Activists accuse Damascus of hiding conflict’s toll

Syria has been deliberately misleading Arab League observers sent to monitor the uprising there, according to the BBC. It reported:

Military vehicles have been replaced to make it look as though the army has left city centres as required by an Arab League peace plan, activists said.

"The observers are going to areas known to be loyal to the regime," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told the Associated Press news agency.

Human Rights Watch reported on December 27 that Syria was hiding detainees from Arab League monitors.

Meanwhile, the Free Syrian Army announced plans to attack the regime. The group's leader, Col. Riad al-Assad, noted that peaceful protests had failed to budge Bashar al-Assad and pledged "we are going to force him by arms to leave." Col. al-Assad said the FSA plans "huge operations" for this week against Damascus' "vital interests," CNN reported.

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But infighting by two main opposition groups is slowing momentum, according to CNN. The Syrian National Council and the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria are bickering over a purported Cairo agreement to work together for change in Syria.

For some, the growing threat of rebel-led violence and the traditional role of the Assad regime as protector of minorities is raising the specter of civil war, according to NPR:

"I don't believe that the Syrian crisis is about sectarianism," [Gerges] says. "This is not about Sunnis vs. Alawites and Christians. This is about national security and regional security. And President Assad has been basically relentlessly hammering this particular point: 'Do you want to be another Iraq?'"

Everyone in the region — already suffering from a dangerous sectarian divide — is watching Syria closely.

More from GlobalPost: Syria: Protesters clash with troops during Arab League's stay