UN admits Syria wracked by sectarian civil war

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Friday December 21, 2012 20:59 by Elric

Chris Marsden writes on how the UN have finally accepted that Syria is in the throes of a Civil War. Also on the build up of US equipment and troops in Jordan and false reporting about Alawite on Alawite violence. Full text at link.

A United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry has finally admitted that a sectarian civil war is raging in Syria. Its findings are based upon extensive investigations and interviews between September 28 to December 16, 2012.

They detail massacres and gross violations of human rights that have polarised Syria between the supporters of a Sunni insurgency and those Sunnis and various minority groups that have aligned themselves with the Alawite-led Ba’athist regime out of fear that its downfall will produce a yet more brutal Sunni chauvinist alternative.

Investigators, headed by Carla del Ponte, the former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, have interviewed more than 1,200 victims and refugees.

The report produced is a devastating indictment of the United States and other western powers, who have worked with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar to depose of Bashar al-Assad by recruiting and aiding a Sunni insurgency overwhelmingly made up of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, Salafist and Al Qaeda-style groups. Many are foreign fighters brought to Syria with the specific aim of waging a jihad against what they conceive of as a heretical government.