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Assessing the Success of a Syria Strike
As reports emerge of U.S. plans to strike Syria, possibly as soon as this week, some analysts doubt how effective those strikes could be.
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Exploring the range of foreign powers invested and involved in the Syrian conflict, from Russia and Iran to the United States and Turkey.
Follow via RSSAs reports emerge of U.S. plans to strike Syria, possibly as soon as this week, some analysts doubt how effective those strikes could be.
If U.S. President Barack Obama decides to intervene in Syria, will he go in without the approval and backing of the United Nations Security Council? And if he does, what would be the consequences of the strike?
Over the weekend, the U.S. moved one of its Mediterranean warships closer to the Syrian coastline as administration sources said President Barack Obama was seriously considering a strike on regime targets.
In a weekend call between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Lavrov reportedly warned that a U.S. strike on Syria would have “extremely dangerous consequences.”.
Is the U.S. headed to war in Syria?
After a possible chemical weapons attack left what activists say is more than 1,400 dead in the eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, U.S. President Barack Obama’s “red line” remains fuzzy.
Friday was a day of funerals in Lebanon in the wake of a deadly car bombing that struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, or Dahiyeh, a bastion of support for the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah.
Earlier this month, Russia and the U.S. agreed to schedule long-delayed Syria peace talks in Geneva.
These days in Ersal are tense. This pro-rebellion village, in Lebanon’s northeast Bekaa Valley, has been under pressure since the Syrian army, working with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, seized the neighboring Syrian city of Qusayr in early June.
Clarissa Ward
Srdja Popovic is something of a hero to Arab revolutions. He was a founder and leader of the Otpor student movement that brought down the regime of Yugoslavian leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.
Syria’s economy has been crippled by war. More than two years of unrest, violence and international sanctions have depleted the regime’s foreign reserves and led to soaring inflation. But the government hasn’t gone bankrupt.
Cale Salih
On March 21, 2013, the day of the Kurdish New Year, Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan announced a historic ceasefire and peace process plan to end the 30-year-old conflict between Ocalan’s Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) and the Turkish state.
One of the longest-running debates surrounding the Syrian war is that of the international community’s ethical responsibility to Syria’s civilians – in short, does the long-running violence require the world to intervene?
On Monday the U.S. Congress agreed to move ahead with a shipment of weapons to Syrian rebels. The deal comes after weeks of gridlock on Capitol Hill as lawmakers debated direct intervention in Syria.
On Wednesday, stray bullets from Syria struck homes and the police station in the Turkish border town of Ceylanpinar, killing two people, including a teenage boy.
Sectarian tension is on the rise in Syria and its neighboring countries, fueled by a civil war that has hardened religious lines – most prominently, a violent Sunni-Shiite divide. .
Over the weekend, opposition Free Syrian Army fighters clashed with al-Qaeda backed extremist rebels in the Bustan al-Qasr district of Aleppo, where a single checkpoint links the rebel-occupied territory of the city’s east with the government-held areas to the west.
On July 8, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called for a Ramadan ceasefire in Syria. Shorty after, both Iran and Turkey called for a stop to fighting for the month-long Muslim holiday. Neither the opposition or Syrian regime observed the calls. .
Joyce Karam
If you have been wondering where are the weapons and ammunition shipments that U.S. President Barack Obama had promised Syria’s rebels last month, the Congress has inadvertently answered this week, derailing any military aid to the opposition.
Hassan Hassan
This post originally appeared at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Prof. Mark N. Katz
This post first appeared on Mark N. Katz’s blog.
Joshua Landis / Syria Comment
This post originally appeared on Syria Comment.
On Saturday, Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi cut all diplomatic ties with Syria and backed a no-fly zone over the country. Deepening sectarian tensions between his Muslim Brotherhood and Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, he also called on the latter group – which just helped the Syrian army conquer rebel fighters in the border town of Qusayr – to pull back from Syria. And with the forced closing of Syria’s embassy in Cairo, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees are left stranded without consular services. **Andrew Bowen, Middle East scholar at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University****, put the latest developments in context.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian leader Vladimir Putin discussed Syria Monday on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland. “Our positions do not fully coincide, but we are united by the common intention to end the violence and to stop the number of victims increasing in Syria,” Putin said. But with Obama backing the Syrian rebels and Putin the Assad regime, what will really come of talks between the two leaders?
Joyce Karam / Al-Arabiya
The following post first appeared on Al-Arabiya.
Prof. Mark N. Katz
The following post originally appeared on Katz’s blog. .
As anti-government protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park continued into their third weekend, a Syrian Turk, a riot policeman, a Kurd and others in the disputed strip shared their views on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Syria policy and how it’s shaped their views of the Turkish government.
On Thursday, the White House announced that it would, for the first time, supply military aid to Syrian rebels. Details were not announced, triggering speculation that the aid would be anything from a no-fly zone (favored by U.S. Senator John McCain, arguably the staunchest supporter of Western military intervention in Syria) to the anti-aircraft weapons that top the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) wish list in the ongoing fight against the Syrian air force.
Earlier this month, the Syrian Army and fighters from militant Lebanese group Hezbollah declared victory over opposition forces after a 17-day battle in Qusayr, marking a win for Hezbollah in its first active engagement in the Syrian conflict and the latest in a string of morale-shaking losses for the Free Syrian Army. Controlling the strategically-located village (it’s five miles north of the Lebanese border) will help Bashar al-Assad’s regime control the highway that links Damascus, the capitol, to Tartous, a still-‘safe’ city in Assad’s home province of Latakia. It will also cut a main artery of weapons and fighters from Lebanon.
Hassan Hassan
The following post first appeared in The National.
Amal Hanano and Yakzan Shishakly / The National
This post first appeared in The National.A Syrian man from Homs used to run a tiny felafel stand in Reyhanli, Turkey, to support his family. He had fled the violence at home and lived in this Turkish town near the Syrian border.
ISTANBUL / As police fired tear gas and pointed pressurized water hoses at protesters marching towards Taksim Square in weekend anti-government protests, Syria’s regime was busy spinning Turkey’s predicament in its favor.
Over the weekend Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah made an unprecedented admission that his Shiite militant group is present on the battlefield in Syria. One day later, two rockets crashed on the southern Shiite suburbs of Beirut, apparently in retaliation for Hezbollah’s support for the Assad regime. .
Hassan Hassan
This post first appeared at hhassan.com.
Joyce Karam / Al-Arabiya
The following post first appeared on al-Arabiya.
Another winter has passed at Domaine de Bargylus, and once-twisted, gray-barked vines are today burgeoning with green buds. Spring is a precarious season, when a late frost can decimate a vineyard’s chances of ever yielding a harvest. Like the majority of their countrymen, the owners of this young estate, Syrian brothers Karim and Sandro Saadé, weren’t born into wine. But if the mark of a good winegrower is the ability to adapt and take in stride the vicissitudes of life and nature, then the Saadés have already proven themselves beyond a doubt to be a pair of natural vignerons.
Barak Barfi
The assessment of Western intelligence agencies that Syria used chemical weapons against opposition rebels has placed the U.S. in a quandary. After President Barack Obama announced in August “that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” Washington needs to back up its threat with actions to maintain its credibility.
As of last week, Nadia, a 66-year-old grandmother, was living comfortably in the U.S. at the home of her daughter in an upscale Washington, D.C. suburb. Today, she finds herself back in a leafy district of Damascus wondering when Syria’s civil war will come to an end.
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