AMMAN, Jordan — President Barack Obama’s decision to arm Syrian rebels will deepen U.S. involvement in a regional proxy war increasingly taking on sectarian overtones of pitting Sunni Muslims against Shiite Muslims.
“From now on, every suicide bombing in Damascus — every war crime committed by the rebels — will be regarded in the region as Washington’s responsibility,” Robert Fisk wrote in Britain’s Independent newspaper on Sunday.
The Obama administration’s decision to supply Syrian rebels for the first time with small arms, ammunition and possibly antitank weapons has many questioning the move as too little, too late. Rebel commanders say they need anti-aircraft weapons and the imposition of a no-fly zone, if they are not to lose more ground to President Bashar Assad’s regime troops and Lebanese militant Hezbollah fighters.
Military analysts also believe that Washington’s proposed weapons provision will do little to boost the opposition or help it achieve military victory in the face of the regime’s greater arms numbers and more sophisticated firepower delivered from warplanes and armored vehicles.
Concern in Washington that terrorist groups in Syria could get their hands on high-powered arms makes it less likely that the U.S. will provide sophisticated weapons that would require large-scale training, they said.
Now as G-8 leaders meet in Northern Ireland to discuss Syria, a diplomatic breakthrough appears even further remote. Ahead of the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized the West for considering arming Syrian rebels, referring to them as cannibals eating human organs. By contrast, he said Russia was arming the legitimate government of Syria.
Washington’s announcement last Thursday followed the admission that it now had proof of chemical weapons usage by the Assad regime “on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year” of the civil war that has claimed 93,000 lives and displaced millions. U.S. intelligence officials reported that at least 100 to 150 people had died from the attacks, but said the numbers could be higher. Damascus has refuted the charges.
But the change in U.S. policy also has coincided with rising concerns in Washington over Syrian government troops and Hezbollah fighters overturning rebel gains, particularly the loss of the strategic town of Qusair, along an important supply route near the Lebanese border, and fresh advances on other rebel-held areas, including Aleppo. Apparently, the regime’s bid with expected Hezbollah and Iranian help to retake Syria’s commercial capital has been dubbed the “Qusair echo.”
In recent weeks, Assad troops have won back the military upper hand due mainly to Hezbollah’s intervention. Damascus’s recent gains have also jeopardized the opposition’s position if peace talks in Geneva seeking a political solution to the two-year-civil war were ever to go ahead.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who strongly advocated negotiations between the Syrian regime and opposition, said chemical attacks by Syrian forces coupled with Hezbollah’s growing involvement in the crisis displayed a lack of commitment to talks and threatened to «put a political settlement out of reach.»
Potential game-changers
The German Der Spiegel weekly newsmagazine reported Sunday that Saudi Arabia plans to supply rebels with anti-aircraft missiles to counter Assad’s air force. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have already funded much of the rebels’ arsenal to date.
Citing a classified German foreign intelligence service and government report, the magazine said that Saudi Arabia was considering dispatching European-made Mistral-class MANPADS, or man-portable air-defense systems. Such shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles can target low-flying aircraft, including helicopters and would potentially provide the more of the firepower needed by the rebels to reverse their losses.
Meanwhile, Fisk’s article in the Independent alleged that Iran decided — even before last week’s presidential election — to send a fresh contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the country’s crack military elite, to Syria to support Assad forces.
“Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel,” he wrote.
These reports could not be independently verified.
A no-fly zone?
It is still unclear whether Washington will set up a limited no-fly zone over parts of Syria to assist rebel training and arming as well as to allow displaced Syrians to remain in “safe areas” rather than flee to neighboring countries.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and some senior State Department officials strongly advocate airstrikes targeting primary landing strips that the regime uses to launch attacks, ferry troops around the country and receive arm shipments from Iran.
Vali Nasr, a Middle East expert and dean of the John Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., believes a no-fly zone is needed “to prevent Assad from completely dominating this war.”
But Brigadier Ben Barry of the International Institute for Strategic Studies recently told the Guardian newspaper in Britain that such a no-fly zone would be far more riskier than Libya. “There would be a much greater risk of planes being shot down and ‘a high probability’ that Russians and Iranians on the ground would be killed,” he said.
Even creating “safe areas,” he warned, could create conditions for armed conflict with Syrian government forces.
Pentagon spokesman George Little has said that the U.S. Defense Department “continues to plan for a wide range of contingencies, but the United States has not made any decision to establish a no-fly zone over Syria or within Jordanian air space.”
Over the weekend, Jordan, a key U.S. Arab ally and neighbor of Syria, secured the Pentagon’s approval for American F-16s and Patriot missiles to remain there after multinational military exercises taking place in the kingdom end later this week.
More than 4,500 U.S. troops, along with 3,000 Jordanians, and soldiers from Britain, Saudi Arabia and other countries are taking part in the two-week war games. U.S. Patriot missiles are expected to be installed along Jordan’s 233-mile border with Syria.
King Abdullah of Jordan recently warned that should the worsening Syrian crisis “threaten our country, we are capable at any time to take the necessary measures to protect our country and people’s interests.”
“The weapons will be managed and supervised by the Jordanian Armed Forces, with technical support by U.S. experts,” the country’s information minister Mohammad al-Momani explained.
However, Jordan’s Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour has stressed that no U.S. troops will remain in the kingdom after the “Eager Lion” exercises finish.
Bristling at the thought of a possible U.S.-led no-fly zone being set up, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that any attempt to use the F-16s to impose a no-fly zone would violate international law.