What Is

Next For

Syria?

With over 2 million refugees and tens of thou-

sands of casualties the agony of the Syrian peo-

ple shows no signs of coming to an end any

time soon, but the West ’ s motivation to do

something is no justification for doing the

wrong thing. Precision strikes using Tomahawk

missiles is the appealing option, but without

putting troops on the ground would be doomed

to failure. If there was a day when things

changed in international affairs it was May 1st

2003. That was the day when the then US Presi-

dent George W Bush gave his “ M ission Accom-

plished ” speech aboard the aircraft carrier USS

Abraham Lincoln. From September 11th 2001 un-

til then it was a beautifully simple world, black

and white, good guys against bad guys.

The good guys were the US and its allies, the

bad guys Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda and vari-

ous Islamist fanatics such as the Taliban. With

the disaster that subsequently engulfed Iraq

and the ongoing pain of Afghanistan it has

been revealed that the world is really not that

simple, not black and white but many and ever

increasing shades of grey. With the Damascus

chemical attack of 21st August 2013 President

Basher al-Assad of Syria has shown himself to

undoubtedly be one of the world’ s bad guys,

but any reasonable assessment of the Syrian

opposition raises all sorts of concerns and re-

veals at least some of them to be no better. This

has made a complex situation even more diffi-

cult for the leaders of the western democracies

to handle.

When the Damascus chemical attacks were re-

ported around the world, and it seems highly

probable that the Syrian regime is responsible,

there were quite understandable demands for

action. The US Secretary of State, John Kerry,

quickly began mobilizing support for limited

military action with the objective of destroying

the Syrian regimes chemical weapons capability.

Mindful of the lack of public support for a full

intervention involving ground forces, the oft re-

ferred to “ boots on the ground ” , the preci-

sion strikes option is the only one so far on the

menu. The Obama administration naturally has a

huge aversion to anything that would risk

American casualties, and so even putting Ameri-

can aircraft over Syrian airspace would have to

be avoided.

It is widely known that the Syrians have an ex-

tensive Integrated Air Defence System (IADS),

equipped with some of the latest Russian sur-

face to air missiles including the highly capable

SA22. Whilst the performance of the equipment

itself, the Command and Control system (C2)

and its integration with any kind of Early Warn-

ing (EW) system is unknown, its mere presence

is enough to force the precision strikes option

to take the form of ballistic missile strikes.

These would be Tomahawk cruise missiles fired

from US Navy destroyers in the Eastern Medi-

terranean. The destroyers themselves can sit

outside the range of any Syrian anti-shipping

missiles and strike with impunity targets

throughout the country.

These missiles are extremely effective against

fixed targets, with a range of over 1000km and

excellent accuracy. Likely targets for a first strike

would be C2 facilities and high profile military

targets rather than any chemical weapons

dumps. The question has to be

Will the strikes be effective in degrading the

regimes chemical weapons capability

What happens next

The answer to the first is easier to assess than

the second. Undoubtedly the US military has the

capability to destroy whatever part of Syria it

chooses, it is just a question of firing enough

missiles. With a unit cost of over a million dollars

per missile though, and the danger of collateral

damage and its effect on already fragile Ameri-

can public support,

any campaign would have to be very limited in

duration. There is also the issue of targets,

whilst buildings and facilities are easy and in-

volve loading the coordinates into the missiles

GPS system, chemical weapons loaded into the

back of a truck that may then be parked next to

a school is a completely different story.

So it has to be assessed that precision strikes

with Tomahawk missiles would be effective in

visibly punishing the Syrian regime, but not in

degrading their ability to use chemical weap-

ons.

It is a blessing that the Russians have politically

outplayed the Obama administration and that

the option of limited military action has at least

be temporarily shelved.

It could only have caused more problems in a

region already hugely destabilised.

What is most likely to happen now is that an As-

sad regime emboldened by its perceived sup-

port from Russian and US prevarication that it

takes as weakness will make token attempts to

comply with demands to hand over chemical

weapons it was until recently denying even ex-

isted. This will go on for months with no obvious

benefit and no end in sight until finally the US

and its allies lose patience. Even the British

members of parliament who voted against mili-

tary action will change their mind, having

watched yet more footage on news coverage of

atrocities carried out by both sides in the Syrian

civil war and listened to ever more desperate

pleas from the relief

agencies operating in the border areas. Mean-

while the numbers of displaced civilians will rise

well over the current two million and the body

count will mount. It is likely to then be appar-

ent, even to war weary western governments

that intervention is necessary, and by then the

Putin administration is Russia may be willing to

play the part of international peacemaker. It will

then become possible to gain UN Security

Council approval for intervention, not against

one side or the other, as would be the case in

striking only against the Assad regime, but as

genuine peacemakers. The only workable solu-

tion will be for a full UN military intervention as

suggested by formed Canadian General Romeo

Dallaire, who led the UN peacekeeping force in

Rwanda.

Only sufficient numbers of ground troops,

suitably equipped, effectively lead and with ro-

bust rules of engagement can form the re-

quired buffer between the warring parties and

bring some semblance of peace to Syria, allow-

ing the diplomats to do their work, and saving

the innocent people of the country from relent-

less suffering.

PUBLICATION BY

QUANTUM TRADING

PRIVATE BRITISH INTELLIGENCE

SECURITY FIRM