Stuff on Syria and neighbours

From DailyStar
Jordan has protested to Syria after a shell landed in the kingdom's north during clashes between the Syrian army and rebels, the information minister said on Sunday.

"The foreign ministry has sent a written protest to the Syrian embassy in Amman after a shell landed Thursday night on Al-Falah mosque, near the industrial park in the northern city of Ramtha," Mohammad Momani said in a statement carried by state-run Petra news agency.

"The shell hit that area during clashes between the Syrian troops and the (rebel) Free Syrian Army."

Raghida Dergham at Al Monitor;
Tunisia Tries to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration of Syria. Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki revealed that authorities have banned around 4,500 individuals from traveling on suspicion of their intending to head to Syria and participate in the fighting. Marzouki noted that in this regard the authorities are cooperating with many countries, including Turkey and Libya.........

Christine Marlow writing at Telegraph:
Eleven-year-old Ahmed’s singed hair is matted with dirt and blood. Flesh peels from the burns that cover his body, hands and face. His expression is blank, frozen with shock, but the brown eyes that stare up from above his mangled cheeks and cracked lips, are wide with fear. He tries to lie perfectly still under the covers of the bed in the makeshift clinic, but, despite his efforts, his small body quivers and trembles uncontrollably.
Ahmed is the collateral damage of the Syrian war; one of hundreds of thousands of civilians, more than half of them children, who have been maimed or made homeless in almost three years of conflict.
The Russia-US brokered deal for the Syrian regime to give up its chemical weapons has been heralded as the most significant diplomatic breakthrough yet in the conflict.
But it does little to address the use of conventional weaponry – air strikes, Scud missiles and artillery – that has already taken the death toll to more than 100,000.......... 

Nabih Bulos  writing at LA Times:
Syrian President Bashar Assad has the right to decide whether to participate in elections next year, Information Minister Omran Zoubi told reporters in Damascus on Tuesday, insisting that Syrians want him to remain in office.

"The people demand this," he said, adding that the ballot box will show their support for him rather than for "the opposition, the Americans, the traitors and the spies."

His words matched statements by other government officials. Assad said in an interview with Italy's Rai 24 network that he would take his cue from the people on whether he will run, and Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, speaking with Sky News Arabia on Saturday, dismissed any talk of Assad's resignation. 

From ABCNews:
Jordan's military court has convicted five Jordanians of trying to sneak into neighboring Syria to join rebels seeking to unseat President Bashar Assad.
The court sentenced the men in a brief hearing Monday to five years in jail with hard labor on charges of attempting to illegally cross the border to join a banned group.
Presiding judge Ahmed Qatarneh said the five — in their 20s and 30s — had confessed to planning to join the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, or Nusra Front.
They were arrested in February 2012 on the Jordanian-Syrian border.
The prosecutor's indictment said the five were members of the hard-line Salafi Jihadi Movement. The group is banned in Jordan.
Security sources say several hundred Jordanians have joined rebels in Syria.

Robert Fisk writing at Independent
A Syrian solution to civil conflict? The Free Syrian Army is holding talks with Assad's senior staff. Secret approach to the President could reshape the whole war
Six weeks ago, a two-man delegation arrived in secret in Damascus: civilians from Aleppo who represented elements of the Free Syrian Army, the rebel group largely composed of fighters who deserted the regime’s army in the first year of the war. They came under a guarantee of safety, and met, so I am told, a senior official on the staff of President Bashar al-Assad. And they carried with them an extraordinary initiative – that there might be talks between the government and FSA officers who “believed in a Syrian solution” to the war.
The delegation made four points: that there must be an “internal Syrian dialogue”; that private and public properties must be maintained; that there must be an end to – and condemnation of – civil, sectarian, ethnic strife; and that all must work for a democratic Syria where the supremacy of law would be dominant. There was no demand – at least at this stage – for Assad’s departure.
The reply apparently came promptly. There should indeed be “a dialogue within the Syrian homeland”; no preconditions for the dialogue; and a presidential guarantee of safety for any FSA men participating. And now, it seems, another remarkable development is under way: in seven rebel-held areas of Aleppo, most of them under the control of the FSA, civil employees can return to work in their offices, and government institutions and schools can reopen. Students who have become militiamen over the past two years will be disarmed and return to their classrooms.............

From TheAustralian:
.....“Illegal migration has increased with the influx of Syrian refugees,” a Lebanese security source said on condition of anonymity.
“Criminal networks have started to focus on Syrians but also on Lebanese who want to emigrate,” he said of the people smugglers.
According to the source, around 250 people, including Syrians and Lebanese, have since March paid huge sums of money to people-smugglers for trips to Australia.
Relatives of Lebanese who have emigrated through such networks in recent months said a Tripoli-based man organises the journeys from Lebanon to Australia through Indonesia.
The smugglers' contact in Indonesia is an Iraqi man known only as Abu Saleh who monitors the arrivals, they said.
The first part of the trip consists in obtaining a visa for Jakarta, which the Indonesian embassy in Lebanon grants Lebanese passport-holders without much difficulty.
Once in Jakarta the migrants are led secretly across Java from where they take boats for the high-risk sea trip to Australia seeking asylum.
Lebanese authorities on Saturday arrested a suspect involved in the people-smuggling network as part of an investigation ordered by Justice Minister Shakib Qortbawi.......

From NSNBC:
Turkish families are trying   to find their children in terrorist camps. Gang leaders, who capture children, are asking for ransoms from families. Children of families who refuse to pay are being threatened with death.
Turkish youths between the ages of 18 and 30 are being taken to Syria from the southeastern provinces of Turkey, in particular Adıyaman, Bingöl, Urfa, Diyarbakır and Bitlis, to fight against the Syria administration on the side of Jihadists. A father who went to Syria to rescue his child was threatened with death.
A number of families have managed to bring their sons back by paying a ransom. The Radikal newspaper interviewed four families who went to Syria to bring back their children. M.D, the father of twins Ö.D and M.G.D who both ran away to Adana under the guise of registering for university,  made the following statement:

“One day, my children called home and said they are in Syria and fighting for ‘Jihad,’ asking me not to head out after them. I called the police department and explained the situation. However, they did not do anything, and said my children are now adults. I went to Aleppo with a guide to try to take my children back and visited six camps in four days.”...