Just when you think that the situation in Syria couldn’t get any worse… it does. The conflict is spilling over Syria’s borders and badly affecting its neighbors.
The United Nations Refugee Agency is reporting that the number of Syrians who have registered as refugees (which allows them access to aid and services) has now passed the 1 million mark. The actual number of refugees, many of them unregistered, is higher and millions more are internally displaced within Syria. The refugee flow is growing all the time with at least 7,000 people leaving the country every day. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees warns that “Syria is spiraling towards full-scale disaster”–and it’s not just Syria that is affected. As the New York Times notes:
Around 330,000 Syrians have sought shelter in Lebanon and close to 320,000 in Jordan, the refugee agency reported, with more than 185,000 in Turkey, 105,000 in Iraq, 43,500 in Egypt and around 8,000 across North Africa. Others have fled to Europe, it said.
To illustrate the strain this influx has imposed on Syria’s neighbors, the refugee agency said the population of Lebanon has swelled by 10 percent, Jordan’s energy and water capacity as well as its health and education services are stretched to the limit and Turkey had spent $600 million building 17 camps to house arrivals and more are under construction.
Meanwhile, two violent incidents in recent days show further spillover. On Monday, 40 Syrian soldiers who had sought shelter in Iraq and were being returned to Syria via Anbar Province were slain by unknown gunmen. This shows how the Syrian insurgency, led by Sunnis, is melding with the existing Sunni insurgency in Iraq, which is being enflamed by Prime Minister Maliki’s sectarian Shiite tendencies. And as if that weren’t bad enough, now comes news that Syrian rebels have abducted 20 UN peacekeepers from the Golan Heights.
Amid this intensifying horror, what is the Obama administration doing? Well Secretary of State John Kerry has announced that we will send non-lethal aid to the rebels, and he has expressed support for allies—but not, for mysterious reasons, the U.S. itself—sending arms to the rebels as well. The CIA is also reportedly providing some training to some rebels in Jordan.
To say that this is inadequate is merely to state the obvious. The Syrian mess is turning into the biggest foreign policy debacle of the Obama administration. Its hands-off policy is proving just as destructive as the hands-off policy that the George H.W. Bush and the Clinton administrations took in the early years of the bloodletting in the former Yugoslavia. Unfortunately it is unlikely that international peacekeepers will ever be dispatched to restore calm in Syria as eventually happened in Bosnia and Kosovo because Western nations are so wary of intervening in another Muslim country.
But as the Balkans interventions proved, it is still not too late—even after more than two years of war—for Washington to lead a relatively low-risk multilateral intervention that would attempt to bring the fighting to an end. In the case of Syria the only realistic option is to hasten Assad’s downfall through the provision of weapons and training to the rebels and the use of Western airpower to create a no-fly zone and to assist the rebels with close air support in their operations. Those options may not seem very palatable (especially at a time when sequestration is badly hurting military readiness) but unless the administration changes course, the spillover and slaughter will continue to worsen.
Still no sale, Max. It's not "obvious" that the US should do more, which would inexorably draw the US military into intra-Arab fratricide — possibly in Lebanon and Iraq (again), as well as Syria. Our French and British-prompted intervention in Libya has resulted in nothing good in that country while spawning a new terrorist threat in the Sahel. n nNo one can say that active US military assistance to the rebels would produce an outcome better for our interests than an Assad victory. So let them kill each other.
If it's so critical to defeat Assad, let's urge our Arab and Turkish "allies" to intervene with their considerable forces (much paid for with our money). If that draws Iran in on Assad's side, more's the better as it would weaken the whole lot of bad and worse actors.
NO US aid of any kind of ANY faction involved in the Syria civil war: no money, no matieral, no men. Terrorists like Al Qaeda now make up the "rebels'. The Islamic world is awash in money from its oil weath. Time for them to step up. End the conflict, feed refugees, set up a functioning state in Syria, get the refugees re-settled. Let us see how they do. n nNo matter what we Americans do 1)it is never considered enough 2) the Muslims still hate us. 3) we wind up supporting jihad (Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) or corruption (Karzai, Abbas). We never get it right. n nObama's administration's latest thing is to support any elected gov't, even if it adopts a sharia constitution which makes it LEGAL to discriminate against women, gays and non-Muslims. That is what Team Obama is doing in Egypt right now with US taxpayer dollars. Obama could have made clear USA would support only liberals, he did not. Obviously this Administration is clueless. So, the only answer regarding Syria is tell the Islamic world – MAKE IT RIGHT. We're out.
"The operatives, who are fighting on the side of the opposition forces attempting to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, are members of a 13-faction radical Islamic coalition, the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Syria that has declared itself completely separate from the mainstream opposition sector. Most of the group's members are linked to the international Al Qaeda terrorist organization." From Arutz Sheva/Israel National News. n n n n n n
The US should do nothing but provide Israel with EVERYTHING it needs to defend itself. Let the world see what the Islamic world is really like. And…this time, unlike in 2006 when Israel could have completely destroyed Hezbolleh – but the "international community" was so appalled that Israel had the temerity to defend itself – this time, if Israel is attacked from Syrian and/or Lebanon, let Israel destroy Hezbolleh and its allies completely. (Al Qaeda is already IN Syria.) n nPS: International community: I hope you are feeling horrible for the mess you created. If you had allowed Israel to totally wipe out Hezbolleh in 2006, what is happening in Syria right now would have ended a long time ago. In 2006 Hezbolleh ATTACKED Israel, kidnapped and killed Israeli soilders. Too bad you "international community" think it is OK for Jews to be killed by Muslims and NOT OK for Jews to destroy those that threaten to destroy Israel and murder every Jew on the planet. n n.
Exactly right. n nTap. . tap . . . sorry . . . busted sympathy meter for victims of arab on arab violence and incompetence. n nI read today that Israel was chastised by the USA for not seizing the opportunity to intervene in its own interest in Syria. Don't know if it is true. Debka reports that Hezbollah has some chemical weapons now. If true, then Israel screwed up in a big way. n nAs long as the fallout for Israel is neutral or positive (and I actually think it may end up being positive if the chemical weapons are dealt with), it's popcorn time.
Hopefully the USA will help Jordan – already burdened by hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christian refugees created by the Bush43/Cheney/Rumsfeld BIG mistake in Iraq. n nI also wonder what has happened to the Iraqi Christians who found refuge in Syria. n nPerhaps it is time for the Kurds to stop the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. That should change the regional dynamics…and America's unrepentant neocons need to find a new hobby. n n n n
I don't see it as either a catastrophe or anything to be ameliorated at all. A problem has to be solvable before you attempt to solve it. A conflict needs a clear definition of what success looks like before starting. If you can't tell the difference between success and failure then you have gained nothing and lost quite a bit. Moreover, if "Syria", meaning the slowly disintegrating nation of Syria and its confederates, non state actors, elements in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq – if all of that becomes the graveyard of all their ambitions, if it grinds on for 10 or 15 years, then that is better for most of the rest of all of us. The alternative is more or less the same thing except we're there.
"The United Nations Security Council condemned on Wednesday evening the seizure of 20 UN peacekeepers by Syrian rebels and demanded their immediate release." From israel National News/Arutz Sheva. n nThe rebels are terrorists. No US help. NONE. What might have been done if we immediately vetted those going up against Assad, made sure they were truly liberals/democrats in the Western sense….that time has passed. The Syrian civial war is now about Assad dictatorship vs Islamic dicatorship. Nor US men, money or material. Not even for humanitarian aid. The Arab world is awash in money from oil. Our help is not needed. 1) US is a debtor nation. 2) whichever group comes out on top will be anti-American. n n n
"Meanwhile, a video published Tuesday showed Al Qaeda terrorists along Israel’s northern border from the Golan Heights, tracking IDF soldiers from the Syrian side of the fence." From israel National News/Arutz Sheva. n nAl Qaeda is in Syria. So, where is the Muslim world that likes to say Al Qaeda is going AGAINST Islam, does not represent Islam. Will the Arab world step up to defeat the Al Qada scourge? When US kills a Muslim it says US is Islamaphobic. So, how soon can we expect the islamic world to deal with the military, political and humanitarian crisis in Syria? n n