ANALYSIS: US fearful intervention in Syria could ignite powder keg

By Marco Mierke Feb 10, 2012, 6:06 GMT

Washington - When Libyan dictator Moamer Gaddafi brutally repressed his rebellious people, US President Barack Obama did not hesitate.

While some countries were perhaps able to ignore the horrors of war in other countries, the United States was different, Obama made clear in a major policy speech aimed at countering critics opposed to military action. He insisted he was not prepared to wait to see images of slaughter and mass graves.

With Syria in flames, the president is now being judged on those words. Syrian President Bashir al-Assad has allowed an estimated 7,000 opponents of his regime to be killed in the last year, and is stepping up the repression.

So far, the US has made no strong moves toward ending the violence - if necessary, by military intervention. Washington has limited its action to applying sanctions, calling for a United Nations Security Council resolution and repeatedly demanding Assad's resignation.

'Thirty years after his father massacred tens of thousands of innocent Syrian men, women and children in Hama, Bashar al-Assad has demonstrated a similar disdain for human life and dignity,' Obama said last week.

However, no one should expect 'another Libya,' a high-ranking US administration official told The New York Times. Remarks like this are being interpreted as a sign of hopes in Washington that Assad will fall on his own.

'The Obama administration's high-level inattention towards the bloodshed in Syria is curious, given just how inimical such a posture is to American interests and values,' said Robert Danin of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Washington think-tank.

US restraint is caused primarily by fear that becoming directly involved in Syria would be like poking a hornets' nest. Assad remains Iran's closest Arab ally, and the US has no wish to hand the Tehran government an excuse to become involved in the fighting itself.

Tensions are already high about the continuing standoff over Iran's nuclear programme, and US involvement in Syria could spark a powder keg in the region. The White House reportedly fears a 'huge explosion' with devastating consequences for Syria's neighbours: Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's assertion that the US would 'redouble its efforts' to end the violence in Syria sounds overstated.

However, the US does have a few levers left to pressure Assad without using its bombers, Middle East expert Danin believes.

The withdrawal of all diplomats and closing of the embassy in Damascus were just the start, according to this view. A series of further steps could follow.

One alternative is getting a UN arms embargo passed - something that even Russia, which has vetoed a Security Council resolution on Syria, would find it difficult to oppose. And the conflict should remain on the Security Council agenda, Danin believes.

Clinton has called for establishment of a contact group of 'Friends of Syria' to ratcheted up the diplomatic pressure on Assad. The group could draw together Arab states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia with Muslim Turkey and Western nations including France, Britain and the US.

The group would be in a position to impose further sanctions on Syria, targeting key members of the regime.

Pressing charges against Assad before the International Criminal Court in The Hague remains an option, as was done in the Gaddafi case.

Danin believes the main challenge facing the US and its allies is the need to strengthen the divided and leaderless Syrian opposition. Options under consideration include a full diplomatic recognition of the Istanbul-based Syrian National Council, providing military training to anti-Assad militias and possibly supplying arms.

But it remains essential never to exclude the military option, in the view of Daniel Byman, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institute in Washington. Without it, the US could be seen as a toothless tiger.

'Intervention must also be on the table to signal that the regime cannot put down the opposition by force,' Byman wrote in a recent policy analysis.

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