Turkey stands at the forefront of calls for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad, but there are an awful lot of red lines that it won't cross to realize that goal.
Like its Western allies, Turkey says it won't arm outgunned Syrian rebels, and has no plans to set up a buffer zone in neighboring Syria where civilians and army defectors can shelter and regroup.
The result? A stalemate in which diplomacy and ritual condemnations pale alongside the uninterrupted killing, and fears of wider, regional chaos preclude bolder action on the ground.
So Assad continues to kill. And lately his forces have been busy all across Syria:
The security forces have shifted most of their attention from Homs to other places like Deir Ezzor in the east, Daraa on the Jordan border and Idib near the Turkish border. With the help of Iran and Russia, Syria has managed to keep out most official foreign support for the rebels. The government strategy now appears to hunt down and kill as many of the most active rebels as possible. This will demoralize the large number of Syrians who oppose the Assad dictatorship, and convince people to submit to a government they oppose. Iranian advisors have pointed out how well this worked in Iran, where a large urban population, that opposed the religious dictatorship in Iraq, have been brutalized and terrorized into submission. Iran also advised that much be made of foreign agents (from Israel and the West, of course) stirring up the people. This gives rebellious Syrians a suitable excuse to accept a future amnesty and behave.
Syria needs to demoralize the opposition to win. Syria still doesn't have enough troops to hold all that ground they are operating over. We shall see where the opposition pops up again as Assad has to thin out forces to deal with other hot spots. Somebody will break and it is foolish to assume that the question of Assad's fall is "when" rather than the "if" it really is. Assad actually has a plan that can work--kill the opposition until they won't come out on the streets any more. The West strikes back by preventing the wife of Assad from shopping in their fashion districts:
European Union states are set to ban Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's wife Asma from travel to and shopping in the EU, diplomats said, cranking up pressure on his government to end a bloody crackdown on popular unrest.
I suppose I should be grateful that the EU didn't phase in the sanctions starting with just shoes and perfume, with the full wardrobe ban kicking in sometime in 2015.
Strategypage also notes that the rebels aren't getting help from Iraq's Kurds, that Russia has sent in special forces (but Russia denies that), that Iran and Russia continue to arm Assad, and that Iraq decided to block arms shipments to Syria.
We just aren't serious about fighting Assad. We are doing enough to reassure ourselves that we "care;" tell ourselves Assad's fall is inevitable, thus excusing our meager efforts; and in the end refuse to strike--let alone kill--the king we are limply slapping.
We count on luck to win, assuming there is no limit to what the Syrian protesters can endure as Assad continues to kill, wound, torture, and imprison resisters. I guess after Khaddafi we think we are on a winning streak.
