Fragmentation of response

If it is as Hillary Clinton says and the Kremlin is sending helicopter gunships to Syria to bolster the Assad regime, then the siren calls of John McCain to arm the rebels sounds very tempting.  But, for Americans in the know, McCain has a reputation as being a ‘media bitch’ for at least the last ten years, sounding off for his own gratification.  He seems to forget that the West pursued a similar strategy in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s, creating a chain of events that led to one day in September in 2001.  There is a distinct possibility that western hardware could be used against ISAF troops in the land of the Hindu Kush.  Even if we did provide weapons to rebels we ‘trusted’, there is no guarantee that they would not sell it on to anti-western radicals.  And were western armaments found to be involved in an atrocity carried out by the Syrian opposition, the PR fallout would be disastrous.  Riyadh and the Gulf states may well be funnelling guns, missiles and ammunition through Damascus-hostile Jordan or across Iraq’s porous borders but they are playing with fire.  Militarising the country will also make it harder to re-establish order, even if the overthrow of the Assad regime is successful.

Moreover, Moscow could point to hypocrisy on the part of the West, with Saudi Arabia sending in massive force to crush the uprising in Bahrain and Israel frequently perpetrating humans rights abuses (usually in retaliation) on the Palestinians.  But neither the House of Saud nor Tel-Aviv inflicts carnage on such a scale or as organised as that which is occurring in Syria now.  Putin is also treading dangerously as the Gulf states, for by thumbing his nose at his government’s line of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries, he is making all Russian people and property located in Syria fair game to be attacked by the rebels.  Were damage to be inflicted on Russian assets, he could not send in Russian troops to ‘defend’ it having so vigorously opposed western foreign intervention.  Russia doesn’t care how many innocent civilians, men, women and children, that Bashar al-Assad is responsible for killing, just so long as he puts down the revolution/civil war.  The Kremlin sees him as weak, hence their increasing talk of supporting the regime, not the Assad family.  How Russia must pine for the days of Bashar’s father, Hafez al-Assad, when he killed tens of thousands in Hama before the world was even aware (though communications technology has become more widespread since then).

It is frustrating that there is little we can do in the absence of a Security Council resolution, with Russia blocking any criticism of Assad, let alone sanctions.  Maybe we should channel non-lethal equipment to the rebels, such as body armour and night-vision goggles, so that if it does end up in the hands of radicals and makes its way to Afghanistan, it won’t be as damaging to our troops as live weaponry (though it would still make the task of ISAF harder).  I would still favour targeted assassinations by covert western forces but that carries its own risk should they be caught.  In a civil war, which it what it is, there are no easy choices.