Syria: the end game
attack on the government building, on the building belonging to Syria’s armed forces…. This was quite similar to a true civil war.”
We have so far witnessed the first two stages of the anti-Assad campaign: civilian demonstrations and Saudi-financed and equipped armed insurgency. The news from the region indicate that we are now witnessing the third stage of the of the campaign to topple the regime: organizing defecting soldiers and military units into the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). We may soon begin to see the fourth and final stage of the campaign: Turkish intervention.
Yesterday, FSA units used mortars and rocket-propelled grenades to attack a government security compound outside Damascus. Col. Riad al-As’ad, the leader of the FSA – the result of the merger of two groups of defecting soldiers – says that he now has twenty-two battalions under his command. Military observers say these numbers appear to be on the high side, but agree that more and more Sunni soldiers and officers have defected from the Syrian military, taking their light arms with them. If the Saudis direct some of their military aid to the FSA, it may well become a force to contend with.
Turkey appears to be inching closer to intervening in Syria. One component of the anti-Assad coalition, the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, has openly called on Turkey to use its military to impose a no-fly zone over Syria, and “buffer zones,” or Turkish-protected enclaves, where anti-regime forces could gather without fear of attacks by the regime.
Ankara has indicated that if the killings in Syria continue, and if the number of Syrians fleeing Syria into Turkey continues to grow, it may entertain military options. In an interview with the Financial Times, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, said the door was open for the creation of Turkish-protected buffer zones inside Syria, although he made it clear it was not Turkey’s preferred option.
Turkey has everything to gain and little to lose from championing the anti-Assad movement. Specifically: Turkey could assert its role as a leader of the Sunni states in the region, and it would weaken the Shi’a Iran and its regional agents. With Egypt embroiled in post-transition internal problems, such regional leadership role appears available to Turkey, if it plays its cards right. An intervention in Syria which would bring Sunnis to power in that country, and aggressive championing of the Palestinian cause, only burnish Turkey’s credentials as a regional leader of the Sunnis.
The toppling of Assad would also be a blow to Iran and its local agent, Hezbollah, isolating and weakening both.
The willingness of the Assad regime to unleash a brutal suppression campaign against the anti-regime movement, and the reluctance of outside forces openly to intervene – as they did in Libya — to curb the regime’s ability to use its military superiority to suppress the insurgency, have led analysts to argue that the Assad government can outlast its opponents and emerge victorious, if bloodied, from this latest challenge.
The emergence of the FSA – especially if aided by Saudi Arabia – and the move by Turkey to assume a more active role in Syria, may well spell the end of the regime.
Ben Frankel is the editor of the Homeland Security NewsWire
