In Aleppo, Karm al Jabal. This neighbourhood is next to Al Bab and has been under siege for six months. Mar 4, 2013. Credit: Basma/cc by 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

As the Syrian uprising enters its third year, the United States and its allies are preparing to materially increase their support of the armed opposition in Syria.

Secretary of State John Kerry pledged an additional 60 million dollars in direct aid to the rebels, marking the first time Washington will directly supply rebel forces, but the administration appears as wary as ever to get more directly involved.The CIA is on the ground helping sort out who should get money, and they’re training people in Jordan. The idea is, they don’t want to get involved any further.

The provision of battlefield materiel has been met with some support from hawks who have pushed for greater military intervention, though many policymakers have urged the president to go even further. Exhortations for intervention have increased since rumours began of a chemical weapons attack in Aleppo. Though U.S. officials have largely dismissed the reports, many members of Congress expressed concern about the use of weapons of mass destruction in Syria.

On Monday, Rep. Eliot Engel, the most senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced legislation that would authorise funding for “limited lethal assistance” to Syrian opposition groups, assuming that the groups would be carefully vetted in the process.

Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin concluded a Senate hearing on Syria by stating that a no-fly zone would “be helpful in breaking the deadlock and bringing down the Assad regime”.

During the hearing, Senator John McCain reiterated his long-held position that the U.S. should intervene more directly in the uprising. Levin and McCain have signed on to a letter urging President Obama to establish no-fly zones and provide more military aid to rebels.

Both the House legislation and the Senate letter were applauded in a press release Thursday from the Foreign Policy Initiative, the think-tank successor to the neoconservative Project for a New American Century: “This week, key members of Congress stepped into the void of U.S. leadership on the Syria conflict, calling for action to end the Assad regime’s slaughter of the Syrian people and avoid an even greater regional catastrophe.”

But the boldest military endorsement thus far came from Senator Lindsey Graham, who responded to rumours of the chemical attack by stating, “You’ve got to get on the ground. There is no substitute…I don’t care what it takes…I vote to cut this off before it becomes a problem.”

The Obama administration and senior military officials have pushed back against this type of involvement. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said earlier this week, “I don’t think at this point I can see a military option that would create an understandable outcome. And until I do, it would be my advice to proceed cautiously.”

Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, warns that this should not be taken to imply that the appetite for any intervention is low.

“They’re clearly already involved in the armed opposition,” Bennis told IPS. “The CIA is on the ground helping sort out who should get money, and they’re training people in Jordan. The idea is, they don’t want to get involved any further.”

Prominent Republicans from both sides of the aisle have also expressed concern about further militarising the conflict. At a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Chairman Ed Royce concurred with the sentiment that “the U.S. has no good options in Syria,” and Rep. Karen Bass warned that the Syrian opposition leaders are too weak to be credible in Syria.

“Who are those good rebels we want to arm?” asked Leslie Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. “The interventionists seem to take for granted that we know them well. The fact is, the interventionists themselves and the U.S. government don’t know squat about Syria and know even less squat about these rebels.”

The Free Syrian Army, the moniker bestowed on disparate militias and defected military units that have become the primary vehicle of the anti-Assad opposition, still lacks a functional central structure, and many fear that it has grown increasingly beholden to extremist Salafi groups such as Jabhat Al-Nusra.

“The very real risk in the U.S. providing arms even to those we believe to be moderate Sunni rebels is that even if they do better, and Assad’s regime is weakened, who would be the real beneficiary?” writes Gelb. “No one disputes that the extremist jihadis are far better positioned to take advantage of defeating Assad.”

The Central Intelligence Agency, Defence Department, and State Department have been vetting opposition elements in Jordan and Turkey, attempting to identify “friendly” groups and individuals to furnish with U.S. support, but the process has been fraught with unknowns.

Though the presence of U.S. officials in surrounding states has become near-ubiquitous, Washington continues to suffer from a significant deficit of information from inside Syria itself. This not only precludes the ability to identify friendly (or antagonistic) actors that remain within the Syrian borders, but also the knowledge of what happens to U.S. materiel after it crosses into Syria.

Nevertheless, the changing U.S. position is a clear indication of a shift away from President Obama’s expectation that the uprising would topple Bashar Al-Assad without added U.S. support.

“Obama would have preferred not to get involved at all,” said Bennis, “but that’s not an option. Others are eager to get involved, but their rationale is political, not based on strategic interests.”

According to Gelb, “There is one path to sensible strategy and to staying out of trouble. It is for America’s leaders in Congress, the media, and, above all, the administration to learn the lessons of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam and get themselves to satisfactorily ask and reasonably answer the tough questions before we selflessly, inadvertently, and foolishly find ourselves in another war.”

But as exhortations to further intervention rise, the tenor in Washington appears to be moving decidedly in the other direction.

A resident of Aleppo in the midst of buildings damaged by an airstrike from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Credit: Zak Brophy/IPS

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Feb 14 2013 (IPS)

Though President Barack Obama has been reticent to involve his administration too deeply in the Syrian uprising, revelations over the past week have shown near-unanimous agreement among the president’s top national security advisors for greater military intervention.

A New York Times story last week uncovered a strategy by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus to directly involve the U.S. in arming and supporting the Syrian rebels, in order to have a more direct influence on the course of events in the war-torn country.

The following week, during congressional testimony on the Benghazi embassy attacks, former Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey both professed similar support for the idea of arming Syrian rebels. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is also said to have backed the plan.

The revelations paint a very different picture from the official narrative of the Obama administration, which has remained publicly sceptical of the idea of providing weapons to unknown militant groups operating in Syria.The proposals put in front of (Obama) don’t have a plan about how to get out, or if things don’t go according to plan. They don’t outline in any way how America is going to win, or achieve its goals.

“The U.S. long ago accepted the strategy of supporting insurgents as a way to counter the Assad regime or at least to appear to be doing something about Syria,” Leila Hilal, director of the Middle East Task Force for the New America Foundation, told IPS.

“Even if full-scale military support was not mobilised earlier, steps were taken to allow others to arm rebels. The indirect approach failed to turn the conflict and undermined the revolution.”

Foreign policy analysts have jumped to widely different conclusions about the disparate opinions of the president on one hand, his senior national security staff – the secretary of state, the secretary of defence, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and director of the CIA – on the other.

Writing for the Council on Foreign Relations, Elliott Abrams refers to the president’s decision as “tragically wrong”, and states that “one cannot escape the conclusion that electoral politics played a role” in ignoring the advice of his national security team.

Joshua Landis, associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and proprietor of the widely-read blog Syria Comment, disagrees.

“Obama doesn’t seem to agree with the prevailing interests in Washington, and the way they want to formulate our Middle East policy,” he told IPS.

Landis claims that instead of being influenced by the cabinet’s push for more involvement, “that’s a driver for him for staying out of Syria, because he knows powerful interests will quickly weigh in if we get involved there. He doesn’t seem to trust our Middle East policy-making apparatus.”

Pressed further on the question, General Dempsey clarified later in the week that he supported arming the Syrian opposition “conceptually”, noting that “there were enormous complexities involved that we still haven’t resolved.”

The interventionists’ plan was further undermined by a study within the CIA itself, where a team of intelligence analysts concluded that the influx of U.S. arms would not “materially” affect the situation on the ground.

Landis also cautioned that “the proposals put in front of (Obama) don’t have a plan about how to get out, or if things don’t go according to plan. They don’t outline in any way how America is going to win, or achieve its goals.”

Little is known about the current state of U.S. involvement in the two-year Syrian uprising, which may have claimed the lives of over 60,000 Syrians. Senior White House officials have repeatedly expressed concern that increasing the arms supply to the Syrian rebels may result in weapons falling into the “wrong hands”, a concern exacerbated by the influx of foreign fighters in Syria.

As Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have risen in the ranks of the armed Syrian opposition – partially due to better financial backing, equipment, training, and experience in Iraq/Afghanistan – it has become increasingly difficult to disentangle such groups from other opposition elements.

Even the very same cabinet members who have vocally supported arming the Syrian opposition have expressed grave reservations about the increasingly extremist inclinations of the rebels. Hillary Clinton herself has warned that “the opposition is increasingly being represented by Al-Qaeda extremist elements,” a development she considers “deeply distressing”.

“You can always vet, but can you make the people you like win?” asked Landis. “I’m sure we know people we like, but the problem is, can you make them winners?”

Thus far, Washington’s efforts to marginalise militant Al-Qaeda groups have largely backfired. After the U.S. designation of Jubhat Al-Nusra, the largest Al-Qaeda-linked fighting group in Syria, as a foreign terrorist organisation, most of the Syrian opposition leadership jumped to their defence.

Moaz Al-Khatib, the titular head of the Syrian opposition’s main coalition, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, immediately defended Jabhat Al-Nusra’s role in the uprising as “essential for victory”.

Nevertheless, Washington has been covertly supporting rebel groups for well over a year, with “non-lethal aid”, intelligence, and other unknown means.

The recent statements by Clinton and Panetta, therefore, still reveal little about the actual relationship between the White House and the Syrian rebels.

President Obama openly criticises the idea of armed assistance but has been silently supporting the rebels, while his administration’s liberal interventionists who have openly called for a more militant role have also expressed grave reservations about the ideology and direction of the very people they hope to arm.

These varied opinions and perspectives leave the door open for any number of policies toward Syria.”No one has taken any option off the table in any conversation in which I’ve been involved,” said Dempsey.

Nevertheless, Landis thinks a more militaristic approach in Syria is unlikely.

“Clearly…the people Obama has tried to put forward, all of his appointees, are not in favour of a muscle-bound Middle East policy and are not in favour of more military involvement,” he said. “They’re consistent with his overall plan, which is not to get involved with Syria, not to start a war with Iran.”

Tensions between the civilian and military opposition to Assad’s rule has simmered since the conflict took a decidedly militaristic turn last year. Credit: Freedom House/cc by 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Dec 14 2012 (IPS)

This week, the United States officially recognised the newly-formed National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people, culminating a two-year process of legitimising the Syrian opposition with the U.S. government.

However, as rebels advance ever-closer to the regime’s remaining centres of power, Washington may soon be forced to make more controversial decisions that influence its relations with the Syrian state – and possibly the entire region – for decades to come.

“Those who wish to influence and shape (the outcome of the conflict) must get into the arena,” said Ambassador Frederic C. Hof, senior fellow for the Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East at the Atlantic Council, at a roundtable discussion on Syria Wednesday.

Hof warned that, “Whether the regime goes voluntarily or at the point of the gun, one thing is clear. Those who fought the regime with arms will have much to say” in determining Syria’s future, “even if a civilian government comes to power.”

But further militarising an already explosive situation may have long-term consequences beyond the current battle between opposition forces and the Syrian regime.

Spontaneous civil society

At a panel discussion at the New America Foundation on Tuesday, Mohammed A. Ghanem, senior policy advisor for the Syrian American Council, spoke about the development on independent civil society in “liberated” regions in northern Syria.

“Citizens are coming together trying to fill the gap left by the contracting state,” said Ghanem, describing the proliferation of local city councils and proto-government groups that have formed in the wake of the regime’s departure.

But such civil society groups can only exist in the shadow of the armed rebel forces that have driven out existing institutions. “Of course if it were not for the military efforts in the city, there would be no liberated areas,” says Ghanem. “Everyone depends on the (Free Syrian Army) to provide protection and keep the regime from entering the city.”

“However,” he warns, “there is also a competitive aspect…about who will have the upper hand in the city. Both the military council and the civilians are severely underfunded, but the main source of power for the military is in fighters and arms, whereas civilians need to be empowered to provide more and more services so their legitimacy will be bolstered.”

Very little international attention or money has been given to these grassroots efforts; most of the money funneled into the country has been devoted to maintaining the salaries and supplies of rebel groups.

The tension between the civilian and military opposition to Assad’s rule, long simmering since the conflict took a decidedly militaristic turn last year, raises problems for Washington’s attempts to influence a post-Assad transitional order.

Washington’s Catch-22

The Obama administration has largely avoided direct influence in the fighting on the ground. Instead, it has sought to facilitate the transfer of arms and intelligence to “friendly” armed groups in Syria.

“Although Washington has quietly endorsed the new regional Sunni politics, U.S. policymakers and intelligence and policy analysts should consider the possibility that in the long run, the new order could also spell trouble for Arab democratic transitions and for the West,” wrote Emile Nakhleh, the former director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Programme at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The administration quickly found that far-right Islamists and Al-Qaeda sympathisers were among the best-armed and well-financed armed groups, and that U.S. equivocation has engendered animosity from both the regime and the opposition.

Many have argued that the absence of pro-U.S. sentiment in Syria necessitates a more direct involvement. Ghanem stated that “engaging the situation, being proactive about what’s happening, and doing it before it’s too late…will determine the relationship they have (with Syria) in the future.”

He dismissed concerns that direct support might empower the wrong individuals. “This argument of ‘we don’t know the bad guys and the good guys’, I don’t buy that. They know who’s good and who’s bad. What they need to do is to engage the situation more proactively.”

Similarly, at the Atlantic Council roundtable, Ambassador Hof cautioned that “to be credible with Syrians…the United States will have to become directly involved in arming units now affiliated with the new opposition Supreme Military Council,” referring to the Free Syrian Army’s new military coordination body.

However, given its diminished regional standing, any overture of support (or condemnation) from Washington may well have the opposite of its intended effect.

Activists have accused Washington of “putting the opposition in a very embarrassing position” by listing the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front as a foreign terrorist organisation earlier this week. Some have argued that Nusra’s portrayal as an enemy of Western interests in Syria has bolstered its legitimacy, not undermined it.

Ambassador Hof acknowledged the problem, but characterised the terrorist designation as a U.S. policy imperative. “I understand the reaction of the Syrian opposition, but the Syrian opposition needs to understand that we’re not going to be forgetting about 9/11 and Benghazi any time soon.”

Others, including Sheikh Moaz Al-Khatib, head of the National Coalition, and Riyadh Al-Asad, commander of the Free Syrian Army, have defended the Nusra Front as “integral to the fight”, and its militants among “the best and the bravest” of the Syrian opposition.

After the fall

Given these limitations, the administration has been happy to project an image of staying on the sidelines, but even if the regime falls – a process that could take days or months – calls for international intervention are unlikely to subside.

Hof argues that “an international stabilisation military force” will be necessary to “return refugees and …restore vital services as quickly as possible”, referencing the growing humanitarian disaster for displaced individuals in Syria and refugees abroad.

While the war grinds on, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are bracing for the coming winter. Though most did not expect to remain outside their country long enough to consider the coming weather, it appears that few are expecting to return home any time soon.

The escalating warfare in the past week alone has involved aerial bombardments, car-bombings, and a government shut-off of national internet service. Credit: Rami Alhames/cc by 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 2012 (IPS)

As Syria descends further into civil war, the Barack Obama administration has struggled to balance its support for anti-Assad groups with its concerns that the opposition leadership – including the newly-formed umbrella coalition – is controlled by hardline Islamist groups.

Washington’s support for the rebels has become increasingly tenuous as the escalating violence has led to worrying developments from both sides. Noting “increased concern” of potential chemical weapons deployment, President Obama warned this week that the use of WMDs by the Syrian government would be “totally unacceptable”.

Washington has been reluctant to get too directly involved in the conflict, despite appeals from pro-war organisations, Syrian rebels, and other Western states. U.S. officials have enacted rigorous sanctions and diplomatic pressure on the Syrian government, and have furnished the rebels with “non-lethal” material support, but have been unwilling to commit U.S. troops or weapons.

However, NATO officials announced earlier today that Patriot Missiles have been approved for deployment on the Turkish border, bringing the U.S. and its European allies closer to direct conflict than ever before.

Joshua Landis, associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and proprietor of the widely-read blog Syria Comment, does not expect the NATO arms shipment to lead to a direct confrontation with Syria.

“The Patriot missiles have been in the works for months, when the situation on the ground was quite different,” Landis told IPS. “Things are moving fairly quickly in Syria, and the rebels have made a lot of advances…and events on the ground have overtaken the initial issues.”

Phyllis Bennis, a Mideast expert at the Institute for Policy Studies, largely agrees. “There is a danger, although still small, that the Obama administration will look at the escalating European support for the newly configured – though largely unchanged – rebel alliance, and decide that it is more risky to remain outside,” Bennis told IPS.

Consolidated opposition struggles for control

The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the umbrella group created after U.S. and its Gulf allies grew disillusioned with the existing opposition organisations, closed out a three-day conference in Cairo last week. Though the coalition made little progress in determining the make-up of its 11-member executive political assembly, the Muslim Brotherhood appears to wield increasing control in coalition proceedings.

Attendees claim that members of the Brotherhood have overwhelming control in the determination of the final leadership body, as well as the drafting of the organisation’s internal constitution.

Riad Hijab, who served as the Baathist prime minister in Syria until his defection earlier this year, currently serves as the liaison between the coalition and the rebels on the ground. With the fragmentation of the armed movements inside Syria, the coalition will have to find a means to reunite right-wing Islamists in northern Syria, armed tribal elements in the East, and Kurdish militias in the northwest, none of which have expressed a willingness to fall in line under the leadership of the coalition.

Local fighters buck national leadership

Days after the formation of the coalition, rebel groups in Aleppo rejected the organisation’s leadership, denounced the coalition’s “conspiratorial” attempt to seize power, and declared their intent to establish an Islamic state in Syria, rather than the purportedly secular plan of the coalition.

Though Syrian rebels have made striking gains in the past few weeks, launching an offensive in the capital just this week, profiles of opposition figures and Syrian regime arrests show an increasing internationalisation of the opposition. Some rebels have recently acknowledged the growing influence of Jabhat Al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda affiliate which claims to have up to 10,000 fighters in Syria.

It is near-impossible to determine the influence of such groups on the overall opposition, but many are concerned that the protracted conflict has empowered the wrong actors to properly manage a post-Assad transition.

Bennis cautions that, “It appears that the vast majority of the weapons flooding the conflict by outside forces are being used by partisans of the first few battles, far less by those concerned with Syrians themselves.”

Friends of Syria plan for the future

Late last week, delegates from dozens of states gathered in Tokyo for the fifth meeting of the “Friends of Syria” group convened by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Though Clinton promised that the U.S. would “do more in the weeks ahead” to aid the Syrian opposition, the Obama administration’s path forward remains unclear.

The United Kingdom, France, Turkey, and most Gulf states have already recognised the new coalition as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people. U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford said on Thursday that he “strongly, strongly, strongly” supports the efforts of the coalition, but Washington has yet to extend any official recognition to the body, though it has maintained strong networks of support and assistance to the group.

“The U.S. has made clear that it has no intention of stopping its regional allies, primarily Qatar, Turkey and the Saudis, from arming the various factions of the Syrian opposition,” said Bennis.

With Washington’s acquiescence, rebels’ weapons and money from the Gulf States have flowed freely into Syria through Turkey, while the regime appears to have secured arms shipments through Iraq.

According to Landis, much of the problem stems from a lack of long-term planning at the start of the uprising: “Back in 2011, everyone was predicting that Assad was going to fall within a couple of months, and everyone miscalculated badly.”

The escalating warfare – which in the past week alone has involved aerial bombardments, car-bombings, and a government shut-off of national internet service – demonstrates an unwillingness of either side to consider the possibility for a negotiated outcome.

Though most of these actions evince a growing confidence and organisation among the rebels, the political effect remains largely the same.

“Developments in Syria these last couple of weeks have escalated militarily, with the opposition forces showing greater capacity,” said Bennis. “But politically, little has changed.”

Syrian rebels from the “Al-Qasas Brigade” or “Justice Brigade” run through an olive grove to avoid Syrian Army snipers as they travel between villages on foot in the northwestern Jabal al-Zawiya area. Credit: Freedom House/cc by 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Nov 13 2012 (IPS)

As Syrian rebels launched a new attack in Damascus, opposition leaders announced the creation of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, an umbrella group designed to be more representative of – and more influential with – anti-Assad forces on the ground.

Some view the development with cautious approval. Leila Hilal, director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation, told IPS, “The Coalition is substantively different in several meaningful ways. A main concern, however, lies in how it may be used to advance the proxy agendas at play in the country.”

Rebels advance

Components of the Free Syrian Army escalated attacks on the Syrian capital in the past few days, shelling one of Damascus’s two main presidential palaces and assassinating family members of senior regime officials.

A recent offensive along the border has also led to the rebel capture of Ras al-Ain, a small town in the northeast province of Hasaka, which caused up to 8,000 Syrians to flee into Turkey.

The Syrian army, in response, has bombed rebel positions by air, and laid siege to opposition-controlled areas. Reports indicate heavy fighting in Damascus, as well as the eastern town of Al-Qurriya.

In an interview last week with Russia Today, President Bashar Al-Assad claimed to have no intention to back down or compromise. “I am Syrian, I am made in Syria, and I will live and die in Syria,” he told the interviewer.

Fighting spreads

The fighting has also deeply impacted the internal situation in Lebanon, and spread to Palestinian factions inside Syria. Rebels armed a brigade of Palestinians to battle the regime-friendly Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC), killing at least 10 Palestinians in and around the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus.

Fighting also broke out last weekend along the border with the occupied Golan Heights, where Israeli forces attacked Syrian artillery positions in retaliation for a mortar round that fell near an Israeli army post.

Joshua Landis, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and author of the blog Syria Comment, warns that the Syrian spill-over may be even worse in Iraq.

“The Sunni-led attempt to depose Assad’s regime is sure to give a big boost to Al-Qaida in Iraq as arms and men flow across the border and find a refuge in Syria,” he warns. “Saudi, Turkish and Qatari support for Syria’s Sunnis is also likely to turbo-charge passions in Iraq.”

Opposition rebrands

Amidst the escalating violence, Western powers grew disillusioned with the Syrian National Council (SNC) as an effective leadership organisation for the Syrian opposition. After over a year of infighting, high-level defections, and a failure to implement its policies on the ground, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the creation of a new, more representative opposition body.

After initially supporting the SNC as the “only legitimate representative of the Syrian people,” policymakers in Washington became concerned about its ability to manage a transition to a post-Assad Syria, and the strength of the pro-Western elements in its ranks.

Subsequent attempts by the U.S. to exercise greater oversight and control by coordinating with the opposition in Turkey revealed a chaotic military structure, and deep infiltration right-wing Islamist elements.

Clinton’s call for a new structure demonstrated the administration’s doubts that the current leadership would be unable to produce an outcome in Syria suitable to U.S. interests.

Despite Washington’s best efforts, the meeting of opposition groups appeared to fall apart on Wednesday, when prominent dissident Raid Saif pulled out of the coalition talks after losing his seat on the SNC executive council.

On Friday, SNC President Andulbaset Sieda was replaced by George Sabra, a left-leaning secular activist. Though he originally fell one vote short of being elected to the secretariat, Sabra was invited to take a seat belonging to a hard-line Islamist bloc called the Higher Council for the Syrian Revolution.

On Sunday, however, opposition groups tentatively agreed to a new leadership structure. Sheikh Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib was chosen as the new president, replacing Sabra as the titular head of the opposition after only two days. Riad Saif was also reincorporated as the new vice president, and the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir claims that Qatar successfully pressured the SNC into the coalition by threatening to cut off its funding.

Washington responds

The new organisation was immediately recognised by the Gulf Cooperation Council. The U.S. Department of State issued a statement on Sunday promising to “work with the National Coalition to ensure that our humanitarian and non-lethal assistance serves the needs of the Syrian people”.

Despite the administration’s focus on the political dimension of the conflict, other prominent government figures and analysts continue to push for more direct military intervention.

David Schenker, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, recommended that Washington “take the lead in vetting and providing units of the Free Syrian Army with the weapons required to more quickly end the war.”

General Mustafa al-Sheikh, one of the leaders of the Free Syrian Army, has similarly warned that “If there’s no quick decision to support us, we will all turn into terrorists.”

However, the New America Foundation’s Hilal has warned that increased foreign involvement may be counterproductive.

“The challenge now will be to avoid letting external agendas interfere with what is good for Syria,” she told IPS. “A sudden infusion of foreign assistance and weapons could prove more harmful than helpful, including potentially undermining the nascent unity.”

Meanwhile, Lakhdar Brahimi, the current international envoy for Syria, warned that the violence in Syria may produce a failed state. “What I am afraid of is…the collapse of the state and that Syria turns into a new Somalia,” said Brahimi in an interview with the London-based al-Hayat newspaper. Brahimi’s attempt at a ceasefire collapsed in late October.

“I believe that if this issue is not dealt with correctly, the danger is ‘Somalisation’ and not partition: the collapse of the state and the emergence of warlords, militias and fighting groups.”

As the uprising in Syria becomes violently entangled with its neighbours, the expatriate opposition leadership is already formulating plans for a political transition following the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

On Thursday, the United States Institute of Peace hosted an event entitled “Syria After Assad: Managing the Challenges of Transition”, at which panellists from USIP’s The Day After Project presented their transitional framework for a post-Assad Syria.

The panellists insisted that The Day After Project: Supporting a Democratic Transition in Syria is an “evolving, growing document” that is meant to provide guiding principles instead of concrete policy recommendations. The report covers a wide range of transitional issues including the rule of law, transitional justice, security sector reform, Constitutional design, economic and social reconstruction, and electoral reform.

The Day After Project is comprised of 45 members of the Syrian opposition, drawn from the ranks of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the Local Coordination Committees, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and other independent and unaffiliated groups. It includes several individuals who have become well known in Washington circles, such as Murhaf Jouejati, Najib Ghadbian, Radwan Ziadeh and Rami Nakhla, but only a few of the opposition leaders in Syria itself.

In an attempt to foster consensus across varied political perspectives and avoid policy decisions that fall within the jurisdiction of future governments, the report avoids specific policy prescriptions. Instead, it recommends objectives such as “judicial independence”, “respect for the…diversity of Syrian society”, and “measures to facilitate macroeconomic stability”  without addressing the formal structures or ideologies underpinning these principles.

Nevertheless, the authors of the report have incorporated a number of lessons from recent political transitions in the region. They stressed the importance of civilian authority over the army and the necessity of maintaining existing government structures without engaging in a process of “de-Baathifcation”, a lesson learned from neighbouring Iraq.

Assured that the demise of the Assad regime is forthcoming (panellists’ estimates of the regime’s lifespan ranged from a few months to one year), the report’s authors have launched a communications campaign to bring the findings of the report to activists working inside Syria, seeking endorsements from local groups to supplement the international recognition that the project has received.

But while the transitional plan has been endorsed by a number of international bodies and has received the official backing of the SNC and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, it remains largely unfamiliar to many Syrians on the ground.

The Conflict Expands

Despite their optimism for the distant future, the panellists were forced to admit that the “incremental gains the opposition made in the summer have slowed” and that the momentum of the early strikes in Aleppo and Damascus have turned into a prolonged and bloody stalemate.

Recent reports claim that the rate of Syrian army defections have “slowed to a trickle”, and at least one high-level Free Syrian Army figure appears to have defected back to the regime.

The stalemate has not prevented the violence from expanding beyond Syria’s borders. Turkish armed forces attacked several Syrian government positions on Wednesday after Syrian artillery troops shelled a Turkish town, events that led to further deterioration in relations between the two countries.

Although Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stated that he has no intention of allowing the conflict to escalate any further, thousands have been protesting in the streets of Ankara and Istanbul to decry the ruling AK Party’s “ugly provocation of war” with Syria.

The conflict is also drawing other disparate groups from both sides into its orbit. After the death of a prominent member of Hizballah in Syria, some analysts are predicting a “more explicit backing for Assad” that may tie the Lebanese organisation more closely to the regime.

Within the ranks of the opposition, questions have been raised about the growing number of opposition members with ties to right wing or Zionist organisations, including the affiliation of The Day After Project’s Rami Nakhla with CyberDissidents, a group funded by Sheldon Adelson’s Jerusalem-based Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies.

Envoys from both sides are also busily attempting to win new allies and legitimacy; a letter to Pope Benedict XVI from prominent opposition activist Michel Kilo requests a visit from the Pope to allay fears from Syria’s Christians that the uprising has taken a sectarian focus.

War Rages On

Meanwhile, dozens of Syrians were killed in a series of Al Qaeda-style suicide blasts in the Syrian city of Aleppo, an attack claimed by the extremist opposition group Jabhat Al-Nusra. The government has responded with mortar attacks, aerial strafing and sniper fire, reducing much of the ancient city to rubble.

Fighting in Damascus itself has ebbed significantly since the summer, although the rights organisation Human Rights Watch issued a statement today condemning the government’s abduction of prominent human rights lawyer Khalil Maatouk, who has defended Syrian activists in government courts.

“Maatouk’s apparent arbitrary and incommunicado detention would violate basic principles of international human rights law,” said the statement, calling on the government to “immediately release him if he is in its custody”.

The abduction has led to renewed calls from Egypt, the European Union and human rights organisations for Syria to release its thousands of jailed political prisoners. The intransigent response from Damascus will likely raise more calls for Assad’s departure at all costs.

As Syria continues to unravel and infrastructural and humanitarian responses become more critical, a plan for Syria’s future seems more important than ever. But it also casts a shadow of doubt over the viability of an abstract draft plan to rebuild Syria that sidesteps many of the same issues that have torn the country apart.

A Syrian independence flag painted on on a government school wall. Credit: Freedom House/ CC by 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Aug 23 2012 (IPS)

As violence in Syria spikes after a short lull, the prospect of international military intervention appears to be growing by the day. Earlier this week, almost exactly one year after President Barack Obama first called on Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad to step down, Obama warned of “enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons”.

Though the warning hardly indicated a significant policy shift in the Obama administration’s response to the growing catastrophe in Syria, it does represent the latest step in a slowly shifting willingness of administration officials to consider the use of direct military force against the Syrian state.

Early reactions of the Obama administration – and much of the American public – were largely opposed to yet another foreign military intervention.Still reeling from setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, with forces stretched into Yemen, Pakistan, Mali, and elsewhere, administration officials were also discouraged by the lack of political capital gained by the controversial intervention in Libya.

They pushed back against committing the United States to yet another military endeavour in the Middle East, despite strong urging from hawks in both parties that advocated an immediate aerial campaign against the Assad regime.

However, Washington has not been content to sit on the sidelines and wait out the conflict; it has deeply involved itself on all levels of the uprising – from the daily violence to the transitional plans –hoping to mould the process and outcome to suit its own regional geopolitical interests.

Instead of committing U.S. troops, the administration has chosen a different tactic. For months, Washington has been facilitating the arming and coordination of the Free Syrian Army, the loose umbrella group of militia members, foreign fighters and army defectors that has rapidly grown in size and capacity to take on Assad’s security forces.

Reuters recently uncovered covert CIA involvement with the Free Syrian Army in Turkey, and the administration has allowed a U.S. organization to funnel money to Syrian opposition forces. These moves align the administration not only with the anti-Assad opposition writ-large, but with a particular subset of that opposition movement that has prioritised a violent struggle above all other alternatives.

An armed uprising to unseat a dictator is not necessarily an illegitimate course of action; many successful and inspiring revolutions have followed a similar course. However, the armed uprising in Syria is arguably the least legitimate component of the country’s two-year revolution.

From the very outset, “rebels” have had to rely on financing, equipment and even manpower from external sources, often either from other autocratic neighbouring states with non-democratic expectations for a post-Assad Syria, or from international players with disastrous track records of involvement and influence in Middle Eastern political affairs.

In this context, there are no indications that this iteration will somehow be substantively different than the countless others that have come – and failed – before it.

Syrian proponents of international military intervention are well aware of these dangers, yet some have consciously chosen to disregard them. The majority, however, claim that these complications are a necessary price to pay in the absence of any other alternative. Without Gulf and Western involvement, they argue, the opposition is doomed to defeat, which would inevitably result in a bloodbath for the people of Syria.

This claim belies the fact that the conflict does not exist in the black-and-white binaries presented by pro-intervention groups. Armed insurrection is not the only way to bring down the Assad regime, and the strengthening of armed groups directly undermines alternative methods of resolution to the conflict.

The opposition encompasses a number of different forms, with widely divergent tactics, and commensurate variation in efficacy and legitimacy. It is highly telling that popular demonstrations in Syria have all but vanished as the armed insurrection has gained control and prominence.

Anecdotal evidence points to the rapid disillusionment of many Syrians with armed gangs that have “hijacked” their uprising, potentially to advance the interests of some foreign power with designs for Syria. Charles Glass, a former ABC News chief Middle East correspondent who recently returned from Syria, warned that the Syrian popular democratic opposition is being “drowned out in the cacophony of artillery and rifle fire”.

The effects of the armed uprising are also being felt across the region. In addition to sizable refugee outflows into Turkey, Lebanon and Iraq, the Syrian crisis has served as a catalyst to reignite long simmering tensions in its neighbouring states, a particularly dangerous development for the fragile political equilibrium in Lebanon.

In clashes yesterday, at least a dozen individuals were killed in a gunfight between pro-Assad and anti-Assad factions in Tripoli, and Lebanon has been host to a number of kidnappings of Syrian individuals in retaliation for Lebanese kidnapped earlier in Syria.

It is in this context that Washington’s positioning toward the crisis is particularly dangerous; the explicit support for the armed opposition has effectively edged out all alternatives. It has sidelined moderates, nonviolent activists and a large portion of the Syrian population that has no love for Bashar Al-Assad, but no interest in a Qatari, Saudi or American vision for a future Syrian state.

More importantly, it has emboldened the rebels to continue on a course that will inevitably lead to greater bloodshed, animosity and social collapse. The current course of action gives undue power and political legitimacy to outside actors with little to lose in Syria’s continuing descent into chaos; they can afford to hold out for maximalist objectives because they are not the individuals bearing the costs.

The Syrian regime, similarly buttressed by Russian and Iranian attempts to maintain strategic positioning, has openly floated the idea of an Assad resignation, and advocated the beginning of a dialogue with opposition groups.

Based on the regime’s history of reneging on internationally-mediated efforts to end the violence, the sincerity of this pledge is clearly circumspect. It does, however, represent a growing awareness within some Syrian circles that dialogue is the only way out of this stalemate that would keep the Syrian nation intact, a fact that the militarised Syrian opposition refuses to acknowledge.

As the last remaining U.N. monitors depart Syria today amid bombs and artillery fire in Damascus, it seems that the rest of the world has done the same.

Syrian refugees shout slogans against Assad at Boynuyogun refugee camp in Hatay province on the Turkish-Syrian border in March. Credit: Freedom House/CC BY 2.0

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Aug 6 2012 (IPS)

As government security forces continue a week-long siege of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, high-ranking Syrian officials have begun to defect from the regime in record numbers.

The U.N. estimates that hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled the fighting in Aleppo, which has witnessed a sharp increase in military tactics by both sides, including the use of helicopters, jets, tanks, and other heavy weaponry. It remains unclear if the rebel offensive was planned to coincide with a similar offensive in Damascus and the recent bombing that claimed the lives of four senior regime officials.

The death toll in this latest round of violence remains unclear, but reports show entire neighbourhoods levelled in skirmishes between the two sides, and a senior regime official warned Saturday that the true “battle for Aleppo” had not yet begun.

Fighting has also broken out in and around the Al-Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, where shells likely fired by the regime killed at least 20 Palestinians, and in Al-Abbasyieen, an area in the outskirts of the Syrian capital of Damascus. On Monday morning, Syrian state media claimed that a bomb exploded inside a pro-government TV station in Damascus.

The regime has been further undermined by a series of high-level defections, including Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab who fled Sunday night to neighbouring Jordan.

“I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution. I announce that I am from today a soldier in this blessed revolution,” said a spokesperson for Hijab.

The situation looks grim for the embattled Syrian regime, which is facing dwindling resources and cooling relations with its international supporters in China and Russia, but thus far the army has successfully retaken most areas that have come under its direct offensive.

The Syrian government has appealed to Russia for financial relief from crippling international sanctions that may be starting to deprive the regime of much-needed fund and oil to maintain its strained security apparatus.

However, as the battle for Aleppo drags on and sporadic fighting continues in Damascus and elsewhere across the country, it is unclear if the limited remaining resources of the Syrian army will be able to continue to fund the embattled security apparatus.

Reports have emerged that northeastern Syria has increasingly come under the control of Kurdish forces under the auspices of a newly-formed Supreme Kurdish Council. Abdelbaset Sieda, the new president of the Syrian National Council after Burhan Ghalyoun’s resignation several months ago, has issued a statement arguing for a negotiated solution to sovereignty in the Kurdish areas, while maintaining a policy of zero tolerance for compromise with regime officials who have “blood on their hands”.

There have also been significant changes in international responses to the uprising, including a Treasury Department waiver to allow U.S. groups to fund the opposition, and the recent revelation that President Barack Obama has secretly authorised the arming and training of Syrian rebels in neighbouring Turkey.

The spiralling violence has led to some international concern that the conflict could rapidly become far worse. The government recently relocated several of its chemical and biological weapons stockpiles, and though the Syrian foreign ministry promised that no weapons of mass destruction would ever be used on Syrian civilians, it did reserve the right to use them against “foreign enemies”, a distinction that has become increasingly blurry as the Syrian opposition develops closer ties to international players in the U.S. and the Gulf.

Some concern has also been directed toward the Free Syrian Army (FSA) itself. While still structurally outmatched by pro-regime forces, it has significantly bolstered its military capability in recent weeks. In addition to worries about sectarian language from some FSA fighters, human rights organisations have begun to condemn potential war crimes committed by the FSA, including kidnappings, summary executions, and bombing attacks on civilian areas.

The window for an internationally-mediated ceasefire and transitional peace plan appears to be closing, as Special Envoy Kofi Annan announced his plan to resign from his post at the end of his current mandate on Aug. 31. Though the U.N. is scrambling to find a suitable replacement, the U.N. mission in Syria and Annan’s six-point peace plan appear to be nearing their end, leaving few diplomatic options left on the table.

Many inside of Syria have begun to worry that a prolonged civil war is now all but inevitable. As the military battles increase, the incidence of peaceful, mass-based demonstrations have effectively vanished. It is unclear, however, to what extent the dwindling numbers are a result of fear of regime reprisal, or a lack of faith in the militarised Syrian opposition movement.

Despite the string of FSA victories, the Syrian opposition remains deeply divided and struggles over leadership and direction continue to plague coordination efforts. A conference planned by Haytham Al-Maleh, a prominent opposition figure who recently broke with the well-known Syrian National Council, is being boycotted by several opposition groups, including the SNC.

A number of analysts in the U.S. have roundly rejected both the Syrian government and the Syrian opposition, including As’ad Abu-Khalil, a professor at California State University Stanislaus and the proprietor of the popular Angry Arab News Service.

Abu-Khalil warns in his blog that “the Free Syrian Army took over and hijacked the uprising. Most activists stayed home and washed their hands of what was going on, and some still supported the FSA even if they did not join.” He claims that there is now “no civilian movement left: it was killed by the regime and the FSA.”

Abu-Khalil also warns of the increasing influence of Al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist Islamist groups operating under the guise of the FSA, which still lacks strong central coordination and leadership. Websites affiliated with Al-Qaeda groups have taken responsibility for a number of bombings and attacks in Syria, and analysts have warned that many pro-Al-Qaeda fighters have left Iraq to join the ranks of the Free Syrian Army.

As the Assad regime’s legitimacy – and institutional capability – plummet to new lows, there is little indication that the opposition movements have built the necessary public support to effectively replace it in the event of a total government collapse. U.S. and Israeli plans for post-conflict reconciliation have been roundly rejected by key opposition figures, but no credible alternative has been offered in their place; Syria’s future is apparently as unpredictable and dangerous as its present.

The defection this week of a key general with longstanding ties to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad was hailed Friday by officials in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama as an important step towards ending the regime.

Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlas, the son of former defence minister Mustafa Tlas, was reportedly smuggled by opposition activists to Turkey three days ago and may be en route to Paris, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters Friday during a high-level meeting of the “Friends of Syria” group in the French capital. Fabius later stated that he had no indication of Tlas’s final destination.

“We welcome this defection and we believe it is significant,” Pentagon spokesman Capt. John Kirby said, while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who took part in the Paris meeting, also praised Tlas’s defection and predicted that more would follow.

“(I)t is important that there is this increasing stream of senior military defectors,” she told reporters after the meeting in reference to Tlas’s defection. “Because if people like him, and like the generals and colonels and others who have recently defected to Turkey are any indication, regime insiders and the military establishment are starting to vote with their feet.

“Those who have the closest knowledge of Assad’s actions and crimes are moving away, and we think that’s a very promising development,” she added.

Independent analysts here, including some who have long expressed scepticism over administration claims of the regime’s vulnerability, largely echoed that view, agreeing that Tlas’s departure has struck a major blow to the regime, which has relied for some 40 years on unity between the Alawite minority, of which the Assads are a part, and the Sunni military and business elite.

“The Tlas family is the keystone of the Alawite-Sunni alliance that’s been the bedrock of the regime from the beginning,” Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma, told IPS Friday. “There is no bigger Sunni family in this regime, and here is the cornerstone of that family defecting. It’s a body blow to the regime.”

“This is not the ‘tipping point’, but it is very significant for morale. It sends a message: This is Humpty Dumpty falling off the wall, and it’s over,” according to Landis, whose blog, SyriaComment.com, is widely read among those who follow developments there.

He predicts that the process of high-level defections is inevitable, but is “going to be slow” due to regime restrictions and surveillance of other members of the Sunni elite.

“(E)ven if he’s not the kind of figurehead Washington can optimally support, Tlas can serve a useful purpose,” according to David Schenker, who advised the Pentagon under President George W. Bush on Middle East affairs and is now based at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy (WINEP).

“Tlas appears to have residual appeal with some Sunni Muslims, and it is possible his departure could embolden fellow Sunni soldiers and even prompt a mass exodus from Assad’s military,” he added, noting that some 84 soldiers, including a general and 14 officers, crossed into Turkey last week.

News of the defection comes amidst the continuing deterioration of the Syrian conflict, which has claimed upwards of 10,000 lives in the past 16 months. The Syrian government has steadily lost the backing of former supporters, notably Turkey, as it has failed to curb violence across the state.

While members of the opposition met in Cairo this week in the latest of a series of vain efforts to unify its diverging – and often quarrelsome – factions, the U.S. and Russia continued to butt heads over the terms of any transition that would be authorised by the U.N. Security Council. Russia has insisted that Assad and his cohorts be allowed to participate in a transitional government, which the U.S.- and Arab League-backed opposition has rejected outright.

Though reports have emerged of CIA involvement with Syrian rebels groups operating in Turkey, the Barack Obama administration has thus far refrained from the deeper military intervention favoured by the Turkey-based Free Syrian Army, the Syrian National Council, and some U.S. lawmakers, such as Republican Sen. John McCain, and independent Democrat Sen. Joseph Lieberman, as well as neo-conservative and liberal interventionist pundits and commentators.

Among other measures, they have called for arming the opposition and establishing no-fly zones where opposition activists and civilians can gather in safety.

These hawks have argued that a protracted and increasingly sectarian civil war in Syria could strengthen radical Islamist forces there and that Washington should take a more activist role in the conflict to steer the opposition in a more “moderate” and pro-Western direction.

The Tlas defection may very well bolster the administration’s position by demonstrating that its efforts to isolate and pressurise the regime may be creating the internal fissures needed to bring about its downfall.

Manaf Tlas, a childhood friend of Bashar Al-Assad, is a member of one of the most powerful Sunni families in Syria and served as the commander of the feared Republican Guard. His father, Mustafa Tlas, was a key ally and confidante of Bashar’s father Hafez, and a mainstay of Syria’s Ba’ath regime. Mustafa and Manaf’s brother Firas, a wealthy businessman with former ties to the regime, both left the country last year.

In a declaration purportedly released by Tlas Friday, the former commander stated he had been “progressively dismissed” from his military responsibilities due to his “complete opposition with the unjustified violence and crimes committed by Assad’s regime in the past months” and that he “recognise(d) the legitimacy of the fight of the opposition members to the regime, particularly the ones on the ground.”

He added that he intended to make a statement about his “motives and the possibilities that the future offers me.”

Based on the failure of other prominent regime figures to garner the opposition’s acceptance, let alone backing, Landis said he was sceptical that Tlas can successfully emerge as a new leader.

“They’ve been shunned because they’re considered persona non grata, with blood on their hands,” he said.

Both Landis and Schenker also worry that Tlas’s defection may cause other, unintended problems for the country by signalling its descent into a sectarian civil war.

“We’ve known for some time that this is turning into a sectarian brawl of Alawites and Sunnis,” said Landis. “This defection means that the battle lines along religious communal lines are being drawn up right up to the top of the regime. That’s what has to be very scary.”

“Should Sunnis leave the military and join the opposition wholesale,” warned Schenker in the New York Daily News Friday, “it could reinforce the increasingly sectarian nature of the conflict. Such a trend could, after Assad’s departure, trigger reprisals against the Alawites and communities – like Christians – perceived to have been supporting the regime.”

Alawites constitute approximately 11 percent of the population, and Christians make up an additional 10 percent.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

By Samer Araabi
WASHINGTON, Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

As the Syrian army has stepped up its attacks against opposition strongholds in Homs and elsewhere, the U.S. and its allies have achieved little consensus in choosing a course of action to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Though Washington has severely criticised the Assad regime in Syria for the scale of violence being used against the Syrian opposition – Human Rights Watch estimates the death toll in Homs from this past month alone at over 700 – policymakers have yet to agree on a path forward beyond the existing sanctions policies and the coordination of humanitarian aid.

Many figures have explicitly called for foreign military intervention by U.S. forces, or at a minimum, the provision of U.S. arms to the fledgling Free Syrian Army, a loose assortment of anti-regime fighters that have changed the nature of the anti-Assad opposition from non-violent demonstrations to armed counter-attacks and firefights.

On Monday, John McCain became the first U.S. senator to openly call for U.S.-led airstrikes on President Bashar al-Assad’s military forces.

“The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to establish and defend safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces can organise and plan their political and military activities against Assad,” he is reported as saying in remarks on the Senate floor.

A congressional briefing last Friday featured a presentation by Dr. James Smith, founding director of the controversial military contracting firm Blackwater, who laid out a plan for the establishment of a “Benghazi-like” zone in northeastern Syria to use as a staging ground against the Syrian government.

Smith proposed that U.S. military and intelligence agencies coordinate with the existing Syrian opposition and the restive Kurdish population to establish a safe zone from which international military forces and humanitarian agencies would operate.

Smith, along with a significant portion of the neoconservative establishment, has called for intervention in Syria as a means to “confront Iran and Hezbollah by proxy”, by eliminating Syria’s role in the so-called “axis of resistance”.

Others who supported military action in Libya but have until recently expressed reservations about intervening in Syria have also been reconsidering their positions.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department who is close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called last week for “foreign military intervention” as “the best hope for curtailing a long, bloody destabilizing civil war”. She advocated the establishment of “no-kill zones” and “humanitarian corridors”, which she said could be enforced by internationally-armed local forces and unmanned aerial drones.

Such plans, however, are unlikely to gain significant traction until Washington is assured that its involvement would not further exacerbate the many problems facing the Syrian uprising and the rise of radical Islamist groups within it.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman made the case for the Syrian National Council’s “clear, credible opposition plan”, supported by “Arab leadership on the issue”, but also admitted that the opposition remains marred by “competing divisions, including an Islamist element”.

These fears have led many in Washington into the uncomfortable position of supporting opposition organisations such as the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, while simultaneously expressing concern over their viability in a post-Assad era.

Many analysts have been quick to respond to calls for Western intervention by raising the spectre of Libya, where readily-available weapons and leadership divisions appear to have contributed to a rise in post-civil war violence and the new government’s inability to exert control over the scores of militias that participated in the war.

At a panel sponsored by the Century Foundation in New York last week, Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation, warned that “Dumping arms into this conflict in an unorganised fashion is clearly going to make this conflict bloodier, and clearly going to prolong it.”

Those advocating a more direct international role in the Syrian uprising have been working to increase coordination and leadership within the disparate elements of the opposition, which remains divided not only between the various organisations but within them as well.

Hanna described the Free Syrian army as a “moniker for a local insurgency” that still lacks effective command and control.

The Syrian National Council has also faced growing divisions after a number of prominent members announced they were resigning from the group, citing a lack of progress and insufficient coordination with protestors on the ground.

The “Friends of Syria” meeting convened in Tunis last week exemplified many of these organisational contradictions. While representatives from some 70 countries and international organisations met to discuss ways to coordinate efforts to oust the Assad regime, they were unable to gain meaningful consensus on specific steps beyond the continuing application of diplomatic and economic sanctions.

Though there appeared to be widespread agreement over the need to coordinate humanitarian aid to Syria’s growing refugee population and the countless Syrians living with daily food and heating shortages, the scope of additional involvement proved to be a highly divisive issue.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal is reported to have stormed out of the meeting, angered by the unwillingness of the members to take stronger measures – he has explicitly endorsed arming the opposition.

Russia and China declined to participate in the Friends of Syria meeting, but many policymakers have reluctantly acknowledged that Russia is likely to a play a significant role in the outcome of the conflict despite its apparent intransigence.

“The only way to resolve this is through the Russians,” said former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz, speaking at the Century Foundation. He argued that perhaps Vladimir Putin will be more amenable to compromise after Sunday’s Russian election in which the Russian prime minister regained the presidency.

A new report issued by the International Crisis Group warned that Russian cooperation would be essential to a properly managed transition.

The report suggests that “If Moscow can be convinced that its current course maximises the risk of producing the outcome it professes to fear most: chaos” then it could create a situation in which “the (Syrian) regime would be confronted with the choice of either agreeing to negotiate in good faith or facing near-total isolation through loss of a key ally.”

Feltman, who recently returned from a trip to Moscow to discuss a way forward on the Syria issue, reported that “contact with Russia on all levels is continuing.”

Given the degree to which the Kremlin has invested in defending Assad over the past year, however, finding common ground with Russia will be a daunting task.

Excerpt:

As the Syrian army has stepped up its attacks against opposition strongholds in Homs and elsewhere, the U.S. and its allies have achieved little consensus in choosing a course of action to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Though Washington has severely criticised the Assad regime in Syria for the scale of violence being used against the Syrian opposition – Human Rights Watch estimates the death toll in Homs from this past month alone at over 700 – policymakers have yet to agree on a path forward beyond the existing sanctions policies and the coordination of humanitarian aid.

Many figures have explicitly called for foreign military intervention by U.S. forces, or at a minimum, the provision of U.S. arms to the fledgling Free Syrian Army, a loose assortment of anti-regime fighters that have changed the nature of the anti-Assad opposition from non-violent demonstrations to armed counter-attacks and firefights.

On Monday, John McCain became the first U.S. senator to openly call for U.S.-led airstrikes on President Bashar al-Assad’s military forces.

“The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to establish and defend safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces can organise and plan their political and military activities against Assad,” he is reported as saying in remarks on the Senate floor.

A congressional briefing last Friday featured a presentation by Dr. James Smith, founding director of the controversial military contracting firm Blackwater, who laid out a plan for the establishment of a “Benghazi-like” zone in northeastern Syria to use as a staging ground against the Syrian government.

Smith proposed that U.S. military and intelligence agencies coordinate with the existing Syrian opposition and the restive Kurdish population to establish a safe zone from which international military forces and humanitarian agencies would operate.

Smith, along with a significant portion of the neoconservative establishment, has called for intervention in Syria as a means to “confront Iran and Hezbollah by proxy”, by eliminating Syria’s role in the so-called “axis of resistance”.

Others who supported military action in Libya but have until recently expressed reservations about intervening in Syria have also been reconsidering their positions.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department who is close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called last week for “foreign military intervention” as “the best hope for curtailing a long, bloody destabilizing civil war”. She advocated the establishment of “no-kill zones” and “humanitarian corridors”, which she said could be enforced by internationally-armed local forces and unmanned aerial drones.

Such plans, however, are unlikely to gain significant traction until Washington is assured that its involvement would not further exacerbate the many problems facing the Syrian uprising and the rise of radical Islamist groups within it.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman made the case for the Syrian National Council’s “clear, credible opposition plan”, supported by “Arab leadership on the issue”, but also admitted that the opposition remains marred by “competing divisions, including an Islamist element”.

These fears have led many in Washington into the uncomfortable position of supporting opposition organisations such as the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, while simultaneously expressing concern over their viability in a post-Assad era.

Many analysts have been quick to respond to calls for Western intervention by raising the spectre of Libya, where readily-available weapons and leadership divisions appear to have contributed to a rise in post-civil war violence and the new government’s inability to exert control over the scores of militias that participated in the war.

At a panel sponsored by the Century Foundation in New York last week, Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation, warned that “Dumping arms into this conflict in an unorganised fashion is clearly going to make this conflict bloodier, and clearly going to prolong it.”

Those advocating a more direct international role in the Syrian uprising have been working to increase coordination and leadership within the disparate elements of the opposition, which remains divided not only between the various organisations but within them as well.

Hanna described the Free Syrian army as a “moniker for a local insurgency” that still lacks effective command and control.

The Syrian National Council has also faced growing divisions after a number of prominent members announced they were resigning from the group, citing a lack of progress and insufficient coordination with protestors on the ground.

The “Friends of Syria” meeting convened in Tunis last week exemplified many of these organisational contradictions. While representatives from some 70 countries and international organisations met to discuss ways to coordinate efforts to oust the Assad regime, they were unable to gain meaningful consensus on specific steps beyond the continuing application of diplomatic and economic sanctions.

Though there appeared to be widespread agreement over the need to coordinate humanitarian aid to Syria’s growing refugee population and the countless Syrians living with daily food and heating shortages, the scope of additional involvement proved to be a highly divisive issue.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal is reported to have stormed out of the meeting, angered by the unwillingness of the members to take stronger measures – he has explicitly endorsed arming the opposition.

Russia and China declined to participate in the Friends of Syria meeting, but many policymakers have reluctantly acknowledged that Russia is likely to a play a significant role in the outcome of the conflict despite its apparent intransigence.

“The only way to resolve this is through the Russians,” said former U.S. ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz, speaking at the Century Foundation. He argued that perhaps Vladimir Putin will be more amenable to compromise after Sunday’s Russian election in which the Russian prime minister regained the presidency.

A new report issued Monday by the International Crisis Group warned that Russian cooperation would be essential to a properly managed transition.

The report suggests that “If Moscow can be convinced that its current course maximises the risk of producing the outcome it professes to fear most: chaos” then it could create a situation in which “the (Syrian) regime would be confronted with the choice of either agreeing to negotiate in good faith or facing near-total isolation through loss of a key ally.”

Feltman, who recently returned from a trip to Moscow to discuss a way forward on the Syria issue, reported that “contact with Russia on all levels is continuing.”

Given the degree to which the Kremlin has invested in defending Assad over the past year, however, finding common ground with Russia will be a daunting task.

WASHINGTON, Mar 5 2012 (IPS) – As the Syrian army has stepped up its attacks against opposition strongholds in Homs and elsewhere, the U.S. and its allies have achieved little consensus in choosing a course of action to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Protestors inside the Friends of Syria meeting, demanding an end to the bloody violence in their country.
Credit: Jake Lippincott/IPS

Though Washington has severely criticised the Assad regime in Syria for the scale of violence being used against the Syrian opposition – Human Rights Watch estimates the death toll in Homs from this past month alone at over 700 – policymakers have yet to agree on a path forward beyond the existing sanctions policies and the coordination of humanitarian aid.

Many figures have explicitly called for foreign military intervention by U.S. forces, or at a minimum, the provision of U.S. arms to the fledgling Free Syrian Army, a loose assortment of anti-regime fighters that have changed the nature of the anti-Assad opposition from non-violent demonstrations to armed counter-attacks and firefights.

On Monday, John McCain became the first U.S. senator to openly call for U.S.-led airstrikes on President Bashar al-Assad’s military forces.

“The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to establish and defend safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces can organise and plan their political and military activities against Assad,” he is reported as saying in remarks on the Senate floor.

A congressional briefing last Friday featured a presentation by Dr. James Smith, founding director of the controversial military contracting firm Blackwater, who laid out a plan for the establishment of a “Benghazi-like” zone in northeastern Syria to use as a staging ground against the Syrian government.

Smith proposed that U.S. military and intelligence agencies coordinate with the existing Syrian opposition and the restive Kurdish population to establish a safe zone from which international military forces and humanitarian agencies would operate.

Smith, along with a significant portion of the neoconservative establishment, has called for intervention in Syria as a means to “confront Iran and Hezbollah by proxy”, by eliminating Syria’s role in the so-called “axis of resistance”.

Others who supported military action in Libya but have until recently expressed reservations about intervening in Syria have also been reconsidering their positions.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department who is close to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, called last week for “foreign military intervention” as “the best hope for curtailing a long, bloody destabilizing civil war”. She advocated the establishment of “no-kill zones” and “humanitarian corridors”, which she said could be enforced by internationally-armed local forces and unmanned aerial drones.

Such plans, however, are unlikely to gain significant traction until Washington is assured that its involvement would not further exacerbate the many problems facing the Syrian uprising and the rise of radical Islamist groups within it.

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Thursday, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman made the case for the Syrian National Council’s “clear, credible opposition plan”, supported by “Arab leadership on the issue”, but also admitted that the opposition remains marred by “competing divisions, including an Islamist element”.

These fears have led many in Washington into the uncomfortable position of supporting opposition organisations such as the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, while simultaneously expressing concern over their viability in a post-Assad era.

Many analysts have been quick to respond to calls for Western intervention by raising the spectre of Libya, where readily-available weapons and leadership divisions appear to have contributed to a rise in post-civil war violence and the new government’s inability to exert control over the scores of militias that participated in the war.

At a panel sponsored by the Century Foundation in New York last week, Michael Hanna, a fellow at the Century Foundation, warned that “Dumping arms into this conflict in an unorganised fashion is clearly going to make this conflict bloodier, and clearly going to prolong it.”

Those advocating a more direct international role in the Syrian uprising have been working to increase coordination and leadership within the disparate elements of the opposition, which remains divided not only between the various organisations but within them as well.

Hanna described the Free Syrian army as a “moniker for a local insurgency” that still lacks effective command and control. The Syrian National Council has also faced growing divisions after a number of prominent members announced they were resigning from the group, citing a lack of progress and insufficient coordination with protestors on the ground.

The “Friends of Syria” meeting convened in Tunis last week exemplified many of these organisational contradictions. While representatives from some 70 countries and international organisations met to discuss ways to coordinate efforts to oust the Assad regime, they were unable to gain meaningful consensus on specific steps beyond the continuing application of diplomatic and economic sanctions.
Though there appeared to be widespread agreement over the need to coordinate humanitarian aid to Syria’s growing refugee population and the countless Syrians living with daily food and heating shortages, the scope of additional involvement proved to be a highly divisive issue.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal is reported to have stormed out of the meeting, angered by the unwillingness of the members to take stronger measures – he has explicitly endorsed arming the opposition.Russia and China declined to participate in the Friends of Syria meeting, but many policymakers have reluctantly acknowledged that Russia is likely to a play a significant role in the outcome of the conflict despite its apparent intransigence.

By Samer Araabi and Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Feb 22 2012 (IPS)

Just days before the opening meeting of the new international “Friends of Syria” in Tunis 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 favour 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 Sen. Lindsay Graham, who was travelling with McCain, and by an open letter to President Barack Obama issued by two right-wing pro-Israel groups – the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) and the Foundation for Defence of Democracies (FDD) – 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 U.S. invasion of Iraq and have urged Washington to prepare for war with Iran.

But 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.

In the latest statement by a senior administration official, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued 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 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 behaviour 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 organisations 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, U.S. 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 U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper.

A statement today by State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland emphasised 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 U.S. Institute of Peace, warned that the “fairly decisive failure of U.S. policy toward Syria” in the past year is ill-equipped to manage the “unregulated, unchecked militarisation” of the current conflict, and called for a greater U.S. 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 U.S. 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 (CPA), Paul Bremer and Dan Senor; former undersecretary of defence 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 later 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 parametres 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 U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Excerpt:

Following a failed bid to pass a U.N. Security Council Resolution calling for regime change in Syria, Washington is considering other means to influence events on the ground, as the country slips ever closer toward civil war.

As the Syrian uprising nears the one-year mark, increasing violence at the hands of the Syrian regime has led to greater calls for international intervention to stop the bloodshed and force President Bashar Al-Assad from power.

Though originally evincing a strong anti-interventionist platform, the Syrian National Council (SNC), the purported leaders of the Syrian uprising, have gradually shifted to a position that calls for direct international intervention as the only means to stop the country from sliding into civil war. The U.N. currently estimates the death toll over the past year of unrest at more than 5,000.

A recent statement from the SNC called on “everyone around the world to speak up and do something to stop the bloodshed of innocent Syrians,” while condemning Russia’s unwillingness to terminate its robust military relationship with the Syrian regime.

Setbacks at the UN

Attempts to coordinate international action were dealt a significant blow on Sunday when Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling on Assad to cede power to the vice president as part of process leading to a government of national unity.

The Russian and Chinese ambassadors justified their vetoes as a defence of state sovereignty, eliciting pointed responses from their U.S. and French counterparts.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice stated – and tweeted – that she was “Disgusted that Russia and China prevented the #UN Security Council from fulfilling its sole purpose.”

Following the vote, the SNC issued a statement calling for “empathizers around the world…to take all political, economic, and diplomatic measures with countries that have hampered the issuance of the UNSC resolution” including “direct economic boycott, terminating cooperative trade agreements, and reevaluating relationships”.

Washington has also been weighing a number of other punitive, symbolic and humanitarian actions.

On Monday, the State Department announced that it would be closing the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, sending its entire staff back to the U.S.

A press statement cited the recent violence in Damascus which “has raised serious concerns that our Embassy is not sufficiently protected from armed attack,” while assuring that “Ambassador Ford has left Damascus but he remains the United States Ambassador to Syria and its people.”

There has also been some discussion on the humanitarian responsibilities of the U.S. government, and a recent briefing hosted by Congresswoman Sue Myrick aimed to address the ways in which the government could alleviate the worsening humanitarian crisis in Syrian refugee communities bordering the country, as well as in Syria itself.

Heavy sanctions, a decline in diplomatic and economic relations, and the Syrian government’s own budget reprioritisation have caused basic food prices to skyrocket in Syria, and several regions report acute shortages of food, medicine, and electricity.

The refugee camps operating predominantly in Turkey do not appear to be faring much better, and scattered reports detail similar shortages of basic necessities, all amid poor weather conditions.

Arming the rebels

Meanwhile, the failure at the Security Council has increased calls in Washington for independent action on Syria to influence the course of events on the ground.

Shortly after the Security Council vote, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for a coalition of “friends of a democratic Syria” to coordinate efforts to remove Assad from power.

“We will work with the friends of a democratic Syria around the world to support the opposition’s peaceful political plans for change,” Clinton said, raising the possibility that Western powers may sponsor arms and training for rebel groups in a manner reminiscent of the Contact Group on Libya, which helped fund and arm the Libyan Transitional Council last year.

Though there appears to be little appetite for direct military involvement as of yet, many voices within the government, such as Senator Joseph Lieberman, have openly called for the provision of weapons, intelligence, and other military aid to Syrian rebels, particular to the armed army defectors known as the Free Syrian Army.

Concerns over intervention

A number of observers have been troubled by the ever-increasing militarisation of the conflict, and many see the involvement of Western military aid as a worrying development that may distort the nature of the uprising.

Bassam Haddad, director of the Middle East Studies programme at George Mason University and co-founder of the popular website Jadaliyya, recently wrote an article decrying the ways that foreign intervention may undermine the goals of the initial uprising, prompting a heated exchange between proponents and opponents of foreign intervention.

In a recent interview with Al-Jazeera English, Haddad warned that the Syrian uprising has been gradually transformed “from a legitimate domestic fight against dictatorship to something far more cynical”. Haddad and others have accused the U.S. of supporting the Syrian uprising to suit its own regional interests, while ignoring or undermining similar uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, and elsewhere.

Bashar Jaafari, Syria’s ambassador to the U.N., capitalised on this contradiction during his remarks on Saturday, asking Ambassador Rice why she failed to feel equally “disgusted” with the numerous U.S. vetoes protecting Israeli military operations in Gaza, Lebanon, and against the Palestinian people in general.

Washington’s dealings with the Syrian regime are also complicated by a darker ongoing relationship between the two governments.

In an apparent warning to those in the West advocating the overthrow of the regime, Syria reportedly released Abu Musad al-Suri, the alleged mastermind behind the Jul. 7, 2005 London bombings, from the prison in which he was held under the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme.

The release is believed to be an implicit statement on the consequences of abandoning the Syrian regime and a reminder of the ties enjoyed by the U.S. and Syrian governments in the George W. Bush administration’s “Global War on Terror”.

Given the recent escalation of violence by both the regime and its foes, as well as the Syrian regime’s willingness to use all available options in order to stay in power, many take these developments to suggest that further international intervention will only stoke the embers of civil war.

“The veto will diminish the relevance of the United Nations and increase the odds that Syria will descend even further into a civil war fuelled by a flood of weapons and aid to all parties,” wrote Marc Lynch, a Middle East expert at George Washington University, on his foreignpolicy.com blog after the Security Council vote

“The U.N.’s failure won’t end regional and international efforts to deal with the escalating brutality, but it will now force those efforts into other, less effective and less legitimate channels. The already slim prospects for a ‘soft landing’ in Syria, with a political transition deal ending the violence, are now closer to complete collapse.”

As the Syrian uprising enters its ninth month, it faces some of its most daunting challenges to date, despite the consolidation of near-unanimous international condemnation of the Syrian government.

Over the past two months, the Syrian National Council – having modelled itself as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people – has successfully lobbied a number of states and international organisations to enforce sanctions against the Syrian state.

The United States, European Union, Turkey, and most recently, the Arab League have levied deep and comprehensive sanctions aimed at crippling the efficacy of the Syrian regime.

On Tuesday, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Rep. Brad Sherman introduced the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Reform and Modernization Act, which updates already-existing legislation to further penalise those providing weapons, mining equipment or technological support to Syria.

Opposition leaders in the Syrian National Council have welcomed the sanctions as a means to cut off the government’s ability to maintain its massive security apparatus, but many observers have decried the sanctions for the damage they do to the Syrian people.

While the Economist estimates the direct effect of international sanctions to top 400 million dollars per month, sanctions have also played havoc with the Syrian economy itself, with skyrocketing prices for basic foodstuffs and a rapid devaluation of the Syrian pound.

Meanwhile, despite significant trade reductions from most of its neighbours, the Syrian state still enjoys robust economic relationships with Iraq, Lebanon, and Iran, as well as Russia and China, which have been largely unwilling to condemn the regime’s violent crackdown. As a result, the true effect of international sanctions and their ability to dry up the Syrian state’s coffers remain to be seen.

In addition to its existing sanctions policies, Washington has been steadily increasing its support for the opposition movement, while further condemning and restricting the Syrian government.

In the past week alone, the Barack Obama administration announced the return of Ambassador Robert Ford to Syria, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held direct meetings with elements of the Syrian opposition for the first time.

Clinton referred to the SNC as the “leading and legitimate representative of Syrians seeking a peaceful, democratic transition” and accused the regime of fanning sectarian violence.

Despite growing support, U.S. officials continue to express some doubt over the Syrian National Council’s actual legitimacy and representation, questioning its efficacy in controlling events on the ground, and expressing concern over the apparently disproportionate representation of Islamist-affiliated members.

A recent report on Syria by the International Crisis Group considers many of the myriad intricacies that have come to define the Syrian uprising, from the caution of Syria’s minority communities to the increasing entanglement of the Syrian opposition with regional and international actors, and the concomitant increase in violence that has resulted from it.

While acknowledging that the Syrian regime may well be on its last legs, it warns about the “increasing internationalization” of the conflict, which “may be impossible to stop” but almost certainly “would both distract from the protest movement’s goals and diminish its chances for success”.

The report details the significant interests of the U.S., Israel, Lebanon, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in seeking to shape Syria’s future foreign policy and demographic dynamics.

The acceptance of an international role in ending the conflict – once considered taboo by the overwhelming majority of Syrian protestors – is beginning to find greater acceptance in SNC circles.

In an interview with the Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal, SNC President Burhan Ghalyoun also refused to explicitly state his position on foreign military intervention, a sharp about-face from his earlier pronouncements about the unacceptability of a Libya-like scenario in Syria under any circumstances.

Perhaps most notably, Ghalyoun recently declared that the SNC would formally sever ties with Iran and cut all funding and support for Hizballah and Hamas, partly in response to Hizballah’s ostensible support for the Assad government, but likely also as a nod to Western observers who are keen to see such ties cut.

Ghalyoun also recently stated the SNC’s commitment to the restoration of Syrian’s occupied Golan Heights through “diplomatic means”, by leveraging Syria’s “special relationship with the Europeans and Western powers”.

Many suspect that Ghalyoun’s comments on these issues are primarily directed toward assuring the international community of the Syrian opposition’s willingness to act in accordance with Western expectations.

Responding to Ghalyoun’s statement, Bassam Haddad, director of the Middle East Studies Program at George Mason University, asked, “Why should the strategies of a potentially democratic Syrian government be announced before the appropriate conditions for such a representative leadership are met?”

The Crisis Group report also warns of increased militarisation in the hands of the Syrian opposition, which has swiftly escalated from largely non-violent resistance to armed attacks and coordinated military manoeuvres in a manner of weeks.

Last week, defected military units known as the Free Syrian Army attacked an intelligence compound outside of Damascus, and armed opposition members appear to have gained footholds in parts of Idlib, Hama, and Homs.

Though members of the Syrian National Council have been quick to reassure international observers that the Free Syrian Army is reliable, coordinated, and responsible, the FSA remains shadowed in unknowns.

As the report explains, “the Free Syrian Army itself is more a wild card than a known entity,” and posits that the group may grow to mimic the deadly Syrian state from which it was born, warning that “the Free Army’s posting of forced confessions by captured security officers – who, in at least one instance, showed obvious signs of torture – stands as a first, cautionary tale.”

In addition to the increasing importance of the Free Syrian Army, violence has scarred Syria in other, more localised ways. Several cities have witnessed widening spirals of violence, retribution, kidnappings and even beheadings, often by regime loyalists but increasingly at the hands of opposition members as well.

In spite of the regime’s recent overtures for the entry of external observers and for dialogue with the opposition, violence at the hands of Syrian security forces continues to escalate, claiming the lives of over 100 protestors this week alone, and all signs point to the continuation of the conflict for some time to come.

In a surprising interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad appeared to take no responsibility for the 4,000 lives claimed by the Syrian uprising. In discussing the government’s response to the protests, Assad claimed that “No government in the world kills its people, unless it’s led by crazy person.”

Though different actors will interpret those words in different ways, none of them bode well for the coming months in Syria.

Journalists, analysts, and policymakers have struggled to separate truth from fiction as the political situation in Syria steadily deteriorates. The lack of accurate, credible information has mired the Syrian situation beneath a fog of war that has complicated the world’s understanding of the regime, its opposition, and the realities behind the uprising’s latest developments.

As the uprising nears its fourth month, President Bashar Al-Assad’s troops have continued to battle surging demonstrators across the state, scrambling to ensure that protests remain outside of the pivotal central cities of Aleppo and Damascus. The military crackdown, arrests, tortures, and sieges have been accompanied by a state-wide media blackout, ensuring that news organisations have highly limited resources within Syria.

Many news outlets, including most major Western news organisations and prominent Arab stations like Al Jazeera and Al-Arabiyya, have been highly reliant on amateur and unaffiliated inside sources, hastily recorded mobile videos, or eyewitness accounts.

Though some such accounts have been pivotal in broadcasting the government’s siege of Dara’a, or demonstrating the brutality of Syrian troops against their own civilians, it has also led to a great deal of confusion, obfuscation, and downright manipulation of facts, on both sides of the political divide.

Last week, Syria’s Ambassador to France, Lamia Shakkur, appeared to publicly resign on a French television show, in protest of the brutal policies of her government. Speaking on France 24, Shakkur denounced the “cycle of violence” and claimed to “recognise the legitimacy of the people’s demands for more democracy and freedom.”

Reuters confirmed the resignation with an embassy source, but, by the time the story had crossed the globe, a different television station was invited to the embassy to hear Shakkur claim to have no knowledge of the resignation and reiterate her support for the Assad regime.

An even more dramatic example centred on a popular blog titled “A Gay Girl in Damascus,” ostensibly written by Amina Arraf, a Syrian American lesbian living in Damascus. Amina’s updates on the ground in Syria, and her reflections on the political situation quickly became an important source of information on daily life during the uprising in Syria.

The blog captured the world’s attention when a post by the blog owner’s “cousin” claimed that Amina had been arrested by the Syrian police and had disappeared.

News of the abduction spread quickly, and a number of media outlets, politicians, and government agencies began to get involved, until the revelation that “Amina Arraf” was in fact a 40-year-old U.S. citizen from Georgia named Tom MacMaster.

MacMaster admitted to fabricating the identity of Amina Arraf and apologised for having “compromised the safety of real people” and for the ways in which he may “have helped lend credence to the lies of the regime”.

The reaction to this revelation has been quick and furious, particularly from supporters of the Syrian opposition who bemoaned the loss of credibility MacMaster’s actions would doubtless create.

As’ad Abu-Khalil, professor at the University of California at Stanislaus and owner of the popular Angry Arab News Service blog, complained that “Macmaster damaged the efforts of well-meaning and sincere Syrian dissidents” and argued that he “should not only apologize to the readers of the blog: he owes a bigger apology to the people of the Middle East and to gays and lesbians in the region”.

Disinformation has been emanating heavily from the Syrian government and its supporters as well. A recent online exposé by Syrian opposition members has identified a number of factual inaccuracies and outright falsifications in the Saudi Arabian paper Al-Sharq Al- Awsat, which used pictures from a German research study to fabricate Syrian identities.

Beyond its deliberate campaigns of misinformation, the actions of the Syrian regime itself remain veiled from public view. Speculation abounds about the true political authority behind the crackdowns, with many prominent analysts presuming that Bashar Al-Assad has been sidelined by hardliners such as Muhammad Makhluf, father of wealthy businessman Rami Makhluf, and Maher Al-Assad, brother of the president and commander of the fearsome Republican Guard.

The nature and disposition of the opposition itself are also cause for much speculation. Allegations of disproportionate influence have been levelled at the Muslim Brotherhood, neighbouring states, expatriate Syrians, and tribal leaders.

The competing accusations often overlap, as in last Friday’s protests, dubbed the “Day of the Clans.” Abu-Khalil has speculated that the role of tribal leaders in Friday’s protest had been buttressed by the support of the Brotherhood, through financing from Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, the first large-scale army defections appear to have taken place in Jisr Al-Shughour, a small northern city near the Turkish border.

The Syrian government has claimed that “120 security forces and civilians” were killed by “armed gangs”, but eyewitness accounts claim that an army unit ordered to fire on protestors had decided to join the opposition instead, prompting a large-scale invasion of the district and forcing approximately 7,000 Syrians to flee across the border to neighbouring Turkey.

Violence has also spread to the province of Aleppo, the country’s second biggest city. The neighbouring province of Idlib is quickly rising to be the next hot spot, and events in Jisr al-Shughour seem to have convinced both sides that the creation of an armed rebel force may be a possibility, though a distant one as yet.

Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma and owner of the popular and well-respected blog Syria Comment, claims that the ferocity of the Idlib crackdown is due to fear that “Damascus will do everything it can to preclude the formation of a Benghazi, which would allow foreign intelligence agencies and governments to begin arming and training a rebel army, as happened in Libya.”

As the protests begin to creep toward more urban areas, many eyes are on the main cities of Aleppo and Damascus, which had been largely quiet since the beginning of the uprising. A number of commentators have noted that the opposition cannot hope to win without the support of the major metropolitan centres, which have been pivotal uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain.

The absence of credible information has severely constrained Washington’s response to the situation. In a White House conference call earlier this morning, Middle East Advisor Steve Simon admitted that the administration has “no idea how this thing is going to play out, but we’re hoping that a process does begin” for political transformation.

The administration remains optimistic that the outcome will be favourable. Simon added that a coalesced and credible opposition “appears to be beginning”, and expressed a willingness to “work with whatever opposition matures and whatever alternative government ultimately replaces the current government.”

Two months into the uprisings that have shaken the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, the outcome remains largely unclear. The Syrian government’s repressive measures, complete with mass arrests, torture, and sizable military deployments, have severely dampen the movement but failed to extinguish the protests altogether.

Meanwhile, while a large-scale opposition meeting takes place in Istanbul, many analysts have noted worrying rifts in the anti-regime movement.

As the opposition tries to muster its support, the Syrian regime has continued its month-long crackdown on protestors.

The originating city of Dara’a remains under tight military control, with little or no access to food, water, electricity, and basic medical supplies. Troops remain posted in a variety of other protest areas.

Despite the government brutality, protestors have continued to demonstrate in the streets. As time has dragged on, though, growing rifts have emerged in the opposition movement, both between local Syrians and their international counterparts, and within the domestic opposition itself.

Joshua Landis, an expert on Syria and the proprietor of the blog Syria Comment, claims that “the opposition is divided over the proper role foreign governments should play in bringing down the Syrian regime. Many Syrians abroad believe that only foreign action – primarily sanctions as presently articulated – will destroy the Syrian government” while others favour an internal domestic solution instead.

Other divisions abound inside Syria itself, where different factions argue over timing, strategy, and the practicality of negotiating with the regime.

Many of these points of contention were present at a recent forum hosted by the Middle East Institute, which featured three figures with vastly different interpretations of the Syrian situation.

Ammar Abdulhamid, a prominent Syrian dissident based in Washington D.C., argued that the protestors in Syria “Don’t want us to piggyback on their success, or style ourselves as the leaders of the revolution, but they want us to assume a leadership role… to formulate an alternative that can be endorsed by the protest movement inside and endorsed by the international community.”

Abdulhamid called for greater U.S. involvement and international recognition for a Syrian transitional government, presumably guided by the expat Syrians coordinating with the protest movement.

Steven Heydemann, another panelist and an expert on Syria at the United States Institute of Peace, warned that greater involvement in the Syria situation would not suit U.S. interests at this time, arguing that “some fairly serious trigger” would be required to get Washington off the fence.

The greatest divisions, however, appear to centre around the means by which the opposition movement could end the Assad’s regime grip on power. Heydemann opined that only cooperation and dialogue with the regime could move the country forward, cautioning that the “trial of Mubarak serves as significant disincentive for other dictators to accept an exit,” in reference to the recent decision by Egyptian officials to bring ex-president Hosni Mubarak to stand trial for his crimes.

Abdulhamid vehemently disagreed, stating that “the idea that Assad can stay is… a destructive one.” Abdulhamid compared the Assad regime to a “woolly mammoth”, suffocating the state with its “dead weight”.

The upcoming Istanbul meeting, relocated after Egypt denied the Syrian opposition permission to meet in Cairo, is meant to consolidate the disparate strains and produce a common narrative, and more importantly, to create a viable alternative to the status quo.

All parties agree that the creation of a shared set of guidelines, ideology, and strategy is imperative both to strengthen the Syrian resistance, and to win international backing, but the meeting itself is fraught with dissention.

Burhan Ghalioun, another prominent Syrian intellectual who has insisted that leadership of the resistance must come from the domestic Syrian youth, has boycotted the Istanbul meeting.

In a statement produced earlier this week, Ghalioun claimed that the meeting would be “a collection of many of those who want to benefit from and exploit the revolution to serve private agendas, including, unfortunately, foreign agendas.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Farid Ghadry of the Reform Party of Syria openly hoped that “this is an opportunity for Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, to do something.”

Ghadry has called for greater regional intervention in the Syrian situation, particularly from Israel, an idea with little popularity on the ground.

Though the U.S. has so far been unwilling to move beyond sanctions and warnings, the European Union on Wednesday voted to withdraw all aid to the Syrian state, and has suspended a number of ongoing and infrastructure projects, while calling for a U.N. Security Council resolution to condemn the Syrian crackdown.

Meanwhile, support for the Syrian regime continues to hold strong in some circles.

Hasan Nasrallah, secretary general of the pro-Syrian Lebanese party Hizballah, gave a televised address in which he urged “the Syrian people to maintain their regime of resistance, as well as to give way to the Syrian leadership to implement the required reforms and to choose the course of dialogue,” calling on Lebanon to “reject any sanctions led by U.S. and the West asking Lebanon to abide by them against Syria, which is the most important goal of [Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey] Feltman’s recent visit to Lebanon.”

In the latest significant turn, video footage of deceased 13 year-old Hamzah Ali Alkhateeb elicited a furious response both internally and throughout the international community.

Alkhateeb was brought by his parents to an Apr. 29 demonstration, where he was detained with hundreds of other protestors. Video footage shows the boy’s corpse – released to his parents last week – with several gunshot wounds, mutilated genitals, and other clear signs of torture.

Protests have increased significantly since the footage of the body was made public, as have reported casualties. The total body count has climbed well over 900 by the most conservative estimates, earning Syria the second highest death-per-capita ratio in Arab uprisings, coming a distant second to Libya.

Whether this event will be a sufficient “trigger” remains to be seen, but for all their differences, the many voices of Syria’s opposition movement seem to agree on one thing: without some sense of a collectively agreed-upon political alternative to the current regime, the protests stand little chance of success.

Though the Arab Spring has heralded newfound hope and optimism across the Middle East, the mood has darkened considerably as entrenched governments have fought back viciously against democratic opposition.

The relatively quick collapse of the governments in Tunisia and Egypt has given way to protracted struggle – along with its many complications – in Syria, Bahrain and Libya. Nowhere has this been demonstrated more clearly than in Syria, where the demand for democratisation has become deeply tangled with geopolitical dynamics, overlapping alliances, and clashing political ideologies.

The situation in Syria has developed differently than the revolutions that swept its neighbours. As one of the members of the so-called Axis of Resistance, Syria has evaded the accusations of subservience to foreign powers that plagued the old guard of Egypt, Bahrain, and elsewhere.

More importantly, Syria sits between Lebanon and Iraq, states still struggling to overcome their recent spasms of sectarian violence and instability. Syrians have also watched warily as the revolutions in Libya and Bahrain have produced large-scale violence, continued instability, and foreign military interventions.

For these reasons, along with the Assad regime’s brutal month-long crackdown, the vast majority of Syrians have stayed at home, many quietly seething at the government, but unwilling to publicly embrace the opposition.

Nowhere has this gap between disdain for the government and support for the opposition been more clear than in the circles of the Arab Left – near-unanimous in their animosity towards Bashar Al-Assad, but deeply conflicted about the nature, substance, and future of the burgeoning opposition movement.

As the opposition scrambles and regroups in the face of the Syrian government’s recent offensive, various influential leftists have struggled to wed their support for popular uprising with their concerns of manipulation by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States.

A small but vocal minority have categorically rejected the current opposition, claiming that disorder in Syria only serves to embolden right-wing Islamist movements that will consequently tilt the balance of power toward the camps of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States.

Some have complained that while the revolutions of Egypt and Tunisia heralded significant defeats for the traditional enemies of the Arab Left, the implications of a power vacuum in Syria are significantly more muddied, and may well further destabilise its already fragile neighbours.

Prominent Syrian dissident Michel Kilo, in a recent article in the leftist Lebanese newspaper As-Safir, warns that sectarian conflict will “move society backwards”, undermining state, society, and national unity “for God knows how long”. Kilo is joined by a few others who agree that the total collapse of the regime, at this particular juncture, may not be beneficial to the aims and goals of the left.

Generally speaking, these comments have invited a flurry of opposition. Rime Allaf, an associate at Chatham House, has pointed out that the “other regimes [are] seemingly throwing their weight behind the Syrian regime, fearful of the reach of this inconvenient Arab spring.”

A number of commentators have likewise noted that those who worry that the demonstrations will empower their traditional enemies – Israel and Saudi Arabia – find themselves in the same camp as a number of Israeli and Saudi policymakers, who fear precisely the opposite. Though Israeli officials have largely remained silent on the issue of Syria, many suspect the Israeli government of supporting the Syrian regime, in word if not in deed.

“You want to work with the devil you know,” Moshe Maoz, a former Israeli government advisor, said to the Los Angeles Times in March.

Others have been supportive of the opposition, but more cautious, including well-known analyst As’ad Abu-Khalil , the proprietor of the Angry Arab News Service blog. Abu-Khalil has argued on numerous occasions that the “Saudi” and “Western” tendencies of the opposition were counterproductive and dangerous, and must be considered separately from the “majority” of protesters who remain free of such influence.

Abu-Khalil has been particularly tough on expat Syrians, who some say have played a pivotal role in organising the protests and disseminating information. He points to examples such as Farid Ghadry, leader of the “Reform Party of Syria”, who left Syria at the age of 10 and maintains that Israelis should be allowed to stay in the Golan Heights, a position that is highly unpopular with mainstream Syrians.

Bassad Haddad, a well-respected specialist on Syrian politics and co- founder of the website Jadaliyya, finds the entire debate frustrating.

“The whole conversation is not productive, because this is not a conversation of the Left, but a conversation between people who believe in conspiracy theories…and those who see [the situation in Syria] as it is,” he said in a recent interview with IPS.

Though Haddad admits that “I have friends who don’t like what I’m saying,” he stands strongly behind the consideration that “there are probably infiltrators, but they’re a minority. What’s going on in Syria is not the result of infiltrators, but 40 years of people living under oppression…and in the end the Syrian regime is killing its own people. That’s where the buck stops for any self-respecting leftist.”

“We must be able to critique the regime … without making the critique amenable to be abused by the enemies of resistance anywhere,” he said, noting that the balance between the two positions can be a difficult road to travel.

Haddad warns that for some, “the principle at heart here is being abandoned for politics,” accusing opponents of the opposition of acting as “apologists for authoritarianism” simply because they share some of the same enemies of the Syrian regime.

As the debate rages, the government’s crackdown has continued unabated, shielded by an increasingly effective media blackout, leaving all sides waiting anxiously to see if their worst fears will come true.