The fall of the border
town of Qusayr to the Syrian government, signs the military balance may be
tipping in favor of President Bashar al-Assad, the entry of Lebanese Hezbollah
fighters on his side, and the growing credence of reports of chemical weapons
use by the regime have all triggered a re-evaluation of Washington's Syria policy.
The Group of Eight summit
in Northern Ireland next Monday and Tuesday will give U.S. President Barack
Obama a chance to discuss Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin and could
influence his decision to arm the rebels or do something else to support them.
The United States and Russia
announced on May 7 they would try to bring the warring parties to a Geneva-2
conference to implement a peace plan they endorsed a year ago that left open
the question of whether or not Assad must leave power.
With the fall of Qusayr
brought about by Syrian government forces and fighters from Iran's Lebanese
Hezbollah militia, Assad seems to be gaining the upper hand on the battlefield,
raising a serious question of why he would agree to any peace deal entailing
his departure.
In Washington on
Wednesday, Secretary of States John Kerry told a joint press conference with
British Foreign Secretary William Hague:
Together, our
two countries also remain committed to a Syrian-led political solution to the
crisis there. We are deeply concerned about the dire situation in Syria,
including the involvement of Hezbollah, as well as Iran, across state lines in
another country. So we are focusing our efforts now on doing all that we can to
support the opposition as they work to change the balance on the ground. And
together, we have provided tremendous humanitarian assistance in an effort to
mitigate the human suffering that is taking place in Syria. We remain committed
to the Geneva 2 conference. We both understand the complications with the
situation on the ground and moving forward rapidly. But there will have to be a
political solution, ultimately, to the situation on the ground, and that is the
framework that will continue to be the outline, and we remain committed to it.
QUESTION (from Jill Dougherty of CNN): ... After this catastrophic defeat
for the opposition in Qusayr, do you still believe they can win and do it
without the weapons they are asking for?
KERRY: Look, I think that nobody wins in Syria the way things are
going; the people lose, and Syria as a country loses. And what we have been
pushing for, all of us involved in this effort, is a political solution that
ends the violence, saves Syria, stops the killing and destruction of an entire
nation. And that’s what we’re pushing for. So it’s not a question to me whether
or not the opposition can, quote, “win.” It’s a question of whether or not we
can get to this political solution.
And the
political solution that the Russians have agreed to contemplates a transition
government. The implementation of Geneva-1 is the goal of Geneva-2, and that is
a transition government with full executive authority, which gives the Syrian
people as a whole, everybody in Syria, the chance to have a new beginning where
they choose their future leadership. Now, that’s the goal.
And we have said
that we will do everything we can and we’re able to do to help the opposition
be able to achieve that goal and to reach a point where that can be
implemented. And that’s what we’re trying to do. And I think that there’s unanimity
about the importance of trying to find a way to peace, not a way to war. Now,
the Assad regime is making that very difficult.
We will be – as
everybody knows and has written about, we’re meeting to talk about the various
balances in this issue right now. And I have nothing to announce about that at
this point, but clearly, the choice of weapons that he has engaged in across
the board challenge anybody’s values and standards of human behavior. And we’re
going to have to make judgments for ourselves about how we can help the
opposition to be able to deal with that.
(...)
QUESTION (from Tom Whipple, The Times): We’ve heard you
say similar things for 800 days about Syria.
KERRY: Well, not me. I haven’t been in office for 800 days.
QUESTION: Officials like yourself, sir. Can you say – can you give us a
sense, any sense at all, what you’ve been talking about in terms of the kind of
help you may be offering the Syrian rebels, and why you aren’t able to say
anything more than you’re saying at the moment, which you’re staying pretty
tight-lipped about what you’ve been discussing in terms of this help you can
give the rebels? At some point, it’s going to be too late for that, isn’t it?
Do you think we’ve reached that point?
KERRY: I’m not going to make judgments about the points, where we
are or aren’t. I’ll just say to you that as I said to you, we are determined to
do everything that we can in order to help the opposition to be able to reach –
to save Syria. And that stands. That’s exactly what we’re going to do. I have
nothing new to announce today. When and if I do, you’ll hear about it. But at
this moment, we are in consideration, as everybody knows – it’s been written
about this week. People are talking about what further options might be
exercised here. And we certainly had some discussion about that, obviously. But
we don’t have anything to announce at this moment.
In his
think piece today for the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat, Lebanese political analyst Abdelwahhab
Badrakhan says in part:
While both the regime and the opposition have allies,
fact is regime partners have proved dependable and committed.
By contrast, the opposition’s “friends” have led it
to a blind alley.
Qusayr’s defenders gave their all. The regime and its
mercenaries were an invasion unit.
The battle was between Syrians and an outside force
alien to both Syria and Lebanon. The regime sent for it to regain control of
the town.
“Control” in regime parlance means the cities, towns
and townships should be in ruin and their residents hushed and subdued, as they
were 27 months earlier.
Qusayr fell because its position on the map allowed the
invaders to isolate it from its supportive surroundings.
Overstating its strategic importance as a gateway
linking Damascus with the Syrian coastline recalls the regime’s hot air about
“terrorists and armed gangs.”
It also lets slip Damascus bosses are no more
interested in connecting with Aleppo, Idlib, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and Deraa. Their
obsession is to secure a “safe escape route” to Syria’s Alawite heartland.
The most important aspect of the battle for Qusayr is
that it allowed the Syrian and Iranian regimes and Hezbollah to set a model for
external intervention and lay to wrest the “no winner or loser” equation
between the sides.
The said equivalence was the raison
d'être for Geneva-1
and the June 2012 Geneva Declaration.
The regime never accepted the Geneva Declaration,
except slyly. The Russians and Iranians embraced it simply to promote the
regime’s own interpretation of the document – namely, a political transition
led by their ally Bashar al-Assad; otherwise no solution.
Occasional Russian statements feigning indifference
to Assad’s fate were smokescreens. They have dissipated in the buildup for
Geneva-2.
The worst and most dangerous fallout of the battle
for Qusayr is the bitter feeling it leaves in the minds and hearts of Arab and
Muslim public opinions – the feeling that the battle was: (1) the first
sectarian conflict marking a Shiite victory against Sunnis (2) the foremost
retaliation for the “poisoned
chalice” Ayatollah Khomeini agreed to drink from in 1988 to end Iran’s eight-year
war with “Saddam’s Iraq.”
Post-Qusayr, Syria and Iran’s regimes and Hezbollah
are ecstatically toasting a “divine victory” against what they call a
“conspiracy.”
The West and so-called “Friends of Syria,” for their
part, proved ready to forfeit the Syrian people’s blood because their humble
aspirations do not serve their interests.
The “victors” will not suffice with Qusayr ahead of
Geneva-2, having known by now that the White House’s “red lines” are anything
but red and Washington’s coaxing and flattery of Moscow will fall on deaf ears.
The “victors” are also conscious that Israel has
numbed and shackled America’s Syria undertaking and is now flirting with the
Kremlin, knowing that Moscow’s future role would serve her interests.
Israel is of the same mind as Russia, Iran and
Hezbollah in preferring Assad and his regime to remain in place – much as it
helped Iran poach Iraq and shares Tehran’s strategic designs to destabilize the
Arab Gulf.
The Syrian people are not beaten, or down and out
yet. But they could be if Washington kept playing second fiddle to Moscow on
Syria.
