Syria is going downwards on a steep slope. The armed confrontation between the Syrian army and the armed opposition is sparing no one: 40,000 deaths, 200,000 injured, dozens of destroyed villages and various hundred of thousands refugees. The only recipe that regional and international big powers can think of, is more of the same. The script of war escalation is being written in capitals as Washington, Paris, London, Istanbul, Doha, Riyadh, adding new chapters to the Syrian war drama.

What preceded. Turkey, Qatar and Saudi-Arabia have been busy for a quite a while now with administrating support to the armed militias of the Syrian opposition. When UN envoy Kofi Annan seemed to be nearing a possibility to bridge the gap between government and opposition, the international community was only in words supportive, while Qatar and Saudi-Arabia sabotaged openly. They initiated a fund to finance the armed opposition which is operating from Turkish territory. Some principal actors within NATO saw this as an intermediate solution, as an alternative for a genuine military intervention that would never get full UN support due to the predictable Russian and Chinese veto in the Security Council. These militias proved to be less efficient as initially thought. The Free Syrian Army, the bigger armed opposition structure, was internally divided and was confronted with the growing influence of armed salafist jihads.

Time for a new scenario, based on a cocktail of deception and war propaganda. Early in October grenades fell on Turkish territory. Turkey accused the Syrian army and responded with heavy bombardments. On the international scene Syria was severely condemned. However, this could as well have been a so-called 'false flag' operation of the armed opposition hoping to provoke a foreign military intervention. Few people in the political and media-establishment asked themselves the logical question: why would the Syrian regime for heaven's sake provoke a confrontation with Turkey, a country with a powerful military and moreover a member of NATO? It seems at least rather absurd that Syria would run the risk of war with NATO.

But the scenario is obvious. NATO plays the act of Syrian aggression and will help 'poor' Turkey with the deployment of some Patriot missiles in order to “protect the population and the territory of alliance member Turkey”. The NATO declaration states bluntly that these missiles will “help to diminish the crisis escalation along the alliance's borders”. Turkey allows its territory to be used for armed actions in Syria, but is now presented as the victim of Syrian military violence. In order to convince the public opinion with the necessity of NATO involvement some drama is added. 'Unnamed military intelligence services' fear that Damascus will use chemical weapons. Again, the international scene is severely condemning Syria.

The bigger the lie the trustworthier it sounds. Copy paste of the 2003 recipe against Saddam Hussein. If a military intervention through the UN Security Council offers no perspective, change it into a defensive war against the use of gruesome weapons. No matter the lack of concrete proof or reliable sources to confirm that Damascus plans to use chemical weapons. It matters even less that Syria repeatedly did emphasize it would never use such arms against Syrians. Every word of Damascus is per definition understood as unreliable.

Next act in the scenario: reform the opposition groups into a National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, recognize them officially as the sole representative of the Syrian people in order to construct the legitimacy to arm them, as so often asked for by Paris or 'our' Guy Verhofstadt, actual leader of the liberal faction in European Parliament. Forget that the opposition remains as divided and infiltrated as before. The Syrian Kurdisch party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), talks mockingly about a “coalition of those who obey Turkey and Qatar” and in a common declaration variouos armed militias 'linked to the Free Syrian Army' declare they don't feel represented by the new coalition. Groups which chose for an unarmed opposition as the National Coordination of Democratic Change, are completely put aside and ignored. Its leader Dr Haytham Manna says on his website: “Militarization means our political and financial dependence of the military opposition, the marginalization of democratic forces and the reinforcement of sectarian extremists and Islamic groups (…). War is not our destiny. It is possible to stop the violence and we have to do our utmost to reach this goal. Firstly in order to save what is possible of the revolutionary values, secondly to stop the killing and destruction, thirdly to safeguard our future...”. But the latter thoughts actually do not fit in the script of 'certain' international actors.