Last week in the Syrian city of Houla,108 people—mostly women and children—were killed, reportedly by the security forces of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. As this crisis enters its newest chapter, Foreign Affairs provides three different takes on the prospect of international intervention to end the violence.
No End in Sight, Unless…—Former Syrian general Akil Hashem argues in an interview that the stalemate between the Syrian government and the anti-government rebels “will not end unless the international community intervenes militarily.” Hashem adds that he “cannot believe that the United States, Britain, and France, with all of their intelligence capabilities, do not realize that the Syrian military is weak.”
Read here: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/
Assad Is More Popular Than We Think—Former U.S. assistant secretary of stateRichard W. Murphy writes in a Snapshot that “the [Assad] regime has its supporters in all walks of life and across Syria’s religious communities. Over the last 40 years, the Assad family built a reputation for safeguarding the country’s minorities and for providing a predictable (if repressed) life for Syrians. Its policies have created both resistance to change and inertia.”
Read here: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/
The Catastrophe That Awaits—Professor and Saban Center director Daniel Bymanargues in a Snapshot that international intervention will not break the Assad regime without creating a humanitarian refugee crisis that would break the country. “A failed Syria would not be the world’s only humanitarian tragedy, but it would be among the world’s most dangerous.”
Read here: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/
More on Syria from Foreign Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations:
Foreign Affairs Managing Editor Jonathan Tepperman’s op-ed in the International Herald Tribune: “The Perils of Piecemeal Intervention”
ForeignAffairs.com Snapshot by Patrick Seale: “Assad Family Values”
ForeignAffairs.com Snapshot by Dmitri Trenin: “Russia’s Line in the Sand on Syria”
CFR Senior Fellow Steven Cook: on CNN’s Starting Point.
CFR Senior Fellow Elliot Abrams’s blog: “Pressure Points”
CFR Senior Fellow Robert Danin’s blog: “Middle East Matters”
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Jacques Neriah, an Israeli intelligence official makes the following observation :
“The gradual transformation of the Syrian opposition into a movement led by extremist Muslims allied with al-Qaeda does not serve the opposition well. The majority of Syrians don’t identify with those radicals. The more the opposition wears the mask of al-Qaeda, the more there is cohesion in the ranks around Assad.”
see http://jcpa.org/article/alqaeda-jihadists-join-battle-syrian-regime/ for the full article.