Syria: Washington Needs To Climb Down
About a thousand insurgents are trying to hold territory in Syria's biggest city Aleppo. The Syrian army is certainly capable of defeating them with an all out assault but that would be costly in lives and it would lead to the destruction of those neighborhoods. So far the Syrian army has not tried to assault the insurgents in those suburbs but so far uses only probing skirmishes to find their exact position. It may be going for a kind of siege. That again may be part of a plan to suck more insurgents into the fight before fixing them in place and finishing them off.
It could also be a sign of a weakening army. But I have yet to see any other symptom for that to be the case. Sure the army has made and makes mistakes. There recently was a video showing a platoon of tanks trying to assault an insurgent stronghold in urban terrain without infantry support. As any capable tactician would have predicted they got slaughtered by RPG volleys from the side streets. But the Syrian army still has lots of resources. There has been no attack by the air force yet and helicopters have been used only sparsely. There are certainly more troops and reservists available and willing to join the fight on the government side.
But my impression is the general situation in Syria is still deteriorating. The Syrian insurgency consist of unemployed youth, some army defectors and bandits and criminal gangs. But more and more foreign Jihadist arrive every day with seasoned al-Qaeda fighters in the lead. The insurgency is increasingly sectarian and brutal in its behavior. Today some insurgents overran two lightly armed police stations, killed all 40 policemen (video, graphic) and ransacked the buildings. Christians and other minorities are starting to arm to defend themselves. If this downward spiral continues as more Jihadists come ine Syria will get wreaked.
The Obama administration is only now starting to understand that a continuation of its confrontational policy of arming the rabble and Jihadists will lead to the total destruction of the Syrian state with bad secondary effects all around. Yesterday it sent out defense secretary Panetta to warn the opposition that it will have to keep the Syrian state and its institutions intact.
But the insurgents will not listen to that and will continue their destructive path. They just revealed a plan to create a military dictatorship in Syria with their local leadership in the role of the dictator. The Wahabbi U.S. allies in the Gulf states will also not agree with Panetta's begging. They want a Sunni dominated Islamic state in Syria that will put Christians and Allawis into a second class citizens role (if not to death) and will exclude them from any relevant posts. They will continue to send their unwanted revolutionary youth and lots of money to the most radical parts of the insurgency.
Schemes like a junta in a box around the playboy soldier Manaf Tlass are stupid dreams and like the bickering Syrian National Council very unlikely to be acceptable to the Syrian people.
There is only one way to stop the carnage and to keep Syria intact. That is to let Assad win enough to make a political deal possible. For that all foreign support for the insurgency has to stop and new negotiations will have to be started including Russia and Iran. There is no guarantee that such negotiations will lead to an outcome that is acceptable to everybody. But as it is becoming more and more clear the alternatives are worse.
Washington is not yet ready to climb down. It may need another six month, a new secretary of state and more serious consequences of the destruction of the Syrian state coming into view before a different policy will be pursued.
Posted by b on July 31, 2012 at 16:53 UTC | Permalink
« previous page@Lysander 25. Your argument about Assad soldier casualties is exactly the argument the IDF has used whenever they invade Lebanon and/or the Occupied Territories. They claim to be fighting a "humane" war where they take the utmost care in avoiding civilian casualties. So, please remember this the next time you criticize Israel for their barbaric actions.
Posted by: A V | Aug 1 2012 20:12 utc | 102
@A V - Israel invades, as you said, foreign territories, and does so with no restrains whatsoever; the IDF "values" is just a myth, denounced by IDF members themselves;
Posted by: claudio | Aug 1 2012 20:31 utc | 103
@A V:
You've missed his point. He was writing about Syrian army casualties, and that they were killed because they had tried to avoid kiling civilians. The Dahiya strategy is the opposite: using disproportional and indiscriminate fire power, flattening everything from the outside, purposefully targeting civilians.
Dov Yermiya was a veteran of the 1948 war and the oldest soldiert during the 1982 massacre the Izzies called a war. He wrote his "War Diary" contains phases such as:
"the war machine of the IDF is galloping and trampling over the conquered terri-tory, demonstrating a total insensitivity to the fate of the Arabs who are found in its path"
"The air is per-meated with the smell of corpses; destruction and death are continuing. [...] I am ashamed to be a son of this nation, this arrogant, condescending, cruel nation."
"This was a picture that reminded me of the death march of the Jews in Auschwitz" (he was informed by an operations officer).
"The district commander announces in his disgusting style: 'Another prisoner stopped smoking today.' Earlier, I had learned that a prisoner who had been beaten and tortured died. [...] The commanders were only concerned that it be written in the death certificate that the prisoner died of a heart attack."
"this is what I ran into every step of the way: despicable actions of humiliation, of striking at women and children who wander, confused and miserable, along the sidelines of the war and its aftermath, not knowing their own souls in their fright, hunger, and thirst"
"the barrages only hurt the non-combatant population. They caused both killings and the destruction of buildings in a most systematic manner, which [...] was not meant to hurt terrorists, but rather, to eliminate the possibility of the existence of refugees in this camp."
and
"the story that the civilian population had been held hostage by the PLO, and prevented from responding to the IDF's call to leave the camp [...] was totally unfounded"
To be sure, I do not know of any general staff order to the Syrian army to cleanse refugee camps and kill thousands of people.
Posted by: m_s | Aug 1 2012 20:44 utc | 104
@Hu bris
claudio - you and your other leftist comrade bevin ... "why us lefties dislike Hu Bris" ... your leftist sensibilities ... it is mainly you and several of your leftist comrades ... the "White Knight Fearless defender of Leftie-ism" pose ...Hu bris, seriously - what's a leftist, in your dictionary?
Posted by: claudio | Aug 1 2012 23:40 utc | 105
claudio you're a hypocritical asshole - you attcked me yesterday for bringinbg up something from a few days back and here you are trying to troll me now, probably because you're bored
But if you must know, 'leftist' is really my own personal just shorthand for 'clueless fuckwit'
Posted by: Hu Bris | Aug 2 2012 16:25 utc | 106
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Seems like syrian army has destroyed rebel's Aleppo command center, without the command center, the various rebel groups would no longer be able to coordinate attacks
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2012/08/01/253898/syrian-troops-kill-150-rebels-in-aleppo/
Posted by: Nikon | Aug 1 2012 20:05 utc | 101