use by rebels in Syria’s civil war, but their distribution is being held up because of disunity and feuding between the different groups of fighters, The Independent has learned.

In high-level discussions, Qatari and Turkish suppliers told opposition representatives that heavy weapons would not be made available until the various factions agreed to form a coherent command structure.

After 18 months of fighting and an estimated 30,000 people dead, rebel fighters are convinced that the time for a negotiated end to the conflict is over. But they have been forced back from many areas by tanks, artillery and air strikes. The regime, meanwhile, has not faced any significant shortage of supplies, with US officials claiming that daily flights bearing arms are coming in from President Bashar al-Assad’s ally, Iran.

One attempt to set up an arms supply chain took place in the Turkish capital, Ankara, in early August. Opposition representatives were seeking weapons for Aleppo where the regime forces were beginning to push forward and recapture areas held by the rebels. According to those present, the Turks were acting as facilitators while the Qataris controlled the flow of material. Both the Qataris and Turks are said to have stressed to the opposition emissaries that the revolutionaries in the main cities, starting with Aleppo, needed to form structured military councils and come up with co-ordinated operational plans. [Continue reading…]

McClatchy reports: Austin Tice, an American freelance journalist in Syria who hasn’t communicated with family and colleagues since mid-August, is shown alive and in the custody of armed men in a video posted on YouTube.

In the 47-second clip, headlined “Austin Tice still alive,” he’s shown blindfolded and disoriented, mangling an Islamic prayer before crying out, “Oh, Jesus.” Masked gunmen who act like militant Islamists surround him, calling out “God is great!” and wearing the baggy traditional outfits of fighters operating in Afghanistan.

The video was posted Wednesday but it escaped notice until early Monday, when a link to it appeared on a Facebook page that appears to support the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad. Tips and other evidence previously gathered by the news organizations to which Tice contributed have suggested that he’s in the custody of the Syrian government.
[…]
Murad Batal al Shishani, a London-based analyst of jihadists who’s monitored extremist groups since the early 1990s, said many aspects of the video didn’t jibe with the communiques that al Qaida-style extremists typically sent out. The call-and-response rhythm in the cries of “God is great” seems off, he said, and it would be unusual for jihadists to include Tice’s mangled prayer, or to release such a low-quality clip when they’re known for slickly produced videos distributed via their own media wings.

“If it was a jihadi video, they have their own platforms. They wouldn’t release it on YouTube,” Shishani said.

The YouTube user who posted the video hadn’t previously uploaded to the site, suggesting that the account may have been created to disseminate the video. Analysts also pointed out that the captions include English and Arabic, which would be unusual – but not unheard of – for a jihadist group.

The clip was later shared on a Facebook page and Twitter account associated with a group called “the Media Channel for Assad’s Syria,” which echoes the government’s line that opposition rebels are terrorists intent on destabilizing Syria. The group’s tweet reads, “Important, please publish and share our clip on the truth about the disappearance of the American journalist Austin Tice.”

The Facebook page posting asserts that “the American journalist Austin Tice is with the Nusra Front gangs and al Qaida in Syria,” a reference to Jabhat al Nusra, a jihadist group that’s part of the opposition forces fighting Assad’s troops. For weeks, U.S. analysts have sounded alarm about the presence of an avowed jihadist group on the battlefield, a development that rattles not only Assad’s regime but also the non-Islamist Syrian opposition and its Western allies.

Jabhat al Nusra boasts a sophisticated media wing that produces a Twitter feed and videos that are clearly labeled and edited. The group repeatedly has said that any release outside its established platforms should be considered fake, said Aaron Zelin, who researches militants for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and blogs about them at Jihadology.net.

A typical Nusra video, Zelin said, “would start out with a graphic of the media outlet, then a Quranic verse written out, then a series of videos of attacks or someone reading his last words before going out on a suicide mission, a martyrdom operation.”

McCants, the former government terrorism adviser, echoed that observation.

“Everything about the video is uncharacteristic of a polished al Qaida group like Nusra,” he said. “It doesn’t mean it wasn’t them, but there’s nothing that points in that direction.”

Robert Mackey adds: Joseph Holliday, a former United States Army intelligence officer who tracks Syrian rebel groups for the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, told The Post that it seemed strange that the armed men around Mr. Tice were wearing what appear to be salwar kameez, traditional clothing worn in Afghanistan, which looked very clean. “It’s like a caricature of a jihadi group,” he said. “My gut instinct is that regime security guys dressed up like a bunch of wahoos and dragged him around and released the video to scare the U.S. and others about the danger of Al Qaeda extremists in Syria. It would fit their narrative perfectly.”

In a post Tice put up on his Facebook page on July 25, he wrote:

Every person in this country fighting for their freedom wakes up every day and goes to sleep every night with the knowledge that death could visit them at any moment. They accept that reality as the price of freedom. They realize there are things worth fighting for, and instead of sitting around wringing their hands about it, or asking their lawyer to file an injunction about it, they’re out there just doing it. And yeah most of them have little idea what they’re doing when they pick up a rifle, and yes there are many other things I could complain about, but really who cares. They’re alive in a way that almost no Americans today even know how to be. They live with greater passion and dream with greater ambition because they are not afraid of death.

Neither were the Pioneers. Neither were our granddads. Neither was Neil Armstrong. And neither am I.

No, I don’t have a death wish – I have a life wish. So I’m living, in a place, at a time and with a people where life means more than anywhere I’ve ever been – because every single day people here lay down their own for the sake of others. Coming here to Syria is the greatest thing I’ve ever done, and it’s the greatest feeling of my life.

As a proudly declared partisan, who would see Tice as a threat? A jihadi group — or any other opponent of Assad? I don’t think so.

The Syrian government no doubt has a file on every foreign journalist in Syria whose presence they are aware of. Tice — a freelancer willing to venture places that most newspapers are reluctant send their own reporters — would probably look like an attractive target to authorities who want to intimidate other reporters yet sustain doubt about the identity of Tice’s captors.

The Daily Telegraph reports: The Assad regime in Syria brought about Muammar Gaddafi’s death by providing France with the key intelligence which led to the operation that killed him, sources in Libya have claimed.

French spies operating in Sirte, Gaddafi’s last refuge, were able to set a trap for the Libyan dictator after obtaining his satellite telephone number from the Syrian government, they said.

In what would amount to an extraordinary betrayal of one Middle East strongman by another, President Bashar al-Assad sold out his fellow tyrant in an act of self-preservation, a former senior intelligence official in Tripoli told the Daily Telegraph.

With international attention switching from Libya to the mounting horrors in Syria, Mr Assad offered Paris the telephone number in exchange for an easing of French pressure on Damascus, according to Rami El Obeidi.

“In exchange for this information, Assad had obtained a promise of a grace period from the French and less political pressure on the regime – which is what happened,” Mr El Obeidi said. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Fire swept through the old central souk, or marketplace, of Aleppo, Syria, on Saturday, damaging a vast and well-preserved labyrinth of medieval storehouses, shops, schools and ornate courtyards as fierce clashes between security forces and insurgents vowing to carry out a “decisive battle” for the city continued.

One video shot by antigovernment activists showed a curtain of dark smoke hanging over the center of Aleppo near the old city, a Unesco World Heritage site. Another showed intense, crackling orange flames engulfing heavy wooden doors in what appeared to be one of the market’s arched stone passageways. The activists said they believed that the fire, whose origins were unclear, had destroyed a large portion of the market’s shops overnight, though the claim could not be immediately verified.

For many residents, the old city, with the souk at its center, is the soul of Aleppo, one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities and Syria’s largest. Aleppo has been staggering for months under a bloody battle that has reduced some residential areas to rubble, and with no deaths immediately reported from the blaze, the damage to the souk pales compared with the recent human toll.

Yet serious damage to an area that Syrians widely consider one of their greatest treasures is likely to stir anger at both sides — each of which blames the other for the destruction in the city — in a conflict that seems mired in stalemate. It could also make the rebels’ latest push in Aleppo backfire politically: Some opponents of President Bashar al-Assad were already incensed on Saturday at insurgents they said had operated conspicuously near the old city.

“Our hearts and minds have been burned in this fire,” said a doctor in Aleppo who gave her name only as Dima. “It’s not just a souk and shops, but it’s our soul, too.”

She said she supported peaceful resistance against Mr. Assad, and pronounced herself “annoyed, annoyed, annoyed” with fighters from the rebel Tawhid Brigade, which announced the offensive on Thursday. The fighters said they were seeking to “liberate” neighborhoods that had remained largely pro-government and were being used as posts from which to attack the opposition.

But in a Skype interview, Dima said the recent fighting cast doubt on both the rebel leaders’ tactical wisdom and their intentions. She called them “performers” who had needlessly provoked the government by posing for pictures outside the souk and the nearby 12th-century mosque — which she worried would now be shelled — and who “talked nonsense.”

“There is no decisive battle,” she said. “There are no liberated areas.”

Amal Hanano writes: One night in mid-March, activist Rami Jarrah and I – in our typical Damascus versus Aleppo rivalry – were bickering. Our dispute was about the date of the “real” anniversary of the revolution. But as we argued, and later as we discussed the sad events of the day in Syria, there was a lightness, a slight joyfulness that we did not discuss. Yet it lingered and I knew why. We couldn’t believe we had really made it – the revolution had survived an entire year.

The feeling of elation was nothing compared to what we had felt the day the students of Aleppo University took over the campus, or the evening the brave people of Homs reclaimed Clock Square. Still, it was a revolution high.

Moments like those have become scarce, dissolving into memories. Those days when hope was enough – when a witty sign from Kafranbul could lift millions out of despair; when the spirit of the Syrian people seemed unbreakable – are over.

Now the lows exceed the highs. Now we talk about what has been lost more often than what will be gained. And the losses have been heavy: some of the people we once spoke to daily are no longer in Syria; some have abandoned the revolution; many have died. Peaceful protests have dwindled as the bombs drop onto our cities and villages. Civilians are caught in the crossfire; thousands have become refugees – outsiders just like us.

And everyone is depressed.

We are now silent witnesses, watching as our country is reduced to a headline and the opening act for the United Nations General Assembly. Syria cues endless analysis from pundits and continuous hand-wringing by world leaders. The UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi says without shame: “There is no prospect for today or tomorrow to move forward.” And our dead are a steadily growing but meaningless number.

As we crashed from euphoric highs, cracks in the revolution have appeared. Power struggles on the front lines and between the political groups exposed us as a fractured opposition. Bickering on social media sites turned activists against each other as loyalties were questioned. In contrast, the regime was steadfast, unflinching in its kill, burn and bomb strategy. Somewhere along revolution road our narratives had crossed and we wondered, was this the beginning of the end? Was the revolution dying? Or worse, the question I asked people: was the revolution dead?

On September 16, yet another massacre was reported from the village of Kafr Awayd in Idleb province. I thought I had become immune to the images of slaughtered children. I thought we had learnt lessons of detachment from Houla and Qubeir. But this time there was a little girl in a blue dress and white tights, a girl we could only imagine as pretty because she was missing her head. While I watched a man carry her like a rag doll in front of the camera, I realised we had not seen the worst yet. [Continue reading…]

The Saudi-owned Al Arabiya might not be the most reliable source, but if the following story is genuine, Turkey’s role in the war in Syria may be about to significantly escalate.

As political tensions mount between neighboring Syria and Turkey, newly-leaked Syrian intelligence documents obtained by Al Arabiya disclose shocking claims shedding light on the dreadful fate of two Turkish Air Force pilots.

Contrary to what was publically claimed, the documents reveal that the pilots survived the crash, but were later executed by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad!

This disclosure is the first in a series of revelations based on a number of newly-leaked and highly classified Syrian security documents which will be aired in a special program produced by Al Arabiya over the next two weeks; the channel’s English portal – http://english.alarabiya.net – will be carrying a subtitled version of the program on daily basis as well as publishing downloadable copies of the leaked documents.

The documents were obtained with the assistance of members of the Syrian opposition who refused to elaborate on how they laid hand on the documents.

Al Arabiya said that it has verified and authenticated hundreds of these documents and that it is has decided to disclose the ones with substantial news value and political relevance. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: A huge fire has destroyed parts of the medieval souks in Aleppo, Syria, following raging battles between rebels and government troops.

The city is a Unesco world heritage site and the labyrinth of narrow alleys and shops was once a major tourist attraction and is one of Syria’s largest commercial hubs.

Over the past two months, the city, home to 2.5 million people, has become a focus of the insurgency against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, with near daily fighting and shelling.

Activists posted online videos which showed the fire around wooden doors and shops and a pall of smoke hanging over the city on Saturday.

Ahmad al-Halabi, an activist based in Aleppo, said residents were struggling to control the blaze with a limited number of fire extinguishers and low water supply: “It’s a disaster. The fire is threatening to spread to remaining shops,” he said. “It is a very difficult and tragic situation there.”

Reuters reports: Up to 700,000 Syrian refugees may flee abroad by the end of the year, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday, nearly quadrupling its previous forecast for the exodus from the deepening crisis.

Most faced what was likely to be a bitterly cold winter living in tents with little prospect of returning to their homeland, it said. The agency urged Western donors to help raise nearly $500 million to finance aid operations in four neighbouring countries that have kept their borders open so far.

About 294,000 refugees fleeing 18 months of conflict in Syria have already crossed into Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey, or await registration there, the UNHCR said.

“This is a significant outflow taking place, 100,000 people in August, 60,000 in September and at the moment 2,000 or 3,000 per day or night,” Panos Moumtzis, Regional Refugee Coordinator for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told a news briefing.

“The most important part is the preparing for winter months. The winter period is very harsh in that region,” he said.

The UNHCR’s previous forecast – of 185,000 refugees – was surpassed in August. It had been made in June.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports: The rusting green Mercedes truck could have been mistaken for a removal lorry. It was parked in a narrow street outside a luxurious villa a short distance from the Turkish border, and the arms and legs of chairs and tables protruded from the tarpaulin that covered the back. Beneath the furniture, however, was 450,000 rounds of ammunition and hundreds of rocket-propelled grenades destined for the Syrian rebels in Aleppo.

Inside the villa two rebel commanders and a chubby civilian in jeans and T-shirt were exchanging pieces of paper, which the civilian signed. He issued a series of instructions to the men outside, who began transferring crates into the commanders’ white Toyota pickup.

“All what I want from you is that you shoot a small video and put it on YouTube, stating your name and your unit, and saying we are part of the Aleppo military council,” the civilian told one of the commanders, who fought with the Islamist Tawheed brigade. “Then you can do whatever you want. I just need to show the Americans that units are joining the council.

“I met two Americans yesterday in Antakya (Turkey). They told me that no advanced weapons would come to us unless we were unified under the leadership of the local military councils. So shoot the video and let me handle the rest.” Looking in the back, it was clear the ammunition was new. The RPG rounds were still wrapped in plastic.

It was past midnight in Aleppo when Captain Abu Mohamed and Captain Abu Hussein received a phone call informing them the ammunition from Turkey had arrived. Abu Mohamed, a portly 28-year-old member of Aleppo military council, perched unsteadily on a plastic chair in a garage on the edge of the Salah al-Din neighbourhood. He had a handsome face and a great round belly. He and Abu Hussein, a short man with a blond goatee, had been close friends since they were cadets in Aleppo military academy. Abu Mohamed had defected first. Abu Hussein followed him a couple of months later.

Abu Mohamed described where the weapons had come from. Different donors in Saudi Arabia were channelling money to a powerful Lebanese politician in Istanbul, he said. He in turn co-ordinated with the Turks – “everything happens in co-ordination with Turkish intelligence” – to arrange delivery through the military council of Aleppo, a group composed mostly of defected officers and secular and moderate civilians.

Because of its virtual monopoly on ammunition supplies, the council has grown into a significant force in the Syrian civil war, rivalling existing powers like the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist factions. [Continue reading…]

Save the Children has released a new report containing testimony from children who, along with their parents, are now receiving help as refugees. Wael, a sixteen-year old boy describes his experience in Syria.

I’ve been here in Za’atari for a month now. Why did I leave? What a question. There’s no one left in Syria.

At the beginning we could just about survive. We would go to the shelter, we would hide, and we would live. But now they’re using different weapons. Before, the shelters were safe, but now the weapons destroy even those in the basements of houses. I couldn’t stand what was happening: the shelling, the destruction, the torture.

At my home in Syria, we dug a hole in the garden to hide in. It was only big enough for three people to crouch in, but whenever we knew that violence was coming, I would climb in there with my brothers. My mother would lead us in and then cover it over with corrugated iron, and throw sand over the top. And we would wait, sometimes for hours.

The last time I was in there it was from 7am to 5pm. It was terrifying – I was so worried that they would find us and kill me and my two brothers. We’d hide in the hole when armed men were walking the streets, and in the basement when shelling happened. The shelling was almost daily. We’d use the hole at least once a week, often on Thursdays. Thursdays are a big day for massacres and crackdowns because prayers on a Friday can be a trigger for protest.

Once, I was arrested along with hundreds of other people. They separated out the children and I was the oldest at 16. I can’t tell you how many there were, but there were many. We were forced into a small cell together. There was nowhere to go – there wasn’t even a toilet, just a hole in the floor.

There was a group of small children with us whose parents were ‘wanted’. There were perhaps 13 children in total. They weren’t allowed food or water. When it was time for us to eat, their group was surrounded by armed men who stopped anyone giving them food. These children were too weak to even cry. They just lay on the floor.

They were also subjected to repeated beating with sticks, worse than us. I knew a boy called Ala’a. He was part of that group. He was only six years old. He didn’t understand what was happening. His dad was told that his child would die unless he gave himself up. I’d say that this six-year-old boy was tortured more than anyone else in that room. He wasn’t given food or water for three days, and he was so weak he used to faint all the time. He was beaten regularly. I watched him die. He only survived for three days and then he simply died. He was terrified all the time. They treated his body as though he was a dog.

I wasn’t able to think about anything by then. I thought I’d die in that cell and I couldn’t see past that. If they overheard us talking, we were beaten fiercely and repeatedly. So we didn’t talk. All we heard was screaming, crying and silence.

When I left that place I felt I’d escaped death. Now, I feel that no one cares about Syria. No one is helping us and we’re dying. If there was even 1% of humanity in the world, this wouldn’t happen.

I feel as though I’m dying from the inside. At least when I die this will be over. [At this point Wael begins to cry.] Torture is not only physical, it’s mental. When you see women and children scream and die, it has an effect. Each and every Syrian has been devastated mentally by this war.

Before, I laughed all the time, now I don’t, what do I have to laugh about? Some children from my village have become mute because of what they’ve seen. Young children are worse. They don’t understand why – none of us do, really. They are just sad, terrified children. These children used to be taken to the park by their mother, now their mothers are forcing them into basements for protection and they don’t understand.

There’s no way I can cope, no way I can turn over a new page. I have seen children slaughtered. I don’t think I’ll ever be OK again.

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports from Aleppo, alongside the internationals that the Syrian fighters refer to collectively as the “Turkish brothers”.

Inside the [commandeered] school was a Jordanian who often roamed the frontline with his Belgian gun, for which he had only 11 bullets. He was a secular and clean-shaven former officer in the Jordanian army who lived in eastern Europe running an import-export business. He had come to Aleppo without telling his wife and children where he was going.

“This is my duty,” he said. “Originally I was from Palestine. I know what this [Syrian] regime did to the Palestinians, shelling the camps in Lebanon, assassinating the commanders. Half of the miseries of our nation are because of Israel and the other half are because of the Syrian regime.

“Many Arab men I know want to come and fight. Some lack the means and others the energy, but so many people hate this regime. For 20 years the regime has destroyed the Arab world.”

If some of the foreign fighters in Aleppo were callow, others such as Abu Salam al Faluji boasted extraordinary experience. Abu Salam, a rugged Iraqi with a black keffiyeh wrapped around his head, said he had fought the Americans in Falluja when he was a young man. Later he joined al-Qaida in Iraq and spent many years fighting in different cities before moving to Syria to evade arrest. These days he was a commander of the one of the muhajiroun units.

I found him watching a heated debate between the Syrian commanders about how to defend the buckling frontline.

The government attack had begun as predicted and mortars were exploding in the streets nearby, the sound of machine-gun fire ricocheting between the buildings. The mortars were hammering hard against the walls, sending a small shower of shrapnel and cascading glass, but Abu Salam stood unflinching. One Syrian, breathing hard, said that he had fired three times at the tank and the RPG didn’t go off.

“Don’t say it didn’t go off,” Abu Salam admonished him. “Say you don’t know how to fire it. We used to shoot these same RPGs at the Americans and destroy Abrams tanks. What’s a T72 to an Abrams?

“Our work has to focus on IEDs and snipers,” he told the gathering. “All these roofs need fighters on top and IEDs on the ground. You hunt them in the alleyways and then use machine-guns and RPGs around corners.

“The problem is not ammunition, it’s experience,” he told me out of earshot of the rebels. “If we were fighting Americans we would all have been killed by now. They would have killed us with their drone without even needing to send a tank.

“The rebels are brave but they don’t even know the difference between a Kalashnikov bullet and a sniper bullet. That weakens the morale of the men.

“They have no leadership and no experience,” he said. “Brave people attack, but the men in the lines behind them withdraw, leaving them exposed. It is chaos. This morning the Turkish brothers fought all night and at dawn they went to sleep leaving a line of Syrians behind to protect them. When they woke up the Syrians had left and the army snipers had moved in. Now it’s too late. The army has entered the streets and will overrun us.”

He seemed nonchalant about the prospect of defeat.

“It is obvious the Syrian army is winning this battle, but we don’t tell [the rebels] this. We don’t want to destroy their morale. We say we should hold here for as long as Allah will give us strength and maybe he will make one of these foreign powers come to help Syrians.”

The irony was not lost on Abu Salam how the jihadis and the Americans – bitter enemies of the past decade – had found themselves fighting on the same side again. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Syrian opposition figures called Sunday for the overthrow of President Bashar Assad at a rare meeting of anti-regime groups held in the government-controlled capital Damascus, a possible attempt by the gathering to position itself as an alternative to the armed rebellion.

Rebels fighting Assad typically dismiss the so-called “internal opposition” as too lenient on the Syrian dictator, so the strong statements from the 16 parties in the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria may be aimed at gaining credibility among Syrians who despise the regime but are weary of an uprising that has since devolved into a grinding and bloody civil war. Assad’s government tightly restricts criticism in areas it controls.

But the group would have its work cut out for itself to have its peace initiative, centered on a cease-fire, gain traction. Many rebels look askance at any political plan short of Assad’s immediate ouster, seeing it as a play for time.

Ambassadors from Iran and Russia attended Sunday’s conference. Both countries support Assad, suggesting the regime authorized the gathering to bolster its own rhetoric that there should be a peaceful settlement to the Syrian crisis through dialogue.

A statement distributed to journalists said the participants at the conference have agreed on a number of principles, mainly “overthrowing the regime with all its symbols” while emphasizing the need for “peaceful struggle to achieve the goals of the revolution.”

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports from Aleppo for PBS Frontline in this two-part documentary. (I posted part of this on Thursday before it was posted on YouTube.)

The Daily Telegraph reports: Hidden under olive groves in the rolling countryside of Syria’s northern Idlib province, of which a vast swathe is now in opposition hands, more than a dozen training camps have been set up in which young men prepare for the fight against President Bashar al-Assad’s military.

In one camp seen by The Daily Telegraph this week, recruits were put through their paces on an arduous obstacle course. Timed to the shouts of Commander Abdel Kadr, a military officer who has defected, the men vaulted walls, scrambled under razor wire mesh and swung along ropes in the tree tops.

Two men looked on from the tented sleeping quarters nearby. Tall with shaven heads, fair skin, bulging pectoral muscles, and biceps covered in tattoos, they were incongruous among the scrawny young fighters. They could not speak Arabic and were extremely unhappy in the presence of The Daily Telegraph.

The men, who use the code names Radwan and Mohammed, come from Scandinavia, but have requested that the country not be disclosed.

Though they refused to speak, saying only that they were “here to help”, recruits in the Free Syrian Army told this newspaper that the men were ex-special forces working as military advisers.

“The Free Syrian Army at first didn’t exist, it was just an idea. Now we are trying to turn this into a reality,” said Louay al-Mokdad, a coordinator for the FSA in charge of channelling much of the foreign funding into Syria. Unlike most of Syria’s rebel “brigades”, who, with informal behaviour and mismatched uniforms bear little relation to a conventional army, the men in this training camp wore identical uniforms and conducted themselves with military discipline.

As Commander Kadr arrived, the men sprung to attention with a salute. Answers were given in the shouted delivery of soldiers responding to a command.

“We have 20 men training, 12 on vacation and some on missions,” said one recruit. To some questions he replied that the information was “classified” and the “strength of an army is in its secrets”.

For three weeks the men are subjected to extensive physical training, gun practice on a firing range, lessons in military discipline, and instruction in military tactics, such as how to attack a sniper or move under fire. Trainees cannot leave the camp without permission.

Failure to follow the rules leads to “hard physical punishment” or expulsion. Many of the men undergoing the extensive training are civilians.

“I was studying in Damascus and I went to the first protests,” said a 21-year-old, who would not give his name. “And then the massacres started. You see it on TV and you hate it, and then you feel it and you hate it more. Then either you die with your hate or you go to fight.”

There are 18 such training camps spread across Idlib province, as well as some in the suburbs of Damascus, FSA commanders said. Rebels denied that other camps also had foreign advisers, but one source said it was something that was under consideration.