Persian Gulf & Middle East Military News, Reports, Data, etc.

Equation said:

$30 per bucket?! It better be darn good chicken for that kind of price.

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The Toronto Star , March 22, 2013, Syria’s child brides:

‘My daughter is willing to sacrifice herself for her family’

Refugee brides: Woman takes a cut to help Syrian refugee girls in Jordan find Arab grooms from all over Middle East

Nezar’s face is tight with expectation as she arrives for the meeting. She is a heavy-set mother of 12 and as she arranges herself on the small sofa in Um Majed’s living room she removes her black veil and the pious black gloves that allow her to shake hands with men who are not her relatives.

Um Majed sets down small cups of hot Turkish coffee to ease the tension. Nezar is a Syrian refugee and looking for a husband for her daughter. She lists the girl’s qualities.

“She is tall and pretty,” she tells Um Majed. “She finished the seventh grade.”

“There is one available. He is Saudi,” Um Majed answers. This is what Nezar wants to hear. Saudis, flush with petrodollars, will pay well. She has high hopes for this Saudi.

So does Um Majed who will earn a $287 fee if the two sides agree to the match.

Um Majed, 28, is also a Syrian refugee, a former housewife from Homs. Um Majed isn’t her actual name but a respectable Arab moniker meaning ‘mother of Majed,’ her young son. She doesn’t want her full name published because of her shame about what she does for a living: procuring brides, some as young as 12, for men as old as 70 from all over the Middle East in exchange for money.

Nezar too was a homemaker in Homs who arrived in Jordan last year. Her husband was a taxi driver but he can no longer work because he has a heart condition. Her son is badly injured.

“He was a fighter with the resistance army and they were removing a roadblock the regime set up on the street when he was hit by a missile,” she explains. “Four others died. He has had three surgeries and needs another one.”

Her daughter Aya is their best hope.

“My daughter is willing to sacrifice herself for her family,” Nezar says. “If the war had not happened I would not marry my daughter to a Saudi. But the Syrians here are poor and have no money.”

Nezar’s daughter is 17. The Saudi groom is 70.

Stories of men fighting and dying to overthrow President Bashar Assad’s regime have fixated the world but for women the war has different, troubling dimensions. Syrian women and their children make up 75 per cent of the 429,000 refugees in Jordan. The vast majority do not live in the camps set up by the Jordanian authorities. They flood into cities like Amman where they live on the charity of kindly Jordanians and aid organizations.

Many of these women are not equipped to support their families, having been raised to keep the home and hearth while husbands and fathers provided for them. The true cost of how the war is ripping apart the nation is evident in the brutal life choices Syrian women are forced to make to survive.

Grasping for the security of a husband and home, hundreds of girls are being sold into early marriage. These are undoubtedly forced marriages but the truth has several shades of grey: some mothers believe they are protecting their daughters from further hardship and violence, others are desperate to pay the bills. Yet their voices are rarely heard because their lives are lived behind closed doors, their private tragedies not shared with outsiders.

“If you see how Syrians here live you will see why they marry their daughters to whoever will take them,” Um Majed says. “People are poor and they will do anything to pay the rent.”

The surplus of desperate Syrian refugees means marriage has become a buyer’s market with some grooms offering as little as $100 cash for a bride.

The legal age of marriage in Jordan is 18 but some religious clerics will marry underage girls for a small fee. This puts the girls at even greater risk for exploitation because some of Um Majed’s clients want a temporary union lasting a few weeks or months after which the girl is returned to her parents.

In other words, it is religiously sanctioned prostitution.

“One of my brides has been married three, four times,” Um Majed says. “She is 15.”

Yet Nezar believes she is saving Aya from a life of hardship. What are her daughter’s prospects in Jordan where she has no right to work? There is little hope of the war ending and returning home. She will soon become a burden on her parents. No, a life in Saudi Arabia with a husband who can provide a home and children, perhaps send money back to Jordan, is the answer.

She admits the marriage market is hazardous. Most of the potential grooms offer a few dollars to leer at her daughter.

“You are already selling your daughter, you might as well sell her to someone decent,” she says.

Nezar cuts the meeting short. Aya is having belly-dancing lessons to increase her appeal to the elderly groom.

“I will take 3,000 dinars ($4,300) from him,” she tells Um Majed. “If he was younger I would accept 2,000 dinars.”

*

In the old days, the neighbourhood busybody, a matronly figure, was the matchmaker. She would appraise the unmarried girls on her street on behalf of the grooms’ families. At the Turkish bath, the would-be bride was paraded like a prizewinning filly: her mane tugged to check she wasn’t wearing a wig, a walnut cracked between her molars to make sure her teeth were real. In a society where women, especially unmarried girls, do not mingle with men not related to them, or even venture outside the home at risk of being labelled sexually loose, many families relied on matchmakers to find the right bride for their sons.

Um Majed raises a cynical eyebrow at this innocent archetype as she strikes a match and lights a cigarette. She became a matchmaker when she approached a local Islamist charity for food and the manager asked if she “knew any pretty girls.”

“I have 10 families looking for grooms,” she says. “Their girls are between 12 and 21. The grooms are always in their 40s, 50s, or 70s. They want beautiful girls, the younger the better.”

She pauses and takes a drag of the cigarette.

“The Saudis usually ask for 12-year-olds.”

As she sees it, life has become about exploiting or being exploited.

“I have to feed my children,” she says.

“What does freedom mean?” she asks. “We were living with pride and in our own country. I asked my husband this question. He said that they are Alawites and we fight them. But the Saudis are Sunni like us and they harass Syrian girls. Is this religion? Is this freedom?”

Her husband owned a car wash in Homs. Last year, he was hit by a stray bullet and after Um Majed nursed him back to health he joined a militia fighting with the Free Syrian Army.

“I now wish the bullet pierced his heart,” she says bitterly. “He abandoned me to fight and left me with the burden of supporting the family.”

Syrian brides have always been sought after, especially by Gulf Arab men. There is an expression which roughly translates as ‘he who does not marry a Damascene will never know a night of peace.’

The stereotype of the houriya, Levantine beauties with pale faces, speaking the melodious Syrian Arabic dialect and purveyors of a famous cuisine holds great appeal. A Syrian hostess’s reputation can rest on the balance between the olive oil and lemon juice in her tabbouleh salad.

In the Middle East, the groom or his family are expected to provide maher, roughly translated as dowry. If he is a good catch he will approach the girl’s family with a fully furnished flat, perhaps a car, and bank statement proving his savings.

Zayed Hamad who runs Kitab al Sunna, a Sunni Islamist charity that helps women refugees and receives funding from Saudi Arabia, says he receives 100 phone calls, emails and even text messages a month from grooms all over the Middle East looking for wives. Some are looking for a bargain.

“Some believe if they marry a Syrian girl it is cheaper,” he says. “I get approached by the brothers but I say it is not my responsibility to find them brides.”

He says it is a good thing as these girls will have more secure futures.

Eman is a typical Damascene beauty with her pale skin and hazel eyes. At 29, she is considered an older bride and has two daughters from her ex-husband whom she divorced because she caught him in bed with his sister-in-law.

Eman is tired of the war and its slogans.

“I curse the people who call for freedom,” she says. “But Bashar invited the devil to Syria.”

She fled to Amman with her girls late last year. All refugees are meant to stay in the Zaatari camp, a dusty, sometimes violent shanty town on the north border. The main drag is nicknamed the Champs Elysees and sells everything from shoes to shawarmas. Women dig small holes in the ground near their tents to avoid trips in the dark to the public toilets because they are afraid.

Eman refuses to live there. “It’s horrible,” she says. Instead, she rents a small apartment in Amman with her children, sister and mother for 150 dinars a month.

But life in the capital without the protection of a husband or father is hard. When Eman first arrived she would go to charities and mosques for food and mattresses where her soft Syrian accent immediately attracted attention.

“Wherever I go I get proposals,” she says with more weariness than pride. “They ask, can I smell your perfume for 20 dinars? ($28) Can you lift your veil for 35 dinars ($50)? I’d rather die of hunger than do something wrong.”

Just yesterday she heard about a rich man giving away cash at the local mosque so she went to investigate.

“He was giving $100 and gave money to all the others and told me to wait,” Eman says. “When everyone was done he asked me to call him in the morning at his hotel. I said I’d come with my mother. He said come alone. He would give double the money. I told him he was ridiculous.”

She works from home, shelling peanuts for a factory and earning 2.5 dinars ($3.50) for every 10 kilograms of nuts she peels. Eman wants to marry soon so she doesn’t have to expose herself to unwanted attention.

“I want a real husband and a real marriage, someone like Muhandin,” she says, and giggles. He is a Turkish actor in a popular soap opera.

Um Majed, though, has no time for romantic dreams.

A new client, a Jordanian man aged 29 wants a young bride from the Zaatari camp. He will give Um Majed fake documents and they will pose as charity workers to gain access to the families and size up their daughters.

“Some families accept 50 dinars (72) to let the groom look at their girls,” she says. She has done this ruse several times.

Um Majed will get her cut for brokering the arrangement. But she insists it will be a food package, not cash.

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Geographer said:

I watch a lot of videos from the Syrian Civil War. I notice how pitiful the FSA air defences are. Aircraft are filmed on straight bombing runs at only a few thousand feet. The FSA has plenty of AA artillery yet rarely hit anything. This shows the total inadequacy of AA artillery for air defense.

Why doesn't FSA form their own fighter units? They must have a few pilots who have defected, along with all the necessary support crew. I've seen videos of them walking around captured airbases with intact fighters. I'm sure Turkey and the CIA would be happy to provide them with any spare parts, fuel, and training. Yet two years in, I have never seen an FSA helicopter or aircraft. Why not?

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Geographer said:

I watch a lot of videos from the Syrian Civil War. I notice how pitiful the FSA air defences are. Aircraft are filmed on straight bombing runs at only a few thousand feet. The FSA has plenty of AA artillery yet rarely hit anything. This shows the total inadequacy of AA artillery for air defense.

Why doesn't FSA form their own fighter units? They must have a few pilots who have defected, along with all the necessary support crew. I've seen videos of them walking around captured airbases with intact fighters. I'm sure Turkey and the CIA would be happy to provide them with any spare parts, fuel, and training. Yet two years in, I have never seen an FSA helicopter or aircraft. Why not?

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THE ROVING EYE
Assad talks, Russia walks
By Pepe Escobar

So Bashar al-Assad has spoken - exclusively, to Argentine daily El Clarin (there's a huge Syrian diaspora in Argentina, as well as in neighboring Brazil).

Cutting through the fog of Western hysteria, he made some valuable points. The record shows that, yes, the regime has agreed several times to talk to the opposition; but myriad "rebel" groups with no credible, unified leadership have always refuted. So there's no way a ceasefire, eventually agreed on a summit - such as the upcoming US/Russia Geneva conference - can be implemented. Assad makes some sense when he says, "We can't discuss a timetable with a party if we don't know who they are."

Well, by now everyone following the Syrian tragedy knows who most of them are. One knows that the Un-Free Syrian Cannibals, sorry, Army (FSA) is a ragged collection of warlords, gangsters and opportunists of every possible brand, intersecting with hardcore jihadis of the Jabhat al-Nusra kind (but also other al-Qaeda-linked or inspired outfits).

It took Reuters months to finally admit that jihadis are running the show on the ground. [1] A "rebel" commander even complained to Reuters, "Nusra is now two Nusras. One that is pursuing al Qaeda's agenda of a greater Islamic nation, and another that is Syrian with a national agenda to help us fight Assad." What he didn't say is that the real effective outfit is al-Qaeda-linked.

Syria is now Militia Hell; much like Iraq in the mid-2000s, much like the Western-imposed, "liberated" Libyan failed state. This Afghanization/Somalization is a direct consequence of NATO-GCC-Israel axis interference. [2] So Assad is also right when he says the West is adding fuel to the fire, and is only interested in regime change, whatever the cost.

What Assad didn't say
Assad is not exactly a brilliant politician - so he wasted a golden opportunity to explain to Western public opinion, even briefly, why GCC petro-monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, plus Turkey, have the hots for setting Syria on fire. He could have talked about Qatar wanting to hand over Syria to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia dreaming of a crypto-emirate colony. He could have talked about them both being terrified of Shi'ites in the Persian Gulf harboring legitimate Arab Spring ideals.

He could have pointed to the absolute shambles of Turkey's "zero problems with our neighbors" foreign policy; one day there's a triad of collaboration Ankara-Damascus-Baghdad, the next Ankara wants regime change in Damascus and routinely antagonizes Baghdad. And on top of it Turkey is puzzled to see Kurds emboldened from northern Iraq to northern Syria.

He could have detailed how Britain and France inside NATO, not to mention the US, as well as their petro-monarch puppets are using the disintegration of Syria to hit at Iran - and how none of these actors supplying the weaponizing and plenty of cash give a damn about the suffering of the "Syrian people". The only thing that matters is strategic targets.

While Bashar al-Assad was talking, Russia was walking. President Vladimir Putin - well aware that the Geneva talks are being derailed by various actors even before they happen - moved Russian naval vessels to the Eastern Mediterranean; and offered Syria a batch of ultra-modern ground-to-sea Yakhont missiles plus a batch of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles - the Russian equivalent to the American Patriot. Not to mention that Syria already has Russian SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles.

Now try, any one of you NATO-GCC gang, even bypassing the UN, to unleash a mini-Shock and Awe on Damascus. Or to install a no-fly zone. Qatar and the House of Saud, militarily, are a joke. The Brits and France are seriously tempted, but they don't have the means - or the stomach. Washington has the means - but no stomach. Putin was dead sure the Pentagon would read his message accordingly.

And don't forget Pipelineistan
Assad could also have talked about - what else - Pipelineistan. It would have taken him two minutes to explain the meaning of the agreement for the US$10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline that was signed in July 2012. This crucial Pipelineistan node will export gas from the South Pars field in Iran (the largest in the world, shared with Qatar), through Iraq, towards Syria, with a possible extension to Lebanon, with certified customers in Western Europe. It's what the Chinese call a "win-win" situation.

But not for - guess who? - Qatar and Turkey. Qatar dreams of a rival pipeline from its North field (contiguous with Iran's South Pars field), through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and finally Turkey (which bills itself as the privileged energy transit hub between East and West). Final destination: once again, Western Europe.

As in all Pipelineistan matters, the crux of the game is bypassing both Iran and Russia. That's what happens with the Qatari pipeline - frantically US-supported. But with the Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, the export route may originate nowhere else than in Tartus, the Syrian port in the Eastern Mediterranean that hosts the Russian navy. Gazprom would obviously be part of the whole picture, from investment to distribution.

Make no mistake; Pipelineistan - once again tied up with bypassing both Russia and Iran - explains a great deal about why Syria is being destroyed.

The EU oil-for-al-Qaeda scheme
Meanwhile, the real Syrian army - backed by Hezbollah - is methodically retaking strategic Al-Qusayr out of "rebel" control. Their next step would be to look east - where Jabhat al-Nusra is merrily profiting from another typical EU blunder; the decision to lift oil sanctions on Syria. [3]

Syria Comment blogger Joshua Landis drew the necessary conclusions; "Whoever gets their hands on the oil, water and agriculture, holds Sunni Syria by the throat. At the moment, that's al-Nusra. Europe opening up the market for oil forced this issue. So the logical conclusion from this craziness is that Europe will be funding al-Qaeda." Call it the EU oil-for-al-Qaeda scheme.

Southwest Asia - what the West calls the Middle East - is bound to remain a privileged realm of irrationality at play. As things stand in Syria, instead of a no-fly zone what should really fly is an "all fly peace" - with everyone and his neighbor involved; US, Russia, the EU, but also Hezbollah, Israel and of course Iran, as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has keenly stressed. [4]

Way beyond the Western obsession with regime change, what the already troubled Geneva conference could yield is a deal following the Syrian constitution - which, by the way, is absolutely legitimate, adopted in 2012 by a majority of votes of the real, suffering, "Syrian people". This could even lead to Assad not running for president in elections scheduled for 2014. Regime change, yes. But by peaceful means. Will NATO-GCC-Israel let it happen? No.

Notes:
1. Insight: Syria's Nusra Front eclipsed by Iraq-based al Qaeda, Reuters, May 17, 2013.
2. North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Gulf Cooperation Council-Israel.
3. EU decision to lift Syrian oil sanctions boosts jihadist groups, Guardian, May 19, 2013.
4. Russia says Iran must take part in proposed Syria talks, Reuters, May 16, 2013.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His also wrote Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at [email protected].

(Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Syria highlights US political impotence
By Ramzy Baroud

In an article published on May 15, American historical social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein wrote, "Nothing illustrates more the limitations of Western power than the internal controversy its elites are having in public about what the United States in particular and Western European states should be doing about the civil war in Syria."

Those limitations are palpable in both language and action. A political and military vacuum created by past US failures and forced retreats after the Iraq war made it possible for countries like Russia to reemerge on the scene as an effective player.

It is most telling that over two years after the Syrian uprising-turned bloody civil war, the US continues to curb its involvement by indirectly assisting anti-Bashar al-Assad regime opposition forces, through its Arab allies and Turkey. Even its political discourse is indecisive and often times inconsistent.

Concurrently, Russia's position remains unswerving and constantly advancing while the US is pushed into a corner, demonstrating an incapacity to react except for condemnations and mere statements. Much to the displeasure of its Arab allies.

Russia's recent delivery of sophisticated anti-ship missiles and its own buildup of warships in the eastern Mediterranean is a case in point. The move was condemned by the Obama administration as one that is "ill-timed and very unfortunate".

But this American attitude in the region is fairly new. Behind it stands a history bloody and filled with imprudent foreign policy. Regardless of how the US decides to move on Syria, the chances are that a return to its old dominant approach is no longer an option.

The current American political impotence in the Middle East is unprecedented, at least since the rapid disintegration of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union had ushered in the rise of a unipolar world, wholly managed by the United States. The rise of the uncontested American hegemony represented a shift in historical dialectics, where great powers found their match and the rest of the world, more or less, accommodated the ensuing competition.

Then, the US acted quickly to assert its dominance starting with hasty military adventures such as the invasion of Panama in 1989. A much more calculated move followed with a devastating war against Iraq in 1990-91. In Panama the objective was to remind the US's southern neighbors that the region's cop was still on duty and was capable of intervening at a moment's notice to rearrange the entire political paradigm in any way that Washington deemed necessary - as this has been the case since the CIA-orchestrated coup and war in Guatemala in 1954 and even earlier.

The US's massive military involvement in Iraq, however, was that of a conqueror who arrived with an entourage of many countries - regional and Western allies - to claim the spoils resulting from the end of the protracted Cold War. It was an arrogant show of force since the target was a single Arab country with humble military and economic means vs. major military powers from near and far.

The war devastated Iraq - its initial aerial bombing campaign alone involving the dropping of 88,500 tons of bombs. Many new weapons were used and tested, while the US media and public celebrated the prowess of their military. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died or were wounded as a result of one of the most asymmetrical wars in history.

Trying to capitalize on its military triumph, Washington quickly pushed for a political settlement between its closest ally, Israel, and Arab countries. The logic behind the Madrid Conference in 1991 was achieving pseudo peace that catered to Israel's interests, while opening up the gate of normalization between Israel and its neighbors. Moreover, the US hoped to achieve some sort of "stability" that would allow it to manage the Middle East region and its ample resources in a less hostile environment.

Eventually, Israel managed to negotiate its own political deal with the Palestinians, thus dividing Arab ranks and ensuring that the "peace talks'" outcome was entirely consistent with Israel's colonial ambitions.

As years passed, the US and Israeli political visions moved even closer, but with Washington eventually becoming a mere conduit to Israeli colonial objectives. This fact was underscored repeatedly under the George W Bush administration, which compounded US failure in the region with even more disastrous and dangerous wars.

A major fault in US foreign policy is that it is almost entirely reliant on military power - as in the ability to blow things up. The US war on Iraq which, in various forms, extended from 1990 to 2011, included a devastating blockade and ended with a brutal invasion.

This long war was as unscrupulous as it was violent. Aside from its overwhelming human toll, it was placed within a horrid political strategy aimed at exploiting the country's existing sectarian and other fault lines, therefore triggering a civil war and sectarian hatred from which Iraq is unlikely to cover for many years.

But the limitations of US military power became quite obvious in later years. The empire was no longer able to bridge the divide between translating its dominance on the ground - itself increasingly challenged by local resistance groups - into a level of political progress required to achieve the minimum amount of "stability".

Moreover, an economic recession, coupled with the Iraqi retreat and an equally costly debacle in Afghanistan - forced the new administration in Washington, under the leadership of President Barack Obama to rethink Bush's earlier quest for global hegemony. Massive military cuts were soon to follow. Concurrently, the imbalance of global power was slowly, quietly but surely being equalized with the rise of China as a new possible contender.

In the midst of the US transition and policy rethink, an upheaval struck the Middle East. Its manifestations - revolutions, civil wars, regional mayhem and conflicts of all sorts - reverberated beyond the Middle East.

Shrinking and rising empires alike took notice. Fault lines were quickly determined and exploited. Players changed positions or jockeyed for advanced ones, as a new Great Game was about to begin. The so-called "Arab Spring" was rapidly becoming a game-changer in a region that seemed resistant to transformations of any kind.

The transformation of the Middle East - promising at times, very gory and bloody at others - arrived at a time when the US was making forced adjustments in its military priorities. Putting greater focus on the Pacific region and the South China Sea are such examples. Without much notice, it was forced to reengage with the Middle East, as a whole - not a country at a time. Only then, its weaknesses were seriously exposed and its lack of influence became palpable.

Bankrupt is maybe an appropriate term to use in describing the current US policy in the Middle East. Imprudent military adventures devastated the region but achieved no long-term objectives. Reckless policies that are predicated on trying to exploit, as opposed to understand the Middle East and its complex political and historical formation and the insistence on keeping Israel a main priority in its approach to the vastly shifting political lines, will unlikely to bode well for US interests.

However, unlike the early 1990s, when the US moved to reshape the entire region and established permanent military presence, new dynamics are forcing it to change tactics. In this new reality, the US is incapable of reshaping reality but merely trying to offset or control its unfavorable outcomes.

"What the United States (and western Europe) want to do is 'control' the situation," Immanuel Wallerstein argued. "They will not be able to do it. Hence the screams of the 'interventionists' and the foot-dragging of the 'prudent.' It is a lose-lose for the west, while not being at the same time a 'win' for people in the Middle East."

This "lose-lose" scenario might not necessarily translate to a complete American foreign policy meltdown in the near future, but will certainly open the possibility for new/old players to main serious gains, Russia being a lead example. This will likely compel the US to change tactics, despite the incessant objections of neoconservative forces and the Israeli lobby.

Ramzy Baroud (ramzybaroud.net) is a widely published and translated author. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
(Copyright 2013 Ramzy Baroud.)

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Senator McCain met with rebels in Syria: spokesman

Mon, May 27 2013
By Andrea Shalal-Esa
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator John McCain, a former presidential candidate and an outspoken advocate for U.S. military aid to the Syrian opposition, met with some of the rebels during a surprise visit to the war-torn country on Monday, his spokesman said.
Spokesman Brian Rogers confirmed McCain's meeting with the rebels, but declined to give any details about the visit, which may fuel pressure on Washington to intervene in a conflict that is believed to have claimed 80,000 lives.
The visit came as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pledged to do their utmost to bring Syria's warring parties together, and new allegations surfaced about chemical weapons use in the civil war.
General Salem Idris, who leads the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army, told the Daily Beast in an interview that McCain's visit came at a critical time for the rebels, who have stepped up their calls for U.S. support, including heavy weapons, creation of a no-fly zone and air strikes.
"The visit of Senator McCain to Syria is very important and very useful especially at this time," the publication quoted Idris as saying. "We need American help to have change on the ground; we are now in a very critical situation."
McCain is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit Syria since Robert Ford, the U.S. ambassador to Syria, crossed the border into northern Syria to meet with Syrian opposition leaders earlier this month.
It was not immediately clear if McCain, a fierce critic of the Obama administration's handling of the Syrian crisis, told government leaders about his plans to visit the country.
The White House had no immediate comment.
A senior State Department official, in Paris with Kerry, confirmed that McCain did "cross into Syrian territory" but referred all questions to McCain's office.
McCain entered Syria from the country's border with Turkey and stayed there for several hours before returning to Turkey, according to the Daily Beast report. It said McCain met with assembled leaders of Free Syrian Army units in both Turkey and Syria.
McCain, who made a similar visit to Libya early in that conflict, called for U.S. military aid to the forces opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a Time magazine column earlier this month, arguing that the cost of inaction outweighed the cost of intervention.
"The U.S. does not have to act alone, put boots on the ground or destroy every Syrian air-defense system to make a difference," McCain wrote, arguing that training for the rebels, targeted air strikes and the stationing of Patriot missiles just across the border would help change the current dynamic.
McCain recalled his support for a U.S.-led effort under then President Bill Clinton to stop mass atrocities in Bosnia two decades ago and said the United States was uniquely positioned to help in Syria as well.
"Taking these steps would save innocent lives, give the moderate opposition a better chance to succeed and eventually provide security and responsible governance in Syria after Assad," he wrote in the Time magazine article. "However, the longer we wait, the worse the situation gets."
The Obama administration has increased humanitarian aid but has stopped short of providing lethal assistance to Syrian opposition forces. The president has resisted pressure to deepen U.S. involvement in Syria, wary of getting U.S. forces embroiled in another ground war just as American troops are preparing to withdraw from Afghanistan.
A U.S. Senate panel voted overwhelmingly last week to send weapons to forces fighting the Syrian government, but the Pentagon remains concerned about Assad's ability to shoot down enemy aircraft with surface-to-air missiles, particularly in a sustained campaign.
The Pentagon estimates than Syria has five times more air defenses than those that existed in Libya, where the United States helped establish a no-fly zone in 2011. They are also far more densely packed and sophisticated.
In Libya, there were no Western casualties. But the risks are higher in Syria and it's unclear whether the war-weary American public - exhausted by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan - would tolerate U.S. casualties.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed in Paris and Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Eric Walsh and Philip Barbara)

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Czech firm wins Egyptian tender for pistols
2013-05-23 13:46:30 GMT2013-05-23 21:46:30(Beijing Time) Xinhua English
PRAGUE, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Czech arms firm Ceska zbrojovka won an international tender to supply 50,000 pistols to the Egyptian interior ministry, company CEO Lubomir Kovarik said on Thursday.
Speaking at a defence industry trade fair in Brno, Kovarik said some of the firearms were sent to Egypt last week. The CZ P-07 Duty pistols are smaller than those supplied by Ceska zbrojovka to the Czech military and security forces.
The one-year contract will be followed by the supply of several hundred Skorpion submachine guns to the country.
Ceska zbrojovka is also in talks to supply rifles, automatic rifles and pistols to Iraq. The Iraqi side is to take a decision on the contract this year. Iraq is considering building a local service and training centre for the arms.
Ceska zbrojovka is a major arms maker in the Czech Republic that sold 180,000 arms last year.

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