Tag Archives: Guerrillas

It appears that the US State Department under John Kerry willsoon shift its focus to helping the rebels establish a full-fledgedalternative government on Syrian territory and recognize it as thelegal government of Syria. Such a move would legitimize thetransfer of heavy weaponry and would allow the US to directlyemploy air strikes or Patriot anti-missile batteries againstAssad’s forces.Some would argue that these moves could help to marginalize thenotable al-Qaeda presence among rebel forces. Pumping more arms andheavier weapons into Syria is unconscionable at this point, andcontinuing to do so will inevitably bolster the muscle and reach ofjihadi and Salafist fighters. The argument that the US and itsallies have only armed the “moderate” rebels is a deeply flawedone; weapons are in high demand by all rebel factions and there islittle means to effectively prevent arms from gravitating towardhardcore Al-Qaeda fighters.In his famous 1962 description of irregular warfare operations,US President John F. Kennedy alluded to “another type ofwarfare,” one that is “new in its intensity, ancient in itsorigin—war by guerrillas, subversives, insurgents, assassins; warby ambush instead of by combat, by infiltration instead ofaggression, seeking victory by eroding and exhausting the enemyinstead of engaging him. It preys on unrest.”After two harrowing years of division, senseless killing andcivil war, the scared Syrian nation and its people are wellacquainted with these unconventional methods of warfare denouncedover 50 years ago.Yet Western and Gulf states have proven their double standardsby enabling radicals elsewhere – lest we forget the presence ofLibyan military commander Abdulhakim Belhadj, former leader of themilitant Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (officially designated as aterrorist organization by the US State Department), who was sent toSyria to aid the Free Syrian Army on orders of the entity formerlyknown as the Libyan National Transition Council (NTC). The trackrecord of allied Western and Gulf states shows that they are moreinterested in enabling terrorism for their own purposes rather thanpreventing it.Since the eruption of violence in March 2011, Syria has enduredtargeted assassination campaigns, ceaseless suicide bombings andshelling, and massacres where infants have had their throats slitto the spine – the time has come for the opposition to engage theAssad government in dialogue and finally bring about a ceasefireand the total cessation of violence and insurgency.From the reports of third-party sniper-fire targeting bothprotesters and security personnel in the southern city of Daraa atthe very onset of the conflict, to the horrendous attacks on thestudents of Aleppo University in January 2013 – those who havecritically monitored the situation from the beginning are under noillusions – the influx of armament and mercenary elements fromabroad into Syria has brought the situation to where it is today.Western capitals have provided logistics, coordination, politicalsupport, and non-lethal aid, Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia andQatar have openly provided weapons and monthly salaries for rebelfighters, and Turkey has allowed rebel fighters to receive trainingand arms from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in thesoutheastern part of the country, allowing militants to pass intoSyria freely.There are those who say that Syria is the subject of an internalrevolution that is brutally repressed by a malicious dictator, andthose who say instead that Syria is being attacked by foreignpowers who have deployed mercenaries and extremist fighters fromabroad to engage in the destruction of infrastructure and conducttargeted assassinations to bring about an end to the Assadregime.  Despite Washington’s concerns of heavy weaponsfalling into the hands of Al-Qaeda-linked militants, the US-backedcampaign to coax regime change in Damascus has from the very onsetenabled militants who justify their acts of terror in the name of aperverted interpretation of Islam. Reports in the Washington Postindicate that US support for anti-government groups in Syria beganin 2005, transcending two presidential administrations:“The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures beganflowing under President George W. Bush after he effectively frozepolitical ties with Damascus in 2005. The financial backing hascontinued under President Obama, even as his administration soughtto rebuild relations with Assad. Syrian authorities ‘wouldundoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groupsas tantamount to supporting regime change,’ read an April 2009cable signed by the top-ranking U.S. diplomat in Damascus at thetime. ‘A reassessment of current U.S.-sponsored programming thatsupports anti-[government] factions, both inside and outside Syria,may prove productive,’ the cable said. The cables report persistentfears among U.S. diplomats that Syrian state security agents haduncovered the money trail from Washington.”The article describes how Washington funnelled about $12 millionto anti-government programs in Syria between 2005 and 2010 torecipients affiliated with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. Israel,which is now illegally conducting exploratory drilling in theoccupied Golan Heights, and the US view the toppling of Damascus asa means of extinguishing the critical conduit between Iran andHezbollah, the political and militant Shi’a organization centeredin Southern Lebanon, in addition to helping isolate the Palestinianresistance.The non-violent route: Laying aside differencesBoth the incumbent Syrian authorities and the opposition mustfind strength to come to a mutually acceptable compromise. Theseparties have no other option than to search for a solution, laydown an agreeable constitutional basis for elections, and face eachother in international monitored polls once the situationstabilizes. The Syrian people must not have democracy imposed onthem, and the victor of this war should not be decided on thebattlefield, but by the ballot box.To gain the confidence of the electorate, election observers fromthe US, Qatar, Russia, and Iran could be sent to monitor thetransition process – if the people of Syria want Assad to remain inpower, then the rule of majority must be honored. Militant groupscomprised of mostly hard line foreign fighters such as Jabhatal-Nusra and the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham cannot be expected toparticipate in a ceasefire, so the true test of a short-termalliance between Assad and the SNC would be in its ability tocooperate in quelling radical militants and restoring stability –such is a perquisite for any kind of transition.Former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton once threatened Russiaand China that they would “pay a price” for their position on theSyrian issue. It should be noted that these powers maintained abalanced approach throughout and advocated dialogue from the start,in addition to stringently adhering to former UN Envoy Kofi Annan’ssix point peace plan. Iran should also be given due credit forhosting an International Consultative Conference in August 2012,which brought together representatives of thirty nations to callfor ending the flow of foreign arms into terrorist hands insideSyria, proposals to broker a meaningful ceasefire, the coordinationof humanitarian aid, and support for Syrian people’s right toreform without foreign interference.Accommodating diversity in Syrian societyIranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted in theWashington Post stating, “Syrian society is a beautiful mosaicof ethnicities, faiths and cultures, and it will be smashed topieces should President Bashar Assad abruptly fall. The idea that,in that event, there would be an orderly transition of power is anillusion. Abrupt political change without a roadmap for managedpolitical transition will lead only to a precarious situation thatwould destabilize one of the world’s most sensitive regions.”It is clear that the Assad government is more stable than manyWestern states anticipated, and it continues to enjoy popularsupport.Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah recently warned againstsectarian infighting in Lebanon related to the Syrian civil war,arguing that outsiders are pushing Lebanon “toward civil andreligious strife, and specifically Sunni-Shia strife.” Iraqi PMNouri al-Maliki also warned that a victory for rebels would“create a new extremist haven and destabilize the wider MiddleEast.” The Syrian regime will not imminently collapse but if itis brought down by military intervention, the consequences couldlead to a highly unpredictable situation where match and tinder canmeet at any moment with debilitating consequences for the region.It is time for both parties to convene. It is time to end thiswar.Selective supportReports published in 2007 in the New Yorker by veteranjournalist Seymour Hersh detail how the US, Israel and Saudi Arabiasupported a regional network of extremist fighters and terroristsaffiliated with al-Qaeda with the aim of stomping out Hezbollah andSyria’s Assad in a bid to isolate Iran, who is viewed as anexistential threat to the US and its allies in the region. Aprincipal component of this policy shift was the bolstering ofSunni extremist groups, hence the ever-deepening sectarian natureof the Syrian conflict:“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, theBush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure itspriorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration hascooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, inclandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, theShiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also takenpart in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. Aby-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunniextremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and arehostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”While the CIA has purportedly claimed to distribute arms only to“secular” and “moderate” rebel forces, Washingtoninsiders from various academic and think-tank circles have openlyendorsed bizarre positions in favor of integrating terrorists intoSyria’s rebel forces. “Al-Qaeda’s Specter in Syria,” penned byCouncil on Foreign Relations senior fellow Ed Husain, argues infavor of Al-Qaeda terrorists and their inclusion in the Free SyrianArmy, stating, “The influx of jihadis brings discipline,religious fervour, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunnisympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. Inshort, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now.” Foreign Policy’s, “TwoCheers for Syrian Islamists,” penned by Gary Gambill of the heavilyneo-conservative Middle East Forum, argues in favor of Al-Qaeda,“Islamists — many of them hardened by years of fighting U.S.forces in Iraq — are simply more effective fighters than theirsecular counterparts. Assad has had extraordinary difficultycountering tactics perfected by his former jihadist allies,particularly suicide bombings and roadside bombs.”While many Western media outlets once likened Syria’s rebels topro-democracy freedom fighters, it has become more challenging toview them as anything other than Salafist radicals – the former’sexistence was amplified specifically to provide cover andlegitimacy for the violence and subversion of the latter. As aresult of a foreign-backed insurgency, the Assad regime resorted totactics of shelling and conducing air strikes on rebel strongholds,which were mostly in densely populated urban areas. It should notbe denied that these heavy-handed tactics have also led to asubstantial and regrettable loss of life.The Friends of Syria group recently convened in Rome, where theUS State Department has pledged $60 million to help the oppositionmaintain “the institutions of the state” in areas under theircontrol, such as establishing terms of governance, the rule of law,and police forces. Reports have also claimed that the US is alsodeliberating more open engagement in Syria under newly appointed USSecretary of State John Kerry, however Washington has stopped shortof openly providing arms and military training. American andwestern officials have told the New York Times that Saudi Arabiahas recently financed a large purchase of infantry weapons fromCroatia and funnelled them to Syrian rebel groups. Although theUnited States is not credited with providing arms to rebel forces,the New York Times has reported the presence of CIA operatives insouthern Turkey since June 2012, who are distributing weapons withthe Obama administration’s blessing. US spokesperson Jay Carney wasquoted as saying, “We will continue to provide assistance to theSyrian people, to the Syrian opposition, we will continue toincrease our assistance in the effort to bring about a post-AssadSyria.”In early March 2013, the Syrian National Council (SNC) will meetin Istanbul to form a provisional government that would overseerebel-held areas of the country. This wouldn’t be the first timethe SNC has attempted to form a government; previous attempts inJanuary 2013 fell apart, with many factions refusing to consider aprime ministerial nominee. SNC President Moaz al-Khatib has angeredseveral factions for proposing his readiness to negotiate with theAssad government, a position that many in the opposition refuse toaccept.The Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari has urged theFriends of Syria states to convince the Syrian opposition to sitdown for an unconditional national dialogue, which al-Khatib hasexpressed his willingness to take part in. One could surmise thatal-Khatib’s shift toward dialogue indicates that the SNC is feelingless secure and more wary of a possible military defeat or rivalrywith radical factions. Such a dialogue would undoubtedly representa step in the right direction. Despite political differences andtwo years of deep conflict, these two parties must establish agenuine ceasefire and partnership to restore a climate of normalitythroughout the country. In this context, both parties must be ableto agree on coordinating aid distribution to all parts of thecountry.International recognition of a provisional SNC government wouldonly create further divisions at a time when national unity is mostneeded. Although rebel-held areas are badly isolated and in need ofhumanitarian supplies, the delivery of aid must be facilitatedthrough direct talks and partnership between Moaz al-Khatib’sSyrian National Council and Bashar Al-Assad’s government.Nile Bowie for RTThe statements, views and opinionsexpressed in this column are solely those of the author and do notnecessarily represent those of RT. … Read More