Marc Lynch writes: The stunning assassinations of several key Syrian leaders and the outbreak of serious combat in Damascus last week momentarily held out the possibility that President Bashar al-Assad’s regime will rapidly fall. Many hoped for a cascade of defections, a rise in popular demonstrations and a rebel surge to bring down the government.

Those hopes were exaggerated, fueled by a feverish rumor mill, psychological warfare and notoriously unreliable information coming out of Syria. While the regime has been shaken, its military capability stands as demonstrated by its bloody reassertion of control over Damascus. Along with the support of Russia, its determination to survive at any price could draw out the endgame.

The assassinations struck at the heart of the security machine that sustains the regime, and they highlight the extent to which political and military tide has long since turned against al-Assad. The assassinations were more of an inflection than a turning point.

Diplomatically isolated, financially strapped and increasingly constrained by a wide range of international sanctions, al-Assad’s regime has been left with little room to maneuver. It resorts to indiscriminate military force and uses shabiha gangs and propaganda to inflict terror.

The government’s violence against peaceful protestors and innocent civilians has been manifestly self-defeating. Al-Assad has failed to kill his way to victory. Day by day, through accumulating mistakes, the regime is losing legitimacy and control of Syria and its people.

Nonetheless, it’s premature to think the end is close. [Continue reading…]

Ammar Abdulhamid describes being interrogated by Assef Shawkat, Syria’s deputy defence minister and former military intelligence chief who was killed in a suicide bomb attack on July 18: “The country is not ready for revolutions and civil disobedience,” he told me.

“That’s your opinion,” I replied.

“We won’t imprison you and let your friends in America turn you into a hero.”

“Do whatever you want.”

“This country is ours,” he said, “and we will burn it down rather than give it up.”

“Those who built it in the first place will rebuild it,” I replied.

He yelled at me, I yelled at him. He cursed me, I cursed him. He stood up, I stood up. He sat down, I sat down. He pondered, I pondered, as silence reigned.

Then I said: “What if I left Syria?”

He smiled.

“But I will not stop what I am doing and I will not change.”

His smile grew larger. Then he embraced me and sent me on my way.

The man was Assef Shawkat, brother-in-law of President Bashar al-Assad. His family relationship, coupled with his role as head of military intelligence, made him the second most powerful man in Syria and – until his assassination last week – probably the most widely feared.

That meeting in July 2005 was the last time I saw him; I left Syria with my family a couple of months later.

I had not wanted to leave, but I wanted to keep doing what I was doing – to keep agitating and tackling issues that very few wanted to tackle at the time, like minority rights, youth empowerment and citizen journalism – and I knew that distances would not matter much in the internet age.

My first encounter with Shawkat came in March 2005, two months after my return from a six-month fellowship at the Brookings Institution in Washington. I had been slapped with a travel ban on my return, and was interrogated – but not detained – by three different security branches until Shawkat finally decided to interrogate me personally.

His reasons for taking a special interest in my case were not entirely connected with politics. I am, after all, the son of Muna Wassef, Syria’s most celebrated actress, and Shawkat claimed to be “her biggest fan”.

In fact, he had met my mother a few days before our encounter to ask her permission to interrogate me. Such was his subtlety. She gave him her permission while reminding him that I was her only son, and should anything happen … [Continue reading…]

Faisal Al Yafai writes: Perched on a hilltop in the far west of Syria is the stunning Krak des Chevaliers, the best-preserved Crusader castle in the world. From the 11th century, it served as the base for raids by European Crusaders into Syria – a place from which to launch attacks, and a place that kept the Mediterranean coast safe from the Arab empires that sought to reclaim it.

Could something similar happen in the west of Syria soon? As the uprising enters a decisive phase, another “Plan B” is being discussed – if the Assad regime cannot destroy the rebels outright – that would see Alawites retreat to a stronghold in the mountainous far west, centred on the coastal city of Latakia, where an Alawite state could be created. With the Russian base at Tartus, and with millions stashed away in foreign banks, the Assads theoretically could hold out long enough to build a state.

Could this really happen? It may be happening already. Recent attacks, such as the massacre on July 12 in the village of Tremseh, appeared calculated to push Sunnis in western Syria out of their traditional homes and east, away from potential Alawite strongholds. The theory runs that the Assad regime plans to push fearful Sunnis out of the areas west of Homs and Hama, which both remain Sunni-majority cities.

It is certainly the case that once President Bashar Al Assad falls, there will be reprisal attacks against Alawites, who make up a minority in an offshoot of Shia Islam, whereas Syria is a Sunni-majority country.

Syria is not fiercely sectarian, but whatever rebel leaders say now, it is all but certain that members of the shabbiha – the regime thugs who have carried out some of the worst massacres and rapes, and who are overwhelmingly Alawite – will be hunted down. In the face of that reality, and after Alawite domination of a Sunni country for four decades, it is natural for many Alawites to fear for their safety after the Assads fall.

And yet there are strong reasons to believe such an Alawite state would not be welcomed by ordinary Alawites, and would not succeed in any event.

The Assad regime, although composed mainly of Alawites, is not about one sect – it is about one family. Many Alawites have remained poor, even though they have received preferential treatment in the armed forces. If they could be persuaded that a Sunni-led Damascus would not threaten them, they would be unlikely to side with this brutal regime that, once secure in its own state in the west, would certainly continue its systematic repression. [Continue reading…]

The Washington Post reports: Sixteen months into the uprising in Syria, the United States is struggling to develop a clear understanding of opposition forces inside the country, according to U.S. officials who said that intelligence gaps have impeded efforts to support the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

U.S. spy agencies have expanded their efforts to gather intelligence on rebel forces and Assad’s regime in recent months, but they are still largely confined to monitoring intercepted communications and observing the conflict from a distance, officials said.

Interviews with U.S. and foreign intelligence officials revealed that the CIA has been unable to establish a presence in Syria, in contrast with the agency’s prominent role gathering intelligence from inside Egypt and Libya during revolts in those countries.

With no CIA operatives on the ground in Syria and only a handful stationed at key border posts, the agency has been heavily dependent on its counterparts in Jordan and Turkey and on other regional allies.

The lack of intelligence has complicated the Obama administration’s ability to navigate a crisis that presents an opportunity to remove a longtime U.S. adversary but carries the risk of bolstering insurgents sympathetic to al-Qaeda or militant Islam.

The administration is exploring ways to expand non-lethal support, officials said.

“But we’ve got to figure out who is over there first, and we don’t really know that,” said a U.S. official who expressed concern over persistent gaps and who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was discussing intelligence matters. “It’s not like this is a new war. It’s been going on for 16 months.”

The lack of clarity has also fueled anxiety among U.S. allies in the region over who will control Syria if Assad falls. Even among Arab intelligence services eager to help rebels overthrow Assad, “the vetting process is still in the early stages,” said a Middle Eastern intelligence official, insisting on anonymity to discuss his country’s involvement in the Syrian crisis.

The foreign official cited concern that the opposition is at risk of becoming dominated by Islamists pushing for a Muslim Brotherhood government after Assad.

“We think this is a majority view, at least among those who are fighting in the streets,” the official said. [Continue reading…]

In January, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said that Israel is preparing to absorb Alawite refugees once the Assad regime falls, but President Shimon Peres, in an interview on CNN today, wanted to make it absolutely clear that not a single Syrian is welcome in the Jewish state.

“What will happen if Syrian refugees try to cross the Israeli border? Will you help them?” CNN asked Peres.

“No,” he replied.

“Will you shoot them?”

“We will prevent them. I mean, you don’t go straight to the rifle. There are other means to prevent them. We should prevent it. Because it will be a double tragedy for them and for us. They will become homeless and we shall become defenseless.”

“If the Syrians start to come over the border, will you stop them by force?”

“First of all, until now none of them asked to come in,” Peres said. “If they will come by force, we shall stop them by force. If they shall come in without force, we shall stop them the way any country defended her border with civilian means.”

When CNN noted that the potential refugees are trying to escape bloodshed in their own country, not invade Israel, Peres said, “If they want to escape, they first of all have to appeal, ask for permission. None of them did it.”

With Israel facing a potential influx of refugees, Peres said although no Syrians have tried to enter the country, Israel would not help any refugees who want to cross the border and would use force against any armed individuals.

“If they will come by force, we shall stop them by force,” Peres said. “If they shall come in without force, we shall stop them the way any country defended her border with civilian means.”

Michael Gabaudan, president of Refugees International, writes: Syria’s border with Israel is the last national boundary that refugees so far have not crossed seeking safety, and to close this potential avenue of escape is unconscionable. With UNSMIS likely to depart within weeks — and with even the extension of the mission unlikely to stop refugees from having to flee — the need for safe havens will only increase. Four of the five countries that share borders with Syria have made the decision to keep the routes to safety open. Israel should do the same out of respect for international humanitarian principles.

Out of the 114,000 registered Syrian refugees in the region, Jordan and Lebanon have received well over half — largely into some of their most resource-poor areas along the Syrian border. When I visited both countries recently, officials, villagers, and aid workers spoke of having reached saturation point. Their capacity to host more Syrians was running out, and they did not know what they would do to protect them going forward.

That was in early June. Since that time, thousands more Syrians have crossed the borders, and Lebanon and Jordan are still struggling to make good-faith efforts to accommodate them.

The world is searching desperately — and rightly so — for ways to get humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians inside Syria. So far those efforts have been effectively blocked, while a handful of aid agencies inside the country battle to help those who are trapped however they can. But while the world continues to grapple with how to get greater access in Syria, we must keep in mind that those who have already fled can actually be helped right now. The most basic way the world can assist Syria’s battered population is to allow them to escape the violence by whatever path is most expedient for them.

The people of Israel know what it is to be vulnerable; to be refugees. Their country now has an opportunity to show just how deep that understanding really is. Everyone deserves a safe haven in their time of need, even — or perhaps especially — when it comes from an unlikely source.

Zvi Bar’el writes: Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar bin Sultan, 62, fell in love with the United States when he was still a pilot in his country’s air force and took aerobatics training on an American air base. The romance was renewed several years later when he was named his country’s ambassador to Washington, a tenure that lasted 22 years, during which he was a regular guest of both George Bushes and was the only ambassador who was guarded by the U.S. Secret Service.

Last week King Abdullah named him director-general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency, replacing Muqrin bin Abdulaziz, on top of his post as secretary general of the National Security Council, which he’s held since 2005.

Bandar’s appointment to the most important position in the Saudi security echelons is no coincidence. Aside from the fact that he is very well connected to the kingdom’s leaders (his wife, Haifa, is the daughter of King Faisal who was assassinated in 1975, her brother, Turki al-Faisal, was once head of Saudi intelligence and another brother, Mohammed al-Faisal, is one of the kingdom’s richest men), it seems that the primary reason for his appointment now is that Saudi Arabia is preparing for the next stage in Syria, after President Bashar Assad finally gets off the political stage, one way or another, and Syria turns into a focus of international struggles for control of the inheritance.

There is already an intense campaign over this inheritance between the United States with the European Union and Russia, but the ramifications of Assad’s fall on the positions of Iran and Hezbollah – and no less so, Iraq – are more important. And when Egypt is hobbling on crutches in its effort to establish its “Second Republic,” and its position in the Middle East is that of a disabled person needing nursing care, and when the Arab League is paralyzed, Saudi Arabia is left to assume responsibility for drawing up the new map of the Middle East.

From Washington’s perspective, Bandar’s appointment is important news. Bandar, the rugby fan and man-about-town, whose wife, more than a decade ago, was being investigated by Congress about her connections to Al-Qaida activists, is considered the CIA’s man in Riyadh. He’s known as a can-do person who makes quick decisions and doesn’t spare any resources to achieve his objectives.

When there was a need to transfer money to the rebels in Nicaragua in the 1980s, Bandar was the one who dealt with the Saudi “grants” that were requested by the White House. He was also the one who arranged things when Saudi Arabia was asked to help fund the mujahedeen’s battles in Afghanistan against the Soviet conquest.

Bandar is a member of that part of the royal family that is against the revolutions in the Arab states, and who see the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood no less of a threat than Iranian influence in the region. [Continue reading…]

If the Assad regime resorts to the use of chemical or biological weapons on its own people, it sounds as though in that event, it will attribute the use of such weapons to foreign powers who supplied the weapons to rebels “so that Syrian forces can then be blamed.”

The New York Times reports: With street battles still flaring in Syria’s two main cities, the Syrian government said on Monday that its forces would never use chemical weapons in its domestic conflict, describing them as outside the bounds of the kind of guerrilla warfare they are fighting.

Jihad Makdissi, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, read a statement at a news conference addressing repeated questions about Syria’s chemical weapons that have arisen in recent days. The Syrian army has all stocks of such weapons under secure guard and would only use them in case of an external attack, he said.

“They will not be used against Syrian civilians,” Mr. Makdissi told the news conference in Damascus. “They will never be used domestically no matter how this crisis evolves. Those weapons will only be used in the case of exterior aggression.”

The Syrians were evidently taking a lesson from Iraq, where accusations of a chemical weapons stockpile was among the reasons used to justify the March 2003 American invasion. The Iraqi stockpile never materialized.

Mr. Makdissi said all the attention focused on the chemical weapons — also referred to as weapons of mass destruction — “aims to justify and prepare the international community’s military intervention in Syria under the false pretext of WMD.”

Al Arabiya reports: But Makdissi said the government was concerned that foreign states might supply rebels with unconventional weapons.

He warned against “the possibility of foreign parties arming terrorist groups… with bacteriological weapons that might explode in a village, so that Syrian forces can then be blamed.”

It appeared to be the first time that Syria acknowledged it might possess non-conventional weapons. Damascus is not a signatory to the 1992 Chemical Weapons Convention that bans their use, production or stockpiling.

Stephen Starr writes: “You can write about anything you want,” friends and acquaintances regularly told me during my five-year stay in Syria. “But do not touch politics or religion.” For Syrians, the open discussion of politics was something on few people’s minds. Before the current revolt took hold, managing to secure a good job in spite of crippling graft and sparse opportunities was a far more pressing concern.

Pre-March 2011, the vast majority of Syrians I know kept their heads down and enjoyed life as they could. In wealthy areas of the country, politics and open discussion were gladly sacrificed for economic security and streets where their children could play in peace.

Before the uprising, western-styled malls were flung up in Aleppo, Damascus and one on the outskirts of Homs. New private banks made cheap credit available to thousands of young men and women wanting to buy houses and cars, and to get married. The Damascus Securities Exchange opened in 2009. A Mediterranean cafe culture swelled in the major cities.

But there was also an emerging anger that few well-to-do Syrians ever saw: the suburbs around Aleppo and Damascus, and in Daraa, became cramped with displaced farmers and labourers from Syria’s Jazeera region to the east: hundreds of thousands had fled a three-year drought from 2008 and came to the cities in search of work. They moved to Qaboun, Harasta and Douma – all districts we are familiar with today.

The brutal arrogance immediately adopted by the Syrian regime to the current uprising meant it was doomed from the revolt’s beginning. There was a way for it to stay in power had it at the beginning engaged in serious dialogue with Syrian society and taken seriously the grievances of the poor. It could have released the many political prisoners (themselves a sideshow to this revolution) and asked international observers to monitor real elections. It could have allowed commentators and journalists to write freely in media forums. [Continue reading…]

Joshua Landis writes: Will the Alawites try to establish an Alawite State centered in the Coastal Mountains?

Many opposition figures and journalists insist that the Alawites are planning to fall back to the Alawite Mountains in an attempt to establish a separate state. This is unconvincing. Here are the top five reasons why there will not be an Alawite State.

1. The Alawites have tried to get out of the mountains and into the cities. After the French conquered Syria in 1920, the earliest censuses showed a profound demographic segregation between Sunnis and Alawis. In no town of over 200 people did Alawis and Sunnis live together. The coastal cities of Latakia, Jeble, Tartus and Banyas were Sunni cities with Christian neighborhoods, but no Alawi neighborhoods. Only in Antioch did Alawis live in the city and that city was the capital of a separate autonomous region of Iskandarun, which was ceded to the Turks in 1938. In 1945 only 400 Alawis were registered as inhabitants of Damascus. Ever since the end of the Ottoman era, the Alawis have been streaming out of the mountain region along the coast to live in the cities. The French establishment of an autonomous Alawite state on the coast and their over-recruitment of Alawis into the military sped up this process of urbanization and confessional mixing in the cities of Syria. Assad’s Syria further accelerated the urbanization of the Alawites as they were admitted into universities in large numbers and found jobs in all the ministries and national institutions for the first time. [Continue reading…]

Robert Fisk writes: ‘Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ th’ Tiger,” Macbeth’s First Witch announces, but Shakespeare got his geography a bit wrong. Aleppo is 70 miles from the Mediterranean. It’s certainly ancient; Aleppo was mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of Ebla in the third millennium BC and belonged to the Hittites and the Emperor Justinian, its 14th-century citadel walls still lowering today over the revolutionary capital of northern Syria.

And that’s the point. While the drama of last week’s assault on Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus stunned the Arab world, the sudden outbreak of violence in Aleppo this weekend was in one way far more important. For Aleppo is the richest city in Syria – infinitely more so than Damascus – and if the revolution has now touched this centre of wealth, then the tacit agreement between the Alawite-controlled government and the Sunni middle classes must truly be cracking.

As the birthplace of agriculture – the Euphrates is only 70 miles to the east – Aleppo is also the headquarters of the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (Icarda), one of the finest institutions of its kind in the world. It increases food production in Asia and Africa in an area containing a billion people, 50 per cent of whom earn their living from agriculture. Donors include Britain, Canada, the US, Germany, Holland, the World Bank – you name it. And its 500 employees are still operating in Aleppo.

Alas, its principal research station at Tel Hadya, 20 miles from Aleppo, was raided by gunmen who stole vehicles – to use them as “technicals” mounted with machine guns – along with farm machinery and computers. Mercifully, Icarda’s gene bank is safe and has been duplicated outside Syria. The Syrian government moved a military checkpoint closer to Icarda’s property at Tel Hadya – the Syrian ministry of agriculture was always one of the more progressive offices in Damascus – but what use this will be in the coming days, we shall see.

Across all of Syria, the revolution has spread. Tragically, there now seems to be a Baathist pattern of destroying Sunni villages on the edge of the Alawite heartland, the “frontier” of Alawi-stan in the great agricultural plain of Hama province, below the mountains where the Assad home town of Qardaha stands. [Continue reading…]

Haaretz reports: Syrian army forces crossed the demilitarized zone near the border with Israel in the Golan Heights last week, a highly unusual incident, on what is considered a quiet border.

Following the incident, in which 500 soldiers and 50 vehicles crossed into the demilitarized zone, Israel filed a formal complaint to the UN secretary general and to the president of the UN’s Security Council, warning that the event may have serious ramifications.

Concern in Israel, in light of the situation in Syria, especially over Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile and land-to-land missiles, is growing every day. In a meeting on Sunday afternoon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consulted the heads of Israel’s security establishment, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and other senior cabinet members.

“We are monitoring the events in Syria closely and are prepared for any development to come,” Netanyahu said in his opening statement.

The Syrian soldiers entered the demilitarized zone last Thursday. The Syrian forces entered the area near the Syrian village of Jubata Al Khashab, a few kilometers east of the Israeli Druze village of Mas’ada in the northern part of the Golan Heights. It seems that the soldiers’ entrance to the demilitarized zone was a result of the fighting with the rebel army. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Syrian rebels have launched an offensive to “liberate” the country’s largest city of Aleppo, an opposition commander said Sunday, while in Damascus government troops backed by helicopter gunships wrested back control of rebel-held neighborhoods.

The attack on Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub and traditionally a bedrock of support for President Bashar Assad, was a sign of the rebels’ growing confidence and capabilities even as regime forces appeared close to regaining control of the capital Damascus after days of intense street battles there.

With Syria’s civil war moving from the countryside and smaller cities into the country’s two main urban centers, an activist group said the death toll had risen to more than 19,000 since the uprising began in March 2011. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said July is shaping up to be the deadliest month of the conflict so far, with 2,752 people killed in the first three weeks.

The bloodshed has escalated as the rebels have taken the fight to the government with a week of fighting in Damascus, including a bombing that struck at Assad’s inner circle and killed four senior regime officials. In a bid to seize the momentum, the opposition also has taken control of four border crossings with Iraq and Turkey, most recently the Bab al-Salamah post on the Turkish frontier.

A video posted online by activists Sunday showed about a dozen gunmen standing in front of the Bab al-Salamah crossing as they raised the Syrian opposition flag.

Gen. Qassim al-Dulaimi, commander of Iraq’s forces around the border region of al-Qaim, reported the sounds of fighting at the Bukamal crossing, suggesting Assad’s troops are trying to retake that frontier post.

The fighting in Damascus and Aleppo has shaken the government’s once seemingly iron grip on the two cities, which are both home to elites who have benefited from close ties to Assad’s regime, as well as merchant classes and minority groups who worry their status will suffer if Assad falls.

Col. Abdul-Jabbar Mohammed Aqidi, the commander of rebel forces in Aleppo province, said “we gave the orders for the march into Aleppo with the aim of liberating it.”

“We urge the residents of Aleppo to stay in their homes until the city is liberated,” he said in a video posted by activists on YouTube. He added that rebels were fighting inside the city while others were moving in from the outskirts.

Joshua Landis posted these remarks from an unnamed Syrian:

My friend who just arrived back from Turkey, recounted to me the story of a Syrian man he met there. This 30 year old, a volunteer from Jisr Alshughour, was helping the refugees to Turkey from Syria. My friend was shocked that this young man did not have a single tooth in his mouth. After a brief inquiry, he found out that this man was arrested in Syria for participating in a demonstration and while in custody, he was tortured by pulling out all his teeth. Needless to say, they were not pulled out properly, so the man needs a lot of surgery that he can not afford.

This is one of many stories of arrest and torture that many of our young and old recount. I say: God damn us all. Each and every one of us, who for years accepted this as part of normal life. Our collective silence allowed this to happen and continue to happen for years in Syria. While we were going to school, our friends were in Tadmor being treated with the utmost cruelty and some tortured to death, yet we kept our mouths shut. God damn each one who is still supporting these murderous criminals for whatever reason.

The Telegraph reports: Despite mounting fury from the Syrian rebels, who are seeking assistance for their efforts to overthrow the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, the White House has refused all requests for heavy weapons and intelligence support.

Syrian lobby groups in Washington, who only a few weeks ago were expressing hope that the Obama administration might give a green light to the supply of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, said they had now been forced to “take a reality pill” by the US government.

The Telegraph understands that the Syrian Support Group (SSG), the political wing of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), recently presented American officials with a document requesting 1,000 RPG-29 anti-tank missiles, 500 SAM-7 rockets, 750 23mm machine guns as well as body armour and secure satellite phones. They also asked for $6m to pay rebel fighters as they battle the regime. All their requests were rejected.

“Basically the message is very clear; nothing is going to happen until after the election, in fact nothing will happen until after inauguration [Jan 2013]. And that is the same message coming from everyone, including the Turks and the Qataris,” said a Washington lobbyist for the group.

The Obama administration has also made clear to its allies that it will not intervene, a message that was carried to London last week by Tom Donilon, the White House National Security Adviser, who made a low-profile stop en route to Israel.

Sources in Washington who were familiar with the matter said Mr Donilon had made it “abundantly clear” that there was no room for increased US involvement in Syria.

Syrian lobby groups in Washington have thus far been reluctant to speak publicly about their frustrations with the Obama government for fear of alienating White House officials, but also giving succor to the Assad regime.

However, a third lobby group contacted by The Telegraph, but who asked to remain anonymous, said that they too had come up against a White House ‘red line’, despite some earlier receptiveness from the State Department.

“No-one wants to touch this,” the group’s representative said, “Not the White House, not the Congressional committee on foreign affairs. It is clear we will have to play a longer game.”

Fears that the disparate rebel groups are being infiltrated by Al Qa’eda have also reduced appetite in the US for better arming the rebels, either directly or with the help of third-party countries such as Libya, Qatar or Saudi Arabia.

Foreign Policy published the results of a poll indicating what kind of actions American would support in Syria. Although a majority (58 percent) said they would support a no-fly zone, an even larger majority (72 percent) oppose bombing Syrian air defenses — an action that would be required in order to create a no-fly zone. Like many polls, one wonders whether the questions were posed in such a way that respondents could answer them intelligently. No doubt most people who said they support a no-fly zone didn’t understand that a no-fly zone can’t be put in place without first disabling air defense systems.

The Chicago Council Survey, fielded May 25 through June 8, asked over 1,800 Americans about a series of diplomatic and military options the United States could pursue along with its allies to stem the fighting in Syria. It found that the American public was generally ready to support limited measures, even before the fighting extended toward Damascus, but had little appetite for more direct actions. Six out of ten said they supported increasing economic and diplomatic sanctions against the Syrian regime (63 percent), and nearly as many said they would support enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria (58 percent). Beyond these options, there is limited support for sending arms and supplies to anti-government groups in Syria (27 percent; 67 percent oppose), bombing Syrian air defenses (22 percent; 72 percent oppose), or sending troops into Syria (14 percent; 81 percent oppose).

One of the curious features of the reporting on the issue of the Assad regime’s stockpile of chemical weapons has been ongoing speculation about whether these weapons are being moved to safer locations or readied for use, along with assessments about the dangers of them falling into the “wrong hands.” Sorry to have to state the obvious: they are already in the wrong hands — the regime’s.

The opposition Free Syrian Army is creating a special unit of men trained to secure Syria’s chemical weapons sites, a former general in the country’s chemical and biological weapons administration has told the Daily Telegraph.

“We have a group just to deal with chemical weapons. They are already trained to secure sites,” said Gen Adnan Silou, the most senior ranking member of Bashar al-Assad’s regime to defect and join the FSA.

Until 2008 Gen Silou was charged with the task of drafting emergency response plans should any of Syria’s terrifying array of weapons fall out of the government’s control.

Working around Damascus and Latakia he trained thousands of troops in how to secure what analysts believe are the largest chemical weapons stores in the world, consisting principally of sarin, mustard gas and cyanide.

“We trained them in securing stores, in reconnaissance of possible threats, in how to purge supplies and in treatment should Syria come under attack a chemical or biological attack,” said Silou.

“There were two main stores — warehouse 417 in east Damascus, and another, number 419 in Homs area. We had 1,500 soldiers and two or three generals stationed at each base,” he said.

As the Syrian regime’s iron-fist rule begins to unravel the question of how to maintain the security of these sites has become of central concern to Syrians and foreign governments alike.

The Daily Telegraph was told that British military intelligence chiefs believe that the Assad regime could yet deploy some of the stores in a desperate attempt to regain power.

Gen Silou agrees with the disturbing assessment. In his decades of service to the regime Silou said that he met President Bashar al-Assad and members of his inner circle ‘countless times’.

“I know Bashar al-Assad’s character. It is very possible that he will use the chemical weapons against his own people,” said Gen Silou. “They can deploy them from tanks, from rockets, and from helicopters”.

Gen Silou decided to come out of his retirement and join the FSA leadership in Turkey when the government attacked Homs in February. In addition to the barrages of artillery fired from tanks, the attack increased his concern that Mr Assad could deploy chemical weapons in the future. He is convinced that the regime sprayed pesticides from planes on population areas in Rastan, a hub for the rebel Free Syrian Army close to Homs.

The claims cannot be independently confirmed, but in February and March patients seen by the Daily Telegraph who had led Rasatn and Homs for Lebanon showed signs of hair loss, skin irritation, chronic muscle pain and sickness. Doctors in Lebanon treating Syrian patients from Rastan and Homs who had fled the country reported seeing unusual symptoms.

There are also serious fears that as the security structure in the country unravels these lethal weapons could fall out of government control and into the hands of militia groups, including radical Islamic units that might try to deploy them.

“We are now scanning all Syrian military defectors for people with training on chemical weapons,” said Louay al-Mokdad, an oppositoni activist. “We are putting them in one unit that can work to secure the sites.”

“The weapons used to be to protect Syria. Now they are just to protect Bashar,” said Gen Silou.