(NEW YORK) MintPress — As fighting between government troops loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opposition forces continues to rage, the U.S. administration is shifting tactics, now tabling diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis and instead increasing aid to the rebels.
“You’ll notice in the last couple of months, the opposition has been strengthened,” a senior Obama administration official told reporters over the weekend. “Now, we’re ready to accelerate that.”
Just last week, Assad’s deputy defense minister and brother-in-law Assef Shawkat was among those killed in a suicide bombing at a Damascus military building. Also killed were Defense Minister Daoud Rajha and former defense minister Hassan Turkmani; the interior minister survived.
The attack was seen as a psychological blow to the regime, but the military said the bombing left it more determined to “clear the homeland of the armed terrorist groups,” the terms it uses for foreign forces seeking to oust Assad.
The opposition has remained fragmented since the unrest began in March 2011 when residents of a small southern city took to the streets to protest the torture of students who had put up anti-government graffiti.
Assad’s regime has since waged a bloody crackdown on opponents, drawing condemnation from the U.S. and countries around the world, including the Arab League.
In recent days, several U.S. officials have been quoted as saying Washington would provide more communications training and equipment to help improve the combat effectiveness of the opposition forces, and it’s also possible that rebels would receive some intelligence support. They have insisted, however, that the U.S. will not provide arms to the rebel forces.
That didn’t stop Russia from lashing out on Wednesday, blasting the U.S. and other Western nations that have not condemned atrocities committed by the armed groups fighting Damascus, including the deadly July 18 bomb attack in the capital.
Responding to State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nulund’s remarks that such such attacks were not surprising given the Syrian government’s conduct, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference in Moscow, “This is direct endorsement of terrorism. This is a sinister position. How are we supposed to understand that?”
Radicalization of the rebels
Moscow has several reasons to support Damascus, including massive arms sales. Russia is the biggest exporter of arms to Syria, with contracts worth at least $4 billion. Russian firms also have a major presence in Syria’s infrastructure, energy and tourism industries, and Moscow’s only Mediterranean naval base for its Black Sea Fleet is located in the Syrian port of Tartus.
But Moscow is also concerned that instead of the downfall of Assad leading to a democratic government, it could give rise to a regime led by hardline Sunni Muslims known as Salafis, who are backed by Saudi Arabia.
Assad’s government is dominated by Shiite-linked Alawites, estimated to make up about 10 percent of the country, but also includes several Christians. Rajha, the defense minister killed last week, was one of them.
Even White House and State Department officials have said they are reluctant to send weapons because they could end up in the hands of extremist groups or terrorist organizations.
In an interview last week, Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said 25 percent of the opposition has “extremist ties,” although he did not elaborate.
Circumstantial evidence
There have been recent accounts of rebel militias making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and using them with increasing frequency against the regime.
One fighter found planting an IED in northern Syria told Britain’s The Independent, “Presents for Bashar al-Assad, we are holding a party for him here and in Aleppo. It will be like the party in Damascus, lots of fireworks.”
“It is easy and cheap. We use nitrate fertilizer, metal, blasting caps. We used to make them in Turkey and bring them here, but now we are making more here,” he said. “We learned a lot from the Internet, but we also have our own special method of making them that is a secret.”
They are essentially rudimentary versions of the types used by the Taliban in Afghanistan, where they have been one of the primary causes of death for NATO troops and innocent civilians, making it more difficult to distinguish these fighters from America’s enemies in that country.
There has also a been a growing spate of suicide bombings, a tactic commonly used by al-Qaida. In addition to the murder of government officials in Damascus, in April, alleged suicide bombings in the city of Idlib killed eight people. And a group calling itself Jabhat al-Nusra took responsibility for at least three suicide attacks in Damascus earlier this year.
Al-Qaida in Iraq
That has officials in neighboring Iraq on heightened alert. Especially after the country suffered its worst day of violence in nearly two years earlier this week as bombings and attacks in nearly two dozen towns left more than 100 people dead and 300 wounded.
Baghdad called it a spillover of sectarian violence from Syria. According to Izzat al-Shahbandar, a senior member of Iraq’s Parliament and close aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Shiite-led government is under assault from the same Sunni extremists who have taken up the fight against Assad, many of them linked to al-Qaida.
Indeed, in a statement posted on radical Islamist websites on Tuesday, the Islamic State of Iraq said it was behind the latest attacks, which it called part of its “Destroying the Walls” campaign, and warned it was the start of a “new stage of jihad.”
That might be an indication of just how precarious the U.S. position in Syria could become.
“We’re looking at the controlled demolition of the Assad regime,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But like any controlled demolition, anything can go wrong.”