Syria’s opposition on Friday urged the UN Security Council to take immediate action after the United States said for the first time the regime probably used chemical weapons.

The call came as British Prime Minister David Cameron said that growing evidence of the use of chemical weapons by President Bashar al-Assad was “extremely serious” and called for increased foreign pressure on the Syrian regime.

“It is time for the UN Security Council to act” on Syria, an official from the main opposition National Coalition told AFP on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

The UN Security Council has been stalled over Syria for more than two years, with members Russia and China backing Assad and vetoing several draft resolutions that would have imposed sanctions on the regime.

“This is a massive issue, and the Security Council’s paralysis over Syria is no excuse,” the Coalition official said.

“The UN needs to immediately investigate the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Should it find the regime used such weapons, it must act immediately, at least by imposing a no-fly zone,” he added.

“If the Security Council cannot break its paralysis, proof of the use of chemical weapons by the regime would open the way for others, such as NATO, to act.”

The National Coalition has accused the regime of using chemical weapons in the northern province of Aleppo, in Homs in the center of Syria and in rebel-held areas near Damascus.

04/26/2013 - AFP/NOW

Syria’s devastating conflict entered its third year on Friday with no agreement among EU leaders on British and French calls for an easing of the bloc’s embargo to allow arms supplies to the rebels.

With several member states expressing strong opposition, EU leaders at a summit in Brussels put off further discussions on the future of the arms embargo until a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Dublin next week.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy said that leaders had discussed easing it and “agreed to task our foreign ministers to assess the situation as a matter of priority” in Ireland.

Both London and Paris had warned they were ready to break ranks with their European partners to supply weapons to the rebels as their frustration mounts that diplomacy has failed to end the conflict.

But there appeared little appetite among other Europeans for lifting the ban, many fearing that a flood of weapons into Syria will only escalate the bloodshed.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said Vienna was not prepared to lift the ban. “We think the delivery of arms does not contribute to a possible solution,” he told reporters.

A Spanish diplomatic source said there was widespread hesitation about arming the rebels.

03/15/2013

Syrian rebels expect greater military help from Gulf Arab states after they announced a new command structure which aims finally to unite President Bashar al-Assad’s armed opponents, rebel commanders said on Monday.

Rebel fighters have made gains across the country in the last month, seizing military bases and taking on Assad’s better-armed forces on the fringes of his powerbase in Damascus.

Activists said fighting raged on Monday in southern Damascus near the international airport and reported clashes in the northern Damascus districts of Rukneddine and Salhiyeh - the heaviest there since the uprising began 20 months ago.

Despite using more effective battlefield tactics and acquiring more arms, the mainly Sunni Muslim fighters have so far lacked the firepower to deliver a decisive blow to Assad, from the Alawite minority linked to Shi’ite Islam.

Abu Moaz al-Agha, a leader and spokesman of the powerful Gathering of Ansar al Islam which includes many Islamist rebel brigades, said the new, Islamist-dominated military command elected in Turkey over the weekend could change that.

“What we need now is the heavy weapons and we expect to get them after the formation of this. The anti-armor and anti-aircraft weapons are what we are expecting,” he told Reuters by Skype from Turkey before heading to the Gulf.

“The Qataris and the Saudis gave us positive promises. We will see what will happen,” he said, adding that officials from Western countries, who also attended the meeting in Turkey, had not mentioned arming the rebels but talked about “sending aid”.

At least 40,000 people have been killed in Syria’s uprising, which started with street protests which were met with gunfire by Assad’s security forces, and spiraled into the most enduring and destructive of the Arab uprisings.

Stalemate between major powers, particularly the United States and Russia, has paralyzed the wider international response to the violence, leaving regional Sunni Muslim states such as Turkey and the Gulf Arab countries helping the rebels and Shi’ite Iran providing support to Assad.

Washington and Moscow sent their deputy foreign ministers to talks with international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Sunday, but a statement after the meeting showed little sign of breakthrough, although they agreed a political solution was possible in Syria.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle announced on Monday that four Syrian embassy staff were expelled from Berlin, to send a “clear message that (Germany is) reducing relations with the Assad regime to an absolute minimum”.

“REAL HOPES”

The new rebel command brings together most existing rebel entities including brigades which formed an Islamist front two months ago and “provincial military councils” which operated under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army.

A commander in an Islamist brigade in the northern province of Aleppo, which also had a strong presence in the new body, said it would ensure proper supervision of weapons supplies.

“This time people have real hopes. We believe that weapons will be delivered,” he said. “One of the main reasons for the formation of this body is so that thefts (of weapons) are controlled, and each one will get their rights and put the control in the hands of those inside and not outside Syria.”

Rebels of the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, one of the most efficient fighters in Syria, are not part of the new body.

“They have their own leaders and their own structure, they fight side by side with the Free Syrian Army. We have only seen good things from them and they are good fighters,” said Abdul Jabbar al-Oqaidi, a senior commander in the new group.

Activists said rebels strengthened their hold on Monday over a military base in the Sheikh Suleiman region of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, which they overran a day earlier.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors violence across the country, said rebel fighters had been trying to seize the site for two weeks, after they captured a special forces base in the region last month.

The group also reported clashes in northern Damascus, where residents said parents rushed to pick up children early from school. One elementary school bus had only three students in it - one of them told the bus supervisor that all the others were collected early by their parents.

At a nearby girls’ high school, the headmistress was trying to dissuade a mother from pulling out her 16-year-old daughter before the day’s end. “If we keep letting parents pick up their kids anytime something happens, they’ll be in a constant state of panic,” she said.

The mother tried to explain that even though she was trying to keep a calm household, her husband was “really freaking out when we heard gunshots in our own street” earlier today.

In another sign of the sectarian and violent nature of the conflict, a video which activists said was filmed in the central city of Homs showed what appeared to be a youth with a long knife decapitating a man, identified as an Alawite officer. It was not possible to verify the video.

BEIRUT | Mon Dec 10, 2012 11:21am EST

Nov 14/12 N Korea suspected of arms shipment to #Syria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – With the U.S. election over and Syria’s civil war growing bloodier and spreading, the Obama administration is quietly re-examining its options for involvement in the conflict.

Whether that will lead to a change in strategy remains unclear. President Barack Obama and his advisers are extremely cautious, current and former officials involved in discussions say.

But those who favor greater U.S. involvement – not least Syrian opposition leaders – clearly believe their time has come. What Washington must consider, they say, is more support for the rebels and perhaps limited military action.

Even with electoral pressures gone, a major deployment of U.S. troops remains unthinkable. The kind of more limited but sustained air campaign that helped oust Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi is also off the table, at least for now.

Arming the rebels, the Obama administration says, might simply make matters worse – particularly given the mounting evidence of a growing Islamist presence, increasing sectarian bloodshed and accusations of rebel war crimes.

But simply standing on the sidelines may also no longer be viable. As the body count has mounted in Syria, there have been growing signs the war is also destabilizing neighboring states, particularly Lebanon but also Iraq, Turkey and Jordan.

This weekend Syrian and Israeli forces traded fire across their border in the Golan Heights.

“I’m amazed by how quickly people have started talking about Syria” after the election, said Joseph Holliday, a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and expert on the Syrian opposition at the Institute for the Study of War who frequently briefs American officials.

“I think there’s a feeling that doing nothing is in itself a choice, and that the longer we hold back the worse things are getting.”

With Syrian President Bashar al-Assad increasingly using helicopters and jets against civilian targets, there is growing talk of some form of “no-fly zone” – or perhaps a series of targeted strikes to damage his air force.

A likely request by Turkey for U.S. Patriot ground-to-air missiles to defend its airspace could also see U.S. troops deployed in its territory within miles of the Syrian border.

The new united rebel leadership announced this weekend in Doha – the result of months of pressure from western states and Arab allies – is also seen as offering the best hope so far that the opposition can form a united front.

Discussions being held within the State Department, Pentagon and elsewhere are not, insiders say, part of a centrally ordered policy review.

“We constantly review options,” one senior administration official told Reuters, although he said there was no change in the White House’s opposition to arming the rebels directly.

Another U.S. official knowledgeable about Washington’s Syria policy confirmed, however, that a post-election revision was under way.

“The question is: what to do?” he said.

THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE?

A few senior U.S. figures, such as Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador touted as a potential new secretary of state to replace Hillary Clinton, are reported to be more supportive of drastic action. The U.S. military and intelligence agencies, insiders say, are much more reluctant.

Even if Assad were to go, they worry the country might tear itself apart in ethnic bloodletting that could go on for years.

Obama himself has shown little appetite for new foreign interventions, and approaches his second term with no shortage of domestic challenges.

But the shifting reality on the ground in Syria, some argue, may be opening up new options.

One of the greatest barriers to greater involvement in the conflict, Western officials have long complained, has been the chaotic and disunited nature of the rebels – as well as their persistent failure to perform on the battlefield.

But that may now be changing. Disparate elements of the Free Syrian Army are increasingly seizing ground and holding it against Assad’s forces. The newly created Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces, under reformist Damascus cleric Mouaz Alkhatib, must build on those victories.

Long-term Assad supporter Russia, some experts say, may be tiring of the Syrian leader. Moscow might have little appetite for Western-backed overthrow of Assad, but it also wants to make sure it retains influence with any government that replaces him.

‘WAITING FOR THE WEST’

Some key allies remain reluctant. British officials have also been re-examining their Syria options, British sources say, but this week they rolled back from suggestions they might arm the rebels or ease a European arms embargo. France has yet to make good on statements it might provide anti-aircraft weaponry.

But Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey – all arming the rebels – may be betting on a U.S. policy shift that would bring European powers along and help them not just in Syria but in their region-wide rivalry with Assad’s ally Iran.

Up to now, their support for the rebels has largely been limited to intelligence agents and rich Arab individuals cutting deals to arm and supply whichever groups they fancy. That, many experts say, has strengthened the hand of the Islamists.

The opportunity now, rebel supporters say, is for a much more coordinated strategy perhaps led by Washington.

They “are waiting for the West,” Salman Shaikh, a former adviser to the Qatari royal family and now director of the Brookings Doha Center, said via video link. “They don’t want to be in this alone. Only the U.S. can bring this about.”

The fact that Turkey held back from talking about a Patriot missiles request until the day after the U.S. election may be no coincidence. While theoretically defensive, the range of the missiles would reach well inside Syrian airspace.

The option of using Turkish-based Patriot batteries to enforce a limited “no-fly zone” over nearby rebel territory is, insiders say, already circulating within the U.S. government.

Deploying the missiles, however, would require stationing dozens if not hundreds of U.S. troops in volatile border regions already swarming with refugees and weapons.

“There is undoubtedly going to be more attention placed on Syria by the administration in the aftermath of the election,” says Ari Ratner, a former Obama administration State Department appointee and now a fellow at the Truman National Security Foundation. “Not least because the situation on the ground and the needs of our allies will only escalate.”

SYRIAN-TURKISH BORDER - Abu Abdo is a school teacher turned gun-runner and smuggler extraordinaire, a can-do middleman helping to keep the Syrian rebellion alive through an illicit lifeline across the Turkish border.

When brigades fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad want Internet access, walkie-talkies, telephones, fatigues, bullet-proof vests, weapons or ammunition, Abu Abdo is the man they call.

He may not be the one scrambling through the olive groves of no-man’s land, laden with contraband and dodging Turkish soldiers, but he knows the Turks who are selling and the Syrians who are buying.

And there’s no shortage of customers.

He says he has bought communications equipment for the leadership of the Free Syrian Army, the largest umbrella group of armed factions fighting to bring down Assad.

He also deals in weapons and ammunition for brigade commanders across the northwestern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, and even dabbles in wood burners for neighbours anxious to save on winter heating bills.

“It depends on people and demand. When they ask me for something I try to get it. Sometimes that’s everyday and sometimes it’s once a week,” he told AFP in an interview on the Syrian-Turkish border.

“Most of my work is connecting people. If someone needs something in one place, I put them in touch with the person who can do that,” he said.

Mobile Syrian government checkpoints, air strikes and shelling, make rebel supply lines within Syria dangerous and unpredictable.

International sanctions also mean many supplies are simply unavailable, so that even basic food and relief items come from outside.

So Turkey is the linchpin of the entire operation.

“If Turkey wants to guard the border properly, the rebels will lose in 10 days because it’s the main source of everything,” Abu Abdo says.

“Everything we need for the camps like phones, blankets, mats, food is coming through Turkey and because of the sanctions on Syria, no one can transfer any money to a Syrian bank so we’re using the help of Turks to get money into Syria.”

“And transporting goods from Turkey is easy because you avoid (Syrian) military and regime checkpoints” that would be a problem if the goods were coming from elsewhere in Syria. “For example, if you get tents for refugees and we’re stopped at a checkpoint we’ll be accused of starting a training camp.”

The smuggling itself happens early in the morning, when Turkish guards are not there or are changing watch.

The Turkish smugglers take US$5 (S$6.10) commission on each item.

Abu Abdo says he makes no profit, but is instead motivated by the dream of turning Syria into a “democratic country with rights for everyone.”

He deeply opposes any potential break-up of the country, calling secession or federation “a waste of the blood and sacrifice”.

But it’s a risky job and he’s had some close calls.

Like the time he was waiting for five satellite Internet devices, his most expensive haul, at a hefty $1,100 each.

Turkish “soldiers caught us. I was standing there waiting to receive them. I spoke to the officer myself, and he said either you leave now or I’ll arrest you because you’re smuggling stuff. So we lost the devices,” he smiled.

Then there was the time he was ferrying a wounded man back from Turkey to the town of Taftanaz, when they nearly drove straight into a government checkpoint.

“We turned around just in time, waved and said ‘hi’ out of the window, gesturing that we had made a mistake. They must have assumed we were pro-regime, because they didn’t stop us,” he says.

Although he has heard of Turkish weapons bought with Qatari and Saudi cash being smuggled across the border, he says he hasn’t seen any.

Instead, he says weapons are smuggled mostly within Syria. Rebels are so poorly armed that they buy and sell between units depending on local requirements.

And in comparatively peaceful areas, such as Alawite communities in Hama province, Kalashnikovs, RPGs and small machineguns are cheaper and freely available.

But it’s the guns from Iraq, he says, which are the cheapest and best quality.

UK to review EU ban after Cameron visits refugee camps as Turkey says it will ask Nato to put Patriot missiles along border

Nicholas Watt in Amman and Ian Black, Middle East editor

The Guardian, Thursday 8 November 2012

A Syrian rebel fighter throws a grenade towards Assad forces in Aleppo. David Cameron says he will press Barack Obama to make Syria a priority. Photograph: John Cantlie/AFP

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (L) speaks during a joint press conference with Secretary General of the Arab League Nabil al-Arabi (C) and UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi (R) in Cairo on November 4, 2012. AFP PHOTO/MAHER ISKANDER

21/10/12

Bomb blast in Damascus as Assad meets mediator

* Assad says curbing arms central to any initiative

* Brahimi says opposition would respond to govt ceasefire

By Marwan Makdesi

DAMASCUS, Oct 21 (Reuters) - A car bomb killed 13 people in central Damascus on Sunday as President Bashar al-Assad told an international mediator seeking a truce in Syria’s civil war that the key to any political solution was to stop arming rebels.

The bomb exploded outside a police station in the mainly Christian central Bab Touma district of the capital while Assad held talks with United Nations-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is pushing for a temporary ceasefire to mark the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha.

State news agency SANA said the president said Syria supported “any sincere effort to find a political solution to the crisis, based on respect for Syrian sovereignty and rejecting foreign intervention.”

Any proposal “must be centred around the principle of halting the terrorism and … commitment by the countries involved in supporting, arming and harbouring the terrorists in Syria to stop these actions”, SANA quoted Assad as saying.

Syrian authorities blame neighbouring Turkey in particular for the bloodshed because it has sheltered mainly Sunni Muslim rebels fighting to overthrow Assad, from Syria’s Alawite minority which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam. Gulf Sunni powers Saudi Arabia and Qatar also support arming the rebels.

Syria’s conflict, which started with peaceful protests for reform, has escalated into a civil war marked by heavy use of artillery and air power by Assad’s forces and regular bombings against symbols of his authority in Syria’s main cities.

The Interior Ministry said the Bab Touma bomb, on the edge of the old city of Damascus, killed 13 people. Security forces cut off access to the area. Television pictures showed shattered glass on the road and several burnt out cars.

HOPING FOR CALM

Speaking after his meeting with Assad, Brahimi gave few details of the talks but reiterated his call for a pause in the violence, which activists say has killed more than 30,000 people since the uprising against Assad erupted in March last year.

“Everyone can start this (ceasefire) when they want, today or tomorrow for example, for the period of the Eid and beyond,” he told reporters at a Damascus hotel. Eid al-Adha begins at dusk on Thursday, lasting for three or four days.

Brahimi said he had contacted opposition figures inside and outside Syria, including rebel fighters, as well as officials in neighbouring countries, some of which support the insurgency.

“They answered that they would respond positively to a (ceasefire) initiative from the government,” he said. “We hope this Eid in Syria will be calm, even if it is not a happy Eid.”

He added: “If we do find that this calm continued through the Eid, we will try to build on it. If that does not happen, we will try nevertheless and work to open the path to hope for the Syrian people.”

Turkey has called for all sides to observe Brahimi’s truce. Iran, one of Assad’s major backers, has also supported the call but said the main problem in Syria was foreign interference, such as arming the rebels.

The United States, which has been a vocal critic of Assad but has little apparent influence on the ground, threw its weight behind the ceasefire call on Friday.

A previous ceasefire in April collapsed after just a few days, with each side blaming the other. Mediator Kofi Annan resigned his post in frustration a few months later.

The violence has spread across Syria’s frontiers. Assad’s forces exchanged cross-border artillery fire with Turkey several times this month and on Friday a huge car bomb in Beirut killed a top intelligence official whose investigations had implicated Syria in trying to stoke violence on Lebanese soil.

Syria’s Information Minister Omran Zoabi told reporters on Friday: “We condemn this terrorist explosion and all these explosions wherever they happen. Nothing justifies them.”

15/10/12

The majority of weapons secretly shipped to Syria at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar go to hardline Islamic rebel groups rather than more secular organizations favored by the West, The New York Times reported Monday.

Citing unnamed officials, the newspaper said this was the conclusion reached in classified reports presented to President Barack Obama and other senior officials.

This situation has prompted officials to voice frustration over the fact that there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments and no effective way of vetting the groups that receive them, the report said.

Because of this, Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus traveled secretly to Turkey last month in a bid to steer the supply effort, the report said.

The CIA has not commented on the trip.

Petraeus’s goal was to oversee the process of “vetting, and then shaping, an opposition that the US thinks it can work with,” the paper quoted an unnamed Middle Eastern diplomat as saying.

The CIA has also sent officers to Turkey to help direct the aid, but the agency lacks good intelligence about the many rebel figures and factions operating in Syria, The Times noted.

-AFP

02/10/12

01/10/12

30/09/12

Iraq is determined to stop and search flights from Iran over its territory which are suspected of carrying weapons to Syria, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said in comments reported on Sunday.

“We have assured US officials that the Iraqi government is determined to land [Iranian] flights and carry out random searches,” Zebari said, quoted by Arabic daily Al-Hayat.

The Iraqi minister added that his government had told Tehran “to stop the flights and stop arming or financing the [Syrian regime] or any other party to the conflict.”

Zebari said Iraq would not “not accept being a transit point or passage way for… arming or financing” the Syrian conflict.

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed Baghdad to deliver on pledges to stop such flights during a meeting with Iraqi Vice President Kudayr al-Khuzaie.

Clinton reported “some encouraging first steps,” citing an incident in which Iraqi authorities stopped a North Korean flight from crossing its air space while on its way to Syria over suspicions it was carrying arms and advisers.

Zebari said the flights first started in March and were stopped after the Iraqis called on the Iranians to do so. By late July, however, the flights resumed.

“They [the Iranians] said they were not carrying weapons or ammunition but pilgrims, visitors and other things,” said Zebari, adding that “just to be sure, we will land these planes.”

Washington has been calling on Baghdad to ensure that all Iranian planes flying over its air space are ordered to land and checked for weapons.

Tehran has told Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki the planes are carrying humanitarian aid to Syria, where the opposition has been fighting since last year to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

But many in the US government suspect the planes are ferrying military equipment to the Assad regime.

5/09/12

Syrian government troops accused of targeting journalists

IRAN has resumed shipping military equipment to Syria over Iraqi airspace in a new effort to bolster the embattled government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, according to senior US officials.

The Obama administration pressed Iraq to shut down the air corridor this year, raising the issue with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki but the flights started up again in July, as Syrian rebels gained ground, and are continuing.

”The Iranians have no problems in the air and the Syrian regime still controls the airport,” said retired Lebanese general Hisham Jaber, who heads the Middle East Centre for Studies and Research in Beirut.

United States Vice-President Joe Biden discussed Syria in a phone call with Mr Maliki on August 17. A US official said, off the record, that Mr Biden had registered his concerns over the flights.

Mr Maliki’s tolerance of Iran’s flights suggests the limits of the Obama administration’s influence in Iraq.

Mr Maliki, who leads a Shiite party and was sheltered in exile by the Syrian regime, has sought to maintain relations with Iran and appears to look at the potential fall of Dr Assad as a development that might strengthen his Sunni Arab and Kurdish rivals.

Iraq does not have a functioning air force and, since the withdrawal of US forces last December, the US has no planes in the country.

Several airlines have been involved in ferrying the arms, according to US officials, including Mahan Air, a commercial Iranian airline that, the US Treasury Department said, last year ferried men, supplies and money for Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force, and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group backed by Iran.

One former US official said it was not entirely clear what cargo was being sent to Syria before the flights stopped in March. But because of the type of planes involved, it was presumed to be tactical military equipment.

When the flights were suspended, Iraq was preparing to host the Arab League summit meeting, which brought to Baghdad many leaders opposed to Dr Assad. Immediately after the meeting, US President Barack Obama, in an April 3 call to Mr Maliki, reinforced the message that the flights should not continue.

There are reports that Iraqi Shiite militia fighters, long backed by Iran during the Saddam era, are heading to Syria to help the Assad regime.

Last month, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta said the Iranian efforts would merely ”bolster a regime that we think ultimately is going to come down”.

But some experts believe the Iranian leadership may be unlikely to stop its involvement in Syria, even if Dr Assad is overthrown, because a chaotic Syria is better than a new government that might be sympathetic to the West.

”Plan A is to keep Bashar Assad in power,” said Mohsen Sazegara, an Iranian pro-democracy activist who lives in the US. ”But Plan B is that, if they can’t keep him in power, they will try to make another Iraq or another Afghanistan - civil war - then you can create another Hezbollah.”

Please click on link http://www.watoday.com.au/world/irans-arms-airlift-to-syria-back-in-business-20120905-25epg.html  to view video

31/08/12

The Obama administration has backed itself into a corner in Syria, a crisis with few good options. But the endgame is clear, at least, and the time to get involved has come.

From the time that the peaceful protests in Syria turned into an armed uprising, it has been reasonable to argue that any imaginable outside intervention would do as much harm as good. I have made that argument myself. But the situation on the ground has changed, and so the calculus of outsiders must change as well. U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration should accept that the only desirable outcome in Syria is a victory by the rebels and should work much more actively than it has both to hasten the day of that victory and to avoid the terrible settling of accounts that might well accompany such an outcome.

It is true that Syrian forces have committed terrible atrocities in recent weeks, both in the house-to-house killings in the Damascus suburb of Daraya and in aerial bombardments of civilians waiting in bread lines in the northern city of Aleppo, which have been documented in an appalling video recently posted by Human Rights Watch. But the moral case for intervention became incontrovertible many thousands of deaths ago. What has changed is the practical case.

Many people who supported the intervention in Libya, including officials in the White House, have opposed comparable action in Syria out of concern that escalating hostilities could turn an insurgency into a full-blown civil war, inflaming sectarian hatred and threatening neighbors with massive refugee flows and ethnic and religious tension. But almost all those things have come to pass simply as a result of the demons Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has unleashed.

The war has already escalated to previously unimaginable levels. The Syrian regime is now engaging in the strategy of counterinsurgency-by-atrocity used so effectively by Sudan against the people of its south and Darfur — intentionally killing large numbers of civilians in order to shatter the opposition’s will. Assad has sown the seeds of sectarian hatred by unleashing largely Alawite forces against Sunni civilians, in turn making Syria into a new crusade for Sunni extremists, many of them crossing the border from Iraq. And he has exported the conflict beyond Syria’s borders, with Sunnis and Alawites facing off in the streets of Tripoli, Lebanon’s second-largest city. The greatest danger to Syria and the region now comes from allowing Syria’s civil war to continue unabated.

If the calculus of potential harm has changed, so too has the calculus of potential good. A no-fly zone would have done nothing to stop the thugs and soldiers who carried out the massacres in Daraya. The regime, however, doesn’t have enough troops to repress the rebellion everywhere at once. Assad has been deploying helicopters and jets in Aleppo, Idlib, and elsewhere in the north not only to terrorize civilians but to prevent the rebels from establishing control over a large swath of territory, as the Libyan opposition did in Benghazi. The rebels have begun to shoot down a few of the government’s helicopters and jets, but Assad is still counting on aerial terror to subdue the region. A no-fly zone might not stop the killing, but it could give the rebels the foothold they desperately need.

And unlike in Libya, where it was clear from the outset that NATO planes would have to take on Muammar al-Qaddafi’s tanks and armored personnel carriers, a no-fly zone extending perhaps 75 miles south of the Syria-Turkey border could turn the tide in Syria.

A no-fly zone now makes sense. Perhaps if the Libya intervention had never happened, Western and regional powers might be prepared to take on such a task. But Libya exhausted NATO’s resources and outraged Russia, China, and other countries that said they had voted only for a more modest no-fly zone. Russia and China will see to it that the U.N. Security Council never approves a resolution authorizing such an attack. And there is little evidence that any of the likely participants in a new effort — the United States, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia — have any appetite for ambitious military action in Syria, especially absent U.N. approval.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has asked the United Nations to establish a safe haven, but the Turks know perfectly well that Russia and China would veto such a resolution. The Turks, who are deeply worried about the destabilizing effect of the massive influx of Syrian refugees, now thought to number over 250,000, could establish a safe haven on their own, but apparently have no intention of doing so. While in Turkey in mid-August, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States and Turkey were setting up a working group to study a no-fly zone and other options. But one U.S. intelligence official with whom I spoke said that no serious military planning for a no-fly zone was currently under way.

Administration officials say that they cannot act without Turkey, but complain that Turkish political and diplomatic leaders barely speak to the Turkish military, which has shown no interest in military action. That may be true, but U.S. officials seem all too happy to use Turkey the way Turkey uses the U.N.: to avoid blame for failing to take action. With the U.S. president trying to get reelected by a public that is paying as little attention as it can to the world beyond America’s borders, the White House does not want to be dragged into a foreign campaign that could turn ugly. Indeed, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland immediately rejected Davutoglu’s safe-haven plea, saying that the United States wants to help the refugees get to Turkey, not protect them inside Syria.

One administration official said to me that because the rebels are now winning, outside intervention has become unnecessary. But that, too, sounds like a mighty convenient excuse for inaction. Assad may eventually lose his battle with the rebels, but many more thousands of Syrians are likely to die before he does, and an already poisonous atmosphere will become yet more lethal. Because it is now beyond obvious that Assad will leave only if he fears death or imminent defeat, the end must come with a rebel victory. And if the United States wants the rebels to win, then it should be doing everything it can to help them win — and win in a way that prevents a post-Assad Syria from degenerating into Iraq. Nor do you have to be John McCain to believe that the United States needs to range itself on the right side of history.

Is there an alternative? The obvious one is to give the rebels the military equipment they have been begging for. Until now, the Obama administration has provided only nonlethal equipment, mostly communications gear. But according to the New York Times, U.S. officials have granted an export license to a Syrian émigré group seeking to funnel weapons to the rebels. Why then should Washington not do directly what it is now prepared to do indirectly? One former U.S. government official with extensive experience in Syria suggests an alternative: “Just earmark $50 [million] or $100 million in covert assistance, and have agency guys walking around with bags of money.”

Of course, that conjures up memories of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the CIA supplied anti-Soviet jihadists with Stinger missiles that ultimately fell into the hands of al Qaeda. That’s not an encouraging precedent. But CIA officials are reported to be on the ground in Syria and in Turkey helping to direct assistance to rebel commanders whom the United States believes it can work with. That assistance has been grossly inadequate, in part because Saudi Arabia and Qatar have not been supplying arms as promised. The rebels have been forced again and again to break off battles they might otherwise win for lack of ammunition and firepower. With anti-aircraft capability, the rebels could create a safe haven on their own. With anti-tank missiles, they night quickly turn the tide in other disputed areas.

The United States has a profound interest not only in bringing the slaughter in Syria to an end, but in having a meaningful presence on the ground when that happens — as it did in Libya thanks to the NATO air campaign. It will not be easy, under any circumstances, to prevent Syria from collapsing into religious and ethnic enclaves, or into a war of all against all. But if Washington remains on the sidelines, as it has until now, it will have little influence with those who will ultimately prevail, and thus little ability to help shape the post-Assad landscape.

Obama might decide to postpone the decision until after the election, but that would be an act of consummate cynicism. He should act now, before it’s too late.