Syria crisis calls for a new policy
TYPHOID and hepatitis outbreaks are spreading. At least 70,000 people are dead, and there are 850,000 refugees. After covering the battle for Damascus for a month, my colleague — photographer Goran Tomasevic — declared the situation a “bloody stalemate” this week.
“I watched both sides mount assaults, some trying to gain just a house or two, others for bigger prizes, only to be forced back by sharpshooters, mortars or sprays of machine-gun fire,” Tomasevic, a gifted and brave photographer, wrote in a chilling first-hand account. “As in the ruins of Beirut, Sarajevo or Stalingrad, it is a sniper’s war.”
The Obama administration’s policy toward Syria is a failure. Bashar Assad is hanging onto power. Iran, Hezbollah and Russia are funneling him more aid, armaments and diplomatic cover than ever. And Syrian rebels who once hailed the United States now loathe it.
In an incisive essay published this week in the London Review of Books, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, a journalist with the Guardian, described the continued atomization of the Syrian opposition. Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi who covered the dissolution of his own nation, freely admits that “we in the Middle East have always had a strong appetite for factionalism.” But then he delivers a damning description of how prevarication in Washington creates deepening anti-Americanism among the fighters.
“Why are the Americans doing this to us?” one opposition commander demands. “They told us they wouldn’t send us weapons until we united. So we united in Doha. Now what’s their excuse?” In the meantime, hard-line fighters are filling the void.
In an interview on Thursday, a senior administration official played down a report in the New York Times Monday that President Barack Obama might reconsider arming Syria’s fighters. The official confirmed that Obama rejected a proposal last year from four of his top national security advisers that the US arm the fighters. But he said a subsequent review by American intelligence officials had concluded that only a large infusion of sophisticated weaponry would tip the military balance in favor of the fighters.
Repeating prior arguments, the official said the administration opposed supplying the rebels with anti-aircraft missiles out of concern that the weapon could fall into the hands of extremists. “God forbid a US weapon be used to strike an Israeli passenger plane or land in Israel,” he said.
And a recent New Yorker piece described stepped-up assistance from Hezbollah. “If Bashar goes down,” one Hezbollah commander told the magazine, “we’re next.”
And the White House official confirmed that Iranian assistance to the Assad regime is rising.
“The extent of Iranian support is stunning,” the official said. “They are all in. They are doing everything they can to support the Assad regime and putting in enormous amounts of arms and individuals.”
“The United States has a long history of picking winners and losers based on the guy who speak English well,” the official said. “It’s just trying to learn the lesson and be humble.”
Learning is important, but we should do better than this. Our fear of radicals is paralyzing our efforts. And we are missing a strategic opportunity to weaken Iran and Hezbollah.
