Japanese trucker Toshifumi Fujimoto is bored with his humdrum job, a daily run from Osaka to Tokyo or Nagasaki hauling tanker loads of gasoline, water or even chocolate.

Yet while the stocky, bearded 45-year-old could spend his free time getting a jolt of adrenaline by bungee-jumping or shark hunting, he puts his life on the line in a most unusual way.

He's become a war tourist.

Fujimoto's passion has taken him from the dull routine of the highway to Syria, where as part of his latest adventure in the Middle East's hot spots he shoots photos and video while dodging bullets with zest.

He was in Yemen last year during demonstrations at the US embassy and in Cairo a year earlier, during the heady days that followed the ouster of longtime president Hosni Mubarak. Later this year, he plans to hook up with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But for the moment, he is wrapping up a week's tour of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, which for going on six months has been one of the hottest spots in a conflict that has cost more than 60,000 lives, according to UN figures.

He already spent two weeks in the war-torn country at the end of 2011, taking advantage of a tourist visa, but this time he has entered the country clandestinely from Turkey.

Dressed in a Japanese army fatigues and armed with two cameras and a video camera -- Japanese, of course -- Fujimoto heads for whatever frontline he can every morning to document the ongoing destruction of Syria's second city and one-time commercial capital.

Fujimoto, who doesn't speak English, much less Arabic, has picked up a few words, such as "dangerous" and "front line."

The only way to interview him was to make use of Google Translate.

"I always go by myself, because no tour guide wants to go to the front. It's very exciting, and the adrenaline rush is like no other.

"It's more dangerous in Syria to be a journalist than a tourist," he said, describing how "each morning I walk 200 metres (yards) to reach the 'front', and I'm right there on the firing line with soldiers of the (rebel) Free Syria Army."

"It fascinates me, and I enjoy it," he says, as some FSA fighters stop him in one of the Old City's streets to have their picture taken with him.

"Most people think I'm Chinese, and they greet me in Chinese," he smiled.

He takes his time getting his shots right, as the rebels he hangs out with shout from both sides of the street: "Run! Run! There are snipers. Run!"

But he ignores them, finishes shooting and casually walks away with photos that he will later post on his Facebook page to share with his friends.

"I'm not a target for snipers because I'm a tourist, not like you journalists," he told a reporter. "Besides, I'm not afraid if they shoot at me or that they might kill me. I'm a combination of samurai and kamikaze."

Fujimoto won't even wear a helmet or a flack jacket.

"They are very heavy when it comes to running and it's more fun to go to the front without anything. Besides, when they shoot it's fun and exciting."

Fujimoto said his employers don't know he's in Syria.

"I just told them I was going to Turkey on holiday; if I'd told them the truth, they'd tell me I'm completely crazy."

But though some might doubt his sanity, no one can question his financial foresight, which is rooted in the sadness of his personal life.

Fujimoto is divorced, and says "I have no family, no friends, no girl friend. I am alone in life."

But he does have three daughters, whom he hasn't seen for five years, "not even on Facebook or the Internet, nothing. And that saddens me deeply," he said as he wiped away a tear.

So he's bought a life insurance policy, and "I pray every day that, if something happens to me, my girls might collect the insurance money and be able to live comfortably."

Fujimoto doesn't make any money off his photography, and spent $2,500 (1,894 euros) out of his own pocket for the flight to Turkey. Then there's another $25 a day that he pays a local resident, who puts him up in his house and gives him Internet access.

In his week in Aleppo, he has covered all the battle fronts -- in the districts of Amariya, Salaheddin, Saif al-Dawla, Izaa -- and though he's shared many of the images he's captured, one of them has stuck in his mind.

He opened a file on his laptop to show the partly decomposed body of a seven-year-old girl in Saif al-Dawla, gunned down by a sniper, which has lain unclaimed for months.

One wonders if any of his daughters could be the same age, but there was no way to pry more out of him, as he wept every time they were brought up.

"I love children, but Syria is no place for them. A bomb can snuff out their lives at any moment," he said, as some FSA fighters asked him to join them in Saleheddin and he ambled off down the street toward the sound of fighting.

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Let's call it what it is: a proxy war.

Ben Brumfield of CNN reported that U.S. troops arrived in Turkey today to man Patriot missile systems. The systems themselves are officially NATO property, but the people with the finger on the trigger are decidedly American.

From Brumfield's report:

In response [to Assad launching Scud-B missiles on Allepo], the U.S., Germany and the Netherlands deployed Patriot air defense missiles to the border region to intercept any Syrian ballistic missiles.

Just across the border, manning similar systems, Russian military officers "pose a challenge" to U.S. intervention, according to the Guardian. It's more than a "challenge," it means that if Assad drops chems, and the U.S. launches an assault, America will see Russia on the battlefield.

Though Russia denies sending troops and resources to Syria (actually, they called the idea "nonsense" and said their Navy ships were rescuing Russian nationals), the country has a long history of arms shipments to Syria — it's become almost reflexive.

There's little reason they shouldn't arm the Syrians after Obama came out last month and said that America has plans to ship heavy weapons systems from Libya to rebels in Syria.

The administration's announcement came following a thwarted attempt by Russia to fly supplies (and personnel) in to the embattled Assad regime using a Syrian jet liner. Turkey, likely reacting to pressure from the U.S., forced down the Syrian passenger plane over its air space in order to search them for "heavy weapons."

The U.S. is also training Syrian rebel commandos in Jordan, which explains why some reports of Russia arming Syria with 24 Iskander surface-to-surface ballistic missiles also noted that 12 of them were pointed at Jordan while the other dozen were pointed north at Turkey.

So there's a chance Russia and the U.S. will fill each other's crosshairs, unless the U.S. responds to chemical weapon use by allowing Russia enough time to exit prior to an assault.

Independent analysts have told BI that Russia is very focused on "self preservation," and that chemical weapons would trigger withdrawal of support — which is why Russia promptly denounces every report of chemical weapon use or preparation.

When the U.S. expressed concern, to put it lightly, that Assad's movement of chemical weapons constituted "mixing,""loading," and "preparation," Russia responded immediately, labeling the actions "securing" of the weapons, rather than prepping — and later referred to use of chemical weapons as "political suicide."

The suicide would be that Russia would pull its support, and the U.S. (NATO) would have a free hand with Assad. It would also lose the proxy war for Russia, who has officially expressed its goal is to 'protect Syrian sovereignty' and in so doing wear down America's power (and its ability to provoke regime change).

From the BBC:

By standing up for Damascus, the Kremlin is telling the world that neither the UN, nor any other body or group of countries has the right to decide who should or should not govern a sovereign state.

Then there's also the fact that arms shipments to Syria are big bucks. Without Assad, with the rebel Free Syrian Army in place, those contracts would likely go to the West, and Russia would lose influence right in its own backyard.

SEE ALSO: The week that changed everything I thought I knew about Afghanistan >

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Free Syrian Army rebels are laying siege to Assad's Taftanaz airport, which they claim he uses to mount helibourne assaults on rebel positions.

This video claims to have caught a direct hit from a rebel tank on a Syrian army tank at that airport. The rebel tank looks like it could be a T-54, possibly from one of the bases the FSA raided. There are a couple cuts, but there's no doubt the video was all taken in the same place.

Clearly visible, next to the stricken tank, is a Russian-made Mi-8 helicopter, a favorite of the Assad regime.

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In recent weeks international players have called for a political settlement to the ongoing civil war in Syria. It's been part of an attempt to end widespread violence and prevent a sectarian war between the mostly Sunni rebels and the rest of the country.

But negotiated peace would actually prolong the conflict at this point, according to Middle East analysts Bilal Y. Saab and Andrew J. Tabler in Foreign Affairs.

The newest draft from the Syrian opposition involves implementing a transitional justice system that would impose harsh penalties against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's inner circle while providing amnesty for Alawite supporters who fear revenge killings if the regime falls.

Saad and Tabler argue that a compromise would actually "perpetuate Assad's favorite strategy — honed over decades — of using the threat of sectarian war to make his adversaries in the international community wary of getting involved," so the best case scenario is a "decisive and complete" victory by the rebels over the regime.

But that doesn't seem to be imminent either. 

Last week Patrick Cockburn of The Independent reported from Syria that "Syrians face a political and military stalemate" since rebel offensives on Aleppo and Damascus "have faltered, but the government forces do not have the strength to push them out of enclaves they have taken over."

Even a massive transfusion of much-needed money, training and guns for the rebels wouldn't immediately have a decisive impact, and hopes that Assad's hardline inner circle will defect have waned.

Cockburn noted that the 21-month conflict "long ago reached the stage of what in Northern Ireland we used to call 'the politics of the last atrocity,' in which too much blood is being spilled to allow for negotiation and compromise."

Nevertheless, Cockburn concluded that barring full-scale foreign intervention, "a negotiated settlement is becoming inevitable though it may be a long time coming."

Joshua Landia, a Syria expert who argued that Assad could eventually flee to his ancestral homeland, believes that Assad could hold on to power into 2014 given that he has barricaded the major cities and is bombing less important neighborhoods that rebels capture while both the rebels and their international backers lack a cohesive plan to topple the regime.

The deteriorating situation —which has claimed more than 60,000 lives— and lack of concrete actions to curb the violence led UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay to say that the international community has "fiddled at the edges while Syria burns."

SEE ALSO: The US Is Waging An All-Out Proxy War With Russia In Syria

The Gaza And Syria Conflicts Highlight A Complex Web Of Alliances In The Middle East

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Arab Spring: Time from protests beginning to the president resigning or being killed

Egypt: 17 days

Tunisia: 28 days

Libya: 8 months

Yemen: 9.5 months

Syria: 22 months and counting

There’s a little variation there, but one of these things is, far and away, not like the others. Plenty of analysts have addressed this issue from a political perspective (e.g. see pieces by Landis, Hof, and Haddad, among many others), but the long and short of it is that the Syrian regime does not feel that the rebels pose a valid enough threat to force President al-Assad to step down. There are a myriad of factors involved in that, but from a politico-cultural perspective, I would say a decent bit of that is that the rebels do not really have a popular mandate any more than the government does. With the media that we receive outside of Syria, it is easy to assume that the uprising is a massively popular one, but the long duration of the conflict implies that we are seeing only a very limited part of the story.

My guess is that many, if not most, Syrians are in fact bystanders. And their non-involvement reflects years of similar non-involvement in overtly political affairs, meaning that as it always has, standing by supports the status quo of Asad’s rule. But why? In part, because they’re afraid.

In the mid-2000’s, I spent a little over a year living in Damascus conducting ethnographic fieldwork for my PhD. I was studying political identities and nationalism. It really had nothing to do with being against the Syrian regime, because people not only did not resist the regime, many were complicit in it. They used wasta’ (“connections”) to get things done, they paid bribes, they worked the system.* And yet, people always got nervous the moment the word politics came up. It’s not that they were nervous about me—once they were certain we were in a secure location, they would talk their hearts out. They were worried about the eyes and ears of the regime, always watching, always listening. From the Syrian perspective, even if I had turned out to be CIA, they were certain that the one thing I was not was the mukhabaraat, the secret police.

Syrians were afraid of the mukhabaraat. Behind closed doors, they would whisper to me that under Hafez al-Asad, 19% of the population worked for the mukhabaraat. I’m not sure how that came to be such a universally accepted number, and the idea of one in five people being secret police seemed a little much to me, but they assured me it was so. Someone was always watching. They admitted, though, that many were not full-time employees, but everyday people who would report on each other, sometimes for the money, sometimes to get on the government’s good side, and sometimes out of sheer spite:

“It used to be illegal to have satellites for your television, but everyone had one. We just covered them up during the day and uncovered them at night. But in our neighborhood, there was one man who got caught with his. He was fined and it was taken away. He was angry that he was the only one without one, so he went and reported all his neighbors for having satellites to the mukhabaraat. Everyone lost their satellite and had to pay a fine and he felt better.”

And a fine was nothing. When the real mukhabaraat caught you doing something, you would be jailed or even disappeared. Everyone knew someone who had been scooped up and never heard from again. The fear was very real.

The paranoia wasn’t as bad under Bashar al-Asad, but people still felt there was a strong government presence out there, waiting, watching, listening. Syrians insisted that the government read every email and listened to every phone conversation in the country. In fact, a Kurdish woman told me it was illegal to speak on the phone in Kurdish because the mukhabaraat didn’t have enough people who spoke Kurdish to monitor effectively.

The secret police were terrifying, but at the same time not. In fact, I had the pleasure of meeting some not-so-secret police while touring around the countryside. They showed up at the Syrian man’s house where I was staying and introduced themselves. The next morning, they insisted on taking us out for breakfast at the best restaurant in the city and then paid for us to wash our car. One eagerly jumped up and down as he came up with suggestions for all the best local tourist sites and played tour guide at each. They then called ahead to the next town we went to so the guys there could meet us on the road and do the same.

Sure, from the system’s perspective, it was an excellent way to keep an eye on us, make sure we weren’t doing anything spy-like, and protect us if necessary (we were not far from where the lines of fighters and supplies were said to be sneaking into Iraq at the time). But on a personal level, these men were genuinely excited to play host. It probably wasn’t something they got to do very often and was a lot more fun than listening in to phone calls or reading emails or arresting people.

Fast forward to 2012. In the wake of current events, I decided to do a little follow-up research to see what people are thinking now. I reached out to my Syrian friends and asked if they’d be willing to fill out a short questionnaire—not on the uprising or the regime, but on their concerns about rising sectarianism. Having had plenty of public conversations about it while in Syria, I figured it was an innocuous enough topic. Of the dozens of people I asked, only three were willing to respond—and two of those have been living outside Syria for a few years now.

Only three. That is a lot of fear, in spite of the regime losing some of its grip. It’s hard to say who they’re afraid of, whether it’s still the regime’s agents, or whether it might be various rebel groups (and/or their international backers). Regardless of who inspires it, it is an old, ingrained fear. But one that people know how to handle—the best way to avoid getting yourself disappeared is to assume someone is always watching and so sit quietly on the sidelines and do nothing. So there are undoubtedly a lot of people not fighting; they are just hunkering down and hoping no one notices them until it all blows over. They don’t want to get involved and, more importantly, they don’t want to be seen.

SEE ALSO: This week that changed everything I thought I knew about Afghanistan >

SEE ALSO: This is how we know the U.S. Navy dominates the Strait of Hormuz >

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Syria has armed dozens of bombs with sarin gas and other chemical weapons that could be used to target opposition less than two hours after President Bashar al-Assad issues orders, US officials have claimed.

Only concerted diplomatic pressure from the US, Russia, China and other countries has stopped the regime from loading the bombs on to its aircraft.

Satellite imagery gathered by Israel and other states in late November showed regime soldiers preparing the 500lb bombs in late November.

The intelligence triggered a public warning from Leon Panetta, the US Defence Secretary, that the regime would cross a "red line" triggering military intervention if it used the bombs.

Diplomats told The New York Times that American, European, Arab diplomats hurriedly coordinated warnings to Damascus to stop preparing the devices.

But America and its allies remain concerned that the bombs could be dropped by the regime at short notice.

The effectiveness of the weapons would depend on weather conditions and the terrain.

The US military has deployed 150 specialist officers to Jordan to monitor and respond to a chemical weapons attack by the regime.

Meanwhile it was reported that almost 100,000 people fled the Syrian civil war in the last month.

There are now almost 600,000 refugees living outside Syria.

Tens of thousands more have fled the country but not felt the need to register as refugees.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, has accused President Assad of sabotaging a UN-sponsored peace initiative.

"What the Syrian people desperately need at this time are real solutions to the crisis that is tearing their nation apart," Mr Ban said through his spokesman.

The UN leader criticised Assad for having "rejected the most important element" of a June 30 road map agreed by the main powers in Geneva that called for a political transition with the establishment of a transitional governing body.

"The United Nations remains committed to do its utmost, in co-operation with other partners, to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people inside and outside Syria," the spokesman said.

SEE ALSO: There Isn't A Ruler In The World Who Wants To Use Chemical Weapons

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In the past few months we've heard reports of advances by Syrian rebels that have put the regime on its heels, but the gains may instead be a tactical move by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Victor Kotsev of the Asia Times reports that it seems "government forces purposefully surrendered territories with little to no resistance ... to shorten their communication lines and to cut some expenses - but also in order to let the population taste a nightmare version of freedom which would conceivably lead many people to choose Assad's rule as the lesser evil."

The effects are both military and social: the regime relentlessly bombs newly "liberated" areas around Damascus — creating dire conditions on the ground — while rebels in the north and east loot buildings and attempt to keep towns running without food, water, electricity or money.

One fighter told the Guardian that rebels have become a huge problem around Aleppo as there are "battalions sitting in liberated areas who man checkpoints and detain people ... They have become worse than the regime."

The move has led to a political and military stalemate that plays into Assad's hand by allowing him to conserve resources for defending key parts of Damascus (and the roads that lead to his ancestral homeland) while also leading some Syrians to agree with him that the rebels are a "bunch of criminals."

Assad sympathizers with contacts in the regime told Emile Hoyakem of Foreign Policy that Assad's plan is "to survive militarily and hold key cities, roads, and infrastructure" through 2013 with the expectation that "armed rebels will come to blows over territory, resources, tactics, and ideology."

Syria expert Joshua Landis believes Assad will survive into 2014 and infighting among the rebels will only increase as long as they don't receive money and ammunition they desperately need.

That strange part of all of this is that Jabhat al-Nusra — the radical Islamic group that has become the opposition's best fighting force — may be OK with the prolonged strife. The lead author of a new analysis of the group, which is backed by al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), told CNN that al-Nusra now has 5,000 fighters and is willing to watch Syria burn to secure a foothold in the area.

"The longer the conflict goes on, the stronger they will get," he said.

SEE ALSO: Veteran Journalist Says The Media Is Totally Misreporting What's Happening In Syria

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The appearance of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad before his people and the world on Sunday was his first since June 2012, and it could be his last.

His speech, translated fully here, seemed an exercise in, at best, grandstanding, and at worst, disengagement from reality in a country where government forces are firing on neighborhoods of civilians.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said in a statement that he was “disappointed” in Assad’s speech, which he said did note “contribute to a solution that could end the terrible suffering of the Syrian people.”

To Assad’s many detractors, it seemed he was practically begging to be hanged upside down on a meat hook.

All the signs of late – from the Free Syrian Army’s capture of much of Aleppo province to the winning of international support by the opposition coalition – ­ have indicated that said meat hook, metaphorical or not, may be swinging ever closer.

The question merely remains when it will strike. And it’s a question that no one can really answer.

“In terms of the regime’s control over all of the country, I think that’s a limited time span,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute. “Whether it’s weeks or months, that I don’t know. Whether he will still be president of part of the country or a rump regime, that depends on the international dynamics and of the Alawite community.”

“From his speech, we can infer that he is still trying to extend the time,” said Sawsan Jabri, a spokeswoman for the Syrian Expatriate Organization, a pro-democracy advocacy group based in the U.S. “He is trying to head more toward war, so we are not expecting it to end anytime soon. We expect it will intensify in the Damascus area.”

“I don’t think anyone can give an accurate time frame,” said Sarab al-Jijakli, a spokesman for the National Alliance for Syria. “The only thing we do know is that everything that happens in the diplomatic arena will just delay the inevitable."

A diplomatic solution, al-Jijakli said, was out of the question at this point. “Everything we’ve seen from the international community in terms of diplomacy has only bought time for Assad to regroup.”

Jabri said that activists have been reporting clashes in the Damascus suburbs, and that the Free Syrian Army has been slowly and steadily gaining ground in the capital's metropolitan area. “He [Assad] is still in control of only a small section of Damascus,” Jabri said. “Basically just his palace and the surrounding area.”

Reports point to a strengthening rebel hold on key parts of the country. Jabri said that according to her map, 60 percent of the Aleppo province and much of the Damascus suburbs were now under rebel control. Al-Jijakli was even more optimistic: According to him, 75 percent of the country is in rebel hands.

We will really know the end is near when the rebels control not only the ground, but also the sky, Tabler said. “I think when the rebels can keep aircraft from flying into certain areas and bombing targets, that will indicate truly liberated territory,” he said. “That would be a milestone.”

“On the ground, we’re seeing slow gains across the country,” said al-Jijakli, who noted that over the last few months the Free Syrian Army has focused attention on combatting air power. The shift in strategy has led to a tightened FSA grip in key locations. “We’re going to see more gains by the FSA in the country, and Assad’s forces will solidify their grips in the center of cities,” he said.

Jabri said it was her understanding that Russia has begun reducing Assad's arms support, but al-Jijakli noted that Kremlin was still pushing forward with its own proposed peace process, and that based on the speech, Assad was most likely receiving assurances from somewhere that his interests were being taken care of.

“He’s losing, but as for how long, we can’t tell until we figure out how much supplemental help he’s getting.”

The “supplemental help” for Assad and his cause came in the form of political and military support from Iran. Sources on the ground told Jabri that Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has backed the Assad regime, has also sent another 5,000 militants into Syria, although it’s unclear how well equipped  these men are.

“His defiance is coming from somewhere,” al-Jijakli said, “and partly it’s that the international community has being coalescing around this notion that there needs to be some sort of slow transition in the country. We don’t believe that’s the way forward.”

“Without any international interference or pressure on him, I feel that he is now trying to manipulate [the facts] and is still defiant,” Jabri said. “He is completely not in touch with reality. He is still acting like a winner when on the ground, he is a loser.”

If Assad manages to keep his head but not his crown, the question remains where he will go. Tabler said there could actually be a few options.

“I think Tehran could be a place,” he said. “Venezuela, Indonesia, Malaysia have all been discussed."

“The problem is, if you take him in, it’s a liability for you in a post-Assad Syria,” Tabler continued. “And that makes it hard if you have business interests in a post-Assad Syria. I don’t think anyone’s keen to take in someone who’s butchered so many of his own people.”

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The other day we detailed how the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime may have purposely allowed rebel advances to consolidate resources and force the opposition to administrate the suffering cities and towns while government planes drop bombs on bread lines.

The tactic has shown signs of working — rebels are losing civilian support because of looting, arbitrary detainments and lack of basic necessities— but Syria expert Joshua Landis told Syria Deeply that it ultimately won't work since the 22-month conflict has become a battle of attrition.

The reason is simple: while regime troops can’t easily be replaced, rebels are drawing from a large pool of willing fighters — many of whom are jihadists— from Syria and abroad.

The most obvious example is, Jabhat al-Nusra, a highly effective Islamic fighting force that has extensive ties to al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and has grown to 5,000 fighters.

Landis, who serves as the director of the Center of Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said that the steady influx of fresh rebel fighters will make it "very difficult for the regime to hold on to Damascus.”

So while the regime has successfully barricaded itself into the city center for now, Landis believes that the strategy "will be devastating to the regime” in the long run.

SEE ALSO: Assad Made A Brilliant And Brutal Move To Beat Back Syrian Rebels

Why Aleppo and Damascus Are Doomed

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It appears Jabhat al-Nusra — the most fearsome Syrian rebel fighting force — led another successful attack as the opposition captured its first major military airport, Zeina Karam of The Associated Press reports.

But the al-Qaida affiliated group has also been accused of assassinating the northern commander of one of Syria's largest rebel group, according to Khaled Yacoub Oweis of Reuters.

The events, which both happened Wednesday, show how Nusra has evolved into both the opposition's biggest asset and its biggest liability.

After months of fighting at the Taftanaz air base in the northern Idlib province, about 700 rebels from "Nusra and other Islamic groups" commandeered much-needed ammunition, tanks and rocket launchers from the sprawling base.

Taftanas is considered the north's largest base for helicopters used to bomb rebel-held areas and deliver supplies to government troops. Karam notes that it's unclear if the opposition will be able to hold Taftanas as government bombed the air base on Friday. 

Meanwhile in a rebel-held position near Turkey's border, assassins in a white car gunned down Thaer al-Waqqas, northern commander of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed al-Farouq Brigades. Farouq blamed Nusra since Waqqas was suspected of being involved with the killing of a main al-Nusra leader four months ago and the leader's brother vowed revenge.

A rebel in the area told Reuters that "it seems a matter of time before the clashes with Nusra erupt"near the border crossing, which is controlled by Farouq and its Sham Hawks Brigade ally. Oweis notes that there was already tension between the hardline Islamic Nusra and opposition groups like Farouq that include a lot of defectors from Assad's regime.

Adding to the risk of infighting, the three large rebel organizations aren't under the umbrella of the newly formed West and Arab-backed rebel command structure. In November the U.S. designated Nusra — which has grown to about 5,000 fighters or about 10 percent of the opposition force — a terrorist organization.

The disparate groups will have to find a way to co-exist, as a steady stream of foreign fighters will be crucial to toppling Bashar al-Assad, who has barricaded his regime in the center of Damascus and is counting on superior air power to beat back the rebels.

SEE ALSO: Assad Made A Brilliant And Brutal Move To Beat Back Syrian Rebels

Intense Pictures Of The Syrian Rebel Group Blacklisted By The US

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After nearly two years of conflict and 117,000 displaced Syrians the UPI reports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family may have left the country to live aboard a warship manned by Russian security.

UPI cites an unconfirmed Al-Watan report that claims Assad's family is somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea and that the now semi-deposed president travels back to the country by helicopter for meetings and receptions.

Al-Watan is not the most reliable source. The fact their report is unavailable, and also unconfirmed by UPI,  leaves a heavy doubt lingering over the Assad offshore family charter. But, we've seen Syrian news downplayed before when nobody on the ground was able to "confirm" reports to the satisfaction of many Western news outlets. Every policy think tank expert in the world has an opinion on how the Syrian crisis will end, before it does, this is one possibility that slipped out through UPI:

When [Assad] flies to his embattled country, the president lands at undisclosed locations and is transported to the presidential palace under heavy guard, the sources said. The Russian-guarded warship provides a safe environment for Assad, who has lost confidence in his own security detail, the report said.

Assad's presence on the warship suggests he has been granted political asylum by Russia but there has been no official comment from Moscow, the newspaper said. Assad's presence on the ship could be a sign of looming negotiations on the conflict in Syria, the report said.

While negotiations continue stumbling toward a beginning, Assad can take little comfort in the rebels growing proficiency with surface-to-air missiles. Regardless of where he is, Man Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) have been appearing with great frequency among rebel forces and it only takes one shot to take down a helicopter flying in off the coast. 

Even if Assad is taking comfort in the balmy Mediterranean breezes offshore, that long helicopter ride back into the country would be pretty tense.

SEE ALSO: The F-8 was America's greatest weapon over Vietnam >

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Rape is being used as a weapon of war in the Syrian conflict to such an extent that many refugee families are citing it a as a primary reason to flee, according to a new report.

The study of the nearly 600,000 people who have fled the country since the start of the civil war stated it was a "staggering humanitarian disaster".

On top of those in neighboring countries, mainly Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq, 2.5 million had fled their homes but remained in Syria, while 4 million people were in need of help.

"The extent of the bloodshed, devastation, displacement and suffering inside Syria cannot be easily or precisely measured, but it is certainly extraordinary in its magnitude, and it is steadily worsening," the report for the US-based International Rescue Committee said.

"Millions of Syrians are in desperate need and have little if any access to humanitarian relief."

Their overall comments reflect widespread feelings that despite promises from across the world not enough assistance is reaching the often bleak and frozen refugee camps on the country's borders.

However, while there had been allegations of rape and sexual abuse before, the scale suggested by the refugees was shocking.

Women were in particular danger of being dragged away and raped, sometimes gang-raped, at checkpoints set up by armed groups. The report did not single out either side as responsible, but the biggest network of checkpoints is in regime areas and the most serious allegations of human rights abuses have been made against regime troops and in particular its "Shabiha" militia.

"Many women and girls relayed accounts of being attacked in public or in their homes, primarily by armed men," the report said. "These rapes, sometimes by multiple perpetrators, often occur in front of family members.

"The IRC was told of attacks in which women and young girls were kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed.

"The IRC's women's protection team in Lebanon was told of a young girl who was gang-raped and forced to stagger home naked."

With no side currently making major advances, and efforts of the UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to find a peace deal petering out, there is no end in immediate sight to the refugees' suffering.

A major regime push on southern and eastern suburbs of Damascus, which have been fought over for months, has killed scores of people in the last few days alone, including eight children and five women in an air strike on Monday morning.

The regime has taken to using an ever more extreme array of weaponry. In recent weeks it has begun employing Scud missiles – unguided land-to-land missiles – and, most recently, land-fired cluster bombs, on top of the aerial cluster bombs it has been dropping for several months, according to Human Rights Watch.

Rebels who seized an airbase at Taftanaz near Aleppo at the weekend, after months of fighting, also found a hanger containing a row of prepared "barrel bombs", home-made devices that can be dropped from planes and helicopters.

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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad remains as defiant as ever, even as rebels assault the last major government military installation in the country's north.

Ivan Watson and Raja Razek CNN report that more than a month ago rebels began sieging the well-fortified Mannagh helicopter base, which rebels say is the last piece of government-controlled territory between Turkey and Syria's largest city, Aleppo.

"If the regime has even a 1% chance of taking back this region, this is a base that they would then want to rule from," a commander of the rebel Northern Storm brigade told CNN. "Once it has been captured, the north will be liberated."

CNN notes that the siege has recently received reinforcements in the form of members of Jabhat al-Nusra — the key hardline Islamist brigade known as the opposition's best fighters — and that a Syrian special forces soldier who defected last week told CNN that the base has "so many weapons at the airport I can't even count."

But the offensive doesn't seem to be rattling Assad, who has purposefully surrendered territories in the north and around Damascus so that he can conserve military resources, rely on a ruthless bombing campaign and force rebel-held areas to suffer without basic necessities.

The Times of Israel, citing French sources of the London daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, reports that UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi told Assad that he could not defeat the rebels militarily to keep his grip on power, and Assad responded: "I will win the war, even if Damascus is destroyed."

The quote cannot be independently verified, but Assad did say on Jan. 5 that "all of our politics has to be concentrated on winning this war."

Assad's confident resurgence further reflects his reported strategy to hold key parts of Damascus (and the roads that lead to his ancestral homeland) through the year with the expectation that the organization of rebels will fall apart as different groups fight over territory, resources, tactics, and ideology.

SEE ALSO: Assad Made A Brilliant And Brutal Move To Beat Back Syrian Rebels

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Russians fleeing the civil war in Syria described miserable conditions on the ground, Thomas Grove of Reuters reports.

"The Free Syrian Army is getting closer. We've been left without money, without light, without water," Natasha Yunis, who ran a beauty salon in Damascus, told Reuters. "A bomb exploded near our house ... The children hid. Of course it was horrible."

Two planes carrying 77 Russians, all of whom had approached the Russian consulate in Damascus for help, arrived in Moscow from the Lebanese capital Beirut early Wednesday.

"These are people from different regions of Syria who were left homeless and without means to live as a result of the conflict," the Russian emergencies ministry said in a statement.

"It's dangerous there for Russians," one man told Reuters. "If the Free Syrian Army understands that a person is Russian, they'll immediately cut off their head, because they (are seen to) support Assad's regime."

On Tuesday Russia said that it was not planning a full evacuation of Syrians, but would help those who want to leave.

There are 8,000 Russians registered with the consulate in Syria but there could be as many as 25,000 Russian women who have married Syrians living in the country. Voice of Russia radio, citing Russian diplomats, placed the total figure at more than 33,000.

Evacuations may continue as the end of the 21-month conflict is nowhere in sight.

A political settlement is not currently possible as the opposition demands the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while both Syria and Russia consider the stipulation an insurmountable obstacle to peace.

SEE ALSO: ASSAD: ‘I Will Win, Even If Damascus Is Destroyed’

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At 40 years of age, Abir Ramadan joined the all-female unit of Syria's new paramilitary force, pledging loyalty to Bashar al-Assad in the armed struggle against those seeking to topple the president.

Dressed in camouflage, she marches at a stadium in the central city of Homs, raising her fist and chanting "Allah, Suriya, Bashar wa bas" (God, Syria, Bashar — that's it), the rallying cry of the embattled leader's supporters.

The stadium's entrances are guarded by women armed with Kalashnikovs, while others search cars at a checkpoint. They present themselves as "fedayat", which in Arabic literally means those who sacrifice themselves for a cause.

"My husband encouraged me to get involved and I liked the idea. I introduced myself to the recruitment centre and was easily accepted," explains the "fedaya" Abir, who has kept her day job as a technician in a radiology laboratory.

"Before I did not know how to handle a gun and I did not dare stay at home alone for fear of being attacked. I wanted to learn and to help. I volunteered because my country is suffering," she says.

The first women's unit of the National Defence Forces in Syria, founded in the central city of Homs, has 450 fighters from 18 to 50 years of age.

Nada Jahjah, a retired commander who oversees the training, says Homs was chosen "due to the tragic circumstances experienced by the city".

"This is not a normal war, it looks nothing like the October (1973 war against Israel). It is not the enemy we knew. This time the enemy is from our family, our neighbours and neighbouring countries supplying arms and spreading fundamentalist thinking. They kill and slay Syrians. This is a savage war," she says.

Since the outbreak of peaceful anti-regime protests in March 2011, Syrian authorities have dismissed the revolt as a foreign-funded conspiracy and referred to opposition activists and armed rebels alike as Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists.

The director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP the regime has created a paramilitary force to supplement the army in its fight against the rebels.

Dubbed the "capital of the revolution" by the opposition, Homs has been at the forefront of the uprising.

It was the first to pay dearly when Assad's war machine unleashed its firepower on rebel-held areas, retaking a large part of the city.

This industrial heartland is also a diverse centre of 1.5 million people, Sunnis, Christians and Alawites, whose sectarian fault lines have become entrenched with time.

In this charged environment, none of the combatants revealed where she lives, because pro- and anti-regime fighters use captives' ID cards to figure out their sectarian identities.

Sunnis, who represent 80 percent of the population, largely support the revolt, while 10 percent of the population are Alawites like President Assad, and the Christians at five percent mostly back the regime.

"The training includes shooting Kalashnikovs, machine guns, handling grenades, attacking opposition checkpoints, controlling our checkpoints, conducting raids and courses on military tactics," says commander Jahjah.

The force is voluntary and the fedayat serve four-hour shifts in the morning from or in the afternoon to permit the women to carry on with their normal profession.

Etidal Hamad, a 34-year-old government employee and mother of three girls, says while her husband also encouraged her, her primary motivation to sign up three months ago was "a desire to support the army and defend the fatherland".

In the stadium parade that marks the end of the training, the women shout at the top of their lungs: "With our blood and our souls, we sacrifice ourselves for you, O Bashar!"

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We've covered the possibility that the CIA Annex in Benghazi was conducting covert operations aimed at arming Syrian rebels with heavy weapons (SA-7 missiles to counter Assad's air campaign).

At Hillary Clinton's Benghazi hearing today, Rand Paul broke ground by being the first politician to ask Clinton directly if she knew anything about these operations; in particular, about a ship containing 400 tons of SA-7 missiles arriving in Turkey, and if America had anything to do with it.

Clinton sidestepped the question: "You're asking the wrong agency, I don't know anything about that."

Which is odd since U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal in November that "the U.S. effort in Benghazi was at its heart a CIA operation" and that most of the personnel at the consulate were providing "diplomatic cover" for the CIA Annex.

SEE ALSO: How Ambassador Stevens May Have Been Linked To Jihadist Rebels In Syria

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On Wednesday Russia blamed Western countries for creating the current turmoil in Africa by arming Libyan rebels, Timothy Heritage and Gabriela Baczynska of Reuters report. 

"Those whom the French and Africans are fighting now in Mali are the [same] people who ... our Western partners armed so that they would overthrow the Gaddafi regime," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a news conference.

The toppling of Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi led to "perhaps the greatest proliferation of weapons of war from any modern conflict," Emergency Director of Human Rights Watch Peter Bouckaert told The Telegraph.

Those weapons stockpiles were raided by both sides, and both sides had connections with radical militants.

In 2011 Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times noted that the main rebel group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), had formed a "merger" with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM) in 2007. 

And the well-armed Tuareg rebels who fought on Qaddafi's side subsequently returned to northern Mali where they, along with jihadist groups including AQIM, declared the Texas-sized area an independent country in April 2012.

Now France has 2,300 troops on the ground in Mali to retake northern Mali, and several Western countries (including the U.S.) are providing logistical and intelligence support for an offensive that looks like it will take a while.

"The situation in Mali feels the consequence of events in Libya,"Lavrov said. "The seizure of hostages in Algeria was a wake-up call."

A senior Algerian official told The New York Times that the militants who seized an oil field in Algeria last week bought their weapons in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

Russia has also accused the West of arming Syrian rebels in an attempt to topple the regime of Bashar al-Assad, and there is evidence that the allegations hold some truth.

Lavrov noted that the unrest across the Middle East could play into the hands of radical militants.

"This will be a time bomb for decades ahead,"he said.

SEE ALSO: The Dark Side Of The Arab Spring Is Increasingly Obvious

SEE ALSO:  How Ambassador Stevens May Have Been Linked To Jihadist Rebels In Syria

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A leaked internal memo shows how Saudi officials commuted 1,200 death row inmates under the condition they go and fight against Assad in Syria, according to the Assyrian International News Agency.

 From the memo:

We have reached an agreement with them that they will be exempted from the death sentence and given a monthly salary to their families and loved ones, who will be prevented from traveling outside Saudi Arabia in return for rehabilitation of the accused and their training in order to send them to Jihad in Syria.

Saudi officials apparently gave them a choice: decapitation or jihad? In total, inmates from Yemen, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Jordan, Somalia, Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq, and Kuwait chose to go and fight in Syria.

The news agency AINA also reported that an unnamed Iraqi official said Russia objected to the Saudi's decision to release the prisoners. Russia has several military contracts with Bashar al Assad and has continuously vetoed U.N. measures aimed at ousting the embattled leader; although their official position is not overt support of Assad, but rather to uphold the sovereignty of a nation.

The Saudis and Americans have collaborated in several different military and paramilitary excursions, including hosting Desert Storm in 1991, and weapons deals with Libya rebels. Often, these collaborations include support for hardened Islamic fighters.

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On Wednesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Western countries created the current turmoil in Africa by arming Libyan rebels to topple the Qaddafi regime.

On Thursday Russian President Vladimir Putin doubled-down on that criticism by reiterating that the West has sacrificed stability in Middle East and North Africa to their political ambitions.

Alexei Anishchuk of Reuters reports that Putin told foreign ambassadors that the Western-backed Syrian revolution, combined with the Libyan revolution, led to the Algerian hostage crisis that took the lives of 39 foreigners.

"The Syrian conflict has been raging for almost two years now. Upheaval in Libya, accompanied by the uncontrolled spread of weapons, contributed to the deterioration of the situation in Mali," Putin said. "The tragic consequences of these events led to a terrorist attack in Algeria which took the lives of civilians, including foreigners."

It's not entirely clear how funneling weapons to Syrian rebels led to the tragedy in Algeria. Nevertheless, Putin seems to be taking the opportunity to rail against the recent practice by Western nations to ally with radical jihadists to overthrow a sitting leader.

SEE ALSO: RUSSIA TO WEST: We Told You Not To Overthrow Qaddafi!

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Local people describe it as a distant growl, an ever-present rumble, just to the north. A reminder that war is now at their doorstep.

It has been this way for two months in Latakia. The port city had managed to ride out Syria's civil war, seemingly content in the knowledge that whatever was happening in Hama to the south-east, or Idlib a little further north, an army stood between its gates and its foes. Not any more.

The spectre of war is now a reality here in the staunch core of the regime heartland, as much as it is in the rebellious and ravaged Sunni cities to the east. The shells that crunch most hours into the nearby countryside have not yet arrived. But the fear that pervades the communities on the fringes of Latakia is now spreading around the city known throughout the country as the government's stronghold, and possibly its last redoubt.

"We are afraid, very, very afraid," said Loubna, a final-year university student and resident of the city. "For so long the regime has been saying we will be safe here. That nothing will happen to us. Nothing can happen to us. But people are leaving, people are dying. Death is so near."

As the insurgency has blazed into nearly every corner of Syria, Latakia has stood resolute as a distant and almost unobtainable target, protected by some of the Syrian military's most formidable forces and diehard militias. Business still ticks over. With the engine room of the country's ecomomy – Aleppo – having ground to a halt, Latakia has stepped partly into the breach, all the while remaining the playground of Syria's wealthy elite and a refuge for its establishment.

President Bashar al-Assad has a palace on the coast and many of his generals keep villas here. Members of Syria's fractured opposition, as well as western states calling for Assad to be ousted, often claim that Latakia will be a last redoubt for key regime figures and the Alawite sect, from which much of Syria's power base is drawn.

Over the past two months, the influx of Alawites from the increasingly besieged villages to the north is slowly transforming the city into just such a sanctuary.

"The wolves are at the door," said an Alawite refugee in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli. "Even Qardaha is not safe any more."

Qardaha is the ancestral home of the Assad family. It is where the late dictator and architect of Syria's uncompromising social and military doctrine, Hafez al-Assad, is buried, in an immaculately kept shrine maintained by an honour guard. It was never supposed to be under threat of attack.

But 12km to the north, in the mountains of Jebel al-Krud, a giant plateau that soars above Latakia and Tartous to the south, rebel groups now have Qardaha in their sites.

The frontline of the war for the cultural plain, and regime's heart, is several kilometres below them. Warplanes swarm here like mosquitoes. After dark, it is the helicopters' turn to roam above the ink-black plateau, the distant whump of their rotor blades a harbinger of the spine-chilling terror that inevitably follows, in the form of large barrels of explosives pushed from their open doors.

"We can tell when they're falling now," said a young, almost nonchalant rebel who had returned from the frontline that carves jaggedly between lush green undergrowth and the crumbling remains of a grey concrete village. "They are bombing Salma [a frontline village] at the moment, because they think that the battle for Qardaha will be launched from there. We're more interested in Latakia."

So, too, are jihadist groups, first among them the al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra, who are now congregating around 20km north of Latakia and making plans to advance. "There are around 300-400 of them," said a rebel commander in the hills not far away. "They have their eyes on the gold and jewellery stores. They are more interested in here than in Idlib, or Aleppo."

Not all those under fire are seeking refuge in Latakia. Some families, the few that remain in the battleground villages of Jebel al-Krud, are trying to make their way north to Turkey. In one such village, the custodian of the town's Orthodox church offered the Observer a tour of the ancient stone building that she so clearly cherished.

There was little in the way of an oral history, though. She slowly made her way to the centre of the church and, before she had spoken a word, broke down in tears of unrestrained grief. A Muslim neighbour offered her an arm of comfort, but her tears would not stop. Later, she said that her face had recently appeared on a US television network and that she could no longer travel to Latakia without fear of persecution. Falling foul of the regime is a constant dread among those on the move, and especially for those who stay behind.

Abu Yousef and his two sons have chosen to remain in their mixed Sunni-Christian village. They are one of only 10 families to do so. A church sits alongside a mosque here. Both have been damaged by shelling. "We hope it will work out, we really do," he said as he stood on a hillside, Latakia around 20km behind him and the sound of a nearby battle reverberating. "It's up to God. It's out of our control."

Conversations with Syria's newest refugees are often snatched and guarded. Trust is hard won, if it's obtained at all. Eyes are averted. Contact is perfunctory.

War has settled into an eerie rhythm in this part of Syria. While rebels are now at Latakia's northern doorstep, an advance 20km south to the heart of the city will take significant planning and manpower, perhaps more than the rebel army, drawn largely from the rural poor, can muster.

An invasion in any sort of formation is well beyond the opposition army's capabilities, even with a reorganisation of the fragmented leadership's command into groups tasked with coordinating and acting strategically.

"It won't be fast and it won't be easy," said a leader of the rebels' military council, who not long ago owned large and lucrative quarries in the Idlib hinterland. His business interests have since been confiscated and he claimed to be as penniless as the defector sitting cross-legged on the barren floor next to him, a private in the Syrian army who fled his post in Jisr al-Shughour last month. "I don't care what it takes," the officer said. "As long as we beat al-Qaida to Latakia."

In this room, a former Syrian army outpost, and in others like it in the northern countryside of Syria, the working theory is that Assad and his senior officials are keeping a corridor open to Latakia from the south-east – a line that traces the Alawite heartland of the country, past Hama, then Homs, and ending in Damascus.

"They are preparing for a worst-case scenario," one rebel offered as an explanation. "If it goes badly for the Alawites, they will want a country of their own."

"Do you think it's going badly for them?" another man asked. "This is going to continue for another year. They will wear us down."

Another man joined in, struggling to be heard above a now increasing din of voices. "Another year, we'll all be dead. That is too much. May God punish Bashar and all his family."

The conversation was now drowned by shouting. Goals and realities seemed almost irreconcilable at this point in the group's battle planning. There seems little way forward except more of the same grinding, miserable suffering that has come to characterise the war in the north.

"But we must get it together. We just must," the rebel leader finally piped up. "You in the west ask us why it is going like this and then you refuse to help us. Latakia is a price worth paying. There is no way Bashar can win the war if he loses there."

We spoke by phone to a merchant in Latakia on Saturday. He runs restaurants on the coastline and an import business through the nearby port. "Jet skis are on the ocean and people are smoking [water pipes]," he said. "Yes, there are planes and bombs in the distance. But for now it's our new reality. We are getting used to it. If they get any closer, we'll leave."

SEE ALSO: ASSAD: ‘I Will Win, Even If Damascus Is Destroyed’

SYRIA EXPERT: Assad Will Eventually Flee To The Coast And Rebels Will Battle Each Other

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