Against the crimson backdrop of the blasts in Ankara with a death toll crossing 100 and the Israeli killing of women and children near the Gaza border fence there comes the news of a Russian air offensive in Syria that was last seen in WW II. At the weekend the Russian Defense Ministry claimed combat jets hit 60 anti-rebel targets in Syria over a 24-hour period, killing about 300 militants, the largest number in the past four years in one day. As the Russian blitz gives Assad breathing space, the Americans are not impressed by the evidence. Washington believes the Russians are facing a second Afghanistan and might have to commit ground troops in a war they will not win.
While Moscow denies the American underplay the fear that Syria’s plight is becoming secondary to the former cold war combatants beginning another inimical relationship with their involvement and stance taking precedence over everything else. Syria is already war torn. To make it the battlefield for the two giants to trade insults or upstage each other with loaned firepower to the incumbent regime or what re-classified as moderate militants is to create the scenario of a politically motivated proxy war.
How much more can a country take? Syria is practically destroyed. If the Russians and the Americans decide to up the stakes and use the remnants of this land and its stricken people to score points there may truly be nothing left to save. Already the EU has warned civilian aircraft to beware after the massive missile assault by Russia.
Things can only escalate. There seems to be no meeting point and the UN simply epitomizes the phrase: The way to hell is paved with good intentions. Ban Ki Moon’s intentions may be honorable but any initiative is just whistling in the wilderness.
A dimension that should contribute tangible fear into the present equation is that the preferred targets for the Russian firepower is supposedly the strongholds of the CIA trained rebels with as many as 10,000 of them having made inroads into the Assad controlled territory but now facing an obliteration from blanket bombing.
For the Americans this is a situation that they had not reckoned with and while it is fine on paper to retaliate in reality this is not an easy option. One shudders to imagine what would happen if US warplanes were to take to the skies.
Somebody has to stop this before not just Syria and the region but the world has to pay a price.
