Fears Growing as Syrians Wait for U.S. Attack.

Fears Growing as Syrians Wait for U.S. Attack.

BEIRUT | Lebanon  | 30 Aug 2013 ::  In a narrow alley in the old city of Damascus, a shopkeeper who opposes the Syrian government spent Thursday as usual, drinking coffee with the other merchants who keep him company in place of long-vanished tourists. But the calm on the cobblestone street, he said, could hardly mask the fear and ambivalence over an American military strike.

“Disorder, revenge. Sectarian violence,” he said in a text message, ticking off what he sees as the worst potential consequences of the missile strikes that American officials have threatened against President Bashar al-Assad’s government, which they blame for a deadly chemical attack last week.

In Damascus, as people stock up on food and water and the government closes central streets and moves troops and matériel into residential areas and schools, even staunch supporters of the uprising against Mr. Assad are divided on the looming attack.

Many here feel even a limited strike threatens to inject a new, unpredictable dynamic into a civil war that has largely spared their storied city. And some opponents of the government are loath to see direct American military intervention in their fight, fearful it will hijack and discredit the uprising they have waged for more than two years at great cost.

Though some called early on for NATO intervention, others said they wanted support and arms from Washington — not an attack by the American military.(Copy from:The New York Times)

Syrian Kurds battle al-Qaeda-linked rebel faction.

Syrian Kurds battle al-Qaeda-linked rebel faction.

BEIRUT  | AP | 20 Aug 2013 :: Kurdish militias fought al-Qaeda-linked rebel groups in north-eastern Syria on Tuesday in heavy fighting that has helped fuel a mass exodus of civilians from the region into neighboring Iraq, activists said.

The clashes between Kurdish gunmen and Islamic extremist rebel groups have sharply escalated in Syria’s northern provinces in recent months. The violence, which has left hundreds dead, holds the potential to explode into a full-blown side conflict within Syria’s broader civil war.

Tuesday’s fighting, which pitted Kurdish militiamen against rebels from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, was focused in three villages near the town of Ras al-Ayn in the predominantly Kurdish Hassakeh province, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Around 30,000 Syrians, the vast majority of them Kurds, have fled the region in recent days and crossed the border to the self-ruled Kurdish region of northern Iraq, the United Nations refugee agency has said. The new arrivals join some 1.9 million Syrians who already have found refuge abroad from the country’s relentless carnage.

The massive exodus has put a severe strain on Iraqi Kurdistan’s regional government and aid agencies ability to accommodate them all.

The UNHCR said it is sending 15 truckloads of supplies 3,100 tents, two pre-fabricated warehouses and thousands of jerry cans to carry water from its regional stockpile in Jordan. It said the shipment should arrive by the end of the week.

Kurds are Syria’s largest ethnic minority, making up more than 10 percent of the country’s 23 million people. They are centered in the poor northeastern regions of Hassakeh and Qamishli, wedged between the borders of Turkey and Iraq. There are also several predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods in the capital, Damascus, and Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.(courtesy:The Hindu)