Syria: What Needs To Be Done

The international scenario continues to be dominated by the serious situation in Syria where the West (read the US) has been planning an intervention for long with help from strange bedfellows (from the Al-Qaeda to Israel) even though that has not yet materialised. The twin blasts that struck the heavily guarded head-quarters of the Syrian Army in the heart of the country’s capital, Damascus, on September 26 have given a new dimension to the efforts to dislodge Bashar Al-Assad—these are learnt to have been carried out by suicide bombers and this certainly exposes the rebels’ identity.

It is quite well known by now that the West and its allies in West Asia are intensifying their endeavours to create conditions to justify military intervention in Syria. In this game they are seeking to exploit the issue of Syrian chemical weapons through devious means. The strategy worked out is as follows: under the pretext of preventing the Al-Qaeda and Lebanon’s Hezbollah from capturing the chemical weapons, the NATO and Israel would deliver air missle strikes on Syria’s active forces paving the way for future induction of Israel and American special units in operations against Damascus.

In this strategy insignificant incidents invol-ving such weapons and attempts by militants to attack the alleged chemical arms dumps may be used by the powerful anti-Syrian forces ranged against Bashar Al-Assad to engineer intervention in the country. There is also an apprehension that the pro-West opponents of the Syrian President may organise provocations by dispersing poisonous substances of Libyan origin in the Turkish-Syrian border areas culminating in civilian victims.

However, even as it magnifies the problem of Syrian WMDs, Washington does acknowledge the lack of precise information on the quantum and location of the weapons. According to recent affirmations by CIA agents, the Syrian Army is safely guarding the arms dumps but has limited scope and opportunity to employ those weapons in the current circumstances. Any sensational report that some armed groups have seized Syrian arsenals of chemical weapons would be easily taken to be a priori deception since observers are well aware that Damascus has securely preserved those weapons to foil any effort at validating military intervention.

However, it is feared that the chaos that would follow the overthrow of the Bashar Al-Assad dispensation could result in a situation wherein radical Islamic outfits like the Al-Qaeda would seize the Syrian WMDs and then spread those throughout the Middle East as had happened in Libya. That is why in order to pre-empt such a possibility Washington and Tel Aviv are evolving a plan to deploy their 75,000-strong contingent in Syria (this has frequently been mentioned by the Stratfor analysts) in order to enable them to gain full control over the WMD arsenals, arms factories and the entire associated infrastructure.

At present both the parties in the Syrian conflict are not in a position to turn the tide in their favour notwithstanding the massive assistance from the side of the West in general and the US in particular. This is the time when the antagonistic forces in the country must be compelled to conclude an armistice in pursuance of Kofi Annan’s project of peaceful settlement of the conflict instead of triggering another regional war.