« Syria Press Review » #11

Al Qaeda sets up rear base in Lebanon

The Western media accuses Syria of playing a double game: on the one hand, it agrees to open its doors to the Arab League observers and, on the other, it won’t end the repression. Newspapers have echoed without any verification the accusations made by the SOHR (the London office of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood), referring to the execution of numerous deserters.

The adoption of a law extending the death penalty to arms trafficking, and not just to those guilty of blood crimes, is portrayed in the West and the Gulf as a law condemning to death those citizens who demonstrate peacefully against the government.

The Gulf press focuses on the order issued by the heads of the Gulf states to Syria (to stop the killing machine!) and to Iran (mind your own business!), which shows by contrast that the conflict is already regional.

• The French papers are alluding more and more often to a Syrian expert living in Paris: Salam Kawakibi. He is presented as a researcher at the Arab Reform Initiative, shrouding the fact that he is the deputy to Bassma Kodmani, the spokesman of the Syrian National Council.

• It seems that all the reports on the Free Syrian Army that have come out in the past month originated from the same village, purported to be on Syrian territory next to the Turkish border. All correspondents who visited the area had to pass through a Turkish government office acting as a tour operator.

• According to the Beirut Daily Star, Lebanese army Chief of Staff General Jean Kahwagi said that many of the alleged Syrian refugees who have clustered in the Lebanese village of Arsal, are actually Al-Qaida fighters. General Kahwagi sought the approval of the Lebanese Council of Ministers to intervene before the country finds itself in a position comparable to that of Nahr el-Bared (where the army lost 163 men in 2007).