Amid significant rebel
advances and indications that a partition of Syria
might happen in the next months, the government
army reportedly readied chemical weapons for use
last week. The United States and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance
responded with harsh warnings and by approving the
move of multiple Patriot missile batteries to
southern Turkey, something that could further tip
the balance in the country. The Syrian civil war
seems to have entered a critical phase, with
President Bashar al-Assad facing the choice of
either stepping down or fighting to the end, by
all means available.
To be fair, there are
no specific indications that the Syrian government
intends to use weapons of mass destruction against
its own citizens, and its spokespeople vehemently
denied on
Monday any such
possibility. These weapons could play different
roles in several scenarios, including as a
bargaining chip for Assad on his way out of the
country, a deterrent against foreign intervention,
or a way to cover his potential withdrawal to a
rump state centered around territories inhabited
by his Alawite sect.
Some reports claim
that Assad is exploring the possibility of seeking
political asylum in Latin American countries such
as Cuba, Venezuela or Ecuador. Though the Syrian
president has denied any such intention and has
vowed to "live and die in Syria", his recent
military and diplomatic fortunes have turned more
toward dying, and he could be expected to
reconsider.
The threat of chemical
weapons, on the other hand, could win him a
measure of immunity and an offer of more favorable
conditions for an exit (of course, only as long as
he doesn't use them).
Along the same line
of thought, the influential intelligence-analysis
firm Stratfor speculated that the recent defection
of Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdisi
was meant to facilitate "diplomatic efforts to
negotiate a safe exit for the family and guarantee
the security of Syria's Alawite minority".
Still, there are reasons to worry, as
recent statements by US President Barack Obama and
other Western leaders indicate.
"The use
of chemical weapons is and would be totally
unacceptable," said Obama on Monday, rhetorically
addressing Assad in an interview with the New York
Times. "If you make the tragic mistake of using
these weapons, there will be consequences and you
will be held accountable." US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton called Assad "desperate" and said
this could lead him to use weapons of mass
destruction.
Meanwhile, Wired magazine
reported that the Syrian army has begun
weaponizing sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent.
"Physically, they've gotten to the point where
they can load it up on a plane and drop it," an
unnamed American official told the magazine. [1]
Some unconfirmed reports go as far as to
claim that assembled warheads had been moved
toward the north of the country, perhaps toward
the city of Aleppo. There the situation is
particularly bad for Assad: another influential
global analysis firm, Oxford Analytica, forecast
that "loyalist troops are likely to lose most of
their strategic strongholds in the north in coming
months, paving the way to the establishment of a
largely-contiguous rebel area by mid-2013."
The government's failure to recapture
Aleppo, Syria's largest city and a northern
commercial hub, alongside other indicators such as
ever-increasing reliance on air power, underscores
its shortage of manpower. Much of the army is made
up of Sunni Muslim conscripts whose loyalty is
uncertain and who could defect if sent against
members of their sect, a majority of the Syrian
population, and reportedly the government can draw
only a limited pool of soldiers for most
operations.
"Ali, a 28-year-old Alawite
living in Lattakia, the regional capital, said
Alawite villages he recently visited had been
nearly emptied of men after the regime enforced
conscription for any member of the Alawite sect
aged between 18 and 50," the Global Post reported.
[2]
Though Assad may fight for a while
longer, he clearly appears to be losing the war.
This is true even in the capital Damascus, where
the rebels have also advanced in the past few
days. They are fighting pitched battles with
government forces in the city's outskirts and have
caused a shutdown of international air traffic and
other disruptions.
The fact that Lebanese
Druze leader Walid Jumblatt urged Syria's Druze to
join the rebellion carries considerable symbolic
significance. Jumblatt, whom Foreign Policy
Magazine recently called "the weathervane", is
known for aligning himself with the powerful of
the day, and claims to look out always for his
sect. [3] Internationally, Assad's isolation
is growing as well. "A senior Turkish official
said that Russia had agreed on Monday to a new
diplomatic approach that would seek ways to
persuade President Bashar al-Assad to relinquish
power," the New York Times reported.
According to The Atlantic, Israel twice
recently sought Jordan's "permission" to bomb the
Syrian chemical weapons, but was turned down. [4]
On Syria's northern border, meanwhile, a novel
idea of a no-fly zone "lite" may be in the making.
While traditional interpretations of a no-fly zone
include establishing complete air superiority and
taking out anti-aircraft defenses, the Patriot
missiles due to arrive in southern Turkey could
effectively drive off Syrian military aircraft
within 100 or so kilometers from the border. By
negating the Syrian regime's crucial air advantage
in these areas, this step could contribute to the
establishing of a rival rebel regime and the
eventual defeat of Assad.
The Syrian
leader appears to have his back against a wall.
Whether he chooses to step down or to fight on
could be literally a matter of life or death for
him - and for thousands of Syrians of all sects
and stripes. As the death toll in the nearly
two-year uprising tops 40,000 people and the
United Nations is scaling down aid operations in
fear for its staff, a sense of desperate urgency
hangs over the country.
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