Opposition Talks Say No Geneva Talks Unless Aleppo Raids End

The Syrian opposition said it will not attend the Geneva peace talks in January unless Assad ends his escalated assault on Aleppo.

Reuters reports that “the opposition’s Syrian National Coalition said in a statement that it ‘cannot in good conscience participate in peace talks in Geneva as Assad regime forces continue to bombard the city of Aleppo and surrounding areas for the ninth consecutive day.’

“Syrian authorities say they are battling rebels in control of parts of the city, once Syria’s business hub. But rights groups have condemned the use of barrel bombs – oil drums or cylinders packed with explosives and metal fragments – in particular as an indiscriminate form of bombardment.”

Iraq Closes Border with Syria

Al-Arabiya reports that Iraq has closed its border with Syria in conjunction with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s massive military hunt for al-Qaida hideouts in his country’s western desert.

“Iraq’s Prime Minister Maliki has been a strong supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and reports suggested that his government was facilitating the transfer of Iranian arms to Syria,” the network says.

“But as Iraq began to feel the spillover of the Syrian violence, with many Jihadists returning back from Syrian well-armed and trained and carrying out deadly attacks across Iraq, Maliki appeared obliged to revise his approach to the crisis in Syria. On Monday an al-Qaida-linked militant group claimed an attack on two Iraqi television stations that killed five journalists.”

Syria’s War, and Its Past, on a Street Called Straight

Rania Abouzeid has a haunting dispatch from Damascus in which she describes changes to the Syrian capital.

“The taxi pulled up to the curb near Bab Touma, and it was clear, even before it came to a halt, that this place, in the Christian quarter of Damascus and one of the oldest parts of the city, was not the same as it had been in the late summer of 2011, just a few months into the uprising, when I was last here. But then, why would it be?

That Syria is gone, replaced by a country of shards,” she writes at NewYorker.com.

“Damascus is still a city where the country’s multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic communal mosaic is on display, and, if anything, it has been accentuated by the influx of thousands of people displaced by violence elsewhere. It’s not like Baghdad, carved into cantons by a maze of concrete blast walls keeping its people apart based on sectarian affiliation, but it is a city of barricades.”

Syrian Electronic Army Strikes Again

The New York Times reports that the Syrian Electronic Army, a hacking group whose goal is “to offer a pro-government counter-narrative to media coverage of Syria,” has struck again, adding to its list of high-profile targets.

“On Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation dispatched warning notices that the S.E.A. was at it again, according to two people who received the notices, which included various digital clues to help companies block attempted cyberattacks,” reports Nicole Perlroth.

“On Tuesday, some members of the media, including at the New York Times, received emails containing malicious links purporting to be a CNN news article about the conflict in Syria. The emails, which appeared to come from colleagues in some cases, redirected recipients to fake Google log-in pages that requested their usernames and password credentials.”

Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team:

Washington Post: What Makes Syria’s ‘Barrel Bombs’ So Scary

AFP: Syria Calls US ‘One Eyed Pirate’

Reuters: Israel Tracks Syria’s Western Jihadis, Worried About Their Return

Al Jazeera: Displaced Syrian Children Celebrate Christmas