[Johan Bollen]

Wat je niet zal lezen in de westerse propaganda mbt Syrië

You won't read in the mainstream press of foreign jihadists increasingly pouring into Syria to fight their holy war; you won't read that some ultraconservative Salafi sheikhs in Saudi Arabia are running their own military network inside Syria; you won't read how Assad's support during the 14-month crisis has if anything increased in light of the insecurity gripping the country; you won't read comments like those of the Lebanese Christian Maronite patriarch who said that while "Syria, like other countries, needs reforms which the people are demanding ... the closest thing to democracy [in the Arab world] is Syria".

You won't read how the head of the opposition in Turkey, a former ambassador to Washington, Faruk Logoglu, has said that what Turkey is doing hosting armed FSA fighters and allowing them to carry out attacks in Syria is "is against all international norms; against all neighborly relations ... It is a basic rule that countries must respect the sovereignty of others."

You won't read how armed insurgents used the Arab League observer mission's ceasefire to "reinforce themselves and bring supplies from Lebanon, knowing the regime would be limited in its ability to obstruct them at that time", or how they have used the Kofi Annan plan to prepare for larger attacks.

While we have seen extensive demonization of Assad, his wife and family, with the president depicted recently in the British press bathing in blood, you won't read articles demonizing the Saudi or Qatari regimes, or highlighting the hundreds of millions of dollars they have poured into political parties and groups, particularly Salafists, across the region in their "counter-revolution" against change; or the recent declaration by the official Saudi Mufti for all churches in the Arabian Peninsula to be demolished (which was not covered by a single Western mainstream news outlet); or as a senior Sunni political figure told me recently, the more than 23,000 detainees in Saudi prisons, a majority of whom (a recent report notes 90%) have degrees (to be fair, Chatham House did comment on this in a recent report that this "is indicative of the prevalence of a university education").

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