Syria: Kurds Pledge Continued Support for Opposition

Kurdish leaders gathered on Monday in the Swedish parliament to affirm the Syrian Kurdish community’s commitment to the opposition movement and a Syrian future without President Bashar Assad and Baathist Party rule. The gathering brought 50 participants together, including Kurdish writer Massoud Akko and dissident Mohammad Sida, who all pledged to further unify the Kurdish opposition in  Syria.

Arab League Secretary General Nabil el-Arabi is due to arrive in Damascus tomorrow as another fifteen protesters were killed in Homs and Idlib provinces by State security forces. Syria’s opposition has remained fractured and has yet to come together under a single umbrella organization despite numerous attempts. Kate Seelye argues that the divisions in the Syrian opposition are not surprising and reflect the ethno-sectarian divisions represented in Syrian society and the toll taken by years of authoritarian rule.

The Syrian government also permitted the International Committee of the  Red Cross to visit a central prison in Damascus for the first time since the start of the uprising to assess the condition of prisoners and their treatment. Human rights activists state that the Syrian government is holding tens of thousands of people in prison, their fates unknown.

It has also been revealed that the July explosion in Cyprus that incapacitated the island’s main power facility was in fact munitions bound for Syria that Cyprus had confiscated after pressure from “countries that play a decisive role on the international scene.” Cypriot President Demetris Christofias commented that the seizure of the munitions from a cargo ship bound for Syria had hurt Cypriot ties with Syria, and subsequently Iran.