Ghassan Hitto, who had lived in the US for the past 30 years, narrowly won a ballot to lead the nascent political body, the Syrian National Coalition, which has remained under pressure since its inception to offer an alternative to the totalitarian rule of the Assad regime.

Hitto, an IT executive, was elected from relative obscurity, having made his name in opposition circles over recent months, in which he played a lead role in a burgeoning humanitarian effort that has led to increased supplies of aid delivered into northern Syria. However, another stated core goal of the interim administration — to unite opposition interests that have largely remained disparate and factionalised — remains unfulfilled, to the chagrin of Arab and western states who have conditioned their backing on clear lines of command and control being established.

Hitto’s appointment generated little interest inside Syria, where rebel groups remain engaged in a bitter fight with regime forces for control of the country’s key cities. Political efforts have been largely derided by the myriad opposition fighters, who claim they have done little to change the situation on the ground.

With the civil war into its third year and much of the nationwide battlefield now in stalemate, a consensus is emerging in rebel circles that a more unified effort is necessary to shift the balance in its favour.

Hitto said: “We will work to return all Syrian refugees to the freed provinces.” He was referring to the rural north and east of the country, which have been in rebel hands for close to six months. In a direct message to Syrian military leaders, he added: “We urge all of the commanders in the regime’s military to defect and join the civilians.”

He also called for the opposition coalition to be given a seat at the UN and on other international bodies, such as the Arab League, which suspended Syria, a founding member, after the violent state response to the uprising launched more than two years ago.

He said the Syrian National Coalition was “a legitimate representative of the Syrian people” and refused to enter a dialogue with the regime — a key demand of stakeholders, such as Russia, which remains strongly supportive of President Bahsar al-Assad.

The embattled Syrian leader last week told a Lebanese delegation in Damascus that the regime remained on the front foot militarily, despite some defeats in key parts of the country. He acknowledged the heavy economic toll the war had taken on Syria, but insisted it could ride out its troubles. The conflict has seen an exodus of at least two million people, around one million of whom are registered as refugees in neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon and Syria.

Lebanon continues to buckle under the strain of its powerful neighbour’s woes, amid which Syrian jets fired rockets into an area three miles inside Lebanese borders on Monday, for the first time since the war began. The rockets hit an area near the border town of Arsal in the Bekaa Valley, which has been used at times to smuggle opposition fighters and weapons over the frontier.

They caused no injuries, but drew widespread condemnation from the US and France, both of which described the attack as a “serious violation” of Lebanon’s sovereignty. Elsewhere in Lebanon, authorities are trying to contain the fallout from an assault on four Sunni sheikhs, which has stoked sectarian tensions that have been simmering for many months. The chief of the
Lebanese Army, Jean Kahwagi, said on Tuesday the country had passed through one of its “direst days”, referring to the attack, which led to two of the sheikhs being admitted to hospital.

Meanwhile, in Aleppo, regime and opposition groups are accusing each other of firing rockets loaded with chemicals into an opposition-held neighbourhood. The Khan al-Asal area was hit by a large ballistic rocket on Tuesday morning, witnesses said. The region was seized from regime forces during the past fortnight.

Rebel groups in Aleppo strongly denied responsibility for the attack. “These are our own people,” a commander of the largest militia in the city, Liwa al-Tawheed, said via Skype. “We do not have scuds, we do not have chemicals. If we had either we would not even use them on an enemy.”

Syrian state media alleged the attack had killed 16 people and wounded about 90.

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Rebel commanders who fight under the Free Syrian Army banner say they have become increasingly angered by the behaviour of jihadist groups, especially the Al Qaeda-aligned Jabhat al Nusra, who they say aim to hijack the goals of the revolution.

The rising tensions are palpable in the countryside near Aleppo, which has become a stronghold for the well-armed and highly motivated jihadists, many of whom espouse the Bin Laden worldview and see Syria as a theatre in which to conduct a global jihad.

Syrian rebel groups, on the other hand, maintain that their goals are nationalistic and not aimed at imposing Islamic fundamentalism on society if and when the Assad regime falls.

Fighting between the well-armed jihadists and the regular units who accepted their help from late last summer would mark a dramatic escalation in the conflict that has claimed in excess of 60,000 lives. However, commanders in the north say such an outcome now appears unavoidable.

“We will fight them on day two after Assad falls,” said one senior commander. “Until then we will no longer work with them.”

In recent weeks, Liwa al-Tawheed and other militias who form part of the overall Free Syrian Army brand have started conducting their own operations without inviting Al Nusra to join them.

A raid on an infantry school north of Aleppo in mid-December was one such occasion, as are ongoing attacks against Battalion 80 on the outskirts of the city’s international airport and a military base to the east, known as Querres.

“They are not happy with us,” the rebel commander said. “But they had been hoarding all their weapons anyway.”

Another significant issue for rebel leaders is what to do with state assets that have now fallen into the hands of the opposition.

“They see stealing things that used to belong to the government, like copper factories, or any factory, as no problem,” said the rebel commander. “They are selling it to the Turks and using the money for themselves. This is wrong. This is money for the people.”

Jabhat al Nusra does not eschew its links to Al Qaeda, or the fact that many of its members are veterans of the insurgency against US forces in Iraq, which morphed into a sectarian war between Sunni and Shia Muslims.

In interviews, the group’s members say they have learned lessons from Iraq, which saw them battered to the point of strategic defeat by a combination of a sustained push by US and Iraqi forces and a rebellion by Sunni communities against Al Qaeda’s pervasive and puritanical ways.

So far in Syria, Al Nusra has avoided targeting civilian facilities, or the country’s minority communities. It has also started an outreach programme to communities ravaged by almost two years of war.

The aid work has won the group some support in the north of the country, while also earning the ire of rebel groups.— The Guardian, London

Attacks on the bases, one north-east of Aleppo, a second at Mayedin in the far east and a third near Damascus, yielded a large number of weapons, which had been in desperately short supply, especially in positions across Syria’s second city.

The impact of the new weapons seemed to have been felt immediately along northern frontlines, where Kurdish groups loyal to the Assad regime were on Friday engaged in their heaviest clashes yet with rebel forces and jihadists, near the border town of Ras al-Ain.

Up to 30 fighters on both sides had been killed by nightfall, with the battle expected to rage throughout the weekend. Rebels and Kurdish groups clashed in Aleppo earlier this month but had since struck a detente.

Each of the bases raided had been among the last regime strongholds in their respective parts of the country and had in effect become fortresses in hostile territory. Rebel fighters, using captured regime soldiers as labourers, were seen carrying away hundreds of crates of guns, medium-range weapons and ammunition.

All the while, the most formidable weapon in the regime armoury — air force jets — were present in the skies nearby. The regime’s jet fleet of Russian-made MiGs has remained a lethal threat since they were deployed in mid-summer shortly after opposition groups stormed both the capital, Damascus, and Aleppo.

Their menace was emphasised yet again on Wednesday when a bomb dropped from a jet scored a direct hit on the main opposition-held al-Shifa hospital in the Shaar district of Aleppo, killing up to 40 people.

Witnesses to the attack told me of carnage inside the building, which is in the middle of a commercial and residential district close to the centre of the city. They said the hospital was no longer functional and that wounded civilians or rebel fighters must now be treated in makeshift clinics.

Among the dead in al-Shifa were trauma surgeons and specialists who had treated scores of casualties each day for the past four months.

“It is a disaster what has happened here,” said a local vendor, Khaled Homsi, contacted by telephone. “Did the (Israelis) do this in Gaza? Never. This is a terrible war crime and it must be investigated by an international tribunal.”

Syria’s air force is in effect levelling the battle field below, both with its bombs and its constant presence, which is taking a psychological toll on rebel groups that can do little to nullify it. Though in possession of a handful of looted anti-aircraft missiles as well as a small number smuggled from Turkey, fighter jets remain the most dominant weapon in the Syrian civil war.

Turkey this week said it would ask Nato to provide it with batteries of Patriot missiles to reinforce its restive southern border, where sporadic cross-border shelling has continued for much of the past three months.

Nato has said it will consider the request from one of its member states, in a move that has angered its cold war foe and staunch Syrian ally, Russia. The move is seen by rebels as an attempt to keep Syrian jets away from border areas.

Since the sustained border flare-up that started in late September, Syrian jets have seldom been seen near the border.

However, they were active earlier in the month above the border town of Ras al-Ain where Friday’s clashes were taking place. Turkey did not respond at the time.

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Virtually besieged in their homes since the early summer, his hosts hardly needed the warning.

Hassan brought with him evidence that he said strengthened the case against his highest profile target, Lebanon’s former information minister, Michel Samaha, who he alleged had collaborated with Syrian officials to plot bombings — like the very one that killed the veteran major general on Friday.

He died when a bomb in east Beirut blew up the car he was in during the rush hour, killing at least seven others and injuring scores more.

A feared spillover of the violence in Syria into deeply fragile and sectarian Lebanon had been edging ever closer to inevitable.

The melting pot of the region has barely been holding together as Syria boiled, its fragmented sects increasingly drawn into a conflict that the Lebanese had dreaded but could do little to stop.

The case Hassan had built against Samaha was highly unusual in Lebanon, where bigwigs are rarely taken on. Those such as Samaha with powerful connections are virtually untouchable.

This case was different, Hassan said. Not just because of the weight of evidence against the accused, who had allegedly been taped by an aide acknowledging that he had been given explosives by the Syrian national intelligence chief, Ali Mamlouk.

Added to that were the former minister’s allegedly incriminating phone calls: he had apparently recorded his key conversations, then downloaded them to his computer. Prosecution briefs rarely come stronger.

Syrian officials made no secret of their demand for Samaha to be freed and the case against him dropped. But Hassan defied them, a move deemed crazy by his detractors and seen as an act of nation-building by his supporters, who saw the crumbling of power in Syria as an overdue chance for Lebanon to assert its sovereignty against its interfering neighbour.

Western officials in Beirut were heartened by Hassan’s doggedness, with some senior diplomats believing that international arrest warrants against members of the Syrian inner sanctum could soon be issued – an unprecedented act.

Before the Samaha case, Hassan was already the most important anti-Syrian official in Lebanon. As head of the information unit of the internal security forces, he was one of the country’s two main intelligence chiefs.

Military intelligence is the other key player, historically aligned to Syria and to the roughly half of Lebanese leaders, known as the March 8 alliance, who have remained supportive of Damascus throughout its civil war.

Hassan was a patron of the 14 March bloc, named in memory of the day that the former prime minister Rafik Hariri was killed in 2005. No assassination since then – until Friday – had so rocked Lebanon to its core.

Assassins have long been a part of the Lebanese body politic. As Syria has deteriorated throughout the year, every senior 14 March member has at one point been warned of a threat to their life.

Fears of the Syrian crisis spilling over into Lebanon have been a constant refrain from both sides – one of the few things that the implacably split Lebanese political class can agree on.

So far, tensions have been by and large contained in pockets of Lebanon – Tripoli in the north, where an Alawite minority lives among a Sunni majority, and in mixed Shia/Sunni areas of Beirut. The Lebanese have spoken of a newfound resilience where the various sects may not trust each other, but do not want to return to their own civil war.

The assassination of such a high-profile figure and patron of the anti-Assad bloc could change all that. By nightfall, fingers were already being pointed by March 14. Tyres were ablaze on Beirut’s main roads. Gunfire was rattling through parts of the capital
and Tripoli.

Hassan told his backers last week that he would stand on principle no matter what the cost. Lebanon is a far more dangerous place without him.

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Authorities in Beirut confirmed on Wednesday that an unknown number of Syrian men, perhaps up to 20, are being held by a members of a prominent Shia family, the Mikdad clan, in the Bekaa valley, not far from the Syrian border.

The men were seized in retaliation to the kidnapping in the past few days of one of their own inside Syria, Hassan Salim al-Mikdad. His captors insist Mikdad is a member of the Lebanese militia and political bloc Hezbollah, a claim the group has strongly denied.

The Mikdad family also says it has kidnapped a Turkish national after he arrived at Beirut airport. The man’s passport was given to a local TV station, which broadcast an image. Turkey has yet to shed light on the claims.

Wednesday’s developments, and the forced videotaped confessions that accompanied them, have stirred the ghosts of a past that most Lebanese are trying hard to forget. The turmoil in neighbouring Syria is showing that civil war-era enmity, long since disavowed in Lebanon, remains more of a problem than many here want to acknowledge.

So, too, do the issues that have plagued Lebanon since its own savage 15-year conflict ran out of steam: a political class that remains divided, a government that cannot assert its sovereignty and entrenched system of sectarian patronage that cannot allow a nation state to rise from the ruins of war.

“I don’t want it to become like 1985 again,” said Sajida Fahm, in central Beirut. “People want the Sunnis and the Shia to fight again. We can’t be led around like this. Where is the state?”

As the Syrian uprising has morphed into full-blown civil war, Lebanon has been looking for ways to safeguard itself from what many see as an inevitable spillover.

The giant police state to the east was seen by some Lebanese as a pillar of stability — despite the influence that was yielded to Syrian officials.

With Syria teetering there is a growing fear among all layers of Lebanese society that nothing can be done to save the country from turmoil. And this time it feels different to the civil war, from its eruption in 1975 to its end in 1990.

Even the Lebanese establishment say a potentially historic — and dangerous — shift is underway. “This is the unravelling of the Sykes-Picot agreement,” said Walid Jumblatt, leader of Lebanon’s Druze sect, in reference to the secret agreement between the
British and French in 1919, which carved up the Levant into spheres of influence in the wake of the Ottoman empire’s demise.

“We are seeing the end of what was created 90 years ago. The consequences will be very, very, grave unless they are managed properly.”

Neither state — especially Lebanon — has ever been truly comfortable in its own borders. Both are patchworks of sects that have often been at odds with each other and which are very much affected by regional dynamics.

“These agreements are breaking down,” said Jumblatt. “The Alawites could move into the north of their country and establish a homeland near Latakia and that would change the situation in Lebanon hugely.”

Lebanon’s Shias, long a minority but now more of a demographic force, are aligned to Syria’s Alawites, regarded as an offshoot of Shia Islam. Hezbollah, the bloc that represents most of Lebanon’s Shias, is heavily invested in the survival of Syria’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, as is the regional Shia heavyweight, Iran.

A partition of either country would be a seismic change in the regional dynamic. “There needs to be urgent action,” Jumblatt said. “Who knows what the consequences could be.”

From Beirut’s elite, but now largely empty, downtown shopping district to south Lebanon’s Shia villages, it is difficult to find anyone who does not fear what the next six months hold for Lebanon, or to find agreement on who is to blame. “Something is
coming,” said Tamir Ali, in the southern city of Tyre. “It will have to break somehow. It could be the Israelis, it could be the
Americans, who knows?”

A senior political adviser in Beirut said he feared that Lebanon’s vaunted resilience may not be able to withstand many months more of tension — let alone a rewriting of the region’s boundaries.

“The Shias and Sunnis don’t want to fight each other,” he said. “I’m convinced of that. But where is this leading us? And who can slow the momentum?”

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For a second day, rebel groups made use of captured tanks, shelling an airfield in the north of the city and attacking regime positions, forcing thousands more to join a mass exodus of refugees from parts of Syria’s second city.

Abu Hamza, a Free Syrian Army colonel from the Jebel al-Zawiya district south of Idlib, said that neither the FSA nor local communities could provide shelter or food for the thousands of displaced civilians. More than 250,000 refugees are believed to have fled Aleppo in the past fortnight.

“We can’t feed them,” he said. “We need help. We don’t even have food for our own families, or for ourselves. We cannot survive for much longer under these conditions. We are talking a few weeks.”

In southern Turkey, the general formerly responsible for Syria’s chemical warfare division said US and Turkish intelligence officers had questioned him about the weapons’ location and whether the regime would use them.

Adnan Silou, who fled to Turkey nearly two months ago, said he told his interrogators that the stockpiles of chemicals remained secured, but that regime leaders would likely deploy them if they were cornered. “I am sure about this,” he said. “They were a weapon of last resort and what will happen when that day comes.”

Silou, who retired from the Syrian military’s most controversial unit in late 2008, said he had been consulted by still serving officers throughout the past three years and was able to inspect an inventory of the weapons 10 days before fleeing. “Every one of the stockpiles was intact, although it appeared that some had been moved,” he said.

Syria’s chemical weapons included Sarin, mustard and nerve gas, which could be deployed via artillery shells, rockets, or aircraft, Silou said. He said making them combat-ready was a difficult process, requiring components to be brought together from various locations.

He identified the main chemical depots as being 10km east of Damascus and 10km south of Homs. “They are heavily protected,”
he said. “All of these things I told the Americans and the Turks when they took me to Ankara. I told them only the president could give the order to weaponise them. It would have to be Assad.”

With state authority in Syria eroding through defections and sanctions, fears have been raised that the chemical weapons may be used by the embattled regime, or fall into the hands of terror groups.

Syria’s foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi last month added to growing international concerns by warning that the weapons might be used against “foreign aggressors”. “Any stock of WMD or unconventional weapons that the Syrian Army
possesses will never, never be used against the Syrian people or civilians during this crisis,” he said. “These weapons are made to be used only in the event of external aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic.”

Since then, regional states, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel, have increased efforts to monitor the location of stockpiles. Israel has suggested it would send its military to Syria to safeguard the weapons if the regime fell.

The intractable nature of the conflict was brought into focus yesterday when Kofi Annan, the United Nations special envoy to Damascus, announced he would not extend his term when it expires at the end of the month.

The diplomat tabled a peace plan in April that had been the linchpin of diplomatic efforts to stop a slide into civil war. However, none of its main points had taken root, despite three rounds of shuttle diplomacy to Damascus.

The end of Annan’s diplomacy comes amid continuing gridlock at the UN security council, where three attempts by the US and European states to shift Russia and China from their resolute support for the Assad regime have failed.

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It follows two other choreographed strikes in the last six weeks that showed the ease with which bombers, assassins and their enablers can plot carnage in Iraq, more than seven months since US forces withdrew.

The group known as the Islamic State of Iraq is clearly the prime culprit. Its warning ahead of the attack suggests that it is not trying to hide its role as a re-emerging force. Years of being battered by US and Iraqi forces have not diminished the group’s resolve to wreak sectarian havoc and again become the lethal, pervasive influence it was from 2004 until early 2007.

The attacks were centred near the heartland the group carved for itself during those bloody years – a swathe of Iraq north of Baghdad, which an Islamic State of Iraq member said last week the group was trying to reclaim. By mid-afternoon bombings and shootings had spread throughout the centre of the country and to Baghdad itself, both also flashpoint areas in the insurgency that took centre stage during Iraq’s sectarian war.

The attacks were over before noon, seemingly to capitalise on the slow start to the day in Iraq during Ramazan, when Muslims fast.

Viewed in isolation, the attacks are serious enough: the destabilising effect on a country that shows few signs of overcoming deep distrust among its Shias, Sunnis and Kurds is worrying. So too the fact that the postwar hope — the unifying influence of the state — has been unable to stop a multi-city slaughter.

However, when seen through the prism of the rest of the region’s woes, the latest events take on an even more serious perspective.

Neighbouring Syria is fast sliding towards full-blown war, with a real risk of a sectarian spillover into a region that has seen hardening
sectarian positions in all corners for the last 18 months.

Like Iraq in 2002, Syria now is a dictatorship cemented by minority rule, with power drawn mostly from one sect that rules over a restive majority.

Unlike Iraq, however, Syria’s Sunnis have a lot to gain if the Shia-aligned Alawite sect loses power and influence. Although the uprising in Syria has for the most part been driven by a Sunni population tired of life under the boot of dictatorship, there are growing questions about whether an Islamic extremist element that exists on the sidelines could manoeuvre itself to centre stage.

Al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has made no secret of his view that the Syrian uprising marks an opportunity for the group and its offshoots, who see the Arab spring revolutions as a chance to get one up on the Shias.

The Islamic State of Iraq clearly agrees with him. Intelligence officials in Iraq, Britain and the US believe that some battle-hardened global jihad fighters have crossed from Iraq into Syria — ironically using the same routes that fellow militants used to use when crossing the other way.

Subversive groups such as Al Qaeda thrive in a vacuum. And whether by design or through the inevitable bedlam that the collapse of rigid order brings, a vacuum is fast becoming a major concern.

“I will not let this be their moment,” a senior Iraqi intelligence official said on Sunday (July 22). “They will not win here or in Syria. We can’t afford to let them get their hands on things again.”

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As the dust settled at the national security building, a transformation unthinkable only hours earlier was under way. Three of the regime’s leaders lay dead around the table where they had been holding a weekly crisis meeting: the deputy defence minister, Assef Shawkat, the defence minister, Dawoud Rajha, and the military committee leader, Hassan Turkmani, all key figures in the Middle East’s most ruthlessly efficient police state.

Of the three, Shawkat had long been the main target. His influence and power had been unmatched since the popular uprising began nearly 17 months ago. Shawkat was, as Syrian rebels like to say, the keeper of the secrets.

Every strategic decision about the crackdown carried out by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime that had steadily morphed into full-blown war had passed across his desk. He was an essential part of the inner sanctum and a symbol of its infallibility.

Within minutes of the assassinations, the regime had acknowledged them — an unusual event in a police state that has been reluctant to admit setbacks throughout the uprising. And an event that sparked fears not all was as it seems. Information warfare has been a feature of the Syrian conflict.

The announcement, made first through Hezbollah’s television station in Lebanon, then confirmed by the state television in Syria, electrified Damascus, where rebel groups had for three days been battling regime troops that had been considered to be the capital’s staunchest defenders.

Some of the units regarded as “diehards” immediately swapped sides, according to activists and residents in Damascus. Others are reported to have abandoned their tanks and fled.

The reaction was the same in all the hotspots of the uprising. A video posted on the internet showed hundreds of men defecting in Homs. Another appeared to show cars streaming out of Aleppo to reinforce the rebels.

In Idlib province, envoys from opposition villages travelled to pro-regime enclaves imploring them to join the revolution. The mood, bleak and full of foreboding only last week as shortages and siege began to take hold, was reported to be euphoric. Shawkat’s death in particular seemed to strike a chord among loyalists and rebels alike. “Stability with Assad,” was what we were supposed to get, said Thaer Nakhli, speaking by telephone from the Damascus suburb of Down. “He says stick with me — and he can’t protect the capital.”

On the opposition side, Mohammed Nazhar, a lieutenant in the Free Syrian Army, said a rebel intelligence unit had been working to co-opt key aides from within the regime to use as assassins. The message it wanted to convey was clear: who in the regime was safe if the most feared of them all could be reached so easily?

Removing a power base was always going to lead to a vacuum in Syria, just as it had done in Iraq, Yemen, Egypt and Libya. Swamping the capital with thousands of fighters and opposition supporters had clearly been a tactic in the aftermath of Wednesday’s strike.

The coming days, however, will give a sense of whether the rebel gains, as dramatic as they undoubtedly are, can be sustained, or consolidated. To get from this point to outright control of Damascus, as opposed to the bragging rights they now have in some areas, will need a continued momentum. — The Guardian, London

The pilot, a colonel, named by opposition activists as Hassan Merhi al-Hamadi, landed his MiG-21 jet at Jordan’s King Hussein military base this morning after leaving Syrian air space during a training exercise.

He is believed to be the first Syrian air force pilot to defect during the 16-month uprising. There are no other known instances of senior officials fleeing the country with valuable state assets.

Damascus has acknowledged that one of its jets landed in Jordan, after radar operators lost track of it at 10.34am. However, officials later said that the aircraft had been forced to make an emergency landing and that both pilot and plane would soon be returning home.

Though a symbol of the regime’s strength, Syria’s fleet of Russian-made MiGs has been conspicuously absent from the skies above the country’s towns and cities as the insurrection below has gathered strength.

Attack helicopters have been recently deployed near Lattakia and Homs and have proved decisive in battles against the Free Syria Army. Three helicopters refurbished by Russia were this week en route to Syria before the ship carrying them returned to port following an international furore.

The defection seems set to increase tensions between Syria and Jordan, which Damascus has accused of funnelling weapons to rebel groups that it brands as terrorists. Jordan’s monarch, King Abdullah, has twice questioned Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s legitimacy as leader, but has otherwise publicly stayed out of the revolt that analysts fear may soon sweep his way.

Despite widespread splits among conscripts and the lower ranks of the armed forces, defections from the senior ranks have been rare. Three brigadier generals fled to Turkey along with a handful of colonels and majors, many of whom have assumed leadership roles among various factions of the Free Syria Army. No members of the regime’s inner sanctum are thought to have left Syria.

Syria is believed to have around 150 MiGs, making it one of the region’s strongest air forces. It also has several weapons bases and a stockpile of chemical weapons. The MiG fleet is believed to be close to 20 years old.

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The third act, in what looks very much like the beginning of a concerted push to arm the Syrian insurgency, took place on Thursday when the previously gun-shy Syrian National Council formed a military council, which it says will act as a clearing house for anyone offering it arms.

Two probabilities have quickly emerged: the first is that a militarised Syrian National Council is unlikely to be short of suppliers. And, second, Libya is merely a conduit for the $100m, which was at least partly funded by Qatar to get things rolling.

Libya`s national transitional council has been quick to stress that the money it is sending is for humanitarian aid, which is clearly desperately needed in western Syria, withering under a regime offensive. No one in the nascent Tripoli government is quibbling about where the cash comes from. When asked how a state still in turmoil could afford such a generous gift, an spokesman for the Libyan council replied simply: “It won`t be a problem”.

Qatar`s remarks this week, as well as Saudi Arabia`s claim last Friday that arming the Syrian rebels would be an “excellent idea”, clearly shows a new reality. The Rubicon has been crossed. Hopes of resolving Syria`s raging insurgency through patience, or dialogue, have evaporated.

From the early days of the uprising against Colonel Qadhafi, Qatar was running more weapons to Libya`s rebels than any other state. Throughout the war, giant Qatari military transporters regularly disgorged tonnes of weaponry in plain view at Djerba airport in Tunisia, not far from the Libyan border.

The Qataris sent jet fighters to bomb Qadhafi`s armour and special forces to train rebels. They opened a military operations room in Doha and hosted the regime`s highest-profile defectors, as well as rebel leaders to whom they provided with money and mentoring.

As Syria has unravelled throughout the past year, Qatar has played another lead role. It was centre stage in the Arab League`s move to suspend Damascus as a member state and it has been increasingly strident in its criticism of President Bashar al-Assad, whom Qatar`s ruling emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, had earlier tried to engage. As was the case in Libya, its agenda remains unclear.

The change in attitude had been subtle at first: a gradual disengagement, followed by increasingly stern back-channel diplomacy. All carried out in the way of the Arab world: avoiding insult or direct confrontation.

Not any more. “We should do whatever necessary to help them, including giving them weapons to defend themselves,” said Qatar`s prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani, on Monday. “This uprising in Syria now (has lasted) one year. For 10 months, it was peaceful: nobody was carrying weapons, nobody was doing anything. And Bashar continued killing them.

“So I think they`re right to defend themselves by weapons, and I think we should help these people by all means.”

After urging political recourse and discouraging intervention for so long, the Syrian National Council is now also speaking from a markedly different script

“We wanted to organise those who are carrying arms today,” its president, Burhan Ghalioun, said, stressing that any weapons coming into the country should be vetted by the council.

“The revolution started peacefully and kept up its peaceful nature for months, but the reality today is different. We know that some countries have expressed a desire to arm the revolutionaries. The SNC will be this link between those who want to help and the revolutionaries. It is out of the question that arms go into Syria in confusion.”

It is also beyond doubt that a long predicted milestone in the Syrian conflict has now been reached. From this point, nation states, rather than black-market arms bazaars, loom as potential suppliers to the outgunned opposition. Such a prospect is alarming the US and Nato, which said this week it absolutely ruled out direct intervention in a war that nobody seems to want and most seem to fear.

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