Special Correspondent
Good statesmanship warrants making of decisions that can withstand test of time. President Barack Obama has acted prudently by deferring any military action against Syria until the US Congress voted on the matter in about two weeks time.
By then, evidence gathered by the US intelligence and those provided by the UN inspectors – who had returned from Syria – can be tallied to make a conclusive assertion with respect to who’s to be blamed for the crime: Assad forces, or the rebels fighting for his overthrow.
If Obama wants to go down the history with the record of waging a just war by making a humanitarian intervention in Syria to stop use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, he must also convince the UN Security Council (UNSC), and the US Congress that the intervention is just, legitimate and indispensable for preserving global peace and security. And, in order not to repeat the blunder committed with respect to Iraq’s WMD possession, an exhaustive study of claims from both sides must also be done by the UNSC.
Conspiracy theory
The insistence by the Assad regime, and its external allies like Russia and Iran in particular, that the rebels used chemical weapons cannot be brushed aside prior to making a decision to strike any punitive blow which can unleash a flurry of unintended consequences. From the beginning, the Bashar al Assad regime has doggedly rebutted the US claims that Syrian forces had used chemical weapons against its own people. It’s a conspiracy to attack Syria, maintained Syria and its external allies like Iran, Hezbollah and Russia.
Russia has asked the USA to handover to the UNSC any evidence it may have gathered to support its case of military intervention while more evidence are unearthing from the Syrian side to prove that the NATO-backed rebel forces had used chemical agents to blame the Bashar al Assad regime for a grisly crime which forensic evidence proves to have taken place.
Not only the US intelligence has confessed to the New York Times of not having any ‘slam dunk’ evidence or ‘smoking gun’ to prove the Syrian regime’s culpability in the alleged chemical attack, more evidence are piling to show the attack was orchestrated by the NATO-backed rebels to suck the USA into the fray in the face of huge reversals in rebels’ fortune in the battle field in recent months.
The revealing AP story
Lately, rebels in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta have admitted to an Associated Press correspondent, Dale Gavlak, that they “were responsible for last week’s chemical weapons incident which western powers have blamed on Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, revealing that the huge casualties were the result of an accident caused by rebels mishandling chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.” “From numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families….it was found that many believe the rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the (deadly) gas attack, Gavlak claimed.
In January, an exposure in the info Wars quoted alleged hacked emails between a defence contractor named Britam and his business development director David Goulding, revealing a plan approved by Washington and funded by Qatar to stage a chemical weapons attack in Syria and blame it on the Assad regime; fulfilling what the Obama administration warned that use of chemical weapon by the Syrian regime would cross the red line to justify US military intervention.
The leaked emails revealed how David Goulding and the company’s founder, Philip Doughty, opened the discourse. We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington. We’ll have to deliver a CW (chemical weapon) like the one possessed by Assad regime, wrote Philip. Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous, replied David.
The fact that the plan involved delivering a CW that is similar to those possessed by Assad regime clearly suggests that the idea was to stage a false flag chemical weapons attack that could be blamed on Assad by Gulf States like Qatar and the NATO countries. As well, given the alleged attack occurred in an area heavily concentrated by Assad-loyal forces, a Syrian army spokesman categorically denied the allegation of the regime forces using such weapons as absurd and said: Why should we use chemical agent in an area manned by our own troops.
Prolonged war
As Syria doggedly rebuts the allegation as false and the country’s foreign minister, Walid Almollem, vowed to strike back, preparation within the Syrian regime is learnt to have aimed at escalating the crisis into a regional or global conflagration, if attacked.
That invariably means Syria and its Hezbollah allies from Lebanon will strike Israel and Iran will close the Strait of Hormuz through which passes about 22 per cent of global trading, including vital energy supply from the Mid-East. If the crisis escalates further, Iran may as well use its long range missiles to strike Israel and transform the war into a major regional and global conflagration. Iran and Russia already have ground forces inside Syria, according to sources. An escalation of such a magnitude would also necessitate the physical occupation of Syria at some point, which is most likely to spark a prolonged guerrilla warfare seen only in Afghanistan. Unlike Libya or Iraq, Syrian topography is ideal for such a prolonged and protracted warfare.
Between the humid Mediterranean coast and the arid desert regions lies within Syria a semiarid steppe zone extending across three-quarters of the country. The highest point is Mount Hermon (2,814 m; 9,232 ft) on the Lebanese border which Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon can use as its main baseline. And, with a standing armed forces numbering around 178,000 highly skilled soldiers, backed by the hard hitting and equally highly skilled 21,000 Hezbollah forces from Lebanon, Syria thinks it can prevail in a prolonged war by drawing in Israel into the fray and turning public opinion in the Muslim world and beyond in its favour. A constant flow of arms shipment from Russia, China and Iran will make such a strategy sustainable.
25,000 Special Forces
To match the strength of its perceived and real enemy, Israel, Syria has built over the decades’ three full brigades of Special Forces and stockpiled one of the largest missile arsenals in the Middle East. The 25,000 strong Syrian Special Forces are considered as one of the best in the world.
As well, the country’s air defenses (AD) are considered as the best in the region, next only to Israel. Syrian AD is also less vulnerable to aerial or long range missile strikes. Equipped with substantial number of man-portable air defense systems, known as MANPADS, the shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles can be manually carried by roaming Special Force soldiers and others military personnel to evade enemy detection. Syria also has three batteries of Russian- modeled surface to air SA- 17 batteries. Known as the Buk System, the SA-17 has a range of about 30 km and can intercept multiple targets flying at altitudes of over 40,000 feet. Many of the SA-17 missiles have been dispersed and some has gone to the Hezbollah fighters for use against NATO or Israeli fighter jets, according to a source in Lebanon.
The Hezbollah guerrillas are already armed with the deadly M-600 long-range missiles and 302 mm. Khaibar-1 rockets that can hit targets about 100 km away. These weapons were tested against Israel during the 2006 war. More worryingly, constant supply of M600s is ensured by internal production in Syria as a clone of Iran’s Fateh-110. The Fateh variant being more accurate and capable of hitting targets 300 km away with half-a-ton payload, Syria built a huge stockpile of chemical weapons for delivery inside Israel by using these accurate missiles.
The risk of attacking Syria entails not only the internationalization of a crisis by sucking in Russia and Iran into the quagmire, Obama’s professed strategy of hitting limited targets within Syria will embolden the embattled Assad regime further. (globalreview.ca).
Source: Weekly Holiday
