Syria under Bashir Assad (closed end 2014)

[AdamG]

The Syrian government has blamed "terrorists" for the disconnection.
"The terrorists targeted the internet lines, resulting in some regions being cut off," Syria's minister of information told a pro-government television station.

According to activists, it has been known for similar communication cuts to occur in isolated areas before military operations.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20546302

[AdamG]

Syria's information minister claims that the Damascus government had nothing to do with the communications shutdown. "It is not true that the state cut the internet. The terrorists targeted the internet lines, resulting in some regions being cut off," Reuters quotes him as saying.

That's rather unlikely, the web performance company CloudFlare notes in a blog post. "Syria has four physical cables that connect it to the rest of the internet. Three are undersea cables that land in the city of Tartous, Syria. The fourth is an over-land cable through Turkey. In order for a whole-country outage, all four of these cables would have had to been cut simultaneously."

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/.../syria-offline

[AdamG]

Engineers working for the Assad regime in Syria have begun combining the two chemical precursors needed to weaponize sarin gas, an American official with knowledge of the situation tells Danger Room. International observers are now more worried than they’ve even been that the Damascus government could use its nerve agent stockpile to slaughter its own people.

The U.S. doesn’t know why the Syrian military made the move, which began in the middle of last week and is taking place in central Syria. Nor are they sure why the Assad government is transferring some weapons to different locations within the country, as the New York Times reported on Monday.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012...cal-weapons-3/

[AdamG]

The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday.

The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials said.

As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the "precursor" chemicals had begun. But Wednesday, they said their worst fears had been confirmed: The nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2...ads-order?lite

[davidbfpo]

Given the mixed, even contrary reporting on Syrian chemical weapons I am not sure what is going on.

Sometimes I suspect it is a "fig leaf" for enhancing Western diplomacy and reducing the leverage China, Iran and Russia have. You can almost hear the official statement "We had to act, Bashir was about to use CW"; maybe even a spectacular UN presentation?

Enduring America notes:

on chemical weapons, Lavrov suggested that Assad would not use them, and this would be a "red line" for Russia as well:

“For us, any violations of international agreements in this area are unacceptable," Lavrov stressed.

Link:http://www.enduringamerica.com/home/...surge-but.html

Shashank Joshi questions whether CW is useful; it is July 2012 and may have been posted before:http://shashankjoshi.wordpress.com/2...ons-effective/

I have not been following Syria closely and had missed this:

For starters, the fall of Deir Ez Zor will free up large waves of (largely Iraqi) insurgents to attack to the north....Furthermore, the sudden emergence of large numbers of Iraqi fighters, many of them radical, in the east is concerning

Yes Bashir's regime is getting more ruthless, notably in using air power in urban areas; such as a MIG-23:http://theaviationist.com/2012/12/05.../#.UMB5zuTtT0f

There are also reports of Grad rockets being used; when will we see Scud SSM being used?

[AdamG]

The West is aware that its’ claims about the threat from the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons does not stand up to scrutiny, the Russian government has said.

Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/ne...#ixzz2EHQ1baVx

The Russian Foreign Ministry has told its NATO partners that it hopes there will be no attempts at military intervention in Syria.

Lavrov advanced Russia’s firm position on Syria after a meeting of the Russia-NATO Council in Brussels on Tuesday.

"We hope there will be no foreign interference," he said.

http://rt.com/politics/syria-russia-...to-lavrov-314/

[davidbfpo]

By Shashank Joshi

A round-up of where we stand on Syrian chemical weapons, and who is claiming what:

Link:http://shashankjoshi.wordpress.com/2...cal-crescendo/

Not much variation in the reporting, clearly based on official briefings.

He also reports via Twitter that Czech CW defence troops are advising the Jordanians:http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/czech...syrian-threat/

IIRC the Czech military as part of NATO took responsibility for CW defence and their specialised vehicles dominated the market awhile ago.