Assad forces world powers to think
again By Victor Kotsev
Just as he appointed yet another cabinet,
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday
declared on state television that his country was
"in a real state of war from all angles". This was
a change of rhetoric by Assad, who until recently
insisted that he was only fighting gangs of
"terrorists" sponsored from abroad. "When we are
in a war, all policies and all sides and all
sectors need to be directed at winning this war,"
he added.
The war is very real, although
speculations of imminent North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) involvement seem premature and
exaggerated. Tuesday was one of the bloodiest days
in the 15-month rebellion, with extraordinarily
heavy fighting reaching the capital. Unconfirmed
reports have it that a major Republican Guard
compound guarding in the presidential palace came
under sustained assault, and opposition groups
claimed that at least
115 people were killed
in the country during that day only. Elsewhere,
the Syrian regime has reportedly lost effective
control over large swathes of territory.
The international front, too, is heated,
and the tensions are escalating. After losing a
modernized Phantom F-4 military reconnaissance jet
last week, shot down by the Syrians, Turkey warned
on Tuesday that it would attack any Syrian forces
approaching its border, and sent reinforcements
there. This is a symbolic step, and Ankara backed
away from threats to retaliate militarily for the
incident - or to involve NATO under Article 5
(common defense) of the Washington Treaty - but it
is nevertheless significant. NATO's declaration of
support Tuesday also strengthened Turkey's hand.
Importantly, the Syrian rebels are now in
a position, at least theoretically, to draw Turkey
into their clashes with the pro-regime Syrian
army, by provoking the latter to chase them closer
to the northern border. In practice, it is less
clear whether this crisis would truly work in
their favor: one, because it is not certain that
Ankara will follow through with its threats, and
two, because the rhetoric might backfire in
unexpected ways. As the US-based intelligence
analysis organization Stratfor pointed out in a
recent report, the Turkish threat to fire on any
Syrian forces near the border may also discourage
potential defectors from approaching.
There is a lot more to the intrigue than
meets the eye. Despite Turkey's protests that the
downed jet was unarmed, was conducting a training
exercise, and only strayed into Syrian air space
"briefly" (the Turks also claimed that the plane
was shot down in international air space), Ankara
is far from an innocent bystander in the Syrian
crisis. Turkey has supported the rebels for over a
year, offering them bases on its territory,
facilitating high-level defections, and even
repeatedly threatening to send its military to
establish buffer zones where the rebels could
organize undisturbed by the army. In fact, the
most recent ultimatum against Syrian forces
nearing the border seems very much an extension of
these threats, and a first step leading to the
creation of such a buffer zone down the road.
Whether or not the Turkish jet was flying
low over Syrian territory, as Damascus claimed
(the Syrians insist that the missile they used to
shoot it down had a range of less than two miles,
and that there was a second plane involved as
well), the incident appeared to serve an important
purpose for Assad. Over the last month, as the
foreign-backed rebels acquired lethal anti-tank
missiles that have started to claim an
ever-greater toll on the Syrian forces, the
government has started to rely increasingly on
helicopters and planes in order to project power.
This development boosted calls at the United
Nations Security Council to establish a no-fly
zone over Syria, after the example of Libya last
year, and also put additional strain on the Syrian
air force.
A spike of defections ensued,
including a Syrian military pilot, Colonel Hassan
Hammadeh, who allegedly aborted a bombing mission
and flew his Russian-made Mig-21 jet into Jordan
last week. Other high-ranking pilots (including
generals) followed by land, have been bringing
their families into Turkey, and for a moment the
situation in Syria began to resemble closely the
one in Libya right before the Western-led
intervention there started last year (among other
developments back then, a number of pilots and top
regime officials defected en masse).
According to a Daily Telegraph report last
Friday, a number of high-ranking Syrian officials
were planning their "exit strategies". A Reuters
report dated June 26, nevertheless, contradicted
this information, citing US intelligence officials
who claimed that Assad's inner circle had remained
cohesive. It should be noted, furthermore,
that the Syrian air force is one of the branches
of the military most loyal to Assad, and a wave of
defections there could be a serious threat to his
rule.
Shooting down the Turkish jet,
therefore, conveyed a message to both Assad's
enemies and his own hesitant soldiers: that his
regime is strong and defiant, and will not go down
as easily as Libya's regime did. Aided by the
Russian anti-air missiles which it received over
the last year (one of which was most likely used
against the Phantom), Syria would be able, and
would not hesitate to extract a heavy price for
any violation of its territorial sovereignty.
For its part, speculation that the Syrians
had thought the Turkish plane was one of their own
aircraft seeking to defect raises
another point: that deserters could not expect any
mercy.
As a side note, an international
military campaign against a Third-World country,
even one conducted on alleged humanitarian
grounds, often serves an additional purpose of
displaying the qualities of the weapons each of
the major world powers is offering to sell to
others. Thus, the campaign against Libya last year
also resembled an air show that allowed the French
Rafale jets to symbolically compete against the
British Typhoons and the different aircraft in the
American inventory. [1] Back then, they all performed
wonderfully, faced with the mediocre Libyan air
defenses; now, however, there are new Russian
gadgets in display (whose value just went up
following the shooting down of the Phantom), and
the major arms exporters would think twice before
exposing their reputation to danger.
Following the downing, there seems to be
less talk of a no-fly zone, even though a few days
is hardly enough time to gauge whether there is a
substantial shift in this line of rhetoric. In any
case, the discussions at NATO of Syria as a threat
to Turkey show that the West now takes Syria more
seriously than before.
A subtle though
important shift in logic is taking place: while
earlier talk of a no-fly zone and military
intervention appeared to presume that the Syrian
regime was about to crumble (the major threat was
thought to be directed at its own people, while
the violence could destabilize the region
indirectly), the current debates suggest that
Syria is strong enough to threaten a major NATO
member in conventional ways. These two arguments
are not completely irreconcilable - for example,
one could point out that Assad's increasing
military belligerence, both at home and abroad, is
a sign of his political decline - but they diverge
significantly, and it is important to watch
carefully how the rhetoric evolves.
Assad
has additional trumps up his sleeve. According to
reports in the Turkish press, for example, the
reinforcements sent to the Syrian border over the
last days had to guard themselves carefully
against Kurdish guerrilla attacks. The Syrian
regime has a strong clout among the Kurdish
militants in Turkey, and the fact that heavily
armored convoys intended to project force across
the border can hardly travel safely even through
their own territory shows how volatile the
situation is for Ankara and the West. The same
methods used to subvert Assad's rule from the
inside can be used in reverse as well.
All
this is not to say that the pressure on Assad has
lessened, or that his chances of holding on to
power in the long run have improved significantly.
A direct foreign intervention at present is
unlikely (more so after the Phantom incident), but
as the civil war in the country escalates and the
rebels continue to bleed the minority-backed
regime, the strategic calculus may change in the
future.
Also, given that the Syrian crisis
is inextricably linked to the standoff between
Iran and the West, surprises are possible. If the
Assad regime crumbles, this would weaken Iran
greatly, and could placate temporarily disgruntled
American allies (such as Israel and Saudi Arabia)
which might otherwise seek to draw Washington into
a war with Tehran. Since the costs of a war in
Iran will be even greater than those of a war in
Syria, the Americans and the Europeans might
consider the idea.
In this line of
thought, the visit of Russian President Vladimir
Putin to Israel on Monday - his first visit to the
Middle East since reassuming office last month -
has fueled much speculation. Most analysts have it
that the Russian and Israeli position diverge
greatly on Syria, and point out that Russia
supports the Syrian regime while Israel is
indirectly (according to some reports also
directly, if secretly) siding with the rebels.
Some, however, disagree, or at least
qualify this analysis. According to another recent
Stratfor report, for example,
Putin's visit is intended to make
the United States nervous and to try to lay the
groundwork for shifts in Israel's relation to
Russia that could pay off in the long run. The
Israelis, however, do have things they need from
Putin. They cannot control regime change in
Syria, but to some extent Russia can. And here
Israeli and Russian interests coincide. Israel
would tolerate the survival of the al Assad
regime as long as Syria does not become an
Iranian satellite.
Russia could counterbalance
Iran if al Assad's regime survived. If, on the
other hand, his regime fell, Israel and Russia
both have an interest in a moderate Sunni
regime. [2]
One thing that the
Israelis would need badly from Putin, whichever
way the Syrian crisis escalates, is his help in
preventing Assad from firing missiles at Israel.
In the past - for example, in the wake of the 2007
Israeli strike against a Syrian nuclear reactor -
Turkey served as a mediator, but now Ankara has
compromised its role with both Israelis and
Syrians.
The threat is significant,
regardless of Israel's behavior vis-a-vis Assad.
Syrian officials have threatened to "set the
region aflame," if pushed to the brink, and this
is often interpreted in the same vein as Saddam
Hussein's missile attacks on Israel during the
First Gulf War. Back then, the former Iraqi
dictator calculated that attacking Israel would
break Arab consensus against him, and by most
accounts, he came close to succeeding (only the
fact that the US exerted massive pressure on
Israel not to respond saved the day).
Today, Assad finds himself in a broadly
similar situation as Hussein, and Israel is
watching nervously on the sidelines.
In
all, while a foreign intervention in Syria does
not appear imminent, the civil war there is
escalating, the international intrigue is becoming
ever more convoluted, and all sides involved are
preparing feverishly for any contingency. To echo
a cliche, a long and hot summer is expected in the
region.
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