The stories coming out of Syria now are of suspicion, chaos and death. President Bashar al-Assad's personal jet left Damascus on Wednesday night for the coastal town of Lattakia. Was Bashar fleeing his capital? No. It transpired the plane was carrying the body of his murdered brother-in-law, Assaf Shawkat, for burial near his native city of Tartous. In Lebanon, Sunni Muslims were already wildly celebrating his death. For it is Shawkat – his name actually appeared in a UN report that was later censored – who is widely believed to have planned and ordered the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, whose convoy was bombed in Beirut on 14 February 2005.
Hariri, a Sunni, had fallen out with Assad over Syria's role in Lebanon. Shawkat was the hatchet-man. Now the bomber had been bombed to death himself.
Sectarianism is biting into the Syrian revolution. At the end of last week, one Syrian told me that "they are bayoneting people in the villages around Damascus". Women, they say, have been raped outside the city of Homs – one estimate puts the number of victims as high as 200 – and the rapists are on both sides.
Read more: Robert Fisk: Sectarianism bites into Syria's rebels - Robert Fisk - Commentators - The Independent
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