Syria Today: The Fight Over the International "Peace" Conference

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Insurgents Retake Suburb of Damascus

Insurgents have retaken the Damascus suburb of Otaiba, which was been a conduit for arms from Jordan to opposition forces near the capital before it was seized by regime forces last month.

Commanders said insurgent brigades, including the General Command and Islamist factions, had united to re-claim Otaiba, two miles northeast of Damascus International Airport.

The opposition forces adopted a white banner with the Muslim declaration of faith: "There is no god but God; Mohammad is God's prophet."

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Syria Today: Obama & Erdogan Call for Assad to Go --- But Will They Do Anything?

Rebels Prepare to Attack Damascus Airport.

Rebel fighters may be on the move once again in Damascus, near the international airport that is used to ferry supplies in and out of the country.

#Syria #Damascus Big battle in vicinity of int. airport with mortar impacts on runway Rebel convoy heading to ityoutube.com/watch?feature=…

— Mark (@markito0171) May 17, 2013

Meanwhile, to the north of Damascus the Assad regime has been conducting an intense artillery and airstrike campaign against Yabroud. The hilltop suburb has been heavily occupied by rebel forces for many months, but it now appears that the area is being softened up, possibly or a direct regime assault on the town.

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Syria Today: Pressure and Propaganda --- From the UN to Israel to Russia

See also Syria Audio Analysis: Why The Insurgency is More than "Jihadists" and "Cannibals"
Wednesday's Syria Today: US and Russia Manoeuvre Over Support for Assad

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Obama and Erdogan Speak.

US President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan have given a joint press conference in a rainy White House Rose Garden. One would think with both world leaders on the same stage that topics like terrorism on the Turkish/Syria border, the ongoing Syrian crisis, and the sectarian strife in Iraq would be major priorities. They were not. These topics were not raised until more than halfway through Obama's opening comments, and there was no news beyond echoing very general statements that mirror the policies that have been more-fully expressed at other times.

Syria was clearly not on the agenda, though another journalist makes an important note that this may soon change:

Note that PM Erdogan will have 2 hour private dinner w/pres Obama tonight, it's when, Erdogan says, will talk Syria in depth #rosegarden

— ilhan tanir (@WashingtonPoint) May 16, 2013

More notable might be the questions from the press. Due to rain, the press conference may have been shortened, but the 1st question asked to Obama was about a domestic scandal (the IRS) and the 1st question to Erdogan was about Turkey's policies towards Israel. In other words, while having both leaders on record at the same time, some really interesting questions could have been asked about how these two leaders will pursue their most pressing common problem. Instead, they were squandered on offering the leaders an opportunity to echo talking points that they're already given.

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Syria Today: US and Russia Manoeuvre Over Support for Assad

1930 GMT: Even Government Sources Admit Baniyas is Different.

The Baniyas massacre on Syria's coast may be a singular event that stands out as being dramatically different than all the other massacres. For starters, the scale of the massacre is at least among the worst of all of Syria's massacres, though some reports suggest that it may be magnitudes worse than any event that has taken place since the start of this crisis. Also, this incident had a clearly sectarian nature to it that is not disputed - Alawite militias loyal to President Assad targeted Sunnis, many of them children, and killed them en masse. In a thorough, nuanced, and eloquent description of the massacre, the New York Times' Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada point out that the Assad government typically blames civilian deaths on "terrorists" even when their own forces and loyalists are implicated. This time, however, even the government admitted that its people were responsible for a mass killing, though they tell a different tale than Baniyas's residents:

Multiple video images that residents said they had recorded in Bayda and Ras al-Nabeh — of small children lying where they died, some embracing one another or their parents — were so searing that even some government supporters rejected Syrian television’s official version of events, that the army had “crushed a number of terrorists.”

One prominent pro-government writer, Bassam al-Qadi, took the unusual, risky step of publicly blaming loyalist gunmen for the killings and accusing the government of “turning a blind eye to criminals and murderers in the name of ‘defending the homeland.’ “

The article chronicles some of the evidence and eyewitness reports. It also argues that there were those who were trying to break with the sectarian nature of the killings even while the violence was ongoing. In the end, however, it's a must-read article on a story that has been under-reported.

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Syria Audio Analysis: Have US & Britain Changed Their Lines?

EA's Scott Lucas spoke with Monocle 24's The Briefing this afternoon about the latest US and British rhetoric on Syria.

Listen from 17:26 on The Briefing homepage or in a separate pop-out window

In a week when British Prime Minister David Cameron met Russian leader Vladimir Putin and then US President Barack Obama, have Washington and London moved from support of the insurgency to a political accommodation with the regime?

And what of others involved in the conflict --- for example, why is Iran talking so tough this week?

Syria Today: US and Britain Play for Time

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2110 GMT: Islamist Faction Executes Pro-Regime Militia in Raqqa

Graphic video posted on YouTube today shows the execution of three men, claimed to be pro-regime militia, in the main square of the city of Raqqa.

Before the execution, a man reads out a statement declaring the execution to be in response to the mass killing of residents of the coastal town of al-Bayada, near Baniyas, earlier this month.

The man signs off the statement with a reference to the "Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham".

The identity of the faction is unclear as is any affiliation with large Islamist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been prominent in the takeover of Raqqa.

Residents of Raqqa have rallied tonight in protest against the executions.

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Syria Today: Russia Holds Off US and British Political Approach

The moment one of two car bombs went off in Reyhanli in Turkey, near the Syrian border, killing more than 40

See also Friday's Syria Today: Turkey "Backs US-Enforced No-Fly Zone"
Friday's Syria Today: Turkey "Backs US-Enforced No-Fly Zone"

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1610 GMT: Deadly Bombing Inside Turkey on the Border

Leading Turkish officials have been issuing statements as the death toll from the two car bombs in Reyhanli, just inside Turkey on the Syrian border, passed 40 with more than 100 injured.

President Abdullah Gul said, "We should be careful against provocations," while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared:

These actions could have been taken to raise sensitivity in Hatay Province. Twenty to twenty-five thousand refugees live in camps and others are our guests.

The culprits could be those who could not digest this. Or it could be those who want to provoke this fact.

I think we need to be very careful and patient.

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Syria Today: Obama Maintains Cautious Line on US Intervention

Protest in Beza'a in Aleppo Province on Friday

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1205 GMT: Sanctions and Surveillance

Documents establish that large amounts of computer equipment from Dell have been sold to the Syrian government through a Dubai-based distributor despite strict trade sanctions, according to The New York Times.

The computer equipment was sold by BDL Gulf, which is based in Saudi Arabia and is an authorised distributor for Dell in the Middle East and Africa and a reseller for other computer brands, including Samsung and Acer.

BDL sold the equipment to Anas Hasoon Trading, a Damascus-based company with contracts to provide computers to the Syrian government, according to billings records and e-mail exchanges between the companies.

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Syria Today: Assad Appears --- Does It Matter?

President Assad looks at the wall of an electricity plant on Workers' Day on Wednesday

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2046 GMT: Mass Killing

Claimed photos are circulating of the mass killing in Bayada.

1956 GMT: Mass Killing

Activists are claiming that scores of people have been slain by regime forces in Bayada in Homs Province:

Another martyr, Wassim Uthman, from the #BaydaMassacre today in #Banias. Total martyred: 200-300 civilians. | #Syria twitter.com/yasmeenmobayed…

— yasmeen mobayed (@yasmeenmobayed) May 2, 2013

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Syria Audio Feature: Is a Lasting Assad Regime Better than the Current Situation? --- Scott Lucas with Monocle 24

I spoke with Monocle 24's The Briefing yesterday about the political and military situation in Syria, framed by the question, "An end game seems as distant as ever --- should questions be asked in the West now about what seems to be a misguided confidence that Assad would eventually go? Will be continued instability be a lot worse than a continuation of the Assad regime?"

Listen from the 6:39 mark on The Briefing's homepage or in a separate pop-out window

My response begins with a reply to the challenge that a lasting Assad regime is the best option:

That would be just as mistaken as people who said he would fall within a few weeks.

To simply say that it would be better for the Assad regime to continue would be almost blind to the reasons why the protests started in March 2011. It would be blind to the fact that, for the largest part, it is the regime which is responsible for the tens of thousands of deaths since then.