BEIRUT, Lebanon — The leader of the
Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al Qaeda
in Syria, on Tuesday proposed an
initiative aimed at halting the worst
infighting yet between the armed
opponents of President Bashar al-
Assad since the start of the conflict
nearly three years ago.
Deadly battles have raged in recent
days across northern Syria between
rebel forces and another Qaeda
affiliate, known as the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, that also
wants to depose Mr. Assad’s
government but aims to replace it
with a monolithic Sunni extremist
government that rules both
countries.
Angered by what they call the
tendency of the Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria to commandeer resources,
impose strict social codes, and kidnap
and kill opponents, rebel groups have
been attacking its bases and trying to
drive out its fighters from towns and
villages where they once held sway.
More than 270 people had been
killed in four days of fighting as of
Monday, according to the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, an
opposition group based in Britain
with a network of contacts in Syria.
The dead include 46 civilians, 129
rebel fighters and 99 fighters for the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Both
sides have also executed prisoners,
the Syrian Observatory said.
In an audio recording released online
on Tuesday, the head of the Nusra
Front, known as Abu Mohammed al-
Jolani, said the infighting resulted
from the “incorrect policies” of the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He
called for a cease-fire and the
establishment of an Islamic court to
handle disputes, saying the violence
could give Mr. Assad’s forces the
opportunity to regain territory.
“The whole battlefield, including the
foreign and local fighters, will pay
the price of losing a great jihad
because the regime will rebound
when it was so close to vanishing,” he
said.
While rebel forces have in the past
established Islamic courts to
administer individual towns and
villages, the movement has never had
a unified leadership that could
impose discipline.
The authenticity of the Nusra Front
leader’s statement could not be
immediately confirmed.
The Syrian Observatory has reported
that more than 130,000 people have
been killed since the conflict began in
March 2011. But the United Nations,
which has been saying for months
that the death toll has exceeded
100,000, announced on Tuesday that
it had decided to stop updating its
own tally, at least for the foreseeable
future, because of the problems in
verifying information.
“It was always very close to the edge
in terms of how much we could
guarantee the source material was
accurate,” Rupert Colville, a
spokesman for the United Nations
high commissioner for human rights,
told reporters in Geneva. He partly
attributed the decision to the
extremely limited ability of the
United Nations to independently
conduct fact-finding in Syria, making
it “increasingly difficult for us to
source and analyze the casualty
figures in order to update them.”
Suspension of a United Nations
update on casualties “will be a loss —
we will now have only disparate
sources of information,” said Hamit
Dardagan, an author of a report on
Syrian casualties by the Oxford
Research Group, a London-based
organization that put the toll at
113,700 as of November.
Mr. Dardagan, a founder of Iraq
Body Count, a project begun in 2003
to record civilian casualties from the
war in Iraq, also said the sectarian
nature of the Syrian crisis would
further complicate any data
collection. “As any conflict intensifies
and you have more refugee flows
and more people displaced, that
becomes more difficult,” he said in
an interview.
The number of nongovernmental
organizations able to work in Syria
has been reduced by the increasing
violence. Civilian groups that report
events considered unfavorable to any
of the warring parties have been
targeted; most recently, Razan
Zeitouneh, a rights activist who ran
the Violations Documentation Center,
and her colleagues were abducted
from their office in a Damascus
suburb. Parties on both sides also
actively filter information they
provide to the outside world to help
their cause, and government
restrictions and the threat of
kidnapping and death have severely
limited access for journalists.
United Nations agencies that do have
some access have also described
problems in verifying data. Officials
with the World Food Program and
the World Health Organization in
Damascus said recently that because
their officials could not reach many
areas in Syria, they had set up local
contacts to relay information to them,
but that verification was difficult.
Government ministries provide some
data, but they are out of touch with
branches in some rebel-held areas.
The United Nations reported some
progress on Tuesday in the
international effort to purge Syria’s
chemical weapons stockpile. In a
statement issued with the
Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons , it said the first
batch of the most dangerous
materials in the stockpile had been
exported from the country, loaded
onto a Danish commercial vessel in
the Syrian port of Latakia.
The statement said the Danish vessel
would remain at sea until the second
cargo of chemicals reached Latakia,
when it would return to load them.
The vessel was escorted by Danish
and Norwegian naval vessels, the
statement said, and China and Russia
were providing further maritime
security for the operation.
“This movement initiates the process
of transfer of chemical materials
from the Syrian Arab Republic to
locations outside its territory for
destruction,” said the statement by
Sigrid Kaag, the United Nations
official responsible for coordinating
the effort.
The export and destruction of the
most dangerous substances in the
Syrian arsenal, which the statement
called “priority chemical materials,”
has long been considered the trickiest
and most hazardous part of the
operation, which Syria agreed to
carry out as part of its pledge more
than three months ago to renounce
chemical weapons and join the treaty
that bans them.
Under a Security Council resolution
approved Sept. 27 , all of Syria’s
chemical weapons must be destroyed
by the middle of 2014. The most
dangerous chemicals were supposed
to have been exported from the
country by Dec. 31, but that stage of
the operation was delayed because
the war had made their overland
transport to Latakia too dangerous to
complete.
Reporting was contributed by Hwaida
Saad and Mohammad Ghannam from
Beirut, Karam Shoumali from Istanbul,
Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva,
and Rick Gladstone from New York.
Nusra Front, an affiliate of Al Qaeda
in Syria, on Tuesday proposed an
initiative aimed at halting the worst
infighting yet between the armed
opponents of President Bashar al-
Assad since the start of the conflict
nearly three years ago.
Deadly battles have raged in recent
days across northern Syria between
rebel forces and another Qaeda
affiliate, known as the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, that also
wants to depose Mr. Assad’s
government but aims to replace it
with a monolithic Sunni extremist
government that rules both
countries.
Angered by what they call the
tendency of the Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria to commandeer resources,
impose strict social codes, and kidnap
and kill opponents, rebel groups have
been attacking its bases and trying to
drive out its fighters from towns and
villages where they once held sway.
More than 270 people had been
killed in four days of fighting as of
Monday, according to the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, an
opposition group based in Britain
with a network of contacts in Syria.
The dead include 46 civilians, 129
rebel fighters and 99 fighters for the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Both
sides have also executed prisoners,
the Syrian Observatory said.
In an audio recording released online
on Tuesday, the head of the Nusra
Front, known as Abu Mohammed al-
Jolani, said the infighting resulted
from the “incorrect policies” of the
Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He
called for a cease-fire and the
establishment of an Islamic court to
handle disputes, saying the violence
could give Mr. Assad’s forces the
opportunity to regain territory.
“The whole battlefield, including the
foreign and local fighters, will pay
the price of losing a great jihad
because the regime will rebound
when it was so close to vanishing,” he
said.
While rebel forces have in the past
established Islamic courts to
administer individual towns and
villages, the movement has never had
a unified leadership that could
impose discipline.
The authenticity of the Nusra Front
leader’s statement could not be
immediately confirmed.
The Syrian Observatory has reported
that more than 130,000 people have
been killed since the conflict began in
March 2011. But the United Nations,
which has been saying for months
that the death toll has exceeded
100,000, announced on Tuesday that
it had decided to stop updating its
own tally, at least for the foreseeable
future, because of the problems in
verifying information.
“It was always very close to the edge
in terms of how much we could
guarantee the source material was
accurate,” Rupert Colville, a
spokesman for the United Nations
high commissioner for human rights,
told reporters in Geneva. He partly
attributed the decision to the
extremely limited ability of the
United Nations to independently
conduct fact-finding in Syria, making
it “increasingly difficult for us to
source and analyze the casualty
figures in order to update them.”
Suspension of a United Nations
update on casualties “will be a loss —
we will now have only disparate
sources of information,” said Hamit
Dardagan, an author of a report on
Syrian casualties by the Oxford
Research Group, a London-based
organization that put the toll at
113,700 as of November.
Mr. Dardagan, a founder of Iraq
Body Count, a project begun in 2003
to record civilian casualties from the
war in Iraq, also said the sectarian
nature of the Syrian crisis would
further complicate any data
collection. “As any conflict intensifies
and you have more refugee flows
and more people displaced, that
becomes more difficult,” he said in
an interview.
The number of nongovernmental
organizations able to work in Syria
has been reduced by the increasing
violence. Civilian groups that report
events considered unfavorable to any
of the warring parties have been
targeted; most recently, Razan
Zeitouneh, a rights activist who ran
the Violations Documentation Center,
and her colleagues were abducted
from their office in a Damascus
suburb. Parties on both sides also
actively filter information they
provide to the outside world to help
their cause, and government
restrictions and the threat of
kidnapping and death have severely
limited access for journalists.
United Nations agencies that do have
some access have also described
problems in verifying data. Officials
with the World Food Program and
the World Health Organization in
Damascus said recently that because
their officials could not reach many
areas in Syria, they had set up local
contacts to relay information to them,
but that verification was difficult.
Government ministries provide some
data, but they are out of touch with
branches in some rebel-held areas.
The United Nations reported some
progress on Tuesday in the
international effort to purge Syria’s
chemical weapons stockpile. In a
statement issued with the
Organization for the Prohibition of
Chemical Weapons , it said the first
batch of the most dangerous
materials in the stockpile had been
exported from the country, loaded
onto a Danish commercial vessel in
the Syrian port of Latakia.
The statement said the Danish vessel
would remain at sea until the second
cargo of chemicals reached Latakia,
when it would return to load them.
The vessel was escorted by Danish
and Norwegian naval vessels, the
statement said, and China and Russia
were providing further maritime
security for the operation.
“This movement initiates the process
of transfer of chemical materials
from the Syrian Arab Republic to
locations outside its territory for
destruction,” said the statement by
Sigrid Kaag, the United Nations
official responsible for coordinating
the effort.
The export and destruction of the
most dangerous substances in the
Syrian arsenal, which the statement
called “priority chemical materials,”
has long been considered the trickiest
and most hazardous part of the
operation, which Syria agreed to
carry out as part of its pledge more
than three months ago to renounce
chemical weapons and join the treaty
that bans them.
Under a Security Council resolution
approved Sept. 27 , all of Syria’s
chemical weapons must be destroyed
by the middle of 2014. The most
dangerous chemicals were supposed
to have been exported from the
country by Dec. 31, but that stage of
the operation was delayed because
the war had made their overland
transport to Latakia too dangerous to
complete.
Reporting was contributed by Hwaida
Saad and Mohammad Ghannam from
Beirut, Karam Shoumali from Istanbul,
Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva,
and Rick Gladstone from New York.
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