An Israeli patrol on the border with Syria. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

It all happened within ten days – Syria’s civil war fought metres away from Israeli orchards abutting the ceasefire line; Austrian peacekeepers hastily evacuating the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that separates Israel from Syria; fears of a total collapse of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF). All while the cherry-picking season is at its peak.

Staff Sergeant Heinz Brandl of the 378-strong Austrian UNDOF battalion deplored last week’s evacuation. “Our government decided that it became too dangerous here. Most of us are unhappy to leave. Unfortunately we must follow the rules of our politicians. There’s no way back.”

The Austrian pullout came in the wake of the short-lived capture on Jun. 6 of the Syrian town Quneitra by rebel Free Syrian Army forces. Four hours later, Syrian army forces loyal to President Bashar el-Assad dislodged the rebels. The 911-member UN force was caught in the crosshairs of the fighting. Two peacekeepers were wounded.

“Austria go home, return to the Anschluss!” railed an Israeli as he witnessed the sudden pullout from the Ein Zivan lookout, comparing the admission of powerlessness by the peacekeepers to the capitulation of Austria to Nazi Germany’s annexationist demand in 1938.

At the Quneitra border crossing where the UNDOF headquarters are located, the loyalist Syrian flag flies again on the masthead opposite the Israeli flag.

From kibbutz Ein Zivan’s lookout, smouldering fields attest to the battle, the fiercest in the area since the start of the civil war.

Who controls which part of the Golan Heights is now easily identifiable. The charred fields are in Syria. The lush trees are on the Israeli side. This is the height of the cherry season.

Ein Zivan’s community chairman Ronen Gilboa witnessed the fighting. “At 5am, we heard gunshots and explosions while we were picking cherries. Within minutes, the army asked us to leave the orchards.”

Gilboa points out that during the clash, Syrian tanks outflanked the rebels from the area adjacent to the ceasefire line, preferring to fire towards their own territory lest Israel retaliates. “The whole area is a north-south passageway for the rebel.”

Israel nonetheless lodged a customary complaint to the UN because it said five Syrian tanks and four Armoured Personal Carriers had entered the DMZ.

Over the past year, Syria’s civil war has leaked across the ceasefire line. Errant mortar shells occasionally land on the Israeli side. Israel then returns fire towards the source of fire.

Croatia withdrew its force after a UN convoy was held hostage in March by Syrian rebels.

Damascus is a mere 60 kilometres from the Israeli side of the ceasefire line, and 243 kilometres from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, where Benjamin Netanyahu sounded the alarm.

“The disintegration of the UN force in the Golan makes trenchant the fact that Israel cannot lean on international forces for its security,” Netanyahu told his cabinet.

UNDOF chief Herve Ladsous told a closed emergency session of the United Nations Security Council that the latest incident brought Israel and Syria on the brink of the most direct military confrontation on the Golan Heights front in 40 years.

The 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement between Israel and Syria formally ended the 1973 war. UNDOF has since been operating in the buffer zone, supervising the ceasefire.

“We cannot entrust our security to UNDOF; yet, we cannot entrust our security to Syria’s commitment to the 1974 ceasefire agreement without UNDOF,” Gilboa reasons. “We appreciate that UNDOF is part and parcel of the agreement.”

Rhetoric aside, Netanyahu shares this opinion.

Every six months, the Security Council must extend UNDOF’s mandate for a further six months. The current mandate expires by the end of the month.

In a recent report to the Security Council, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recommended the renewal of the UNDOF mission for six more months, until Dec. 31, calling it “essential”.

This is a view shared by both Netanyahu and Assad. Ban announced that Israel and Syria have given their approval to the proposed extension.

Fiji is expected to somehow fill the UNDOF vacuum by sending 170 military and medical personnel to the Golan at the end of June.

Just kilometres away from the UN border crossing around which the recent clash took place, an Israeli reserve artillery battalion prepares for what a soldier calls “a long-planned military exercise.”

In a compound not far from what now looks more like a frontline than a ceasefire line, Israeli tanks trundle by, discharging plumes of exhaust fumes and dust. There’s no need for a smokescreen to hide from the Syrian line of sight, says Gilboa, himself a former armoured regiment commander.

Armoured warfare is often practised on this swath of territory. During the 1973 war, Israel and Syria fought one of the largest tanks battles since World War II on the Golan as Syria tried to recapture the territory conquered by Israel in 1967, to no avail.

“As long as Assad is in control, we’re not that concerned,” says Gilboa. “The civil war doesn’t affect our daily lives. We train our people to be alert, that’s it.”

Syria’s civil war may have reached the fence. Yet, on the Israeli side 50 metres away from the border, visitors have fun insouciantly reaping the fruit of their own labour. Self cherry-picking is a major touristic attraction in this area. Just last weekend, 6,000 tourists flocked to Ein Zivan’s orchards.

Naftali Ashkenazi, a resident of Holon in central Israel, is unfazed by the rising tension: “I’ve been through much worse during the 1973 war.”

“It’s all a little surreal when you hear bangs and booms just across the border,” says kibbutz member Neta Bahat. “But our main concern is to prevent the birds from eating the cherries from the trees. Our livelihood depends on it. I hope nothing will change here. And, may calm prevail.”

By the end of the month, the kibbutz will have produced 100 tons of cherries. That’s half of last year’s harvest. The winter was too hot, the farmers say.

Peace talks between the United States and the Taliban are due to begin later this week in Qatar. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Nearly 12 years after the United States ousted the Taliban from power, the White House announced Tuesday that the United States will begin formal talks with the militant Islamist group in Qatar later this week as part of Afghanistan’s national reconciliation process.

The announcement, which coincided with ceremonies marking the formal transfer of primary security responsibility from U.S.-led NATO forces to their Afghan counterparts, preceded a statement issued shortly afterwards by the Taliban itself in which it implicitly disassociated itself from Al-Qaeda.

The Taliban “would not allow anyone to threaten the security of other countries from the soil of Afghanistan”, Muhammad Naim, a Taliban spokesman, said in a televised broadcast from Doha. In addition, he pledged that the group seeks “a political and peaceful solution” to the conflict.

“These are two statements which we’ve long called for and together, they fulfil the requirements for the Taliban to open…a political office in Doha for the purposes of negotiation with the Afghan government,” said a senior official in a background teleconference for reporters.

“These statements represent an important first step towards reconciliation, a process that, after 30 years of armed conflict in Afghanistan, will certainly promise to be complex, long and messy, but nonetheless, this is an important first step,” said the official, who spoke on condition of not being identified.

He also called on the Taliban and the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai to begin direct negotiations “soon”.

Speaking at the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland, President Barack Obama also described the opening of the Taliban office an “important first step towards reconciliation” but stressed that “there will be a lot of bumps in the road”.

He also said Washington remained “fully committed to our military efforts to defeat Al-Qaeda and to support the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF)”.

Critics of the U.S. military effort hailed Tuesday’s announcement as signalling a major change in policy in advance of the deadline at the end of 2014 for the withdrawal of virtually all foreign troops from Afghanistan.

Most experts in Washington believe that at most 10,000 U.S. troops – plus about 4,000 more from other NATO countries – are likely to remain beyond that date as trainers for Afghan forces and as counter-terrorist units focused on preventing the return of Al-Qaeda forces.

“The U.S. and Karzai know they have to cut a deal with the Taliban and that the Taliban cannot be defeated militarily,” said William Goodfellow, director of the Centre for International Policy (CIP) here.

“The problem for the last 11 years is that it’s the (U.S.) military that’s been running the show, and to the military, negotiations equals defeat. We’re now shifting away from a policy of wanting to defeat the Taliban militarily to one of finding a political solution,” he said.

Tuesday’s developments – both the transfer of security responsibility to Afghan forces and the announcement of U.S.-Taliban talks – come amidst indications of eagerness by both the White House and Congress to wind down Washington’s commitment to Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

Just last week, a majority of the Republican-led House voted for the first time to approve a bipartisan amendment to the defence authorisation bill in favour of accelerating Washington’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The amendment, which was adopted by a 305-121 margin, also deleted a provision of the bill that had supported a continued U.S. military presence after 2014, replacing it with a call for the administration to seek explicit Congressional approval for retaining any U.S. troops there after that date.

About 66,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan – down from a high of around 100,000 two years ago following two “surges” sent by Obama as part of an ambitious counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy overseen by General David Petraeus.

The administration is currently engaged in a major internal debate over the pace of withdrawal for the remaining troops before the 2014 deadline and how many troops Washington will retain in Afghanistan after that date.

The latter question presumes that Karzai – or whoever succeeds him after the 2014 presidential election – wants them and provides the necessary guarantees, including the thorny issue of immunity from criminal prosecution, to keep them there.

The Pentagon and its supporters want to keep as many troops there for as long as possible, including next year’s “fighting season”, which lasts from late spring into the fall. They believe that that U.S. forces can still deal major blows to the Taliban – thus weakening its position in any negotiations – and are still badly needed to back up the ANSF.

Though 352,000 strong and more battle-tested than two years ago, the ANSF suffers serious weaknesses in a range of areas, including air support and an annual attrition rate of about 30 percent. The United States and its allies have said they will continue spending more than 4 billion dollars annually to help maintain, supply and expand the ANSF after 2014.

Obama, who had described the Afghanistan conflict as a “war of necessity” during his 2008 presidential campaign, initially deferred to Petraeus but reportedly became increasingly disenchanted with COIN’s effectiveness.

As early as two years ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the administration’s support for direct negotiations with the Taliban.

But despite a series of informal meetings with Taliban representatives hosted by various European countries and Qatar, the State Department proved unable to wrest control of policy from the Pentagon and its supporters in Congress.

Other key actors, including Karzai himself, the Pakistani military, which is believed to exert considerable influence if not outright control over key Taliban leaders, and more hard-line factions within the Taliban, also opposed talks at various times.

U.S. officials who briefed the press said they believed that the Taliban Political Commission in Doha is fully authorised by all factions of the movement and its leader, Mullah Omar, to conduct negotiations.

The officials also stressed that talks between the United States and the Taliban would likely be limited in scope and that negotiations between the Taliban and the Karzai government, as represented initially by the High Peace Council, were far more important. They said they expected the Council to send representatives to meet with the Taliban several days after the U.S.-Taliban talks.

“I think that given the level of distrust among Afghans, it’s going to be a slow process to get that…intra-Afghan dialogue moving,” said one. “The United States will encourage and help facilitate that, but the talks are largely going to be paced by the success or failure in that dialogue, and so I wouldn’t be looking for early results.”

“There is no guarantee that this will happen quickly, if at all,” added another.

In addition, Washington, they said, would only sign a final accord if the Taliban met three conditions: “First, that they break ties with Al-Qaeda; that they end the violence; and that they accept Afghanistan’s constitution, including its protections for women and minorities.”

While the Taliban’s statement about not permitting Afghan territory to be used to threaten the security of other nations moved partway toward meeting the first condition, they said, the Taliban would have to be more explicit to fully satisfy it.

Both have good reasons: Colombia has witnessed the longest lasting violence in any contemporary country: from 1949, with some interruptions, then on again from 1964 with the notorious guerilla group, the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia).

Johan Galtung, rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University. Credit: IPS

The U.S., with its conviction that evil is lurking around every corner, domestic and global, believes it better have the arms to handle those bad guys.

Both countries have among the highest rates of structural violence, and the most unequal distributions of economic wealth, in the world.

There is a difference, though: one country submits its problem to third party mediation, of all places in Havana, facilitated by Cuba and Norway; the other submits its problem to nobody, nor does anyone seem to offer their services.

Colombia admits openly to the world that it does not have sufficient capacity for self-regulation; from the U.S. no such admission has been forthcoming.

Recently there was news from Havana: a breakthrough in the peace negotiations about a rather basic economic issue: land, and land reform – a redistribution of land, and of better land, to small impoverished peasants.

There are four other problems on the agenda: political participation (the problem being real democracy), ceasefire, drugs, and the rights of the victims and the bereaved in a country where four million have been displaced and thousands kidnapped and killed.

Reasons to celebrate? Wait. The class differences in a country ruled by the triumvirate of landowners, the military and clerics (like three brothers in many families – the Iberian heritage) force upon us a sad prediction: there will be one more military coup in the chain of coups, supported by the Church.

Let us not pray. Let us hope for disarmament of the FARC and the other guerrillas (particularly the reactionary paramilitary) and control of the army, lest we end up with Nepal: disarmament to the left, not centre-right.

To produce food, not only land, but also water, seeds, manure and some technology are needed. Water and seeds may become privatised – by Monsanto – so where does the credit to buy these inputs come from? And at what price?

What’s needed is collective, cooperative farming on communal land with direct democracy for decisions, not corruptible multi-party national elections. And can farming compete with drug commissions when drugs change hands until finally traveling via submarines to the U.S.? Or on the long road to the Mexican border?

Small farms cannot compete; cooperatives would do better. Well, let’s hope.

Expand the zones of peace, have them intersect, and aim at all of huge Colombia.

The U.S.: On May 23, President Barack Obama concluded that he should pull back the drones, and close the Guantanamo prison. Does he have the guts to do so, by executive orders, using vetoes?

There will be no military coup in the U.S. There are permanent, structural links between the Pentagon, Congress, the military industry and the media (owned by the former, and for whom news of peace is bad news) designed to keep the war industry going.

That industry has one major purpose: to stamp out any initiative to eliminate the special status of the dollar as the world’s “reserve currency” – like by Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, by Iran, now by BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) – so that the U.S. can pay by printing money, and even get the naive to buy U.S. bonds, meaning lending the U.S. petro-dollars or China dollars.

Alas, the U.S.’ efforts are self-defeating. The more wars against terror for U.S. security, the more insecurity and terrorism; the more wars to save the dollar, the closer the collapse of the currency of that bankrupt country: by inflation, by stock exchange crashes, by serving debts rather than people.

May still last a couple of years, but the synergy of these three factors will catch up with the economy. In the meantime Monsanto is at work, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the National Riffle Association (NRA) and other lobbies threatening anyone whose voting is not to their liking that they will not be reelected.

The finance industry is at work forcing the administration to withdraw one step behind the other from the tiny measures introduced after the Grand Repression to control the finance industry.

The U.S. Supreme Court did its part of the job granting money to politicians under “freedom of expression.”

And Obama did his job, offering to cut Social Security entitlements in return for some compromise with Republicans, the average retirement package in the U.S. now being only 40 percent of a salary as opposed to 70 percent in developed countries.

Montesquieu’s plan of separating legislative, executive and judiciary power so that they check each other does not work. In the U.S. today all three powers are on the same course set by the finance industry, to which the dollar status is key.

Politicians are bought and cowed and the president once again betrays those who elected him. Democracy does not work. The U.S. blessing – the Occupy Movement – was itself occupied: by armies of FBI agents.

All of this and worse was Colombia’s fate; the answer was FARC, armed revolt. Will there be a similar armed revolt in the U.S., given that the guns are well distributed?

For Anglo-American global direct violence, yes. As the suspected Boston bombers said, an attack on one Muslim is an attack on all Muslims, an eye for an eye – except when it comes to domestic structural violence.

Let us hope for the revival of Montesquieu and democracy or, if not, submission to outside mediation.

Since 2008, militants in Pakistan have torched over 5,000 vehicles carrying NATO supplies to Afghanistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

The United States is laying meticulous plans ahead of its 2014 withdrawal from Afghanistan, but it has clearly overlooked how its continued drones strikes on the tribal areas of neighbouring Pakistan will affect the much-anticipated pullout.

Last week, a group of militants belonging to the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) torched three containers stuffed with supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan, as they trundled along the stony mountain pass known as Torkham Road in Pakistan’s northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province.

The militants claimed the attack on the convoy of 12 containers was payback for the drone strike on May 29 that killed TTP Deputy Leader Waliur Rehman in North Waziristan province, one of seven zones comprising the country’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

The incident last month brought the total number of drone strikes on the region to over 355 since 2005. But while the U.S. government has hitherto been happy to turn a blind eye to various forms of protest against its campaign of remote warfare – from civilian marches, to government statements – the burning of NATO-bound vehicles might signal a turning point in its controversial foreign policy.

Muhammad Mushtaq, an office-bearer of the NATO Suppliers Association – a local collective of drivers, cleaners and vehicle owners involved in the transport of supplies across the border – told IPS, “Since 2008, more than 5,000 NATO vehicles have been burnt down in Peshawar and the Khyber Agency, all of them en route to Afghanistan to replenish the forces engaged in a war against terrorism since 2002.”

In the process, he said, not only have roughly 10 million dollars worth of equipment and supplies been reduced to ashes, but more than 500 people, including drivers and cleaners, have lost their lives.

In December 2008, 160 NATO vehicles carrying Humvees destined for Afghanistan were burnt in a single attack near Peshawar, capital of the KP, Mushtaq said. The militants later paraded triumphantly amid billowing flames that blackened the sky.

Most of the vehicles heading to Afghanistan carry military equipment, food, and other logistical supplies for the roughly 100,000 foreign troops stationed there, Retired Major Anwar Khan, a security analyst, told IPS.

“This same route will also likely be used for the withdrawal of heavy military hardware as well as soldiers,” he said. Thus, if drone strikes continue, the U.S. risks leaving its main access and exit route vulnerable to attacks.

Khan says that the U.S. and its coalition partners in the so-called ‘War on Terror’ must revisit their military strategy if they are determined to stick to the 2014 date. “Otherwise, the chances of their withdrawal and peace in Pakistan and Afghanistan will remain a dream.”

An eye for an eye 

When U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban government in Kabul in 2001, it signaled the beginning of a war that would drag on for over a decade.

Members of the deposed regime, along with their supporters, fled en masse into the mountains that form the rugged 1,200-kilometre-long border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, prompting the latter to throw in its lot with the U.S. in the hopes of preventing the militants from taking root in its own, volatile tribal zones.

But promises to destroy the Al Qaeda network charged with carrying out the bombing of the U.S.’s twin towers on Sep. 11, 2001, have failed to bear fruit, with many commentators observing that the militants are stronger than ever.

Last May, against the backdrop of rising costs, a mounting death toll and loud public opposition to the war, U.S. President Barack Obama signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, agreeing to withdraw forces by 2014 and hand over power to the locally elected government.

But experts like Pervez Jamal, professor of political science at the University of Peshawar, believe this plan will fall flat unless immediate measures are taken to appease the TTP.

As Khan pointed out, “The burning of vehicles has already made the war against terrorism more expensive for the U.S. and its allies.”

Currently, 70 percent of supplies for Western forces in landlocked Afghanistan come through Pakistan, where they arrive by ship at the Arabian Sea port of Karachi before travelling 3,000 kilometres to the Bagram Airfield in Kabul.

In November 2011, the Pakistan government ordered the closure of this supply route when U.S. forces attacked a Pakistani security post in FATA’s Mohmand Agency, killing 24 soldiers.

Deprived of a land route, the U.S. was forced to explore alternative, aerial routes through Russia and the former Soviet republics that border Afghanistan. During this time, the cost of transporting supplies went from 17 million dollars to 104 million dollars.

Unable to sustain these costs, the U.S. government issued an apology for the attack, and the supply route was re-opened in 2012, with the understanding that it would remain functional until 2015, to facilitate a smooth withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But this agreement is now in jeopardy.

The burning of supplies also spells danger for the 10,000 troops tasked with remaining on the ground to assist the 350,000 Afghan National Security Forces with the political transition.

The local security force currently lacks training and military equipment; without the promise of reinforcements, some experts say they will be no match for an attempted power grab by the militants.

Javed Hasham, an Afghan war analyst based in Peshawar, told IPS that the Taliban are capable of destroying convoys very easily. Torkham Road is an exposed mountain pass, with no security outposts along the way. The Taliban, familiar with the terrain, have hideouts in hills and houses that overlook the winding road.

Attacks on supply convoys had recorded a massive decrease over the past four months but have recently picked up again, keeping pace with increased drone strikes.

Hasham believes it unlikely that even the Pakistan government, which is loathe to support the Taliban, will not chastise the militants for these attacks, as it, too, sees the drone strikes as a severe encroachment on national sovereignty.

“The only way forward is for the U.S. to put its drone strikes on hold,” Hasham said.

Women like these in Derik play a key role in the Kurds revolution in Syria. Credit: Giulio Petrocco/IPS.

A ban on political and even social gatherings, a bar on Kurdish language and culture; uprooting people, forced disappearances and a ‘caste’ of hundreds of thousands of local Kurds deprived of citizenship… life for Kurds in pre-war Syria was probably as dire as it is today for their kin in Iran.

About 40 million Kurds comprise today’s largest stateless nation. Numbering around three million in Syria, they are the biggest minority in the country, as many as the Alawites, the ethno-religious group of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

After decades of brutal repression at the hands of President Assad and earlier his father president Hafez Assad, Syrian Kurds had attempted to revolt in 2004. So it came as no surprise that they joined the uprising in March 2011.

A few months later they were shaking off the control of Damascus by manning their own checkpoints and ensuring an area where social centres, Kurdish schools and political parties – both new and those in hiding for decades – would pop up in their dozens.

However, it was striking for many that while Aleppo – Syria’s second largest city 300 kilometres north of Damascus – was being levelled to the ground by Assad’s fighter jets, Kurdish militiamen told IPS that they had “not fired a single shot.”

“From the very beginning, the Kurds in Syria have been committed to their own peaceful revolution meant to bring peace and democracy to the country,” Salih Muslim told IPS in Qamishli, 680 kilometres northeast of Damascus. This former chemical engineer is the leader of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant party among the Kurds of Syria which has an ideology akin to the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), an armed movement seeking rights and recognition for Kurds within Turkey.

“We knew that Assad’s regime would not collapse in just two months, so we organised our people in civil defence committees to ensure the safety in our areas.”

While Kurdish colours – yellow, green and red – are hegemonic in Kurdish-controlled areas, they are hardly visible in areas controlled by the Arab opposition. The Kurdish resurgence seems a parallel, if silent revolution.

Today, the Kurds of Syria are grouped around over 30 political parties. The biggest have strong links with Kurdish political parties in Iraq or Turkey. The Kurdish parties of Syria differ in the status they seek, ranging from an autonomous region similar to Kurdistan in Iraq – almost a de facto state – to a more humble yet ambitious “recognition of the constitutional rights of the Kurdish people of Syria”, according to Muslim.

“Damascus is not afraid of us because we aren’t even demanding an autonomous region,” Muslim told IPS. “We’re only looking for democratic self-determination within Syria’s borders.”

Kurds are still in control of their areas in north-eastern Syria in precarious balance between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Assad’s army.

One of the major hurdles in a dialogue between the warring parties is the increasingly fragmented Arab opposition. The involvement of groups linked to Al-Qaeda like Jabat al-Nusra, has even led to former FSA fighters joining the Kurdish militia in Aleppo, where the Kurdish controlled neighbourhoods Sheikh Maqsood and Ashrafieh in the north-west of the city have been repeatedly bombed by Assad’s jets.

One of the Syrian Kurds’ greatest achievements since the beginning of the uprising was the union of all their factions in July 2012 under the auspices of Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq. Harmony among them is still far from complete but a common enemy seems to work as an effective unifying force.

Moreover, many PKK fighters are reportedly heading for Syrian Kurdistan after Abdullah Ocalan – the PKK’s imprisoned founder and leader – declared a ceasefire and a pull out from Turkey in March. Such a move would add to the logistical support funnelled by the Iraqi Kurds which has proved vital for those in Syria.

But uncertainty has overshadowed the region since the very beginning of the war. Syrian Kurds are already familiar with Assad’s policies, but could an opposition-led government in Damascus be any better?

Muslim claims that the Kurds “will fight for their rights no matter who wins the war” but senior political and military opposition leaders have repeatedly and publicly declared that they are far from eager to recognise the rights of the Kurds in Syria.

This came as no surprise to the PYD leader: “Not happy with us just being Muslims, these people also want us to be Arabs,” said Muslim, pointing to a mentality “deeply rooted in the region for centuries and perpetuated by both the Assads as well as the core of the Syrian insurgents.”

For the time being, the revolts shaking North Africa and the Middle East since 2011 hardly include non-Arab indigenous peoples. While Libya’s Berbers still wait for recognition in post Gaddafi Libya, Egypt’s Copts are constantly threatened since the collapse of the regime of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The Kurds in Syria are also aware that this is all about an “Arab” Spring.

In the last few weeks Damascus has achieved important victories to the point that the Syrian army is already planning a final assault on Aleppo. Those living in the city’s Kurdish neighbourhoods, and elsewhere in Syria, are starting to wonder what might happen if Assad’s soldiers finally end up knocking on their doors.

‘The mountains are the Kurds’ only friends’, local Kurds often say about this nation historically massacred by local rulers and betrayed by foreign powers. Despite their isolation in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq, Kurds have taken major steps forward towards recognition in the last three decades. Could those in Syria possibly take advantage of this unique opportunity and set yet another landmark?

With Russia and Iran backing Assad and the West offering military support to the Sunni insurgents, the international community is split in two blocs. It’s a Cold War scenario where “third ways” will hardly be considered, and which leaves Syrian Kurds’ fate fully dependant on solidarity from Kurds in Iraq and Turkey.

Smoke rises from districts in Aleppo, Syria, in December 2012. Credit: Freedom House/CC by 2.0

Saudi Arabian religious scholars are leading an increasingly vocal chorus of Islamic preachers who are urging Muslims and Arabs to support Syrian rebels against what they say are atrocities at the hands of Iran-backed Shiite forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On Friday, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Saudi Al-Shoreym, issued a rare appeal to Muslims to provide help “by all means” to Syrian rebels and civilians trapped in the Syria conflict.

Popular Saudi Sheikh Mohammed Al-Erify used his guest sermon in a central mosque in Cairo, Egypt to appeal to thousands of worshippers to back groups fighting the Assad regime and urged his audience to enlist in jihad.

On Thursday, dozens of Islamic religious scholars, mostly from the Gulf, gathered in Cairo to study plans to call for an international appeal for jihad in Syria.

On Jun. 4, Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-financed television channel that is usually liberal, hosted conservative leader Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, who is based in Doha, Qatar, to urge support for jihad against Hezbollah forces who are fighting alongside Assad’s forces in Syria.

The spike in religious appeals come weeks after the Iran-backed Shiite militias of Hezbollah buffed up its intervention in Syria and forced rebel forces out of the strategically important city of Al-Qusair.

Rebels had held Al-Qusair for months. The city’s fall marked a shift in the balance of power since rebels took up arms in December 2011 and expelled government troops from several cities.

Syrian government-controlled media are reporting that Assad’s forces are advancing towards the rebel stronghold of Homs, while the Iranian news agency Fars said last week that the Syrian army is gaining the upper hand in different parts of Syria.

An internationalised conflict

Calls for jihad by Sunni scholars against Assad, who as an Alawite is a member of a minority branch of Shiite Islam, come as the United States signalled its willingness on Thursday to send arms to rebels in Syria, saying crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons against his own people.

During the 10-year Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that started in 1979, the United States and Saudi Arabia held similar roles, where Washington supplied weapons to Afghan mujahideen fighters and Saudi Arabia helped with funding and by offering similar religious justifications for fighting the Soviet invaders.

Over the past several weeks, Arab media have been dominated by eyewitness testimonies on the ground of an influx of Iran-inspired Shiite fighters form Iraq, Lebanon and Iran into Syria to buttress the Assad regime, reports that highlight the increasing sectarian tension underlying the conflict.

Sunni Muslim scholars blame Iran and Hezbollah for turning the conflict between the Assad dictatorship and his people into a sectarian war.

The rebellion initially started as peaceful pro-democracy protests in the city of Dera’a, in the early months of the Arab Spring that saw the fall of several other dictators. The protests quickly deteriorated into a war that has cost the lives of close to 93,000 people, according to the United Nations.

Shoreym’s Friday sermon was broadcast live on several pan-Arab television channels. The Saudi preacher is widely respected in many Sunni Muslim countries and his sermons and Quran recitals often heard in public places as well as in households.

In his emotional sermon, Shoreym broke into tears as he recalled the plight of civilians, women and children in Syria.

“Women lost their husbands, the children made [into] refugees and their homes turned into rubble by the forces of aggression and tyranny,” he said. “This makes all of us obligated to lend a hand to help.”

In the past Shoreym has rarely commented on politics, in keeping with the Saudi government’s line to keep Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Madina away from politics as much as possible.

His sermon marked a notable departure from that policy, indicating the seriousness of the situation in Syria.

In Cairo, Al-Erify’s one-hour sermon focused on the need to join jihad. “Modern history has never seen such massacres as those that have been committed by that regime over the past 40 years,” he said.

Al-Erify, a religious preacher with best-selling books and popular TV shows, warned that if the Iran-led Shiite alliance succeeds in Syria they will go after “Muslim children in other countries” and “slaughter them like they did in Syria”.

Erify, Shoreym and Qaradawi’s appeals are the latest in a string of religious edicts, or fatwas, urging people to resist Assad forces in Syria.

On Thursday, dozens of Sunni Islamic scholars, mostly from the Gulf, gathered in Cairo to declare an “urgent appeal for jihad” in Syria and to rally public support for fighters there.

“That conference will have an impact on the ground for sure,” said Gamal Sultan, editor of Al-Mesryoon newspaper in Cairo. “The world imagined that they can sell the Syrian people cheaply to the tyranny of Assad. Religious leaders are out to prove that notion wrong.”

Documenting atrocities

The conference attendees, including Ahmed Al Tayeb, grand sheikh of Al-Azhar, the bastion of Sunni Islam and the seat of its most prestigious religious studies mosque in Egypt, watched a documentary showing Hezbollah and Syrian forces committing atrocities against civilians in conflict areas.

A statement on the website of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, the pan-Islamic non-governmental organisation that ran the conference, said the meeting was designed to “show the real face of Iran, Assad regime and Hezbollah”.

Some of the attendees of the conference later on Friday met with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to try to garner his support for the jihad drive. The following day before thousands of supporters and religious leaders in a Cairo stadium, Morsi announced a number of steps against the Syrian regime, including cutting all relations with Damascus.

Social media that were instrumental in launching the Arab Spring are now being used as a vibrant platform both to showcase the Syrian regime’s abuses and to call for jihad against Assad.

Earlier this week, a crude video on Youtube showed young people trying to rescue a young Syrian woman lying in the middle of the road, half-naked and injured after reportedly being raped by pro-Assad forces. One by one, the youths are shot by Assad’s forces as they try to help, and the woman is not believed to have survived.

Facebook pages share gory scenes of children, their throats slit, and masses of bodies, including children, lying under rubble. “While you are sitting flipping through your Facebook, children are dying in Syria,” said one post.

The Obama administration intends to militarily arm Syrian opposition. Credit: FreedomHouse2/CC by 2.0

Despite Thursday’s announcement that President Barack Obama has decided to provide direct military assistance to Syrian rebels, what precisely the administration has in mind remains unclear.

Analysts here are also questioning whether the decision is part of a deliberate strategy – and, if so, what that strategy is – or whether it is instead another in a series of efforts to relieve growing pressure from its allies in Europe and the Gulf and hawks at home to take stronger military measures designed to shift the 27-month-old civil war decisively in favour of the opposition.

“When Julius Caesar actually crossed the [Rubicon], he proceeded rapidly to mission accomplishment in accordance with a sound strategy,” noted retired Ambassador Frederic Hof, a Syria specialist at the Atlantic Council who has long called for stronger U.S. military intervention.

“Although the administration’s crossing [decision] is significant, welcome, and long overdue, it is far from certain whether this particular legion will move smartly toward an objective or simply mill around the river bank.”

The White House tied the decision to escalate the “scope and scale” of military aid to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Syrian Military Council (SMC) to the U.S. intelligence community’s determination that the Syrian forces had used chemical weapons – albeit “on a small scale” – against rebel forces in multiple battles over the past year.

It also cited the deepening involvement of Iran and Hezbollah militants from Lebanon in support of the regime of President Bashar Al-Assad, whose departure from office Obama has repeatedly demanded since hostilities first broke out more than two years ago.

The announcement, however, followed a series of intensive internal meetings over the past two weeks, as it became clear that the regime’s forces had made a series of battlefield advances – most importantly by capturing, with Hezbollah’s help, the strategic western town of Al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border – that threatened to tip the war decisively in Assad’s favour.

With pro-government forces and Hezbollah fighters reportedly preparing a major assaults on the key city of Aleppo and other “moderate” opposition leaders appealing desperately for weapons, the administration has found itself under pressure from both its allies abroad and hawks here to “do something” that could halt, if not reverse, the regime’s momentum and restore the “strategic stalemate” that Washington considers essential to any prospect for a political settlement.

But what precisely that “something” is or will be remains unclear. In a briefing for reporters Thursday evening, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes repeatedly avoided answering the question, insisting, however, that Washington will increase “the scope and scale” of direct aid to the SMC which so far has received mainly humanitarian and “non-lethal” assistance.

According to various published reports, Obama has indeed decided to provide small arms and ammunition but still pending are decisions on rebel requests for anti-tank weapons and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. Washington had previously ruled out the latter, in part due to Israel’s concerns that they could be used against its aircraft, particularly if they fall into the hands of radical Islamist factions among the anti-Assad forces.

But hawks here have argued that small arms and even anti-tank weapons are at this point insufficient to redress the rapidly tilting balance of power on the ground.

“The president must rally an international coalition to take military actions to degrade Assad’s ability to use airpower and ballistic missiles and to move and resupply his forces around the battlefield by air,” declared Congress’s most visible interventionists, Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham late Thursday. “We must take more decisive actions now to turn the tide of the conflict in Syria.”

They and others have called for Washington to create “no-fly zones” along Syria’s Turkish and Jordanian borders that would both safe havens for refugees and rebels and permit the latter to be trained, armed and supplied for operations against government forces inside Syria.

Hof has urged that such a zone also be used protect a rebel government that could gain formal recognition from the United States and other allies, request heavier weapons and eventually go to peace talks as diplomatic, as well as military, equals of the Assad government.

While Rhodes told reporters that Obama has “not made any decision to pursue a military operations such as a no-fly zone”, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that a Pentagon proposal still under consideration calls for a limited “no-fighting” zone extending up to 40 kilometres inside Syria that would be enforced by U.S. and allied aircraft operating from Jordanian airspace.

In recent months, Washington has set up Patriot air-defence batteries and sent fighter jets to bases inside Jordan, where it has also been secretly training rebel and Jordanian forces on securing chemical-weapons facilities and weapons in the event the Assad regime collapses, according to some reports.

Some analysts who have opposed escalating U.S. involvement in the civil war agree that directly supplying arms to the rebels would be unlikely to turn the military tide, certainly in the short term, and could carry additional risks.

“Selective arms shipments could [spur] clashes between rival rebel groups. Extremist elements might attack more moderate rebel units receiving better arms, driven by need, resentment or both,” according to Wayne White, the former deputy director of the State Department intelligence unit on the Near East, who noted that this could actually strengthen the regime. Indeed, he added, the “rebel military vanguard” for some time has been the “radical Islamist in character – even Al-Qaeda affiliated”.

He also expressed scepticism about the effectiveness of a no-fly zone, noting that it would risk swift escalation. “The rebels would remain at the mercy of the regime’s other heavy weapons on the ground, thus tempting those establishing any sort of no-fly zone to attack regime ground targets as well.”

“The first step on the slippery slope is always easy, but it’s much harder to actually resolve a conflict or to find a way out of a quagmire,” wrote Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University, on the eve of the White House announcement.

For Lynch, who has long urged Obama to resist calls to escalate Washington’s intervention, the key issue is what U.S. policy ultimately aims to achieve and whether providing military aid or taking more aggressive measures will help achieve them.

“Should Syria be viewed as a front in a broad regional cold war against Iran and its allies or as a humanitarian catastrophe that must be resolved?” he asked, noting that very different strategies should be followed depending on the answer to that question.

At the moment, according to Lynch, “advocates of arming the rebels switch between making the case that it would strike a blow against the Iranians (and Hezbollah) and that it would improve the prospects for a negotiated solution.”

While the White House clearly framed its decision this week in the latter terms, it may nonetheless add momentum to those who tend to view the Syrian conflict more as part of the larger conflict against Tehran the model for which, according to Lynch, “would presumably be the jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – a long-term insurgency coordinated through neighbouring countries, fuelled by Gulf money, and popularised by Islamist and sectarian propaganda”.

Elections for the Northern Provincial Council hardly elicit any excitement among the voters, jaded by years of war and a lagging development process Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Though it is yet to be announced formally, political circles in the capital, Colombo, are fixed on the prospect of an election in September.

The most pressing question is whether or not the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse will allow the devolution of power from the centre and the creation of the country’s first-ever Northern Provincial Council (NPC).

It was exactly this question, and politicians’ inability to resolve it, that tore this South Asian nation of 20 million people apart for three long decades as the island’s two peoples – the Sinhalese and the Tamils – came to blows over national sovereignty.

Based primarily in the northern and eastern provinces, Tamils in Sri Lanka have long demanded some degree of autonomy and independence from the rest of the island, citing economic exclusion and discrimination by leaders who favour the interests of the majority.

An unbroken line of Sinhala-led governments has ignored the demand, insisting on maintaining a single, unified state.

In 1983, demands for political autonomy coalesced around a rebel group, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which launched a campaign of armed guerilla warfare against the government.

The group sought to create a separate state for Tamils in the northern and eastern regions of the country in an area covering 7,390 square miles.

In 1987, in an effort to reconcile what was then a four-year-long battle that showed no signs of abating, India brokered a peace accord between the government and the Tigers that provided for the devolution of power to Sri Lanka’s nine provinces and the creation of independent provincial councils endowed with the power to oversee industries like agriculture, manage the police force and collect funds through provincial taxes.

This provision, the 13^th amendment to Sri Lanka’s 1978 constitution, was the country’s first attempt at decentralisation since it gained independence from British rule in 1948.

Despite initial signs of success, the process unraveled within two years when the then Provincial Government declared an independent Eelam, prompting Colombo to reinstate direct rule over the province.

In the next few decades, the region was torn asunder in the war between the LTTE and government forces. Power over the north and its 1.1 million people remained in Colombo’s hands – until now, perhaps.

At most, according to Rajavarothayam Sampanthan – leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the largest Tamil party in Sri Lanka and the one most likely to win the NPC – the elections signal a new beginning.

“Elections could provide political parties with the opportunity to have their policies democratically endorsed,” Sampanthan told IPS. How effective that endorsement will be depends on how much power the central government is willing to devolve.

A lot also rests on the provincial governor, a presidential appointee endowed by the constitution with tremendous powers that can override decisions made by the elected provincial council.

Sampanthan admitted that the chances of power being devolved to an opposition-run council are limited. Without the ability to at least control job creation and industrial development, two areas currently controlled by the government in Colombo, the success of a TNA-controlled NPC will be limited, he said.

However, political commentator Jehan Perera, who heads the National Peace Council, sees another role for the NPC: as a regional forum that can represent the province both nationally and internationally.

“The body can better articulate the interests of the people,” Perera told IPS, referring to issues like unemployment, transport and water management that only get addressed in relation to international complaints.

The eight functioning councils are currently all under the control of the government and unable to give voice to their constituencies. An opposition-held council, on the other hand, can be more aggressive should it feel the government is putting curbs on its powers and “has the chance to be a very vibrant forum,” Perera said.

People in the Northern Province, however, are not so sure. Jegan Murthy, a 27-year-old shopkeeper in the northern town of Jaffna, the cultural and political nerve centre of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, said that if the war-battered community is to regain any hope, the NPC has to be more than just a platform for discussion and protest.

Referring to issues like a lack of housing for the 13,000 residents of the north still living in temporary camps, as well as widespread unemployment – especially among the region’s 40,000 war widows – he told IPS, “We have so many problems and we have been discussing about them in so many forums, one more would not make that much of a difference. What we need is someone who can deliver results.”

In the battle-scarred town of Kilinochchi, 330 kilometres north of Colombo, people mention the election only in passing, like something they have to endure, akin to the skin-searing heat that bears down on them all year long.

“Elections? What elections?” 22-year-old Shanthini Kumar asked when IPS sought her opinion on the subject. She is grateful to have made it alive through the six months of the Sri Lankan army’s final surge against the LTTE, between November 2008 and May 2009, a battle which saw heavy civilian casualties and exposed the government’s human rights record to worldwide scrutiny.

Over 460,000 persons have returned to the Northern Province since the end of the war, but found hard times waiting for them.

“We need houses, jobs and transport; we need money in our hands. Then we can think of elections,” Kumar said.

Jobs are hard to come by and donor assistance is largely drying up: the latest U.N.-Sri Lanka joint funding appeal for 147 million dollars in 2012 fell short by 73 percent. The U.N. estimates that there is a need for over 100,000 houses.

Officials from the Sri Lanka Red Cross Society, which is constructing the largest number of houses in the former war zone, says over 170,000 homes are needed, but according to U.N. data existing funds will provide no more than 55,000 humble dwellings.

The United States has said it will increase direct support to the Syrian opposition. Credit: Freedom House//CC by 2.0

With U.S. intelligence agencies’ concluding that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against rebel forces, the White House announced Thursday that it will increase “the scope and scale” of assistance it has been providing to the opposition, including direct support to its military arm.

In a late afternoon teleconference, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, repeatedly declined to say whether support will include arms that the western-backed Supreme Military Council (SMC) has requested in light of recent setbacks it has suffered on the battlefield.

“We’ve heard their request, and our aim is to be responsive,” he said. “This is going to be different in both scope and scale in terms of what we have provided to the SMC…and will be aimed at strengthening [its] effectiveness.”

But Rhodes appeared to rule out direct military action, including creating a “no-fly zone” to protect the rebels or carrying out airstrikes against facilities used by the regime’s forces, whose ranks were recently bolstered by Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon.

“We have not made any decision to pursue a military operation such as a no-fly zone,” he said, as it “would carry great and open-ended costs” and would not necessarily ensure a dramatic improvement in the rebels’ situation on the ground.

“We are prepared for all contingencies, and we will make decisions on our own timeline,” he said. “Any future action we take will be consistent with our national interest and must advance our objectives.”

The White House announcement came amidst a growing sense of urgency by the opposition and their U.S. supporters, who are worried that recent battlefield successes by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – notably their capture last week of the border town of Al-Qusayr close to the Lebanese border – has shifted the tide of the war in the regime’s favour.

While the administration initially described the opposition’s setbacks as tactical and unlikely to end a strategic stalemate, U.S. intelligence agencies and some independent analysts have reportedly painted a more pessimistic picture, suggesting that momentum in the nearly two-and-a-half-year-old war has moved decisively towards the regime.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that top SMC commander, General Salim Idris, had sent what it called a “desperate plea” to the United States, Britain and France for anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft weapons and hundreds of thousands of ammunition rounds.

Without such materiel, he warned, rebels may soon lose their hold on Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city located close to the Turkish border.

Syrian army, pro-regime militias, and Hezbollah fighters have reportedly been moving into positions around Aleppo in preparation for a major assault that could deliver a decisive blow against rebel forces in the northeastern part of the country.

The White House has come under growing pressure to escalate its involvement in the conflict from providing rebel forces with humanitarian and “non-lethal” assistance, ranging from medical supplies to night-vision goggles, to providing them with direct military support, whether by military intervention or by providing the kinds of arms requested by Idris.

That pressure has come both from the rebels’ backers in the region – notably, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have provided arms to the SMC and other rebel groups, including radical Sunni Islamist fighters, some reportedly associated with Al Qaeda – and from neo-conservative and other right-wing hawks in the media and Congress, chiefly Republican senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham.

They have been joined over the past weeks by a smattering of liberal interventionists, some of whom supported the 2003 Iraq invasion. But their biggest catch came this week when, at a private gathering with McCain, former president Bill Clinton said he agreed with the Arizona senator, calling Obama’s refusal so far to provide more support to the rebels a “big mistake”.

“Sometimes, it’s best to get caught trying, as long as you don’t over-commit,” Clinton said, echoing the off-the-record position of his wife, Hillary Clinton, who as secretary of state reportedly argued last fall in favour of escalating U.S. military support for the rebels during a particularly intense internal administration debate.

As it grew clear in recent days that the opposition, in its weakened state, was adamantly opposed to participating in proposed U.S.- and Russian-backed peace talks in Geneva in the coming weeks, Clinton’s successor, John Kerry, has reportedly taken over from where she left off, urging the administration to take stronger action in order to level the playing field in advance of any negotiations.

Obama, whose concerns about deeper involvement in yet another Middle Eastern war appear to mirror those of the general public, according to recent polls, has until now resisted these pressures. But he also promised last year that he would escalate U.S. intervention if the Assad regime crossed a “red line” by using chemical weapons.

“The president has said that the use of chemical weapons would change his calculus, and it has,” Rhodes said Thursday, noting that the U.S. intelligence community had concluded with “high confidence” that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.

Between 100 to 150 people had died in these attacks, he said, noting that the estimate was “likely incomplete…[and] a small portion of the catastrophic loss of life in Syria that now totals more than 90,000 deaths”.

The use of chemical weapons had added to the urgency of the situation, he said, suggesting, however, that the increased involvement of Hezbollah and Iran was also a major factor in the White House announcement.

Precisely what kinds of additional – and presumably lethal – assistance Washington will provide the SMC, however, remains unclear and the source of continued debate within the administration.

Rhodes’s vagueness and his statement that the administration will now consult with Congress and its allies – Obama attends a Group of Eight meeting in Northern Ireland next week – suggested that the issue was far from settled.

In the past, senior officials have said they opposed providing shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles to the rebels for fear they could be transferred to or captured by Al Qaeda-affiliated elements in their ranks.

Rhodes indicated that that those concerns have diminished somewhat as Washington has stepped up its humanitarian and non-lethal military aid to the SMC.

“General Idris and the SMC we are comfortable working with,” he said.  “It’s been important to work through them while aiming to isolate some of the more extremist elements of the opposition, such as al Nusra. We now have those relationships. We now have that pipeline flowing.”

The exact figure released on Thursday – 92,901 people – is much higher than the U.N.’s last death toll back in January, of 59,000 people.

“The constant flow of killings continues at shockingly high levels,” said Navi Pillay, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights. “This is most likely a minimum casualty figure. The true number of those killed is potentially much higher.”

An average of more than 5,000 people have been killed every month since last July, while rural Damascus and Aleppo have recorded the highest tolls since November, the report said in its latest study compiling documented deaths.

Among the victims were at least 6,561 children, including 1,729 children younger than 10.

Al Jazeera’s diplomatic editor James Bays, reporting from the U.N. headquarters in New York, described the figures as “staggering”.

The U.N. has not had much access to Syria, and therefore has been unable to count bodies. Instead, it carried out a statistical survey.

“They have gone through sources which had the names, dates and locations (of those killed),” our correspondent said, adding that the U.N. acknowledges it has “underreported the number of deaths”.

Rebel-led mass killing

Meanwhile, Syrian rebels reportedly killed at least 60 people, including civilian government loyalists, in a battle in Halta, a Sunni-majority village in the country’s east, activists said.

The fighting over the past few days targeted members of the Shia community, highlighting the increasingly sectarian nature of the country’s civil war.

The opposition fighters reportedly stormed and burned civilian homes in the village in the eastern Deir Azzor province.

The attack is said to be in retaliation for an earlier assault by Shias from Hatla that killed four opposition fighters.

A Syrian government official denounced the attack on the Shia-section of the Sunni-majority Hatla village as a “massacre” of civilians, the Associated Press news agency reported on Thursday.

A video posted online by rebels on Tuesday, entitled “The storming and cleansing of Hatla”, showed dozens of fighters carrying black flags celebrating and firing guns in the streets of a small town as smoke curled above several buildings.

Most armed rebels in Syria are from the country’s Sunni majority, while President Bashar al-Assad has retained core support among the minorities, including his own Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam, along with Christians and Shia.

U.S. debates strategy

The alleged massacre came as the U.S. again debated how to help the Syrian opposition.

Addressing reporters with his British counterpart William Hague in Washington, US.. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that a political solution that would end the war and save Syria was still being sought.

The U.S. has weighed for months whether to give arms to the rebels, but the issue is now firmly on the table given increased involvement by Hezbollah, the armed Lebanese Shia group, and as Iran backs President Assad on the battlefield.

“We are focusing our efforts now on doing all that we can to support the opposition as they work to change the balance on the ground,” Kerry said at the joint news conference.

Kerry’s comments came as regime forces were reported to be preparing for a major offensive on rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo.

The Obama administration is meeting this week on whether to arm the Syrian rebels, a topic that Kerry said he discussed with Hague.

The meetings come ahead of a G8 summit in Northern Ireland next week.

G8 leaders are expected to discuss a coordinated response to the Syrian conflict, and how to bring the rival sides together at a peace conference.

For his part, Hague said Britain, the U.S. and allies in Europe and the region – a group known as the London 11 that has met in Turkish and Jordanian cities – may need to step up their efforts to help the opposition.

Also on Wednesday, trouble flared on Syria’s borders, with Lebanese police saying that a Syrian helicopter fired rockets on Arsaal, a village in the country’s east, wounding at least two people.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.