17/08/2012

Shi’ite masked gunmen from the Meqdad clan, gather at the Meqdad family’s association headquarters in the southern suburbs in Beirut, August 15, 2012. (REUTERS/Khalil Hassan)

BEIRUT: Despite repeated Arab and international warnings over a fallout of the 17-month uprising in Syria spreading to Lebanon, the Syrian turmoil has spilled over into the politically divided country, threatening to plunge it into total chaos, analysts and political sources said Thursday.

“The spillover of the Syrian uprising has reached Lebanon,” Hilal Khashan, professor of political sciences at the American University of Beirut, told The Daily Star. “Lebanon is poised for heightened insecurity that falls short of a civil war, mainly as a result of the spillover of the Syrian unrest, into the country.”

Wednesday’s mass kidnappings of over two dozen Syrians, a Turkish national and a Saudi citizen by a local Lebanese clan in retaliation for the abduction of one of its kinsmen by Syrian rebels as well as the blocking of Beirut airport road and the Beirut-Damascus highway at the Masnaa border crossing with burning tires by rival protesters have revived memories of the chaos and anarchy that reigned during the 1975-90 Civil War when rival militias held sway at the expense of state authority.

During the Civil War years, lawlessness and insecurity prevailed, especially in the capital Beirut, where foreign citizens of various nationalities were kidnapped by militant groups.

In response to security threats, five Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, have urged their citizens to leave Lebanon immediately after the Meqdad Shiite clan kidnapped more than 20 Syrians in Beirut and initially threatened to seize more Arab nationals in retaliation for the abduction of Hassan Meqdad by Syrian rebels.

The mass kidnappings of Syrians, directly linked to the turmoil in Syria, cast further doubts over Lebanon’s ability to weather the storm in its eastern neighbor Syria.

“What happened today is a clear indication that we are [on] the brink of major chaos in Lebanon,” a senior political source told The Daily Star Thursday.

“The storm in Syria has reached Lebanon now and there is no going back,” the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

However, Khashan said he did not believe that Lebanon was drifting into total chaos following the wave of kidnappings and the appearance of masked gunmen on TV.

“The kidnappings were a tension relief exercise. Hezbollah controlled the Shiites. There is no logical reason for them [Hezbollah] to allow the situation to go out of the control,” Khashan said. “Level headedness will prevail.”

“What happened yesterday was an expression of anger and frustration. The sight on TV of the Free Syrian Army displaying Hassan Meqdad, whom the FSA accused of being a Hezbollah member, with bruises on his face, angered many Hezbollah supporters. The kidnappings were [designed] to vent their spleen,” he added.

However, Future MP Ahmad Fatfat had a different opinion. “What happened was a total collapse of the state and a flagrant inability of the Army and security forces to do their job in repulsing any attack, even an internal attack, on Lebanese sovereignty,” Fatfat told the Voice of Lebanon radio station.

“The attack and kidnappings that took place in Beirut and a number of areas meant that the state was absent. This takes us to a civil war,” he added.

Khashan said that there was no regional or international decision to rekindle civil war in Lebanon. “Iran and Arab Gulf states do not want a civil war in Lebanon,” he said.

A similar view was echoed by political analyst Talal Atrissi.

“I don’t think Lebanon is facing the threat of a civil war following the wave of kidnappings,” Atrissi, an expert on Iran and Middle East affairs, told The Daily Star. “There is no internal, regional or international decision for the security situation to spin out of control. Priority is now for Syria. Therefore, no civil war in Lebanon,” he said. “Regional and international powers are still supporting Lebanon’s stability and security.”

Atrissi said the root cause of the current tension in Lebanon was the kidnapping by Syrian rebels of 11 Lebanese pilgrims in May and Meqdad last week.

“Before the spate of kidnappings, tension with Syria was confined to border incidents,” he said.

Politicians and analysts have long held the view that Lebanon’s security and stability are intertwined with Syria’s security and stability.

Violence in Syria has often spilled over into Lebanon, jolting the country’s already fragile security situation, with cross-border shootings, shelling by the Syrian army, tit-for-tat kidnappings and sectarian clashes. Several Lebanese have been killed and wounded by Syrian gunfire in a series of deadly incidents on the Lebanese-Syrian border in recent months.

But the latest spate of kidnappings has fueled fears that the unrest in Syria could further destabilize Lebanon, which has struggled for decades with wars, sectarian strife and a weak political system.

The split between the Hezbollah-led March 8 alliance and the opposition March 14 coalition over the Syrian crisis has raised fears of the turmoil in Syria spilling over to Lebanon.

The U.S. has also expressed consternation. “Our concern in Lebanon, first and foremost, has been the spillover from the Syrian conflict and the fact that the sectarian tensions in Syria are potentially being replicated in Lebanon,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington.

The government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati has adopted a policy to dissociate Lebanon from the repercussions of the unrest in Syria.

Mikati condemned the kidnappings, but his government seemed largely powerless to act. “This brings us back to the days of the painful war, a page that Lebanese citizens have been trying to turn,” he said of the 1975-90 Civil War when Western hostages were seized by armed groups.

Implicitly admitting his government’s inability to act, Mikati called for the formation of an extraordinary government to cope with what he termed the “difficult and extraordinary” situation through which the country was passing.

“This is a battle for Lebanon’s survival. We have to protect Lebanon with all the strength we have.” Mikati told reporters before a Cabinet session at Beiteddine Palace. “We are living in the storm. Therefore, we have to close ranks to face problems and crises.”

Atrissi blamed the Mikati government for weakening state authority and preventing the Army from imposing law and order. “Political and sectarian interests inside the government are preventing the Army from imposing security and state authority,” he said.

Khashan, the AUB professor, said Lebanon is “a soft state.”

“Security has long been based on consensus. The state cannot impose security on the people. Security is achieved through negotiations and compromise,” he said. “The Lebanese state is not authoritative. Rather, it is a soft state.”

Khashan said that instability in Lebanon served the cause of both the Syrian regime and the rebel Free Syrian Army for different reasons and motives.

“The Syrian regime wants to destabilize Lebanon in order to export its problems to the region. Lebanon is the weakest link in the region,” Khashan said. “Likewise, the Free Syrian Army believes that instability in Lebanon will invite Western intervention in both Syria and Lebanon,” he added.

The Meqdad clan, which hails from east Lebanon’s Bekaa region, said Wednesday it kidnapped over 30 men it said were members or supporters of the FSA in retaliation for the abduction of one of its kinsmen.

Maher Meqdad, who said his family fields an armed wing, told The Daily Star Wednesday that his clan had taken matters into its own hands as the Lebanese government had taken no steps to free Hassan Meqdad.

“We will do it ourselves, and we have what you can call a regulated army to do the job,” he said. He added that his family was acting according to the “eye for an eye” principle, and no longer needs the government’s intervention.

Jan 26 2012, 7:02 AM ET

Even though the military challenges might make it unfeasible, we should acknowledge the moral and historical cases for intervening.

A Syrian boy in Homs stands in front of a burned out armored vehicle belonging to the army / Reuters

I was an early supporter of military intervention in Libya. I called for a no-fly zone on February 23, just 8 days after protests began. Now, we’re nearly 300 days into the Syrian uprising. Very few analysts, myself included, have publicly called for foreign intervention, even though the Syrian regime has proven both more unyielding and more brutal than Muammar Qaddafi’s.

Steven Cook, in a recent and controversial piece, made the case for the military option in Syria. I agree with much of Cook’s article but not all of it. Emotionally, and from a purely moral perspective, I agree with all of it. The risks of intervention, however, are tremendous. Marc Lynch has made the most persuasive case for caution. So I find myself torn.

It may make sense, then, to revisit the reasons I, and several others including Lynch, broke ranks with our colleagues on the left and supported the NATO operation in Libya. First, American policymakers should — as a matter of principle — take Arab public opinion seriously. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, there were no widespread calls among Iraqis themselves for us, or anyone else, to intervene militarily. In Libya, there were. The Libyan rebels were practically begging us to step in with military force.

In recent months, a rapidly growing number of Syrian activists, both on the ground and those in exile, have called forcefully and repeatedly for some form of foreign intervention, whether through the establishment of no-fly zones, no-drive zones, humanitarian corridors, “safe zones,” or through the arming of rebel forces such as the Free Syrian Army. 

The Syrian National Council, the most important Syrian opposition body and the closest analogue to Libya’s National Transitional Council, has unequivocally called for foreign intervention. Its leaders have repeatedly issued such calls to the international community in similarly clear language. The same goes for Syrian activists on the ground. Each week, they agree on a theme for the Friday protests that take place across the country. On Friday, October 28, the protests were dubbed, again rather unambiguously, “no-fly zone Friday.” We can’t — and shouldn’t — endorse something just because a country’s opposition wants us to, but we do need to take their calls seriously, particularly because they happen to be directed to us.

As I argued in a recent article in The New Republic, Arab protesters and revolutionaries, despite their often passionate dislike of U.S. policy, continue to turn to us for support in their time of need. This should not be taken lightly. In a time when millions of Arabs are demanding and dying for their freedom, the United States finds itself in a privileged role. Because of who we are, what we claim to aspire to — and, of course, our unparalleled military capability — we often, for both better and worse, have the power to tip the balance one way or the other.

The clichéd refrain that the Arab uprisings are about “them” and not “us” seems to treat Western powers as innocent bystanders, which they aren’t and haven’t been for five decades. International factors have been critical in the majority of countries facing unrest, including Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and, to a lesser extent, Egypt. In short, U.S. support for democracy matters and will continue to matter for the foreseeable future. In some countries, it will matter a great deal.

Some critics of the Libya intervention feared it would set a precedent. I hoped it would set a precedent — that whenever pro-democracy protesters were threatened with massacre, the U.S., Europe, and its allies would take the responsibility to protect seriously, and consider military intervention as a legitimate option — provided that those on the ground asked us to do so.

Unfortunately, one successful case of military intervention — in Libya — is not enough to establish a precedent. For too long, the Syrian regime has assumed, correctly it turns out, that Libya was the exception that proved the rule. Obama administration officials have said as much, insisting that the military option is not being seriously considered for Syria.

To be sure, one should always look at Western intervention in Arab lands with some degree of skepticism. The United States has a tragic history in the region, supporting repressive dictatorships for over 50 years with rather remarkable consistency. But where there is sin there is also atonement. What made Libya a “pure” intervention was that we acted not because our vital interests were threatened but in spite of the fact that they were not. For me, this was yet one more reason to laud it. Libya provided us an opportunity to begin the difficult work of re-orienting U.S. foreign policy, to align ourselves, finally, with our own ideals.

For me, Syria is part of this bigger debate; what role does the United States seek for itself in a rapidly changing world, a world in which activists and rebels still long for an America that will recognize the struggle and come to the aid of their revolutions. The rising democracies of Brazil and India cannot offer this. Russia and China certainly cannot.

Hastening Bashar al-Assad’s fall, aside from being the right thing to do, would also be squarely in our self-interest. The Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis would be destroyed. Iran would find itself significantly weakened without its traditional entry point into the Arab world. Hezbollah, dependent on both Iranian and Syrian military and financial support, would also suffer. A democratic Syria, meanwhile, would likely be more in line with U.S. interests. In a free election, a reconstituted Syrian Muslim Brotherhood would stand a good chance of winning a plurality of seats. As I’ve written previously, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has had the distinction of being one of the region’s fiercest opponents of Iranian hegemony.  

In short, whether based on ideals or interests, the case for intervention is strong. I am not, however, a military specialist. I cannot say whether military intervention would work. Considering all the variables at play, it could turn into a terrible mess, perhaps more terrible than it already is.

Indeed, there are a number of reasons why intervention, today, would be premature (Michael Weiss runs through some of them in his excellent article in Foreign Affairs). But it may not be premature in a month or in two. The international community must begin considering a variety of military options — the establishment of “safe zones” seems the most plausible — and determine which enjoys the highest likelihood of causing more good than harm. This is now — after nearly a year of waiting and hoping — the right thing to do. It is also the responsible thing to do.

Six Persian Gulf nations said they will withdraw their monitors as they sought U.N. intervention to remove Assad from power.

By Jeremy Bowen BBC News, Damascus

The authorities organise regular rallies in support of President Bashar al-Assad

Someone has pinned a poster up at the foreign passports window at the Syrian border post with Lebanon. It shows a dove of peace, surrounded by guns, each labelled with the name of a foreign news broadcaster - including the BBC.

The dove is surrounded, and under fire. But the bullets are bouncing off its feathers, which are the colour of the Syrian flag - white, red, green and black.

As usual, I have had nothing but courtesy since I arrived in Syria, even though the official line here, set by President Bashar al-Assad, is that its troubles are caused by a foreign conspiracy aided and abetted by the international media.

The other day the BBC went on a government trip to Deraa, the town where the uprising started in March last year.

We managed to leave our escort of secret policemen to have a quick talk with a group of defiant young men.

They said they lived in a street of martyrs, where 18 had been killed in the last 10 months. As we left them they were chanting “Bashar, we want to hang you”.

‘Under strain’

About half an hour later, back with the minders from the Ministry of Information, a rumour started circulating that the BBC had an undercover team in Deraa, as well as us, because they had been seen meeting protesters.

It was nonsense of course, but the first assumption was that it was true - yet more proof of the conspiracy.

When the bus got back to Damascus I went to the ministry.

Some building work was going on in the entrance hall, which is dominated by a gigantic bust of Bashar’s father Hafez, who was the first Assad president.

Hafez al-Assad was ruthless. He dealt with attempted revolts by crushing them, if necessary sending in the tanks.

He ended more than 20 years of coups after he seized power in 1970 and by the time he died in 2000, no-one could challenge his wish to pass the presidency on to his son.

The bust of Hafez al-Assad at the ministry is covered in dust. Somehow I imagine its prudent employees would have kept it shiny in his day.

The system he built is now under colossal strain.

Syria is in its worst crisis since independence in 1946. In his time of trouble Bashar has fallen back on his father’s methods, but they don’t work in quite the same way in the modern world.

‘Hypocrisy’

 

When the first President Assad eliminated a revolt led by the Muslim Brotherhood in Hama in 1982 by sending in the army and killing at least 10,000 people, no-one was putting videos on YouTube as it happened.

The deed was done by the time the details were known.

The wiring of the world for instant communication has made it more transparent.

Authoritarian leaders in the 21st century can still get away with a lot. But only if they have the right friends - and at the moment Bashar al-Assad does not.

I had dinner the other night with a senior official I’ve known for a few years.

He is a charming, educated man, who argues that President Assad is not being given the chance by the world’s big powers to reform the regime.

He said the West was applying its usual double standards to what was happening here. We met on the day that David Cameron called President Assad a “wretched tyrant”.

‘Decade of chances’

Hypocrisy, said my contact. Why doesn’t Britain speak out in the same way when civilians are killed in Bahrain? The reason, he said, was that it didn’t want to offend its Saudi allies and their friends in Bahrain’s ruling family.

The West, he said, should realise that only President Assad can save Syria from sectarian civil war.

But there are plenty of people here in Syria who believe that the president had a decade of chances to reform, and he chose not to take them.

They think that in Zabadani, a small town half an hour’s drive from the presidential palace in Damascus.

Armed rebels there have forced a ceasefire on the regime, and for now at least the protesters control the town.

When I stood with them on a bitterly cold evening in the town’s main square as they celebrated, I could hardly believe what I was seeing, so close to Damascus.

President Assad’s forces are still strong, but it might already be too late for him to discard his father’s rule book. It isn’t working any more.

Britain’s Prince Charles (R) stands with Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa at Clarence House in London, December 13, 2011. (REUTERS/Finbarr O’Reilly)

LONDON: Syria is training opposition figures in Bahrain, the Gulf island state’s king said in an interview published Tuesday, in which he also denied systematic rights abuses during state crackdowns on pro-democracy protests earlier this year.

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa’s interview with Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper comes a day after he met British Prime Minister David Cameron, who urged the king to press ahead with national reconciliation and to engage with Bahrain’s opposition. He later met with the Britain’s Prince Charles, Prince of Wales at a reception at London’s Clarence House.

“We have evidence that a number of Bahrainis who oppose our government are being trained in Syria … I have seen the files and we have notified the Syrian authorities, but they deny any involvement,” the king said.

King Hamad’s visit comes weeks after an independent inquiry found evidence of systematic rights abuses and said Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim rulers used excessive force to cow protesters and detainees.

Syria is dominated by President Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiism, and is allied with Shiite Iran, long blamed by Bahrain for stirring trouble among its Shiite populace.

Bahrain’s Shiites hold frequent protests against what they see as state discrimination in jobs, services and political representation.

“It is not the policy of the Interior Ministry to go and kill people on the roads. The policemen and soldiers involved in the killings did not take notice of the discipline side of matters,” King Hamad said, adding that wrongdoers would be held accountable.

Last month the king replaced the head of the state security apparatus as part of a shakeup after the findings of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry.

Bahrain is a key Western ally in the region as well as home to the U.S. 5th Fleet.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on December 14, 2011, on page 8.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2011/Dec-14/156798-bahrains-king-accuses-syria-of-training-opposition.ashx#ixzz1gUsByL8Q
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

MANAMA, Nov 26 (KUNA) — The Bahraini Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked its citizens in Syria to leave it due to insecurity and instability there.
The ministry advised Bahrainis, in a release carried by Bahrain’s official news agency, not to travel to Syria out of fears over their safety. It even urged its citizens in Syria to be in touch with the Bahraini Embassy in Damascus if they need help. (end) mga.mt KUNA 262051 Nov 11NNNN

When Syrian President Hafez al-Assad crushed a revolt in 1982, killing at least 10,000 people, the Arab League failed to act. A generation later, amid another government crackdown, the group has turned on his son, Bashar.

Arab League foreign ministers plan to meet tomorrow at the group’s Cairo headquarters to discuss imposing sanctions on Syria. The league had set a Nov. 19 deadline for the government to comply with an Arab peace plan.

The Arab Spring uprisings have unnerved and threatened regimes throughout the region, shaking up status quo institutions such as the Arab League. The league’s suspension of a founding member, Syria, was the boldest action by the 21- nation club since its condemnation of Muammar Qaddafi’s crackdown paved the way for the United Nations resolution in March authorizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign.

“It’s a measure of the extent to which things have gone wrong,” Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, said in an interview. “These guys were friends. I think they are extremely disappointed, and at some point there was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Images of government attacks on unarmed protesters and of torture-scarred bodies in cities like Homs, Syria’s third largest, are being viewed in homes across the region. Whether motivated by outrage, by concern for self preservation or by both, Arab kings and prime ministers aren’t turning a blind eye, as had been the case in the past.

Arab Public Opinion

The league’s actions “demonstrate that, as a result of the Arab Spring, governments have to be more responsive and that doing nothing is no longer an option,” said Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

A survey of opinion in five Arab countries found the public lined up most nine-to-one behind the Syrian rebels, according to Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland at College Park, who directed the October polling in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.

The same poll suggests that the Arab public would prefer a regional leaders to act, with 46 percent of respondents saying foreign intervention in Libya was “the wrong thing to do.”

The Arab League was created in 1945, the same year as the United Nations, as the decline of colonial powers after World War II and creation of the state of Israel fanned the rise of Arab nationalism.

‘Club of Tyrants’

Yet in its 66-year history, a body that sought to bring Arab nations closer became known as a “club of tyrants,” according to Danin. It was hopelessly divided when dealing with one of is own, such as in 1990, when just 12 out of 20 members condemned Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

There are also shades of realpolitik at play, with Arab nations having different practical motivations for taking action on Syria. Qatar is establishing itself as a foreign-policy titan punching above its size. Saudi Arabia benefits from isolating Shiite Muslim Iran — Syria is its main Arab ally and conduit to arming the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon — and wants to distract attention from human-rights abuses in the neighboring Bahrain, a Sunni ally.

“There are maneuvers within the league,” said Scott Lucas, a Middle East expert at the University of Birmingham in England and founder of website EA Worldview. From the Saudi standpoint: “If everyone focuses on Syria, then Bahrain is forgotten.”

Bahrain is among League members that may be vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy. It voted to suspend Syria and Libya yet has drawn criticism itself from human rights groups for its crackdown on the mainly Shiite protesters earlier this year.

‘Crimes Against Humanity’

While acting against Libya may have been relatively easy for the League, given Qaddafi had few fans among member states after an alleged 2004 assassination plot against Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Assad is another story.

At least 3,500 people have died in Syria and thousand arrested since protests started mid-March, and Human Rights Watch on Nov. 11 accused the regime of “crimes against humanity,” including torture and unlawful killings, in Homs.

The “ineptitude” of the United Nations has also prompted the Arab League to step up, according to Shaikh, a former special assistant to the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

‘Significant Step’

Russia, which sells arms to Syria, and China, which buys its oil, delivered a rare double veto not seen since 2008 to block a Oct. 4 UN Security Council resolution that called for Assad to halt the crackdown. With the UN’s most powerful body paralyzed, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the Arab League has taken “a very significant step” in threatening to impose sanctions for the first time.

“We, as the United States, have imposed very strong sanctions on the Syrian regime as have plenty of other states, now the Arab League is about to follow suit,” she told reporters in New York on Nov. 18.

The U.S. sanctions target top officials; Syria’s largest mobile phone operator, Syriatel; and the Commercial Bank of Syria. The European Union has blacklisted 74 people including senior military and intelligence officials and EU companies are forbidden from doing business with 19 firms and groups.

“It was absolutely clear that the Europeans and the U.S. were going to be unable to do more,” Shaikh said. “They needed the Arabs to take ownership.”

Old Rules

That means questioning the league’s traditional foundation of non-intervention in the domestic conduct of members.

Article VIII of the group’s charter states that members “shall respect the systems of government established in the other member-states and regard them as exclusive concerns of those states” and that each “shall pledge to abstain from any action calculated to change established systems of government.”

“It didn’t act on the massacres in Syria in the 1980s, or Algeria in the 1990s,” said Omar Ashour, a lecturer in the politics of the modern Arab world at the University of Exeter in the U.K. “Sometimes, there wasn’t even a statement to condemn these acts.”

Still, the Arab League is under new leadership. Nabil El- Arabi, who took as Secretary-General of the Arab League from Amre Moussa in July, has described the league as “impotent” and has called on reform.

Creating a formal mechanism to compel members’ to comply with its resolutions may also have to be considered, including economic sanctions which haven’t been imposed before.

The revolt against Assad’s rule has begun to squeeze the economy. Turkey, a neighbor and key trade partner, says it will “strongly support” whatever the Arab League decides and yesterday Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan followed King Abdullah of Jordan in saying Assad should step down.

— Editors: Terry Atlas, Steven Komarow

To contact the reporters on this story: Caroline Alexander in London at calexander1@bloomberg.net; Flavia Krause-Jackson at the United Nations at fjackson@bloomberg.net

LONDON (AFP) - British Foreign Secretary William Hague said strong support for a resolution criticising Syria at a United Nations human rights committee Tuesday ‘sends a signal of united condemnation’ of the regime.

‘Today’s UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) resolution sends a signal of united condemnation of the Syrian regime’s systematic human rights abuses,’ said Mr Hague in a statement.

‘I welcome the wide support it received, including the fact that it was co-sponsored by Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Turkey.’ He added: ‘As long as the crisis in Syria continues the international pressure on the (President Bashar al-) Assad regime will only intensify.’ The resolution was backed by 122 countries at the UN General Assembly’s human rights committee and only 12 nations joined Syria in opposing it.

It ‘strongly condemns the continued grave and systematic human rights violations by the Syrian authorities,’ highlighting the ‘arbitrary executions’ and ‘persecution’ of protesters and human rights defenders.