Konflikten i Syrien

There was a great deal of Alawite separatist sentiment in the region.This is evidenced by a letter dating from 1936 and signed by 80 Alawi leaders. The letter was addressed to the French Prime Minister, and said that "Alawite people rejected attachment to Syria and wished to stay under French protection." Among the signatories was Sulayman Ali al-Assad, the father of Hafez al-Assad.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Friday he believes there will be “an overwhelming report” from UN inspectors that chemical weapons were used in an attack in Syria on Aug. 21, but he did not say who was responsible.

Ban also said President Bashar Assad’s regime “has committed many crimes against humanity.”

“Therefore, I’m sure that there will be surely the process of accountability when everything is over,” he said.

WASHINGTON — President Obama will not insist on a United Nations Security Council resolution threatening Syria with military action, senior administration officials said Friday, as American and Russian negotiators meeting in Geneva moved closer to an agreement that would seek to ultimately strip Syria of its chemical weapons.

After a second day of marathon talks in Geneva between Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia, both sides expressed optimism, while American officials here said they would give the process a couple of weeks to see if it gained traction. But daunting obstacles remain to dismantling Syria’s vast chemical arsenal as negotiators try to defuse a confrontation that has inflamed politics on three continents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/world/middleeast/us-wont-insist-un-resolution-threaten-force-on-syria-officials-say.html?hp&_r=0

he aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''