Syrian army 'looks safe' from US air strikes

​DAMASCUS - Syrian analysts, both pro-and anti-regime, are struggling to predict whether US President Barack Obama will authorise air-strikes on their country, but the consensus among three experienced experts interviewed by Middle East Eye is that his targets will not include Syria's army.

 

Their reasoning runs counter to the hopes of many in the armed opposition to President Bashar al-Assad who want a US air campaign to start against the Islamic State (IS) militant group but quickly move on to attacking Syrian government forces.

 

Dr Bassam Abu Abdullah, director of the Damascus Centre for Strategic Studies, who calls himself a reformer within the ruling Ba'ath party and a loyal Assad supporter, does not believe Obama will even attack IS targets here. "I don't think he will strike in Syria at all," he said.

 

He based his analysis on what he said was an unresolvable contradiction that would force the US president to hold back. "He wants to fight ISIS while not allowing the Syrian army to benefit," he said, referring to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as the IS formerly called itself.

 

Obama has tried to deal with the dilemma by building up so-called moderate armed groups to fight both IS and the Syrian army. He won Congressional approval for the policy on Thursday, but the strategy will take months of training and equipping before it shows results.

 

Anas Joudeh, vice-president of Building the Syrian State, a think-tank and advocacy group that strongly criticises the Assad regime, believes the US president, far from seeking to destroy the Syrian army, wants to preserve it. "The US strategy in Syria is to contain ISIS and isolate them in a closed area. Obama will use air strikes on ISIS but not on a large scale, like in Iraq. He will not hit the Syrian army." 

 

No-one in Damascus has forgotten the chaos caused by the disbanding of the army and the ruling party in neighbouring Iraq after the US invasion in 2003 or the chaos after the regime was toppled by force in Libya.   

 

"The US doesn't want a dramatic collapse of the regime, state institutions and the army here. They know the Syrian regime is the state," Joudeh said.    

 

On the other hand, he felt Obama could not authorise any collaboration with the Syrian army in a common front against IS because of the U-turn this would involve in the strategy he has followed in Syria since the start of the uprising against Assad.

 

Joudeh found evidence for his analysis in a recent New York Times report that described Obama's thinking on the IS crisis.  Responding to a question on what the US would do if Syria shot down one of its planes over Syria, Obama said the US would wipe out Syrian air defences. "He did not talk about destroying the Syrian army," Joudeh said.

 

The aim of the US, in Joudeh's view, is to create a "new Syria" with a de facto partition of the country. "You are talking about a northern region, controlled by the US and the groups they want to support, and IS. Plus an area in the south, controlled by the regime," he said.

 

The Golan heights added an unwelcome complication. This week's withdrawal of the UN observer force in the face of terrorist attacks was dangerous and "will make it easier for Israel to intervene in Syria. Don't forget the buffer zone they had in south Lebanon," Joudeh said.

 

Hassan Abed al Azim is a veteran opposition politician who heads the National Co-ordinating Body for Democratic Change. The group continues to function openly even though two senior members are detained. Russian diplomats have lobbied for their release without success. "Obama will never get involved in ground or air attacks in Syria for fear of a wider war that could involve Israel," he said. "Even his best friends - France, the UK and Germany - are unwilling to take part." 

 

Azim hoped the Iraqi model would be followed in Syria. Only through undercutting IS's  political appeal could it be seriously weakened. "Here, unlike in Iraq, ISIS has minimal support. Even in Iraq, support for ISIS declined when a new government was formed," he said. "The Syrian government must also realise they have to include all political forces in order to confront ISIS.  We need an open-minded pluralistic government here."    

 

 

Joudeh took a similar view. His organisation has long advocated a compromise between the regime and the opposition based on democratic reform of the present system. Obama's strategy of arming the opposition was mistaken since it would remove any incentive for the armed groups to work with the regime against IS. It would bring yet more weapons into a country brimming with violence.

 

Two years ago, Joudeh's group hoped Russia and the United States would join in pressing for peace in Syria by forcing their clients to compromise. That was now impossible, he said, thanks to the US clash with Russia over Ukraine and what he said was the US policy of creating a new Cold War against Russia, with Syria as the battlefield.

 

"When it comes to unifying the forces against ISIS, matters are more flexible at the regional level. The crisis is in the region's backyard. The priority now is to go first and foremost to the Iranians because they are realistic and more pragmatic," he said.

 

Western officials and some Syrian armed groups have accused Assad of deliberately turning a blind eye to IS and focussing his army's efforts against the less extreme Islamist fighters and Western-backed ones who claim not to be sectarian. The regime's aim, they say, is to defeat them and then imply there are only two sides in Syria for the world to choose between: IS or the Damascus regime.

 

The Syrian army recently suffered a series of defeats at the hands of IS in northern and eastern Syria, losing the Tabaqa air base near Raqqa and two important army bases. Hundreds of troops were killed and pictures of their bodies, in some cases beheaded, were shown on IS websites.

 

Abdullah, the pro-regime analyst, accepted that Syrian forces had not concentrated on IS. Even now, in spite of the recent defeats, they were not changing their strategy. He defended this. "If one of my enemies is eating my other enemy, why should I interfere? Let the bigger one eat the smaller one, and then I can fight it," he said.

 

There were geographical issues that also justified the focus on attacking non-IS  groups. IS had captured territory mainly in the relatively unpopulated east. "Our strategy is to to retake Aleppo and secure the main roads, airports and Damascus. We cannot control all of this country," he said.