SYRIAN APOCALYPSE

According to human rights organizations, March 2013 was the deadliest month of the civil war in Syria. More than 6,000 people were killed during this month. Overall, the armed conflict in Syria has claimed 70,000 lives since it began.

A number of events suggest that the war in Syria is taking a more terrifying form. Thus, in the city of Aleppo rebels brutally killed Sheikh Hasan Seif Addin – the imam of a mosque in the Sheikh Maqsoud Kurdish neighbourhood. After murdering the prominent representative of the Sunni Muslims, armed opposition members desecrated his body and then put the severed head of the imam on a minaret. Sheikh Hasan Seif Addin was known for his support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and call for the Syrian army to "liberate the country from criminal mercenaries and obscurantists".

The killing of a Sunni cleric by opposition militants refutes the widespread idea that the regime of Bashar al-Assad, whose family belongs to the Alawite denomination, is only supported by adherents of Shi'ism. It also refutes the fact that the internal Syrian conflict is based on a conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. The murder of Sheikh Hasan Seif Addin shows that al-Assad is backed by certain Sunni circles and points to the readiness of the Syrian opposition, the core of which are radical Islamists, to mercilessly eliminate all supporters of the regime, regardless of their political and religious affiliation.

This is also indicated by the explosion in a mosque in Damascus, which killed 50 people last month. The victim of the terrorist attack was the famous theologian, Sheikh Muhammad Said Ramadan al-Bouti, who supported the current government and criticized fanatical Islamists.

An egregious example of cruelty in the internal Syrian war is terrorist attacks in the student cafeteria of the Faculty of Architecture of Damascus University. The attack claimed 15 victims, while doctors are fighting for the lives of 29 more men and women. "If the meaning of this criminal act is to get Damascus University closed, the militants should know that they will not succeed. The citadel of science, which gave education to many generations of Syrians, will continue to fulfill its educational mission," rector Amer al-Mardini said.

The fatwa issued by Salafi Imam Adnan al-Arour (a Jordanian sheikh and one of the influential ideological leaders of the radical Syrian opposition) endorsing the rape of women who support Syria’s ruling regime was also an extraordinary event.

Talking about all this, it should be borne in mind that the majority of Syrian opposition members are from the rural or urban grass roots and have a very low education level. In addition, part of the armed Syrian opposition is represented by mujahedin who come from abroad. Moreover, the longer the Syrian massacre lasts, the more active various extremist and terrorist organizations are. Specifically, according to German intelligence, Al Qaeda is gaining considerable influence in the armed Syrian opposition. According to the head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service, Gerhard Schindler, several thousand fighters of the extremist group Jabhat al-Nusra are also fighting the Syrian army.

The statement of Israeli military intelligence chief Aviv Kochavi, who claimed that eleven of the seventeen crossings between the demilitarized zone adjoining Israel and the rest of Syria are in the hands of the rebels and weapons and "jihadist elements" are transferred to Syrian territory through them, is also notable.

The civil war in Syria is finally becoming international. In addition to Iran and Russia, who support al-Assad’s government, and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey - countries involved in the internal Syrian confrontation from the very beginning - who are on the side of the armed Syrian opposition, the conflict also involves Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and other Middle Eastern states, not to mention the Western powers that support the Syrian opposition in some way and were in fact the first to give Bashar al-Assad a "black mark" by declaring the Syrian president an "illegitimate ruler".

In the context of the internationalization of the Syrian conflict, the significant activity of the League of Arab States (LAS), which decided at its summit in Doha to hand over the Syrian mandate in the organization to the national coalition of opposition and revolutionary forces in Syria, is indicative.

Despite the fact that al-Assad himself is of the opinion that a break in events in the Middle East will begin from his country and that Syria is "not only to be able to win, but will also offer a new political project attractive to the whole Arab world", the outcome of the armed fight in this country seems predictable, but in a completely different way. The anti-Syrian coalition leaves the al- Assad regime with no long-term prospects. As for the fate of Syria itself, it is worth paying attention to the words of the aforesaid Israeli military intelligence chief, who did not exclude that the country may split along ethnic and religious lines. The continuation of the armed conflict is fraught with the material and moral exhaustion of Syria and its people. Also, we cannot exclude direct outside intervention – by the US and its allies, especially the Salafi monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

The commander of US forces in Europe, Admiral James Stavridis, speaking in Congress, acknowledged that NATO is developing a plan for a military operation to end the civil war in Syria. According to him, a number of countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are considering engaging their forces in direct military intervention in the Syrian conflict on the side of the opposition, including the use of the Air Force to provide a no-fly zone over the country and suppress the Syrian air defence forces.

The fact that British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Francois Hollande declared their intent to convince the authorities of other EU countries to lift the embargo on arms supplies to Syrian rebels also says a lot. However, the French president believes that weapons can be supplied to the Syrian opposition only if it is absolutely certain that terrorists will not be able to access them. However, this argument is unlikely to stop the process of providing military aid to the Syrian opposition, as the bet in all this great game around Syria is on the fall of the al-Assad regime as one of the last pockets of resistance against the globalist scenario prepared for the future of the peoples of the Middle and Near East.

It is even possible that the experience of overthrowing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, which was motivated by unconfirmed US accusations of the readiness of "the Baghdad tyrant" to use weapons of mass destruction against "internal and external enemies", will be used in Syria. Deputy Secretary General of NATO Alexander Vershbow (incidentally, a former US ambassador to Russia) has already expressed concerns about the possible use of chemical weapons by the al-Assad regime against the opposition ...

All these are just some of the features of the violent military conflict that has gripped Syria and threatens not only to destroy all the achievements, which the country has gained over the past decade and which provided it with a leading position in the Arab world, but also to liquidate the Syrian state itself.