Situation in Syria escalates, al-Assad regime ‘dead man walking’

Damascus - A day after committing to an Arab League peace plan, the Syrian government announced on Tuesday it will kill “terrorists” and anyone found distributing weapons for terrorist-associated activities, with implementation of a new death penalty law.

The situation in Syria appears to be escalating, with reports of heightened clashes between Syrian authorities and anti-government demonstrators The death there climbed to 39 on Tuesday, a day after what many are considering the bloodiest day since anti-government protests began in March. “Monday may have been a day with the highest death toll in Syria, between 100 and 110 killed in total,” said Rami Abdul Rahman, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, CNN reports. In association with Syria’s new death penalty law is a life sentence of hard labor for those found conducting arms trafficking. Journalists are severely restricted in Syria, and there is difficulty in verifying reports, but interviews with defectors of the Syrian military and intelligence agencies, conducted by Human Rights Watch, shows ongoing crimes against humanity. The new HRW report calls the arbitrary arrests and detainee torture being conducted by Syrian authorities as “crimes against humanity,” and is calling for the UN Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court. It adds the crimes are known in the highest levels of President Bashar al-Assad’s government. The Syrian regime has been conducting wholesale arbitrary arrests and detainee torture since the protests began last March in the southern city of Daraa. Since then, more than 4,000 protesters have been killed. Included in the number are more than 300 children. Reports on Tuesday indicate between 60 and 70 Syrian Army defectors were “gunned down” when they attempted to join rebel groups. One of the deserting soldiers who survived said they encountered machine-gun fire. “They were killed while trying to run away from their military positions on the way between the villages of Kensafra and Kefer Quaid, in Zawyia Mountain, in Idlib district,” the Observatory said, according to The Christian Science Monitor. External efforts could be underway in attempts at toppling al-Assad’s regime, reports Stratfor. The Free Syrian Army (FSA), a self-declared armed opposition group to the government, is said to be responsible for some of the clashes with Syrian authorities, and could be part of a force continuum in seeking to overthrow al-Assad. Stratfor notes there are alleged efforts by the FSA to target oil and natural gas pipelines. There are rumors of American, French, Jordanian and Turkish special operations forces situated in Turkey who are training FSA personnel. If the rumors bear out, FSA targeting efforts should become more systematic and effective, with those training results beginning to appear soon. The al-Assad regime, a longtime ally of Iran, was recently characterized as a “dead man walking” by the U.S. State Department, according to Stratfor.