(NEW YORK) MintPress — As the fighting between Syrian rebels and government forces continues to rage in the country’s commercial capital of Aleppo, the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power is increasingly remote, despite claims that the regime is in trouble.
On Tuesday, former Syrian prime minister Riyad Hijab, who defected earlier this month, said that the government of Bashar al-Assad is falling apart.
Speaking in neighboring Jordan, he told reporters, “I tell you out of my experience and the position I occupied that the regime is collapsing, morally, materially and economically. Militarily it is crumbling as it no longer occupies more than 30 percent of Syrian territory.”
Hijab, who comes from Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, was not part of Assad’s inner circle. But as the most senior civilian official to defect, his defection was a symbolic blow to the government, which is dominated by Assad’s Shiite-affiliated Alawite sect.
Still, the government has unleashed its full military might on the opposition. “We’ve seen a very troubling and despicable uptick in attacks from the air, perpetrated by the Syrian regime,” said Pentagon spokesman George Little on Monday. “This is yet another example of their depraved behavior. This needs to stop as does the violence they continue to pursue against their own people.”
Damascus for its part has maintained it is battling against foreign fighters. Assad’s government has taken to referring to the rebels as “Gulf-Turkish” forces, accusing the Sunni-led Arab Gulf states and Turkey of arming, funding and leading them.
And the Syrian Foreign Ministry has called on the U.N. Security Council and the Secretary General to demand Britain, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the U.S. stop supporting terrorists operating on its soil. Thus far, it has not received a response.
Indeed, 17 months after the onset of opposition protests, it is clear that Salafists and other jihadists are on the ground in Syria.
There have been recent accounts of rebel militias making improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and using them with increasing frequency against the regime. They are essentially rudimentary versions of the types used by the Taliban in Afghanistan.
There has also been a growing spate of suicide bombings, a tactic commonly used by al-Qaida. The al-Qaida-styled group in Syria is Jabhat al-Nusra li-Ahl-al-Sham, the Front for the Protection of the Syrian People. It has, in fact, claimed responsibility for several attacks against the Syrian army and security forces.
Libyan fighters on the frontlines
Now, it appears that veterans of last year’s civil war in Libya are also on the scene, helping to train and organize rebel forces.
One Libyan-Irish fighter, Hussam Najjar, told Reuters he is part of a unit in Syria known as the Umma Brigade, referring to the global community of Muslims. He said it includes Libyans and other foreigners. Najjar came to Syria, he said, to join Mahdi al-Harati, a powerful militia chief from Libya’s western mountains. Both men were part of the rebel unit that stormed Muammar Gaddafi’s compound in Tripoli last year.
In the months since he arrived, Najjar said, the rebel arsenal had become “five times more powerful,” with fighters obtaining large caliber anti-aircraft guns and sniper rifles.
He also claimed that thousands more Sunni fighters from the Arab world were gathering in neighboring countries prepared to join the cause, and he said militancy would spread across the region if the West did not do more to speed up Assad’s downfall.
“If the West and other countries do not move fast, it will no longer be just guys like me, it will be the real extreme guys who will take it to another level.”
No-fly up in the air
But it is precisely because of the influx of foreign fighters and jihadists that the West is holding back on military support, including putting into place a no-fly zone, which it did in Libya and which would use the threat of force to stop Syrian warplanes from operating over all or part of Syria’s territory.
The imposition of no-fly zones by foreign countries was crucial in helping Libyan rebels overthrow Gadhafi last year, but it required NATO attacks to destroy Libyan air defenses.
In March, testimony to Congress, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned of potential “severe collateral damage” in establishing a no-fly zone because Syria’s air defense systems, which are far more sophisticated than Libya’s, were located in heavily populated areas.
At the same hearing, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, warned that Syria had far more sophisticated air defense systems than existed in Libya.
Even if the U.S. and its allies decided to do so, it could take weeks or months to implement.
In the meantime, innocent civilians continue to suffer at the hands of both sides. The humanitarian plight has worsened over the past month as fighting has spread to the capital Damascus and Aleppo, the largest city. Hundreds of thousands of people have already fled the country.
United Nations emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos held talks with Syrian officials on Tuesday on ways to increase aid to people who are trapped or displaced inside Syria.
According to a U.N. statement, Amos, who entered Syria in a convoy from Lebanon, aims to “draw attention to the deteriorating humanitarian situation and the impact of the conflict on civilians caught up in the fighting.”