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Damascus[/caption]
Ezra Boyd---Recently a number memes with the simple message that 'Obama is supplying guns to terrorists in Syria' have been making the rounds in the social media. While no simple meme will ever fully capture the complexities of foreign relations in the new millennium, this recent set stands out in its dishonestly and over simplification of the Syrian civil war.
Because the outcome in Syria matters to America and its allies, it is important to give the actors in the conflict, the role of foreign fighters and their allegiances, and most importantly the proper role of the United States the thorough examination that it deserves. The two and half year old civil war in Syria has been a bloody conflict that involves an estimated 1200 rebel groups fighting a regime backed by foreign fighters and governments. The meme completely glosses over the fact that the various rebel groups reflect a wide variety of objectives, ideologies, and influences. It also misrepresents that nature and recipients of the assistance that the U.S. has provided.
Among the 1200 rebel groups, there is a coalition of fighters, currently estimated to be around 300,000, who are primarily Syrians who want a better future for their country. By and large, they have simple desires: a democratic nation engaged with the West that lets their sweat and labor benefit their families instead of a corrupt dictator and his cronies. To achieve this objective, they first pursued democratization through peaceful, large scale popular protests. This initially non-violent movement was met with force. First, the dictator deployed snipers, then tanks, and finally medium range artillery. The Free Syrian Army was born out of the simple desire to protect a non-violent protest movement that was watching women and children die at the hands of the regime, its military, and its militias
Unfortunately, the peaceful protests quickly morphed into a complex and bloody civil war, and the tanks and artillery were soon supported by attack helicopters and fighter jets. At the time, the rebels only possessed small arms which did little to match Assad's conventional weapons. Out of the simple desire to protect civilians in rebel territory, the Free Syrian Army requested assistance, including anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, from the United States. The U.S. hesitated, citing a number of reasons the most prevalent were the lessons of the first Afghanistan civil war that gave rise to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The U.S. sat largely on the sidelines while the slaughter of civilians continued. As the death toll rose, the U.S. slowly ramped up it's non-lethal assistance. However, body armor and night visions goggles were useless to stop the August 16, 2012, fighter jet attack that killed 60 and wounded over 70 civilians while they waited in a bread line in rebel held Aleppo. Five days later on August 21, more missiles from the sky killed another 23 people and wounded 30, and again their only "crime" was waiting in line for bread in rebel held Aleppo. Only when the first reports of chemical weapon attacks emerged, the U.S. government increased its support to include small arms and ammunition (still pretty much useless against fighter jets).
While the United States hesitated, Saudi Arabia and Qatar did not. They quickly ramped up military assistance. However, they supported groups that advanced their national interests, not the interests of the United States. Thus, the Al Nusra Front, an extremists group with ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq, emerged as a potent force on the battle field. They arrived with heavier weapons than the other rebel groups, and they took the battle to the army and air force bases that were central to Assad's strategy of terrorizing the civilian population. By providing some measure of relief from the carnage that the civilian population had endured, Al Nusra Front also started to win the hearts and minds of the population. Unlike the Free Syrian Army who sought a democratic society with strong ties to the west, Al Nusra Front and related Islamist groups fought to establish a strict Islamic state in Syria. While they have not stated this goal explicitly, one could logically conclude that they also seek a staging ground for attacks against Europe. The moderate forces fighting Assad made the strategic choice that made the most sense given the circumstances: ally with the foreign backed extremists in the fight against the dictator. When a dictator is slaughtering your woman and children, the enemy of your enemy is your friend does not matter no matter how strict the ideology or the objectives of the foreign governments supplying their weapons.
However, that alliance of convenience was short lived. At this point in time, numerous credible sources on the ground are reporting that the rebels groups aligned with extreme Islamic objectives have turned their guns on the rebels groups aligned with democratic values. Because the Al Qaeda-linked groups have more and bigger weapons, they will continue to capture the territory that the moderates fought long and hard to liberate from the dictator. If the U.S. continues to largely sit on the sidelines, the moderate rebels (western-leaning people like you and me who just want a democratic nation where their sweat and labor doesn't enrich a dictator or Islamic extremists) will be squeezed out. The terrorists and the dictator will win. While there will likely be years of more brutal fighting and more civilian massacres before the parties reach this stage, the most likely outcome will be that Syria will be partitioned into an Alawite homeland on the coast of the Mediterranean and a terrorist state in the interior territory bordering Turkey, a.k.a. NATO and the European frontier.
The Alawite nation will have a battle-hardened and loyal military aligned with Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia and eager to turn its guns on Turkey or Israel, both U.S. allies, to reclaim it's legitimacy as a pillar of the 'Axis of Resistance' against the Zionists and the expansion of Western values. At the same time, the terrorists will have just a short 20 hour drive when they decide to detonate car bombs or attack shopping malls in Greece or Bulgaria, two of America's trading partners in Europe. This outcome goes against U.S. vital security interests. In addition to continuing the civilian massacre and refugee crisis for many years, it will undermine U.S. alliances, introduce new risks for our trading partners, and ultimately will have negative repercussions on the struggling U.S. economy.
The alternative is that the United States engages in a meaningful intervention that increases the military capabilities of the moderate rebel groups associated with the Free Syria Army. To be clear, this engagement does not entail any American boots on the ground; with at least 500,000 boots on the ground engaged in the conflict, we do not need to add more boots on the ground. This engagement does entail meaningful military assistance that gives the moderate rebels the ability to defend themselves against jets and attack helicopters and to defend their territory from terrorists backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It may also involve very limited and targeted missile strikes against Assad's military assets.
U.S. intervention of this nature certainly will not be enough to win the war for the moderate rebels. But it likely will be enough to break the stalemate on the battlefield, and thus bring Assad to the negotiating table. It will also help the moderate rebels win the hearts and minds of the civilian population, thus eroding the uneasy support that the Islamists have received after being the only party to successfully reduce Assad's slaughter.
No doubt this option entails certain costs and risks to a nation highly in debt and generally wary of ongoing conflict. The American public has legitimate reasons, both economic and humanitarian, to be concerned about another costly military engagement and the potential that our actions will cause civilian casualties. However, an honest assessment of the recent history of this conflict along with a rigorous analysis of the logical progression of events without a change in U.S. policy, it is clear that continuing to do little or nothing will entail a much greater humanitarian cost to the civilians caught in the conflict and a much greater economic cost to our nation over the long-term.
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This article was written by Ezra Boyd, PhD, a disaster expert and individual who has studied intensively patterns of disruption in weather and conflicts that bring disaster of a different nature.
Syrian refugee in Turkey[/caption]
