SYRIEN - En sammanställning av konflikten

Now, though, a SPIEGEL team has managed to visit the place where the massacre occurred: Taldou, the largest of four widely scattered villages that form the Houla municipality. Getting there was complicated; the Syrian regime doesn't want any foreign journalists in the country, especially not in Houla

If the rebels had truly committed the massacre, why has the army continued to fire at and shell Taldou for months, including the days when the SPIEGEL reporters were there? And if the FSA was behind the massacre, why did a large number of army officers from Houla defect to the FSA afterwards?

He told me to come in on June 2. He pointed out that I was from Houla, and that an international conspiracy against Syria was underway. For that reason, he wanted me to find a few people, as poor as possible, from Houla or the surrounding area. I was to bring them to Damascus so that they could circulate the regime's version of the massacre.

The Assyrian people,[23] most commonly known as Assyrians and other later names, such as: Ashuriyun, Assouri, Chaldean Catholics, Syriacs, Chaldo-Assyrians (see names of Syriac Christians), are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia. They are Eastern Aramaic speaking Semites who trace their ancestry back to the Sumero-Akkadian civilisation that emerged in Mesopotamia circa 4000- 3500 BC, and in particular to the northern region of the Akkadian lands, which would become known as Assyria by the 24th Century BC. The Assyrian nation existed as an independent state, and often a powerful empire, from the 24th century BC until the end of the 7th century BC. Assyria remained a Geo-political entity after its fall, and was ruled as an occupied province under the rule of various empires from the late 7th century BC until the mid 7th century AD when it was dissolved, and the Assyrian people have gradually become a minority in their homelands since that time.

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The major sub-ethnic division is between an Eastern group ("Assyrian Church of the East" Assyrian "Chaldean Catholic", and "Ancient Church of the East") indigenous to northern Iraq, northwest Iran, northeast Syria and southeast Turkey, and a Western one ("Syrian Orthodox", and Syriac Catholic") found mainly in south central Turkey and Syria, this latter group often preferring an Aramean identity, being culturally but not ethnically the same as Assyrians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian_people

The various communities of indigenous Pre Arab Neo-Aramaic-speaking people of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Turkey and Lebanon and the surrounding areas advocate different terms for ethnic self-designation. It may be the case that the "Assyrian/Chaldo-Assyrian/Eastern Syriac" group and the "Aramean"/"Western Syriac" and "Phoenician" groups are merely closely related and not in fact exactly the same people.

Yesterday it was Midan. Today it was al-Qaboon. In both the picture is pretty clear, that any rebel fighters in these areas have been driven from them. This is a comprehensive victory of the Assad Regime in its own backyard and capital.

The crackling of automatic fire, the crumbling explosion of incoming shellfire, the helicopter gunships quartering the city and firing machinegun bursts – all those sounds have gone pretty much from Damascus today. Replaced by the rather more prosaic hooting of car-horns.

Every now and then army trucks packed with cheering soldiers pass up the city’s main boulevards. It is not a good idea to film one of the world’s most secret armies – even in their moment of triumph.