Report: Syrian Children Deeply Affected by Conflict

BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images(AMMAN, Jordan) -- "Childhood Under Fire" may unfortunately be a very appropriate title for a report about what is happening to the youngest victims of Syria's two-year conflict.

According to statistics compiled by the charity Save the Children, one third of Syrian youngsters have either been kicked, hit or actually shot since President Bashar al-Assad ordered a crackdown on his political enemies in March 2011.

Issuing their findings from Amman, Jordan, Save the Children’s Saba Mubaslat said that children are arriving at refugee camps traumatized by their experiences in Syria with no end in sight to the civil war that has cost more than 70,000 lives and will force a million people to leave their homeland.

Mubaslat says that besides physical abuse, armed groups are turning young boys into porters, runners and even human shields.

Meanwhile, sexual abuse is also prevalent, with stories of many young girls being married off to men because their parents believe it will keep them from being violated.

The Syrian conflict is also causing other brutal side effects of continued warfare, including malnutrition and disease, often from unsafe water supplies.

This bleak assessment coincides with an earlier United Nations Children’s Fund report that claims two million youngsters, close to half of Syria's under-18 population, are in desperate need of assistance.

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US Intelligence Chief Warns of Desperation Moves by Syria

Mark Wilson/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- The U.S. director of national intelligence warned on Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may be preparing to use chemical weapons in a last-ditch effort to hold onto power.

James Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that "the opposition is gaining in strength; it is gaining territory.  At the same time, the regime is experiencing shortages in manpower and logistics."

Clapper's statements underscore what international observers have been saying for some time that the longer the conflict lasts, the greater the chances al-Assad won't last.

However, the Syrian president could presumably strike back at opposition forces with biological and chemical weapons, a move the Obama administration finds untenable although the White House hasn't revealed what the U.S. response would be if that happens.

Adding to the confusion of the two-year conflict that has cost well over 70,000 lives is the rise of al-Qaeda’s al-Nusrah affiliate in Syria, which is mixed in with pro-democratic forces with decidedly different goals.

Clapper says that al-Nusrah has been able to ingratiate itself with ordinary Syrians because of its talent for providing essential services as people cope with a deepening humanitarian disaster.

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UN Group Says Syria Using Militia to Incite Sectarian Warfare

JOSEPH EID/AFP/Getty Images(GENEVA) -- A United Nations inquiry team has charged that the Syrian government is staging sectarian warfare by utilizing local militias called Popular Committees.

In a statement Monday, commission head Paulo Pinheiro declared, "Mass killings allegedly perpetrated by Popular Committees have at times taken on sectarian overtones."

Generally, President Bashar al-Assad's regime has allegedly used Shabbiha militias to commit various atrocities against civilians as the two-year war widens.

However, in its latest report to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, the inquiry team said the Popular Committee is different by mirroring "the ethnic, religious and class composition of the neighborhoods they protect."

Commission member Vitit Muntarbhorn added, "Some groups are exercising…civilian authority without due process of law, stressing that while the commission has listed 20 full-out massacres carried out by both sides, there have been “hundreds and hundreds of unlawful killings."

Since the U.N. cannot directly contact anyone in Damascus because of a news blackout, the inquiry team relied on testimonies from more than 1,500 refugees and exiles to compile its latest report.

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Britain to Provide Armored Vehicles to Syrian Rebels

Scott Peterson/Getty Images(LONDON) -- While stopping short of offering weapons, Britain has announced its intention to provide non-lethal support to the rebels battling government forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The millions of dollars' worth of support includes armored vehicles, body armor, search and rescue equipment, communications equipment and disease-prevention materials.

Foreign Secretary William Hague told Britain’s Parliament on Wednesday that the aid was a “necessary, proportionate and lawful" response to "extreme human suffering.”

Hague told Parliament the Syrian people were in “dire need” of help and the U.K. could not “look the other way” in the face of the escalating humanitarian crisis.

United Nations figures show two million people have been internally displaced, while another 400,000 have fled abroad since the start of this year.

Some members of Parliament expressed concern that Britain might be drifting towards military intervention in Syria.

Hague stated, “No Western government is advocating military intervention of Western nations into the conflict in Syria.  The discussion is entirely focused on the degree of assistance that can and should be delivered to the opposition.”

Still, he refused to rule out the possibility of military intervention in the future.

“In our view, if a political solution to the crisis in Syria is not found and the conflict continues, we and the rest of the E.U. will have to be ready to move further, and we should not rule out any option for saving lives,” Hague told Parliament.

The leader of the Free Syrian Army, Gen. Salim Idriss, who defected from forces loyal to Assad last year, told the BBC that opposition forces desperately needed weapons and ammunition.  He called on the European Union to lift its current arms embargo

The two-year-long conflict has claimed some 70,000 lives.

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Syrian Rebels Detain Twenty UN Peacekepers

Stockbyte/Thinkstock(JAMLAH, Syria) -- Twenty U.N. peacekeepers on the Syrian side of Golan Heights have been detained by a group of armed rebel fighters, the United Nations said today.

A spokeswoman for Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said in a statement that the observers -- reportedly from the Philippines -- were on a regular supply mission and were stopped near an observation post that had been damaged during heavy fighting in the nearby village of Jamlah.

The U.N. convoy was taken by a group known as the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade. The group says they will hold the observers until the Syrian army withdraws from the outskirts of Jamlah.

"If no withdrawal is made within 24 hours we will treat them as prisoners," a rebel spokesman said in a video posted online. The rebels have not threatened to kill the U.N. observers, and for now are treating them “as guests in our village.”

"The members of the Security Council demanded the unconditional and immediate release of all the detained U.N. peacekeepers and called upon all parties to cooperate with UNDOF in good faith to enable it to operate freely and to ensure full security of its personnel," a U.N. spokesperson said.

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One Million Syrians Have Fled Country, UN Says

BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images(GENEVA) -- As expected, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced on Wednesday that the number of Syrians who have fled the country, which has been embroiled in a bloody two-year civil war that has cost more than 70,000 lives, has reached one million.

In a statement, António Guterres said, "With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiralling towards full-scale disaster.  We are doing everything we can to help, but the international humanitarian response capacity is dangerously stretched.  This tragedy has to be stopped."

The commissioner had predicted the toll would hit the one million mark last week.

The UNHCR says more than 400,000 Syrians have become refugees since the beginning of the year, with the majority fleeing to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt.

Those neighboring countries have been greatly impacted by the mass exodus, Guterres says.  Lebanon has seen its population rise by as much as 10 percent, while Jordan's energy, water, health and education services have been severely strained.  Turkey, meanwhile, has already invested over $600 million establishing 17 refugee camps, with more planned.

"These countries should not only be recognized for their unstinting commitment to keeping their borders open for Syrian refugees, they should be massively supported as well," Guterres said.

Guterres is expected to travel to the region later this week to visit UNHCR operations in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon.

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President Assad: Only the Syrian People Can Tell Me to Step Down

Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images(LONDON) -- Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is rejecting calls from many members of the international community that he should step down to facilitate the end of a bloody two-year civil war in his country that has cost more than 70,000 lives and threatens to further destabilize the Middle East.

In an interview published in The Sunday Times of London, Assad said “only the Syrian people can tell the president, stay or leave.  Come or go.  No one else.”

Assad blasted the British government for British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s recent comments that he would not rule out supplying arms to the rebels who are battling Syrian government forces.

Assad remarked, “How can we ask Britain to play a role while it is determined to militarize the problem?   How can we expect them to make the violence less while they want to send military supplies to the terrorists?”

The Syrian president told the newspaper, “The British government wants to send military aid to moderate groups in Syria knowing all too well that such moderate groups do not exist in Syria.”  Assad said his country was “fighting al Qaeda” and its associates.

In comments to the BBC, Foreign Secretary Hague said he could not rule out anything in the future: “If this is going to go on for months or years or more, tens of thousands of people are going to die and countries like Iraq and Lebanon and Jordan are going to be destabilized. It is not something we can ignore.  These are the reasons why we just can’t sit it out in Syria.”

Assad told The Sunday Times he was “ready to negotiate with anyone, including militants who surrender their arms.”

“We have opposition that are political entities and we have armed terrorists.  We can engage in dialogue with the opposition, but we cannot engage in dialogue with terrorists.  We fight terrorism,” Assad said.

On Friday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States would send food rations and medical supplies to the Free Syrian Army that is battling Assad’s government forces.  The Obama administration is still not ready to provide Syrian rebels with military equipment.

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UN High Commissioner for Refugees Warns of ‘Unmanagable Crisis’ in Syria

BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- The UN High Commission on Refugees chief António Guterres spoke to the UN Security Council on Wednesday and warned that a “moment of truth” was approaching in Syria.

Noting that the refugee crisis is “accelerating at a staggering pace,” Guterres told the council that the international community could not allow the situation in the embattled country to deteriorate any further, and that the resulting disaster could “overwhelm the international response capacity -- political, security related and humanitarian."

“This must not be allowed to happen,” he stressed.

The head of the UNHCR also explained just how much the refugee crisis had already escalated. In April of 2012, about a year after the crisis began, there were only 33,000 registered refugees in the region.

"As of [Monday], we had registered -- or given out registration appointments -- to 940,000 Syrians across the Middle East and North Africa," he said, adding that since early January, more than 40,000 people had fled Syria every week.

Within Syria, an estimated 2 million are internally displaced and more than 4 million are affected by the fighting. Three quarters of the refugees are women and children.

"The children pay the hardest price of all," Guterres said. "Thousands of young lives have been shattered by this conflict and the future generation of an entire country is marked by violence and trauma for many years to come."

"Countries of asylum have been very generous and kept their borders open, but their capacity to do so is under severe pressure," said the High Commissioner.

Guterres concluded that the situation in Syria was likely to "deteriorate further before it gets any better," and that if the international community failed to prevent these worst-case scenarios, it would need to further step up its humanitarian response.

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US to Send Direct Aid to Syrian Rebels

Scott Peterson/Getty Images(ROME) -- For the first time, the United States will provide direct support to Syrian rebel fighters, Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Thursday.

"I am proud to announce that the United States of America will be providing an additional $60 million immediately in non-lethal assistance to support the coalition," Kerry, who was in Rome meeting with leaders of Syria’s opposition council, said.

The U.S. has already provided about $50 million of non-lethal assistance to Syria’s political opposition, including providing communications equipment like radios and computers to advocates and political opposition councils.

The new aid will consist of more non-lethal supplies, like food and medicine.  It will be given to fighters who have been carefully vetted to have no ties to terrorist groups, such as al Qaeda.

"This funding will allow the opposition to reach out and help the local councils to be able to rebuild in their liberated areas of Syria," Kerry said.

Ahead of his announcement Thursday, Kerry acknowledged that the Syrian opposition needs more help.

Speaking in Paris on Wednesday, Kerry said the United States still believes that a political solution is the best way to end the bloodshed, but after two years of conflict it’s clear that the process needs to be sped up.

“That may require us to change President Assad’s current calculation.  He needs to know that he can’t shoot his way out of this,” he said.  “We need to convince him of that, and I think the opposition needs more help in order to be able to do that.  And we are working together to have a united position with respect to that.”

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Syrians in Exile Can Have Passports Renewed

BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images(DAMASCUS, Syria) -- Millions of Syrians living abroad have also been affected by the two-year conflict going on in their homeland.

Since the violence started, the expatriates have been unable to have their passports renewed, preventing them from international travel or visa applications.

Damascus has told Syrians abroad to come back and do the necessary paperwork although many fear they will either be arrested by the government or caught up in the warfare being waged by government and rebel forces.

Now, in what appears to be a major concession by President Bashar al-Assad's regime, those expatriates with expired passports will have them automatically renewed, thanks to the efforts of the opposition umbrella group, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

Moaz Khatib, the leader of the coalition, won the concession from al-Assad as a precondition of his group meeting with government officials in an effort to end the conflict that has cost 70,000 lives over the past two years.

Khatib is also demanding that al-Assad free tens of thousands of prisoners in Syrian jails and is awaiting a response.

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