US
torn over arming Syrian
rebels By Samer Araabi and Jim
Lobe
WASHINGTON - Just days before the
opening meeting of the new international "Friends
of Syria" in Tunis on Friday, the debate over
whether the United States should provide more
support - including weapons - to opposition forces
is gathering steam.
Over the weekend, two
influential Republican senators called for
Washington to provide greater material and other
support, including arms, to rebel fighters
associated with the opposition in an effort to
oust President Bashar al-Assad.
"I am in
favor of weapons being obtained by the
opposition," said Senator John McCain, who accused
Russia and Iran of arming Assad, during a visit to
Kabul, Afghanistan.
"People that are being
massacred deserve to have the ability to defend
themselves," he declared, noting that Washington could
provide arms indirectly
through "third-world countries" and the Arab
League.
His appeal was echoed both by
Senator Lindsay Graham, who was traveling with
McCain, and by an open letter to President Barack
Obama issued by two right-wing pro-Israel groups -
the Foreign Policy Initiative and the Foundation
for Defense of Democracies - and signed by more
than four dozen foreign policy analysts and
writers, most of them prominent neo-conservatives.
"Given American interests in the Middle
East, as well as the implications for those
seeking freedom in other repressive societies, it
is imperative that the United States and its
allies not remove any option from consideration,
including military intervention," wrote the
letter's signatories, many of whom championed the
US invasion of Iraq and have urged Washington to
prepare for war with Iran.
And in an
apparent softening of position, CBS reported that
while the White House and State Department said
they still hoped for a political solution ...
... faced with the daily onslaught
by the Assad regime against Syrian civilians,
officials dropped the administration's previous
strident opposition to arming anti-regime
forces. It remained unclear, though, what, if
any, role the US might play in providing such
aid.
Prominent figures, both in and
outside the administration, are pushing back
against the growing pressure from the right to
intervene, particularly with arms, in what may
well become a regional powder keg.
General
Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, argued on Sunday against any overt support
for the still-untested opposition movement.
"I think it's premature to take a decision
to arm the opposition movement in Syria, because I
would challenge anyone to clearly identify for me
the opposition movement in Syria at this point,"
said Dempsey in an interview with CNN.
"There's a number of players, all of whom
are trying to reinforce their particular side of
this issue. And until we're a lot clearer about,
you know, who they are and what they are, I think
it would be premature to talk about arming them,"
he noted.
In a policy brief published on
Tuesday by the Center for a New American Security,
senior fellow Marc Lynch acknowledged that
"military intervention will allow Americans to
feel they are doing something", but warned that
"unleashing even more violence without a realistic
prospect of changing the [Syrian] regime's
behavior or improving security is neither just nor
wise".
Lynch, a George Washington
University Middle East expert who is known to
consult frequently with the White House, said
Washington should instead "focus on engaging in a
sustained and targeted campaign of pressure
against the Assad regime with the end goal of
bringing key components of the ruling coalition to
the negotiating table to devise a post-Assad
political path forward".
His 13-page
report called in particular for Washington to
refer Assad to the International Criminal Court
(ICC) if he refuses to step down, tighten existing
economic sanctions against specific individuals in
the Assad regime, and encourage the opposition to
develop a "unified political voice".
Despite numerous attempts to unify the
opposition into a single cohesive movement,
significant cleavages remain between various
members of the opposition, and between the various
anti-Assad organizations they represent.
Even the Syrian National Council, often
considered by the West and the Arab League as the
official representative body of the Syrian
opposition, has witnessed a number of fractious
disputes over the question of foreign military
intervention, with individuals such as
Washington-based Radwan Ziadeh calling for direct
foreign military involvement, and others, such as
chairman Burhan Ghalyoun, arguing for a
supportive, second-hand role.
Opponents of
any foreign involvement have flocked to the
National Coordination Committee, nominally led by
Syrian dissident Haytham al-Manna, which maintains
a formal independence from the SNC.
Perhaps in response to the fractured
nature of the opposition, and the continuing
violence from American-armed Libyan rebels, US
officials appear to be reticent to support the
military aspect of the opposition.
Recent
reports of a growing presence by the Iraq-based
al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia have raised new and
complex questions about whether increased
involvement by Washington would encourage or deter
its spread into Syria. Bombings in Damascus and
Aleppo earlier this year may well have been the
work of al-Qaeda, according to recent testimony by
the US Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper.
A statement on Tuesday by State
Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland emphasized
that "our position fundamentally has not changed.
We believe that a political solution to this is
the best way to go, that is what is needed in
Syria, and that if Assad will heed the view of the
international community or respond to the pressure
that we are bringing to bear, that we still have a
chance for a political solution, we still have a
chance to get to the kind of transition scenario
that the Arab League has laid out and that many of
the Syrian groups support."
A panel hosted
today by George Washington University's Project on
Middle East Political Science echoed many of these
concerns. Steve Heydemann, a senior adviser
for the Middle East at the US Institute of Peace,
warned that the "fairly decisive failure of US
policy toward Syria" in the past year is
ill-equipped to manage the "unregulated, unchecked
militarization" of the current conflict, and
called for a greater US role in steering the armed
Syrian opposition into a more cohesive, structured
framework.
Other panelists, such as George
Mason University's Bassam Haddad, director of the
Middle East Studies Program and co-founder of the
popular online news journal Jadaliyya, warned that
increasing foreign military intervention could
have disastrous consequences.
Haddad
cautioned that US military intervention in any
form was likely to bolster the regime's domestic
support, partly due to a perceived hypocrisy
regarding Washington's silence on the repression
of uprisings in Bahrain.
Many of the
strongest advocates of military involvement in
Syria have included a number of former George W
Bush administration officials, including top
officials of Iraq's Coalition Provisional
Authority, Paul Bremer and Dan Senor; former under
secretary of defense for policy Eric Edelman; as
well as Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of Dick
Cheney, who served in a senior State Department
post, and John Hannah, the former vice president's
top Middle East aide.
The "Friends of
Syria" coalition is scheduled to meet in Tunis
this week, though Russia and China have declined
invitations to join after vetoing a United Nations
Security Council condemning the Assad regime's
violence.
The meeting will likely set the
parameters for international involvement in Syria,
but with or without Washington's express support,
it appears likely that Syrian opposition movements
will receive significant military and logistical
assistance from a variety of other state and
non-state actors. With the death toll already
surpassing 6,000, it appears unlikely that the
situation will end decisively for quite some time.
Jim Lobe's blog on US foreign
policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.
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