The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict.
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"Turkey faces a dilemma: it wants the (Assad) regime to go, but not to the benefit of the Kurds, and especially not the PYD/PKK… .Turkey is now working with Barzani to contain the PKK."
—Joost Hiltermann at International Crisis Group in “Analysis: Syrian Kurds sense freedom, power struggle awaits” Reuters by Patrick Markey.
Syria: a peaceful uprising turned brutal civil war | AFP
By Tanya Willmer
The spark was lit in March 2011, when a group of young boys were arrested and cruelly tortured for daubing walls in the southern Syrian city of Daraa with anti-government graffiti.
A year and a half on, a once peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad inspired by the Arab Spring revolts against other autocratic regimes has descended into brutal civil war with no endgame in sight, analysts say.
Photo: FreedomHouse/Flickr
Assad’s Alawites run out of options | Sydney Morning Herald
By Paul McGeough
The dilemma for Syria’s Alawites is acute. Do they go off a cliff with their fellow believer Bashar al-Assad, or can they retreat to safe ground from which to negotiate an alternative future once the dictator President has been swept away?
Numbering just 2 million, they are snared in a historic trap - now being sprung by the Arab Spring.
FULL ARTICLE (Sydney Morning Herald)
Photo: Freedom House/Flickr
Analysis: Syria border standoff a new front in Iraq-Kurdish rift | Reuters
By Patrick Markey
KALE, Iraq - Beneath the green, white and red Kurdistan flag, Kurdish Peshmerga troops keep watch from hastily built earthen barricades on soldiers of the Iraqi national army dug in less than a kilometer away along a desolate stretch of road.
The standoff, for a moment last week so close to confrontation, is the most dramatic illustration of a growing rift between Baghdad and the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan. Frictions over oil revenues are exacerbated now by conflicting views of the Syrian rebellion and by territorial disputes that pose questions about the unity of Iraq.
Photo: Freedom House/Flickr
"Defections are occurring in all components of the regime save its hard inner core, which for now has given no signs of fracturing."
— Peter Harling in the Reuters article Syria premier defects to anti-Assad opposition
Accounts of Syria rebels executing prisoners raise new human rights concerns | Kansas City Star
By Hannah Allam and Austin Tice / McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Syrian insurgents fighting to unseat President Bashar Assad face a growing list of accusations that they’ve carried out executions and torture, muddying the Western narrative of a heroic resistance force struggling against a vicious regime.
FULL ARTICLE (Kansas City Star)
Photo: Freedom House/Wikimedia Commons
Victory closer, divisions deepen in Syria opposition | Reuters
By Yara Bayoumy
Three separate Syrian opposition groups have floated proposals for a transitional government in the past week, a sign that differences among the many factions opposing President Bashar al-Assad are deepening even as victory seems closer.
Photo: Freedom House/Flickr
Kofi Annan’s exit makes it clear: Force trumps talk in Syria | Los Angeles Times
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Paul Richter
BEIRUT — The resignation of Kofi Annan, the point man for international efforts to bring peace to Syria, emphatically confirmed what events there had already been making clear: The country’s fate is far more likely to be decided by force than by negotiations.
Photo: World Economic Forum/Flickr
Syria crisis: rebels ‘execute shabiha’ in Aleppo - Wednesday 1 August 2012 | The Guardian
By Matthew Weaver and Brian Whitaker
Summary of the latest developments on Syria
• The Assad regime is morphing into a brutal militia that is pushing the conflict towards an even bloodier outcome than many feared, according to a new report by the International Crisis Group.
• In a telephone interview with the Guardian, a spokesman for the Tawheed (“Unification”) Brigade in Aleppo has described “field trials” of shabiha suspects. He said those believed to have been involved in killing were executed, while others are being kept for trial “after the collapse of the regime”.
• After some delay, the opposition Syrian National Council has now condemned the executions carried out by rebels in Aleppo.
Photo: Freedom House/Flickr
“Syria’s future largely depends on the Alawites’ fate. To cast them aside or marginalise them would plant the seeds of the next conflagration. It also would exacerbate fears among other minorities who, having incurred persecution, like the Kurds and the Druze, or feeling insecure, like the Christians and Ismailis, would wonder whether they were next in line. If Alawites cannot find their rightful place in it, Syria will face the likely prospect of instability, civil strife and fragmentation.”
-Syria’s Mutating Conflict, a recent report from Crisis Group.
Photo: FreedomHouse/Flickr
