US agitates multi-front proxy war against Syria

US prepares multi-front proxy war against Syria
By Chris Marsden – 25 May, 2012 – WSWS

Since the Washington Post’s May 16 report on an influx of arms to Syrian opposition forces, the Obama administration’s plans for a proxy war against Syria have become clearer still.

The Post wrote of “significantly more and better weapons” reaching oppositionists, “paid for by Persian Gulf nations [Saudi Arabia and Qatar] and coordinated in part by the United States,” based upon a perspective that “an expanding military confrontation is inevitable.”

Saudi Arabia and Qatar were sending weapons with approval from Washington, which has “expanded contacts with opposition forces to provide the gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.”

An additional source of weaponry is the Muslim Brotherhood, which has “its own supply channel to the rebels, using resources from wealthy private individuals and money from Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said Mulham al-Drobi, a member of the Brotherhood’s executive committee.”

The Post concluded by noting, “The Pentagon has prepared options for Syria extending all the way to air assaults to destroy the nation’s air defenses.”

In the Daily Telegraph of May 22, Michael Weiss, Communications Director of the Henry Jackson Society, writes that “Rebel sources in Hatay told me last night that not only is Turkey supplying light arms to select battalion commanders, it is also training Syrians in Istanbul.”

He continues, “Men from the unit I was embedded with were vetted and called up by Turkish intelligence in the last few days and large consignments of AK-47s are being delivered by the Turkish military to the Syrian-Turkish border… Material is being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border.”

Weiss notes the response to the Washington Post’s article by White House spokesman Jay Carney, which hardly amounted to a denial. “We continue to provide non-lethal support to the opposition,” he said. “And while I can only speak for the United States, we know that others are pursuing different types of support, and I’d refer you to them to characterise the nature of their actions.”

Weiss concludes, “Turkey wouldn’t take such a course of action without express American consent or encouragement. Nor do I think that US Senator Joseph Lieberman, who has called for surgical airstrikes and the creation of buffer zones in Syria, would indicate that the administration was inching toward a military response to the humanitarian crisis that Kofi Annan’s farcical ‘cease-fire’ has done nothing to quell unless he was fairly sure it was indeed doing so.”

A May 22 DEBKAfile exclusive report states, “The Syrian rebels have received their first ‘third generation’ anti-tank weapons, 9K115-2 Metis-M and Kornet E. They are supplied by Saudi and Qatari intelligence agencies following a secret message from President Barack Obama advising them to up the military stake in the effort to oust Assad.”

DEBKAfile, which is close to US neo-conservative sources, describes these shipments as “only one facet of the unfolding US plan for the Syrian crisis… Turkish intelligence has been given the green light to arm Syria rebels with IED roadside bombs tailored for the Syrian theater and intensively train the dissidents in their use at Turkish military facilities.” This is tantamount to Ankara’s first direct military intervention in Syria.

Turkey has for some time acted as an organising front for imperialist intervention into Syria, aimed at deposing the pro-Iranian regime of Bashar al-Assad. It is host to the SNC and its military arm, the Free Syrian Army—which mounts its offensives by passing through Turkey’s 910 kilometre border with Syria. …more