[Tom Bombadil]

Who is fighting whom in Syria

United Nations human rights investigators said in a new report that the Syria crisis had evolved from a battle to oust Mr. Assad into more of a sectarian conflict, pitting entire communities against one another and pulling in fighters from the Middle East and North Africa.

As the conflict approaches the end of its second year, it “has become overtly sectarian in nature,” said the report by a panel of the Human Rights Council.

The panel, led by Paulo Pinheiro, a human rights investigator from Brazil, said attacks and reprisals had led communities to arm themselves and to be armed by different parties to the conflict. “Entire communities are at risk of being forced out of the country or killed inside the country,” the panel wrote.

“Feeling threatened and under attack, ethnic and religious minority groups have increasingly aligned themselves with parties to the conflict, deepening sectarian divides,” the panel said.

The sharpest split is between the ruling minority Alawite sect, a Shiite Muslim offshoot from which Mr. Assad’s most senior political and military associates are drawn, and the country’s Sunni Muslim majority, mostly aligned with the opposition, the panel noted. But it said the conflict had drawn in other minorities, including Armenians, Christians, Druse, Palestinians, Kurds and Turkmens.

Most foreign fighters joining the conflict are Sunni Muslims from Middle Eastern and North African countries, many of them linked to extremist groups, the panel said, and often operating independently of the opposition Free Syrian Army but coordinating attacks with its forces.

Lebanon’s Shiite group Hezbollah confirmed that its members were fighting for the Assad government, the panel said, and it was investigating reports that Iraqi Shiites had also entered Syria. Iran has also confirmed that members of its Revolutionary Guards Corps are providing the Assad government with “intellectual and advisory support.”

Making their fourth submission to the Human Rights Council, the panel of four investigators said that government forces and supporting militias had attacked Sunni civilians and that opposition forces had attacked Alawite and other pro-government communities. It said that Kurdish groups had clashed with government and antigovernment forces, that Turkmen militias were fighting with antigovernment forces, and that Palestinians, increasingly split in their views of the Assad government, were being armed by both pro- and antigovernment forces.

From NYT