The United Nations and Syria have signed an agreement today to dramatically increase the size of the observer mission for the ongoing ceasefire. The deal authorizes hundreds of additional monitors to oversee the situation on the ground.
At present there are six monitors in Syria, though the deal that was in place allowed for as many as 30, and more were supposed to be deployed by the end of the week. There continues to be much disagreement over exactly what authority the monitors will have.
In particular, Western officials have been pushing for the deployment of European planes and helicopters into Syria, primarily to ferry the observers around but also providing aerial surveillance in some cases.
With US and French officials hinting at a military invasion of Syria even under the current state of the ceasefire, putting Western vehicles on the ground is almost certain to be rejected by the UN.
Putting Western vehicles on the ground in Syria is really dangerous and Syrian leaders should not fall for the trick.
One of the things that may happen would be for the terrorist to attack a couple of these vehicles giving NATO the excuse to come in as R2P their observers and vehicles. In the confusion, they will then attack Syrian forces (by mistake!), or they may bomb Mr Assad to smithereens, claiming it on the disgruntled Syrian air force pilots.
Be careful mucho, mucho.
Article about US and French officials hinting at a military invasion of Syria even under the current state of the ceasefire says: "Armed opponents of Assad also have continued to attack security forces, according to activists and Syrian state media." To me it looks like admission the rebels are breaking the ceasefire.
This is not surprise for me, since "Friends of Syria" pledged to pay salaries to "rebels" just to keep fighting. Forget the ceasefire, forget the UN mission. Fight on until we can send bombers in to chase Assad away or kill him. Do not allow ceasefire intervene with our plans. Fight and blame Assad so we can come to help you.
If I remember it right Arab League monitoring mission led by Sudanese Lt.-Gen. Mustafa al-Dabi was dismantled because al-Dabi did not report what rebels and their "friends" wanted, but what he thought he saw in Syria. I think this will happen again if the leaders of ceasefire monitoring teams report only what they really see instead of rebel propaganda. On the other hand trickle of truth about Syria fighting is getting to media, since they do not want to look like lying bastards when there are people on the ground in there who may see it differently. That is a small hope in this tragedy.