While
far too late, the Obama administration may be adopting a sensible
policy on Syria. The strategy, however, is unlikely to succeed. Oh, and
there is also a very important clue—I think the key to the puzzle—about
what really happened in Benghazi.
Let’s
begin with Syria. As U.S. officials became increasingly worried about
the visible Islamist domination of the Syrian opposition—which their own
policies had helped promote—they have realized the horrible situation
of creating still another radical Islamist regime. (Note: This column
has been warning of this very point for years.)
So
the response is to try to do two things. The first is to train, with
Jordanian cooperation, a more moderate force of Free Syrian Army (FSA)
units. The idea is to help the non-Islamists compete more effectively
with the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafist, and especially al-Qaeda (Jabhat
al-Nusra group) affiliated units.
The
second is to create a buffer zone along Syria’s borders with Jordan and
perhaps later Israel and even Iraq in order to avoid the conflict
spilling over—i.e., cross-border jihad terror attacks—to those
countries.
“The last thing anyone wants to see is al-Qaeda gaining a foothold in southern Syria next to Israel. That is a doomsday scenario,” said a U.S. diplomat in Jordan who was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject.”
Someone
has also figured out that it isn’t a great idea to have a border with
Iraq controlled by Syrian Sunni Muslim terrorist Islamists allied with
the Sunni terrorists in Iraq who killed so many Americans.
Well, might someone not have thought about that a year
or two ago? Because, while nothing could have been more obvious there was no step taken to avoid this situation happening.
I
should point out an important distinction. The problem is not merely
al-Qaeda gaining a foothold but also other Salafists or the Muslim
Brotherhood doing so. That, however, is not how the Obama administration
thinks. For it, al-Qaeda is evil; the other Salafists somewhat bad; and
the Muslim Brotherhood good.
What
are the problems here? As so often happens with Western-formulated
clever ideas to deal with the Middle East, there are lots of them.
--The
United States has stood aside or even helped arm the Islamists through
Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. So now the Islamist forces are far
stronger than the non-Islamists. That cannot be reversed at this point.
--The
idea of border areas will create a Syria that is divided under the
control of different forces. What will happen when, through elections or
other means, the Muslim Brotherhood takes political power and wants its
militia to control everything?
--Might
this be laying the basis for a second Syrian civil war in which the
Islamists
band together against the FSA? In other words, here is this buffer zone
that is backed by the West (imperialism!) to “protect” Israel (the
Zionists!), Jordan (traitorous Muslims!), and Iraq (Shia heretics!)
--The
training is limited and the FSA is badly divided among different
commanders, defected Syrian army officers, and local warlords. The
Brotherhood militia is united and disciplined. The result: worse than
Afghanistan because the Islamists would have both the government and the
stronger military forces.
--These buffer zones would not receive Western air support or international forces.
--Israel
has the experience of maintaining a buffer zone in southern Lebanon for
years by supporting a militia group. It succeeded for a long time by
sending in Israeli troops covertly and taking casualties. In the end,
rightly or wrongly, the effort was given up. Now Hizballah—the
equivalent though not the friend of the Syrian Salafists—is sitting on
the border and already one war has been fought. It should be noted that
Israel has by far the most defensible border with Syria.
--A
situation is being set up in which a future Muslim Brotherhood regime
in Syria can blackmail the United States. Either it will force
Washington to accept whatever it does (including potential
massacres) by threatening to unleash Salafist forces on its borders or
it will actually create confrontations.
--Why
isn’t the United States working full-time to stop the arms flows to the
Islamists by pressuring the Saudis and Qataris (perhaps the point of
Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip but hardly effective) and to rein
in Turkey’s enthusiasm for a Syrian Islamist regime?
Speaking
of Turkey, now we see the reason for the attempted Israel-Turkey
rapprochement, because on top of everything else there will be a
Kurdish-ruled zone not run by moderates but by the Syrian affiliate of
the radical PKK, which is at war with
Turkey.
So
this is the likely fruit of the Syrian civil war, though that conflict
is far from over. The old regime is still alive. What U.S. policy has
helped to do is to create a big new threat to Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and
Israel. It’s also a threat to Lebanon, but since the Syrian Islamists
will target the Iran-backed Hizballah there, Washington doesn’t mind.
What does this have to do with Benghazi? Find out on the next page.
Read this paragraph from the Washington Post:
Obama administration officials have expressed repeated concern that some of about 20,000 of the weapons, called MANPADS, have made their way from the arsenals of former Libyan dictator Moammar (sic) Gaddafi to Syria.
This
weapons system might be the most technologically impressive arms ever
to fall into the hands of terrorists. Once Libya’s regime fell (another
U.S. foreign policy production), these weapons were grabbed by the
Libyan rebels and sold to the Saudis and Qataris, who supplied them,
respectively, to the Syrian Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood.
According
to reliable sources, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was in Benghazi
trying to get those
MANPADS back and was negotiating with radical militias toward that
goal. Stevens was doing something good—trying to take weapons out of the
hands of terrorists—and not running weapons to terrorists.
Yet
that doesn’t mitigate the mess unleashed by the administration’s
policy. At any rate, Stevens and these efforts failed. The money was too
good for the Libyan insurgents to pass up, not to mention helping
fellow Islamists and anti-Americans. And now thousands of advanced,
easily launched anti-aircraft systems are in the hands of
anti-Jordanian, anti-Iraqi, anti-Israeli, and possibly anti-Turkish
terrorists.
Please be subscriber 31,311 (among more than 50,000 total readers). Put email address in upper right-hand box: http://www.rubinreports.blogspot.com
We’d love to have your support and work hard to earn it. See our new feature with 13 free books at http://www.gloria-center.org. Why not make a tax-deductible donation to the GLORIA Center by PayPal: click here.
By credit card: click here.
Checks: "American Friends of IDC.” “For GLORIA Center” on memo line and
send to: American Friends of IDC, 116 East 16th St., 11th Fl., NY, NY
10003.
--------------------
Barry
Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest book, Israel: An Introduction, has just been published by Yale University Press. Thirteen of his books can be read and downloaded for free at the website of the GLORIA Center including The Arab States and the Palestine Conflict, The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East and The Truth About Syria. His blog is Rubin Reports. His original articles are published at PJMedia.
Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org
The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/
He is a featured columnist at PJM http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/.
Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org
Editor Turkish Studies,http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22
No comments:
Post a Comment