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More than 90% of the Internet was shut down in Syria Thursday as rebel clashes with Bashar al-Assad's forces were reported near the Damascus airport.

It's not the first time the Web has been blocked in the war-torn country, but the move toward the airport could be highly significant, said retired U.S. Army Gen. Mark Kimmitt, who worked as assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs under President George Bush.

Damascus, the capital, is the seat of al-Assad's power. It is also home to many Syrians who belong to the Alawite sect. The al-Assads are Alawite.

Rebels fighting al-Assad's forces and possibly winning at or near the airport "would have a psychological affect," Kimmitt explained. "The civilians in Damascus will feel cut off from the outside world."Much more at http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/29/world/syria-civil-war/index.html?hpt=hp_
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As it says, it's not the first time such things have happened, but I heard some pundits worrying that, rather than keeping the world from seeing that the rebels are gaining ground, it might be a move to keep the world from seeinge exactly what kind of weapons the government might use against its people.

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Independent analysts expressed concern that if Mr. Assad is backed into a corner, he could use or threaten to use missiles tipped with chemical weapons against the rebels, despite the threat of Western intervention if he did.

“There is credible information that the Assad regime has been upgrading and expanding its chemical weapons arsenal, which needs to be maintained,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.More at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/world/middleeast/pentagon-sees-seizi
ng-syria-chemical-arms-as-vast-task.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0]
It's not just the internet this time, either:

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Syria was almost totally cut off from the outside world yesterday as the government apparently sought to flex its muscles by shutting down internet and phone services across the country, and flights into and out of the main airport were cancelled due to fighting nearby.

The blackout has raised fears that president Bashar Assad's regime is planning to launch a major offensive on rebel forces in an attempt to turn the tide in Syria's long-running civil war and seize back control of the country.

While the government attributed the loss of the internet and cellphone service to 'terrorists', experts said the progressive shutdown of connectivity could only have been orchestrated by a central authority.

Jim Cowie, the chief technology officer at Renesys, said the abruptness of the outage suggested it wasn't due to a severed cable. Syria has several cables that connect it to the outside world, and all of them would have had to be cut at once for a complete outage.

'We saw everything go in three to four minutes, which looks like a light switch,' Cowie said.Much more at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2240564/Syria-blackout-Interne
t-phone-services-cut-fears-grow-major-government-offensive.html

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I sincerely hope it's an effort not to let the world see how poorly they're doing in combatting the rebels, and not a prelude to some kind of massacre.

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Apparently, the use of chemical weapons can be detected from satellites, so cutting off cell and internet wouldn't prevent detection.

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