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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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Derechos | Equipo Nizkor
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18Feb13
As Assad Holds Firm, Obama Could Revisit Arms Policy
When President Obama rebuffed four of his top national security officials who wanted to arm the rebels in Syria last fall, it put an end to a months-long debate over how aggressively Washington should respond to the strife there that has now left nearly 70,000 dead.
ut the decision also left the White House with no clear strategy to resolve a crisis that has bedeviled it since a popular uprising erupted against President Bashar al-Assad almost two years ago. Despite an American program of nonlethal assistance to opponents of the Syrian government and $365 million in humanitarian aid, Mr. Obama appears to be running out of options to speed Mr. Assad's exit.
With conditions continuing to deteriorate, officials said, the president could reopen the question of whether to provide weapons to select members of the resistance in an effort to break the impasse in Syria. The question is whether a wary Mr. Obama, surrounded by a new national security team, would come to a different conclusion.
"This is not a closed decision," a senior administration official insisted. "As the situation evolves, as our confidence increases, we might revisit it."
Mr. Obama's refusal to provide arms when the proposal was broached before the November election, officials said, was driven by his reluctance to get drawn into a proxy war and his fear that the weapons would end up in unreliable hands, where they could be used against civilians or Israeli and American interests.
As the United States struggles to formulate a policy, however, Mr. Assad has given no sign that he is ready to yield power, and the Syrian resistance is adamant that it will not negotiate a transition in which he has a role. Mr. Obama, in his State of the Union address, did not repeat his oft-stated confidence that Mr. Assad's days are numbered.
Even if Mr. Assad was overthrown, the convulsion could fragment Syria along sectarian and ethnic lines, each supported by competing outside powers, said Paul Salem, who runs the Beirut-based Middle East office for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Syria," he said, "is in the process, not of transitioning, but disintegrating."
The State Department has funneled $50 million of nonlethal assistance to the Syrian opposition, including satellite telephones, radios, broadcasting equipment, computers, survival equipment and the training in how to use them. This support, officials say, has helped Syrians opposed to the Assad regime communicate with one another and the outside world, despite efforts by Syrian forces to target rebel communications using Iranian-supplied equipment. A Syria-wide FM radio network is to connect broadcasting operations in several cities in the next several days. The State Department has also helped train local councils in areas that have freed from the Syrian government's control.
But the State Department does not provide non-lethal assistance to armed rebel factions. This has greatly limited the influence the United States has with armed groups that are likely to control much of Syria if Mr. Assad is ousted..
"The odds are very high that, for better or worse, armed men will determine Syria's course for the foreseeable future," said Frederic C. Hof, a former senior State Department official and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. "For the U.S. not to have close, supportive relationships with armed elements, carefully vetted, is very risky."
Because units of the anti-Assad Free Syria Army have captured prisoners and detained criminals in the areas they control, Mr. Hof said, it is essential that either the United States or an ally train rebel staff officers in judicial procedures and sensitive them to human rights concerns.
While the White House has focused on the risks of providing weapons, other nations have had no such reservations. Russia has continued to provide arms and financial support to the Assad government. Iran has supplied the regime with weapons and Quds Force advisers. Hezbollah has sent militants to Syria to help Mr. Assad's forces. On the other side of the struggle, anti-government Qaeda-affiliated fighters have been receiving financial and other support from their backers in the Middle East.
The arming plan that was considered last year originated with David H. Petreaus, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was supported by former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The goal was to create allies in Syria with whom the United States could work during the conflict and if Mr. Assad was removed from power. Each had their reasons for supporting it.
Mr. Petraeus had experience as a general in Iraq training Iraqi fighters and had long worried that militants traveling through Syria to join Al Qaeda in Iraq might one day reverse course and challenge the Assad government. Mrs. Clinton signed on to the initiative after frustration that the Russians had walked away from a transition plan she had hammered out in a June meeting in Geneva.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta supported the plan, which offered a way to influence the military situation inside Syria without the involvement of the American forces. So did Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, calculating that it was important to bring the conflict to a close before the Syrian state utterly collapsed and there was nothing to hand over to Mr. Assad's successor.
"I thought if there were a way to resolve the military situation more quickly, it would work to the benefit not only of the Syrian people but also us," General Dempsey told reporters en route to Afghanistan earlier this month, though he acknowledged his support was "conceptual" and that complexities remained.
But the president, who had campaigned on the theme that "the tide of war" was receding, was more skeptical, fearing that such a move would, in effect, draw the United States into a proxy war against the Syrian government and its Iranian and Russian backers, with uncertain results. His wariness was reinforced, officials said, by his closest advisers, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, both of whom advised against it.
Also in the skeptical camp, officials said, was Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations. Her opposition was noteworthy, given that she had pushed for military intervention in Libya.
"In a situation as chaotic as Syria's," said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity, "you don't know where weapons might end up, and what the consequences are if those weapons are used against civilians, against Israel, against American interests."
To avoid the risk that Israeli aircraft might be targeted if weapons fell into the wrong hands, the plan would not have provided rebels with shoulder-fired missiles. But that meant that the operation would be less effective against Mr. Assad's forces.
After Mr. Petraeus resigned because of an extramarital affair and Mrs. Clinton was sidelined with a concussion, the issue was shelved. Mr. Donilon convened few meetings of top officials after the election, which also limited the chance to revisit the question.
At one level, the makeup of Mr. Obama's new team would seem to reduce the likelihood of a policy shift. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that he plans to advance ideas on how to change the situation on his first trip later this month -- ideas that appear to include eliciting more cooperation from the Kremlin.
But it remains to be seen if the Russians will soften their position. In a phone conversation on Sunday, Mr. Kerry and Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, discussed how the United States and Russia might encourage a political transition in Syria and said they would try to meet in the coming weeks, said Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman.
Chuck Hagel, the president's nominee for defense secretary who has yet to be confirmed by the Senate, has expressed reluctance, dating back to the Iraq war, to get entangled in foreign conflicts.
Mr. Petraeus' likely replacement at the C.I.A., John O. Brennan, is a 25-year agency veteran, which one official said suggested that he might be more focused on bolstering its clandestine intelligence-gathering capabilities, rather thanparamilitary-style operations.
Against all that, however, is the grim reality that Mr. Assad seems no closer than leaving than he did months ago. For all Mr. Obama's deep reservations, the White House insists it is taking no options off the table, with officials noting that over time, it is learning more about the rebel factions.
"We have consistently looked at all elements of our Syria policy, including what we can and should supply to the opposition," said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser.
[Source: By Mark Landler and Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 18Feb13]
 | This document has been published on 19Feb13 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. |