March 03, 2013
Every time I visit the United States,
I find without fail that the public’s awareness of the Middle East always
reflects a pattern that has two dimensions. The majority that does not follow
events in the region invariably expresses those images that it absorbs from the
mass media’s simplistic coverage of events, usually with phrases like, “are
they ever going to solve the problems over there?”, or, “are things any quieter
now over there?” -- to which the easiest reply is, “oh, not really, but we hope
for the best.”
Those Americans who do follow events
in the Middle East, however, tend to focus on only one issue at a time, perhaps
because it is easier to see our region in terms of single issues that are
isolated in time and political context, rather than view the complexities and
nuances of our region as they really are: interconnected, fluid, and mostly
negotiable, among a range of actors and situations such as Egypt, Iran, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, the March 14 and March 8 alliances in Lebanon, the warring
sides in Syria, Iraq’s fragile condition, and domestic American politics in the
run-up to President Barack Obama’s visit to the Middle East this month.
At the start of my current trip in
the United States, the single question that dominates Mideast-watchers here in
the New World is what to do about Syria, and whether or not the United States
should provide military assistance to the opposition groups fighting to topple the
regime of President Bashar Assad. The issue is more topical with the current
trip in the Middle East of the new Secretary of State, John Kerrey, who has met
with the head of the main political opposition group in Syria, the Syrian
National Coalition. He also announced another $60 million in non-lethal
assistance to help the opposition improve its service delivery to citizens in
liberated areas.
The big question people here ask is
whether the United States should provide military aid to help the Syrian rebels
improve their chances of defeating and overthrowing the Assad family regime.
The hesitance of the Obama administration to do this (beyond the military
training that is widely assumed to be underway in Jordan) is a classic example
of why American foreign policy in the Middle East is so erratic, often leading
to the growth of groups that feed off anti-American sentiments.
The United States is reluctant to
offer direct military aid to the rebels because it fears that weapons might
fall into the hands of groups that the U.S. does not like, especially Islamist
groups like the Nusra Front or smaller militant groups with alleged affinities
to Al-Qaeda, that have grown rapidly in the past year and now spearhead
military advances in some parts of the country. Presumably this is because the
United States does not want to arm Islamist or other unfriendly groups who
could in future agitate against the U.S. or its allies in the region, like
Israel, Saudi Arabia or Jordan.
That sounds like a reasonable policy,
but in reality it is a total failure. In fact it brings about precisely that
outcome that Washington says it wishes to avoid -- the rise to prominence, or
even dominance, of those Islamist groups the United States dislikes. So as the
U.S. speaks boldly about bringing down the Assad regime, but does little on the
critical military front to help bring that about, the Islamist and other rebel
groups whom the United States dislikes are receiving plenty of arms and making
sustained gains in the two areas that really matter: militarily, and in terms
of winning the confidence of ordinary people across the land, which enhances
the likelihood that these groups will dominate the post-Assad system of power.
The wiser policy for the United
States and other foreign countries that oppose the Assad regime is simply to
provide plenty of arms and other military assistance (like satellite
intelligence) to those groups it is already dealing with, such as the
coalition, the Syrian National Council or the Free Syrian Army. If some weapons
slip through to other groups, so be it -- because withholding U.S. arms is not
slowing down the acquisition of weapons by the Islamist and other groups the
United States dislikes. American aid to the mainstream rebels will enhance the
likelihood of these groups dominating the post-Assad governance system, and of
cordial ties between the U.S. and the new government that will arise in
Damascus.
American officials naively withhold
arms and criticize rising Syrian Islamists, and expect everything to work out
for the best in the end, while in reality Washington may wake up to a situation
in a post-Assad Syria in which it is ignored, criticized and marginalized for
not helping the rebels when they urgently needed military help, and Islamists
and other “bad guys” in American eyes dominate the government. It is hard to
think of a more simplistic, ineffective and counter-productive policy on Syria
than the policy the United States is now pursuing.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large
of The Daily Star, and Director of
the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the
American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. You can follow him
@ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2013 Rami G. Khouri --
distributed by Agence Global