Inching Into Syria

In the border towns where Syrian rebels recuperate and resupply, the buzz is that the long wait for Barack Obama may be near an end. The excitement is not the result of the White House announcement on June 13 that the United States will supply light weapons to the groups seeking to overthrow the homicidal regime of Bashar al-Assad. Bullets and body armor won’t help much against Assad’s tanks, bombs and mortars. But the rebels say they see Obama’s hand in some bigger, less-publicized developments: the arrival of more and better antitank weapons, and rumors of long-withheld antiaircraft weapons. The heavier ordnance is coming from Europe, the gulf and — as The Times reportedSaturday — from Libya. But it seems to be flowing now with a wink and a nod from the U.S.

“These thing don’t happen without America’s permission,” said a logistics coordinator for a rebel unit fighting in Homs, the birthplace of the uprising.

When I set out to meet with Syrian rebel operatives in the wake of Obama’s halfhearted shift, I expected a reaction of rolled eyes, too-little-too-late and thanks-for-nothing. What I found was a surprising surge of optimism, a sense that something has changed — specifically, that America is inching toward more serious engagement.

Of course, nobody is saying this is yet a game-changer. Gen. Salim Idris, the former Syrian Army officer who heads the opposition Supreme Military Council, told me that while the Americans have become more helpful in recent days, the speculation about antiaircraft missiles is premature, and there is still no sign that the United States is willing to enforce a no-fly zone or use cruise missiles against Syrian airfields, which could shift the advantage to the rebels. (I’m told Qatar arranged a small shipment of surface-to-air missiles and the U.S. looked the other way.) Whatever the details, intentionally or not, Obama has raised expectations.

Whether this fresh whiff of faith in America is justified, only the president can tell us, and I wish he would.

It’s hard to tell what has driven Obama even this far. Is it the prodding of critics like Bill Clinton, mocking the president’s poll-minded caution? Is there a belated revulsion at the humanitarian catastrophe? A recognition that diplomacy backed by nothing much — which has been the White House answer until recently — is a fool’s errand? Whether or not you agree with me that America has a big stake in the outcome, you are entitled to wonder: What, exactly, is the strategy?

Assad has been pounding his people mercilessly for more than two years, with a death toll that is nearing 100,000, the total for the entire Bosnian war in about half the time. With or without chemical weapons, Assad has achieved mass destruction and cinematic desperation. In Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, rebels say residents have already clear-cut the trees for fuel to get through one cold winter under siege and will face the next one without firewood. In Homs, a rebel from that city said, the opposition recently completed a two-mile tunnel, foul from crossed sewage lines, to bring in supplies and evacuate the sick and wounded.

The refugee burden is straining the good will and budgets of neighboring countries. In Jordan and Lebanon the frictions between fleeing Syrians and the locals have erupted in violence.

In Turkey, which has been by far the most warmly hospitable neighbor to the rebels and the displaced, refugee camps like Altinozu, a camp we visited in Hatay, were once a media novelty. Now some of them have become more like permanent settlements: clinics, classrooms, laundry service, arts and crafts classes, Al Jazeera news on TV and Internet access, all paid for by the Turkish government at some price in public resentment. And here in Reyhanli last month, a duet of car bombs assumed to be spillover of the Syrian war killed more than 50 people.

Like the rebels, the refugees are waiting for America.

“They think American will have the last word,” said a camp administrator. “When America decides, it will end, and they can go home.”

We should have no illusion that this war will end neatly, whatever we do. The opposition figures I talked to concede that Syria now is a much bigger mess than a year ago. Assad is faring better thanks to help from Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. The opposition is fractured into so many “Grandsons of the Prophet” and “Tiger Brigades” that it is hard to keep the players straight. The umbrella Free Syrian Army that General Idris’s council oversees labors to keep track of the metastasizing fighting units, and doesn’t pretend to control them all. And of course, among the rebels there is a minority of fanatic Islamists with Qaeda sympathies, filling a vacuum the standoffish West declined to fill.

Over tea in a Reyhanli cafe with a view of the Syrian hills, I asked a rebel commander named Abu Jarah how he imagined Syria after Assad.

“Maybe Somalia plus Afghanistan,” he replied.

That, I allowed, was a pretty horrifying prospect.

“Not our mistake,” he said. “It’s not what we want. It’s what you gave us, with two years standing and watching.”

In Istanbul, Fahed Awad, a spokesman for one major Free Syrian Army battalion, told me, with disarming candor, that it would probably take three wars to complete the Syrian revolution — one to defeat Assad; then a sectarian war within Islam between the Sunnis and Assad’s Shia sect, the Alawites; and finally a fight over just how Islamic the new Syria should be. (Like most of the opposition, he favors a more secular Islamic democracy, similar to Turkey’s.)

These are worst-case scenarios, but hardly far-fetched. That is one reason so many Americans recoil from any involvement. Seared by two wars in the region, Americans are understandably doubtful that Syria is our problem, or within our competence, or even within our comprehension. While many Syrians believe America just wants to keep Syria weak, the more sophisticated understand that their uprising is a casualty of Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We’ve been unlucky in our revolution,” said Awad, acknowledging America’s reluctance. “Unlucky in our timing. Unlucky in our geography.”

I’ve written before that Syria is, in critical ways, not Iraq redux. The stakes this time are real, not fabricated; the insurgency is genuine and indigenous; we have options far short of occupation. We should not, as Bill Clinton put it in his recent excoriation of Obama’s passivity, “overlearn the lessons of the past.”

What we know is that without our involvement several things are likely: The slaughter will continue. The menacing alliance of Iran, Hezbollah and Syria, stoked by Russia, will be empowered and emboldened. America’s influence on issues like Iran’s nuclear program will be seriously diminished. Jordan and Lebanon and Iraq will be destabilized. Bloodied Syria will be more than ever a breeding ground of terror.

Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute, says that even if Assad remains in power, large swaths of Syria will remain beyond his control. “We have a Syria which is being transformed from a U.S.-listed state sponsor of terrorism — which is bad enough — into a Syria divided into three parts, with terrorist groups ascendant in each. And Syria is home to the largest stockpile of chemical weapons in the region.”

The dangers of intervention, even a carefully calibrated intervention, are real. But keeping our distance doesn’t avoid them. It just postpones them and raises the price.

Nobody, except perhaps our enemies, wants to see American troops in Syria. Our aim should be to make life so miserable for Assad and his friends that he agrees, or his sponsors agree, that it is time to stop the killing, send Assad and his circle into exile, and move from blood bath to diplomacy. Is that achievable? I honestly don’t know. But given the certain costs of doing nothing, I think it’s worth a try. I wish I knew whether President Obama felt the same.

 by Bill Keller