Foreign Policy: Obama administration secretly preparing options for aiding the Syrian opposition

[leveymg]

There are those who have been working actively at DU to shape our views of what's happening there. The perception being planted here is of that it's all just a locally-grown dispute - "move along, nothing to see here." Part of that deception is that there's "zero chance" the U.S. and NATO will be drawn into this nasty little civil war. Don't believe that. The end-game of regime change by other means has already been planned, and that entails an ever-wider war in the region.

Obama administration secretly preparing options for aiding the Syrian opposition
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/12/28/obama_administration_secretly_preparing_options_for_aiding_the_syrian_opposition
Josh Rogin
Foreign Policy
December 29, 2011

As the violence in Syria spirals out of control, top officials in President Barack Obama’s administration are quietly preparing options for how to assist the Syrian opposition, including gaming out the unlikely option of setting up a no-fly zone in Syria and preparing for another major diplomatic initiative.

<. . .>

But the administration does see the status quo in Syria as unsustainable. The Bashar al Assad regime is a “dead man walking,” State Department official Fred Hof said this month. So the administration is now ramping up its policymaking machinery on the issue. After several weeks of having no top-level administration meetings to discuss the Syria crisis, the National Security Council (NSC) has begun an informal, quiet interagency process to create and collect options for aiding the Syrian opposition, two administration officials confirmed to The Cable.

[bemildred]

1. I expect it is more than just "preparing" by now. nt

[leveymg]

2. You're right - we're at the pressing UN "humanitarian" intervention stage.

The operation is now past the Arab League intervention stage, and has now moved to the UN. It's as if there's a timetable, with mid-March as some kind of target date, the one-year anniversary of the start of the sniping that killed 7 Syrian policemen and 4 civilians at the border city, Daraa, home of Salaafist separatists. It's important to get back to basics, though. Not surprisingly, credible reporting on the external origins and support of the intervention are scarce. The propaganda focus is on internal violence, not outside planning and mobilization of support for regime change.

There's a religious dimension to this that's been largely ignored by the western media. The Assad family is part of Shi'a minority that dominates the Ba'athist regime. There's little or no reference to the fact that the Sunni-Shi'a conflict is at the heart of political violence in Syria today. Wiki:

From 1976 to 1982, Sunni Islamists fought the Ba'ath Party-controlled government of Syria in what has been called "long campaign of terror". Islamist Mujafadin attacked both civilians and off-duty military personnel, and civilians were also killed in retaliatory strike by security forces.

The Muslim Brotherhood was blamed for the terror by the government, although the insurgents used names such as Kata'ib Muhammad (Phalanxes of Muhammad, begun in Hama in 1965 Marwan Hadid) to refer to their organization.

With the involvement of Muslim Brotherhood and Sunni Islamist terrorists backed by the Saudis, this resembles Kosovo and the regime change operations against Iran, as much as it also follows the Libyan "Arab Spring" model.

Syrian opposition presses for UN intervention
Foreign affairs editor Peter Cave, wires
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-01-23/syrian-opposition-to-press-un-intervention/3787036?section=world
Posted January 23, 2012 00:25:04
Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby Photo: Arab League secretary general Nabil Elaraby meets the observer committee in Cairo. (Reuters: Mohamed Abd El-Ghany)
Related Story: Arab League debates future of Syrian mission
Related Story: Syria rejects calls for Arab force
Related Story: UN chief renews attack on Assad, amid amnesty
Related Story: Qatar calls for military intervention in Syria
Map: Syrian Arab Republic

The Syrian National Council is planning to send a delegation to the United Nations to press the Security Council to intervene in the country. A spokesman for the Syrian National Council said its members did not believe the Arab League observers report would be objective.

< . . .>
The League panel opened a closed-doors meeting on Sunday (local time) to decide the future of the mission ahead of a decisive meeting of the bloc's foreign ministers. The panel, chaired by the foreign minister of Qatar, also comprises his counterparts from Algeria, Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. League officials have said the bloc was likely to extend and expand the observer mission to Syria, despite staunch criticism that the operation has failed to stem 10 months of deadly violence.

<. . .>

Mission chief, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi of Sudan, was to deliver the much-awaited report and believes his mandate needs to be strengthened, not scrapped, a League official said. The Arab League could expand the mission to more than 300 observers from more than 160 now deployed across Syria, according to a source in the mission. But the opposition Syrian National Council has been lobbying for UN intervention and said it will reveal "a counter-report" later on Sunday to try to discredit General Dabi's account.

ABC/AFP

[ellisonz]

3. Balanced article. n/t