By
John Rosenthal
German
intelligence estimates that "around 90" terror attacks that "can
be attributed to organizations that are close to al-Qaeda or jihadist
groups" were carried out in Syria between the end of December and the
beginning of July, as reported by the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung (FAZ). This was revealed by the German government in a response to a
parliamentary question.
In
response to the same question, the German government admitted that it had
received several reports from the German foreign intelligence service, the BND , on the May 25 massacre in the Syrian town of Houla. But it noted that
the content of these reports was to remain classified "by reason of
national interest", Like many other Western governments, Germany expelled
Syria's ambassador in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, holding the
Syrian government responsible for the violence.
Meanwhile,
at least three major German newspapers - Die Welt, the FAZ, and the mass-market
tabloid Bild - have published reports attributing responsibility for the
massacre to anti-government rebel forces or treating this as the most probable
scenario.
Writing
in Bild, longtime German war correspondent Jurgen Todenhofer accused the rebels
of "deliberately killing civilians and then presenting them as victims of
the government". He described this "massacre-marketing strategy"
as being "among the most disgusting things that I have ever experienced in
an armed conflict". Todenhofer had recently been to Damascus, where he
interviewed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for Germany's ARD public
television.
Wring
in Die Welt, Alfred Hackensberger noted that Taldo, the sub-district of Houla
where the massacre occurred, has been under rebel control since December 2011
and is in an open plain, making it unlikely that "hundreds of soldiers and
Assad supporters" could have entered the village to commit the massacre. (An
abridged version of Hackenberger's report also appeared in Die Berliner
Morgenpost.) Hackensberger visited Houla to conduct investigations for his
report.
He
also interviewed an alleged eyewitness - identified simply by the pseudonym
"Jibril" - at the Saint James Monastery in Qara, Syria. In contrast
to an earlier report in the FAZ, which had claimed that the victims were
largely Shi'ites and Alawis, Jibril told Hackensberger that all of the victims
were Sunnis "like everybody here". By his account, they were killed
for refusing to support the rebellion. Jibril added that "a lot of people
in Houla know what really happened" but would not say so out of fear for
their lives. "Whoever says something," he explained, "can only
repeat the rebels' version. Anything else is certain death."
While
traveling in the region of Homs, Hackensberger heard similar stories about the
conduct of the rebels. One - now former - resident of the city of Qusayr told
him that not only were Christians like himself expelled from the town, but that
anyone who refused to enroll their children in the Free Syrian Army had been
shot. Hackensberger's source held foreign Islamists responsible for the
atrocities. "I have seen them with my own eyes," he said,
"Pakistanis, Libyans, Tunisians and also Lebanese. They call Osama bin
Laden their sheikh."
A
Sunni resident of Homs told Hackensberger that he had witnessed how an armed
group stopped a bus: "The passengers were divided into two groups: on the
one side, Sunnis; on the other, Alawis." According to Hackenberger's
source, the insurgents then proceeded to decapitate the nine Alawi passengers.
That
the German government would cite national interest in refusing to disclose its
information concerning the circumstances of the Houla massacre is particularly notable
in light of Germany's support for the rebellion and its political arm, the
Syrian National Council (SNC).
While
France, the United Kingdom, and the United States have figured as the most
visible Western powers supporting the rebellion, Germany has been quietly
playing a major role behind the scenes. According to a new report in the FAZ,
the German foreign office is working with representatives of the Syrian
opposition to develop "concrete plans" for a "political
transition" in Syria following the fall of Assad.
John
Rosenthal is a journalist who specializes on European politics and
transatlantic security issues. His website is Transatlantic Intelligencer
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