EVERYTHING AGAINST DAMASCUS

There is no end in sight in the civil war in Syria. Of late the Syrian conflict has been acquiring a more international nature. Foreign intervention aimed at toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad cannot be ruled out, similar to the military campaigns which led to the downfall of the many-year-long regimes in Iraq and Libya. 

The regular meeting of the "Friends of Syria", consisting of 11 states, including the USA, a number of Arab and West European countries, which took place in Istanbul, may be regarded as a symbolic one in that it confirmed the following: the internal and external enemies of the Syrian regime are increasingly seeking to ratchet up the pressure on the officials in Damascus and have almost managed to decide on what measures should, in their opinion, be taken to bring about the  inevitable doom of Bashar al-Assad's rule. 

Firstly, the "Friends of Syria" adopted a decision to increase the amount of aid to the Syrian opposition. US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that the American Administration was prepared to allocate $123m dollars for that purpose; this sum would be spent by the opposition on acquiring medicines and so called non-lethal equipment (body armour, night-vision goggles and advanced communications equipment). Moreover, the head of the American State Department appealed to those attending the Istanbul meeting to boost the level of aid to the Syrian opposition to $1bn.

It is no secret that the Syrian opposition has long been receiving quite large amounts of aid. It has been obtaining weapons, albeit illegally, through the countries bordering on Syria. But the "Friends of Syria" are no longer hiding their intentions to legitimise this process. At any rate, the European Union (EU) is expressing its willingness to discuss the lifting of the embargo on deliveries of weapons to the Syrian opposition in the very near future. It was not long ago that the EU was insisting that the embargo should remain in force. In spite of the appeals of Bashar al-Assad's enemies within the country that the arms delivery issue should be resolved, Washington and Brussels have refused to take that step, fearing that the arms delivered might eventually end up in the hands of terrorists fighting under the auspices of Al-Qaeda. The mood of the Syrian opposition's international sponsors has begun to change of late. This is not only because the voice of the Syrian opposition fighters is sounding louder and ever more demanding today. Thus, the heads of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, who confirmed in Istanbul that they were categorically opposed to any kind of dialogue with Bashar al-Assad's government, have been openly calling for the "Friends of Syria" to make strikes on government armed forces' facilities. At the same time, the leaders of the Syrian opposition are assuring their "Friends" that, under no circumstances, will the weapons being supplied to them "fall into the wrong hands". So, this is the reason why the embargo on these deliveries should definitely be lifted.

Moreover, the USA and the other countries forming the anti-Syrian coalition that they have knocked together have sufficient reason to consider ultimately legitimising full-scale international aid to the Syrian opposition.

The American magazine "The National Interest" has commented on this issue in sufficiently clear manner. It believes that the Syrian opposition will not be able to gain the upper hand in this long drawn-out war with its indeterminate success, unless it receives everything it needs to wage an effective struggle, including weapons like anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.  Cracks have begun to appear in the foundations of al-Assad regime, but it has not collapsed in spite of the never-ending forecasts of its rapid downfall".

To all appearances, the United States has already taken the fundamental decision to introduce a no-fly zone, in order to bring down the al-Assad regime more quickly. This method was successfully tried and tested during the operation to topple Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi. US Secretary of State John Kerry stressed that there are a variety of actions that they can resort to, ranging from diplomatic manipulation, support for refugees, financing of certain groups and supplying them with arms, to the introduction of a no-fly zone."

The Syrian armed opposition has incidentally long been appealing to the countries that call themselves the "Friends of Syria" to secure a zone where flights by Syrian aviation on the country's southern and northern frontiers would be banned. The opposition fighters' rationale for demanding this step is that such a measure would help hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to their homes, since there would no longer be a threat of air strikes by government forces. 

Besides introducing a no-fly zone the USA has in reserve another, no less successfully tried and tested means of striking out "at a tyrant" By using powerful propaganda, the United States can obtain some kind of moral and legitimate basis in support of conducting a direct military operation in a specific Middle Eastern country. This was the move that was undertaken exactly 10 years ago to justify the military campaign against the Iraqi regime (although the outcome of that campaign clarified that the Saddam Hussein's regime did not have weapons of mass destruction).

US President Barak Obama has stated that, according to the evidence he has, Syria has used chemical weapons. True, the head of the White House has added, all this information, "some evidence" that chemical weapons were used specifically by the Bashar al-Assad government needed to be rechecked. Earlier Obama warned that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime might be a "game-changer".

Talk of chemical weapons being used in Syria started to be heard about a month and a half ago. The authorities and the opposition accused each other of using missiles containing chemical shells in Aleppo province. Washington believes that the responsibility for the alleged use of these weapons lies with the al-Assad regime. White House [Second] Press Secretary Jay Carney has stressed that the USA is not ruling out the possibility of taking action, including the use of military force, if the Syrian government were to "cross the red line", which sets apart the use of chemical weapons against one's own citizens or the handing over of these weapons to terrorist groups.

The officials in Damascus deny these accusations. Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi has described the "hysteria over chemical weapons" whipped up by the United States as a reaction to the Syrian army's latest successes in its battle against the militants. Thus, talk of the use of chemical weapons in Syria is possibly being used to prepare the ground for a direct military invasion. The probability of this is becoming ever greater as the civil war drags on in that country. This will ultimately convince the USA and its allies that the Syrian opposition is not capable of putting an end to the Bashar al-Assad regime on its own, without the appropriate outside help.

Moreover, the al-Assad regime is not on its own in the international community. In particular, the head of the Lebanese "Hezbollah"movement, Hassan Nasrallah, has admitted that members of this organisation are joining in the Syrian conflict on the side of the government forces. He noted that Syria has real friends in the region who will not allow the country to fall into the hands of the USA, Israel and the extremists.

What is more, the extremists mentioned by Nasrullah are committing more and more acts of terrorism. The most prominent of these was the attempted assassination of Syrian Prime Minister Wael al Halqi, which killed at least10 people. The Syrian Foreign Ministry has again announced that groups linked to Al-Qaeda's international terrorist network are behind the acts of terrorism in Syria. One of these, the Jabhat al Nusra grouping, which has sworn allegiance to Al-Qaeda and has been one of the main perpetrators of the orgy of bloodshed which has been going on in Syria for more than two years now.

It is nevertheless possible to stop the bloodshed in Syria. Many western experts already recognise that, in order to achieve at least a preliminary agreement on holding talks on a political settlement of the Syrian crisis, the stipulation that the talks can only be held after the resignation of President al-Assad, has to be abandoned. Unless the pre-conditions regarding the cessation of the civil war in Syria are removed, there can be no guarantee of a settlement of the conflict. If this is not done, this country will be subjected to even greater upheavals threatening to lead to even more mass killing, the victims of which already number more than 100,000, according to various data.