From: Femi Bashua <femibashua@rocketmail.com>
Date: Thu, May 9, 2013 at 7:01 AM
Subject: ||NaijaObserver|| SYRIA: THE FINAL SIEGE AND CONSEQUENCES
To: OmoOdua@yahoogroups.com, nigeriaroundtable@yahoogroups.com, "naijaelections@yahoogroups com" <naijaelections@yahoogroups.com>, "NaijaObserver@yahoogroups com" <naijaobserver@yahoogroups.com>, Nigerian World Forum <nigerianworldforum@yahoogroups.com>, talkhard@yahoogroups.com, NaijaPolitics@yahoogroups.com
ABOUT a month ago, when U.S. President, Mr. Barack Obama visited Israel and made the rapprochement of Turkey and Israel a priority, it was obvious to any discerning observer, that something dramatic is about to happen in the nearly three-year conflict in the neighbouring Syria.
In spite of several political concessions and reforms of the President Assad regime, including internationally supervised elections, the Syrian armed opposition has maintained a bigoted position of militarily defeating the regime. It has been generously supplied with weapons and money by Arab conservative regimes, with the West doing the same, in addition to political pressure and media disinformation against the government in Damascus. Turkey got soaked into the conflict, when its mildly Islamic regime jettisoned its own policy of "zero problems with neighbours" to prop up the armed insurgents in Syria. The trio of Turkish prime minister, Tayyip Recep Erdogan, President Abdullah Gul and foreign minister Ahmet Davotuglo were originally considered independents whose moderating influence could douse most conflicts in the volatile region. Turkey could have helped to broker political solution to the Syrian conflict but early in the conflict, Ankara took an obstinate stance of regime change in Damascus along with the other largely unelected Arab monarchies in the region. Since then, the Turkish government has used everything at its disposal, including its NATO membership to advance regime change in Damascus. Israel also has reason to see off, the Baath party regime in Damascus. Apart from being the only reliable ally of its mortal enemy, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Syria sheltered, provided and supported the militant Palestinian and Lebanese resistant movement of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Denying these resistant groups, regional support, which comes mostly from Damascus, in Israel's view would expose their vulnerability and tame their ideological bellicosity.
So, when President Obama got Israel and Turkey talking again, after they have cut their direct line, following the lethal attack of Israeli defence forces on the mostly Turkish flotilla ship, attempting to deliver humanitarian supplies to Gaza strip, a Palestinian enclave run by the militant Hamas movement, some few years ago, it was clear that Washington was losing patience with the slow pace of its proxy war in Syria and want more robust engagement. Some few days ago, Washington and other western capitals, including London have been screaming of the use of chemical weapons in Syrian second city, Aleppo, devastated by the hit and run operations of the armed insurgents. Israeli intelligence is said to have corroborated the use of chemical weapons, including the nerve gas. Mr. Chuck Hagel, U.S defence secretary has claimed almost immediately that the use of such weapon in the conflict would obviously have originated from the 'Assad regime'. Two years ago, the U.S President Barack Obama has said the 'red line 'that would warrant the U.S direct military intervention would be the use of chemical weapons, even though the U.S has earlier acknowledged that Syrian unconventional weapon are well secured. The Syrian government has earlier clear that it would never use any unconventional weapons against Syrians, including the armed insurgents, but however, added that it could not maintain similar stance if it comes under foreign aggression. And when a chlorine chemical plant fell to the insurgent in Aleppo, the Syrian government made that they might try to use the deadly weapon and blame it on the government.
The Syrian armed opposition, comprising al-Qaeda jihadists said to be the most fervent fighters, and their Arab and western backers, which have exaggerated their military strength while undermining the will of the Syrian government to hold out and defend itself, is currently bogged down in a military stalemate with Damascus, notwithstanding its generous supplies of money and weapons. In its desperation, the armed insurgents have carried out plain terrorist acts, including suicide bomb attacks of mosques, churches and even shopping malls and recreational centres. None of these outrages have attracted condemnations from universe human rights defenders in Washington, London and Brussels. Wave of massacres upon massacres perpetrated by the armed insurgents with the sole aim of undermining any of government several political reforms and concessions have either been blamed on the government or not mentioned at all in the western press. After the attack last year, that killed several key figures of the regime at a meeting in a supposed well secured compound, the regime was said to be tottering and would collapse in a matter of weeks. It turned out that it was the fractious armed insurgents and their political platform currently called the Syrian national coalition that keeps mutating and re-constituting.
Admittedly, the Syrian carnage has gone too far but who stokes the fire and who benefits from the disorder and instability. Definitely, the government as any other government would want to return to normalcy but for the insurgents and their backers, any return to order and normalcy would deprive them, their argument and reason for the armed insurgence. To his extent, any reasonable justification of the armed insurgency must depend on the continuous carnage in the country.
However, given the current military stalemate and the seeming disarray of the insurgent's political front recently renamed Syrian National Coalition from its former name, Syrian National Council, something more dramatic must happen to make way for direct military intervention of the Syrian government traducers both in the region and the west. The hint of the use of chemical weapons purportedly by the Syrian government will let in the military game changer. Since the Arab conservative regimes, mostly Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the West and Turkey have sought regime change in Damascus through proxy, and it does not seem to bear quick results, a pretence would have to be contrived to establish a no-fly zone to be ostensibly policed by NATO, that would then provide the air-cover for the insurgents to smoke out President Bashar Assad in a typical fashion of NATO's invasion of Libya, two years ago. However, Syria is not Libya and the cost of any such invasion would be very high for the prospective invaders.
NATO military planners are obviously pondering the costs of invading Syria, while their political masters claim to be investigating the use of chemical weapons. If the military strategist and planners conclude that the cost would be high and with a likelihood of political backlash at home, the mission would be abandoned under any pretext, including that investigation did not clearly implicate the Assad regime. And should military assessment show a safe ride to Damascus, all pretences would be thrown over-board while the main item of regime change would be vigorously implemented. However, though Syria has lost battle and even territory with its Israeli neighbour, the country has one of the strongest armies in the region with heavy and modern weaponry.
Less of a show man like Libya's Gaddafi or Iraq's Saddam Hussein, President Bashar Al-Assad has demonstrated a clear political will to engage the political opposition in the framework of genuine national dialogue, and also a steely resolve to face down the armed insurgents and their foreign backers. Not for him, the grandstanding of adorning military camouflage to ramp-up rhetoric about roasting his traducers in a military show-down; as Saddam and Gaddafi, both smoked out from rat holes did, with lots of theatrics. President Assad may still not survive the thickening plot, as his traducers are among the most dangerously armed in the world, but his dignified carriage and thorough comportment will deprive his enemies of the dubious honour of having hunted down a thug in Damascus. The Baath party did enjoy monopoly of power in Syria but have since the start of genuine call for reforms in 2011, recanted on its monopoly of power and accepted pluralism with its key political component of competitive electoral process.
The regional and western conspiracy bearing the poisonous fruit of the bigoted armed insurgence did not even give any chance to test the regime's sincerity on its political conversion to pluralism. Syria is a pivotal Arab country whose several arteries and strands run down through most of Arab states. A military defeat of the Damascus regime will most likely set off political and social implosions in the region whose consequences cannot be predicted. Western political and military leaders who thought that after escorting the quarrelsome Syrian insurgents to Damascus, they would only be signing huge contracts to rebuild the country and letting in western oil majors, may just be unrealistic, if one is to recall the gruesome murder of U.S ambassador and his staff in the embassy premises in Benghazi, Libya, following successful regime change in the north African country.
Even defeating and toppling the reclusive and far less urbane Taliban regime in Afghanistan did not bring any quiet to the country, let alone making it a dependable ally of the West. Syria has absolutely no prospect of been a quiet colony when once, President Assad and his government succumbs to the superior fire power of his antagonist. However, far from the scenario of quick defeat as in Libya or Iraq, the invading forces are likely to be bogged down, in a similar fashion of the armed insurgents, with a cost of more sufferings to the Syrian people, in whose behalf, foreign sympathizers are currently weeping more than the bereaved. Already Syria's core values of religious and ethnic tolerance in which the Christian and other religious minorities have wide latitude of freedom to practice their faith is under intense assault as the rampaging armed insurgents, most of them brandishing the al-Qaeda franchise to demolish any such symbol of tolerance. For the West, the battle against President Assad may not be the last as it would likely return to fight its current armed proxies for which Damascus is just but one stop, in a global campaign to establish a virulent and intolerant theocracy.
• Onunaiju is a journalist based in Abuja.
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