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| The Stinger (top) and SA-7 |
Damascus presumably knows why U.S. Defense Secretary
Leon Panetta is now saying plans to set up a no-fly zone over parts of Syria
are “not on the front burner.”
Without referring to Panetta’s remark, Nasser Sharara,
writing today for the staunchly pro-Assad Lebanese daily al-Akhbar, says Washington and
Turkey’s game plan at this point is not to use air assets to protect Syrian
rebel forces from escalating regime airstrikes.
Instead, he says, Washington and Turkey are planning a
deny-flight operation, whereby the American shoulder-held Stinger
surface-to-air missiles -- also known as MANPADs (man-portable air-defense
systems) -- would be deployed in parts
of Syria to create a safe haven for the rebels.
Sharara says Damascus’ intended counterpunch is to
supply “Ankara’s enemies” in Syria’s Kurdish areas – read the PKK or Kurdistan
Workers’ Party -- with a new generation of Russian
man-portable SA-7s.
Iran is working to
establish in Syria a militia that is loyal to President Bashar al-Assad,
Panetta said Tuesday, warning that Tehran’s growing presence could only
aggravate the situation on the ground.
“It is obvious that
Iran has been playing a larger role in Syria in many ways,” Panetta said at a
joint press conference with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen.
Martin Dempsey.
There is now evidence
that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are “trying to develop, trying to train a
militia within Syria to be able to fight on behalf of the regime,” Panetta
said.
“So we are seeing a
growing presence by Iran and that is of deep concern to us. We do not think
that Iran ought to play that role at this moment in time, that’s dangerous...
it’s adding to the killing that’s going on in Syria.”
“The Syrian people
ought to determine their future, not Iran,” he added, before he
played down
options for a no-fly zone over Syria.
“With regards to the
no-fly zone, that is not a front-burner issue for us,” Panetta said.
Dempsey, speaking at the
Pentagon on Tuesday, said Jordan and Turkey had both examined the possibility
of a safe haven with which “would probably come some form of no-fly zone.”
“But we’re not planning
anything unilaterally, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, just before
Panetta said a no-fly zone wasn’t a front-burner issue.
Sharara, in his
front-page lead for al-Akhbar, recalls Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton pledging last Saturday more military and intelligence
cooperation with Turkey on Syria.
“We have been closely
coordinating over the course of this conflict, but now we need to get into the
real details of such operational planning… Our intelligence services, our
military have very important responsibilities and roles to play so we are going
to be setting up a working group to do exactly that,” she said.
Sharara quotes an
unnamed diplomatic source as saying Clinton’s talk of “operational planning”
and military and intelligence cooperation “precludes the use of American,
Turkish or even NATO air assets to create a no-fly zone over parts of Syria.
Instead, “the plan is for
an opposition-controlled haven in a predominantly Sunnite area stretching from eastern
Idlib to the northern half of Aleppo and upwards to the peripheries of
al-Hasakah and Qamishli.”
The American-Turkish
scheme is to deny flight to the Syrian air force over the said area through the
hush-hush deployment there of Stinger-armed Turkish operators, lest the
surface-to-air missiles fall into al-Qaeda hands.
But Sharara says
Damascus is not expected to stay its hand while Ankara and Washington deploy
Stingers, which “allowed the mujahedeen to defeat the Soviet army in
Afghanistan,” to create a safe haven for the Syrian opposition.
Damascus, he says, is
moving to cede control of northern Syria’s Kurdish areas (along the borders
with Turkey) and equip “Ankara’s (PKK) enemies” there with a new generation of SA-7s
“capable of downing Turkish fighter jets not only over Syrian Kurdistan” but
over Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast as well.
