Arab and international positions indicate that the Syrian crisis is on the way to becoming an international issue and one risking foreign military intervention, writes Bassel Oudat in Damascus The emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, suggested on Sunday in a television interview with the US television network CBS that Arab forces should be deployed to stem the ongoing bloodshed in Syria, an idea that some Syrian opposition forces have supported in the absence of UN forces being sent into the country to end the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters orchestrated by the Syrian regime. Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, whose country heads the Arab League (AL) committee on Syria, is the first Arab leader to support such a proposal, the emir telling the US network that the killings in Syria had not stopped despite the deployment of Arab monitors one month ago to verify Syria's observance of the peace initiative brokered by the Arab League. The statement came nearly one week ahead of an AL ministerial meeting called to discuss a report by the Arab monitors that will decide if the observers should continue their mission or if the matter should be referred to the UN Security Council. Qatar earlier played a key role in assisting Libyan rebels in overthrowing the regime of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Qatari leader's comments were not the first to predict that the Syrian crisis will become an international matter, given the nearly 6,500 civilian deaths that have taken place in the country since the protests began some ten months ago, according to Syrian human rights organisations. Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a news conference with Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani on 12 January that the Arab monitors in Syria "cannot stay forever," adding that the regime led by Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad "did not keep its commitments of ending the violence, releasing prisoners or withdrawing military forces from towns." Clinton said that Washington and its allies were waiting for the monitors' final report after their mission ends on 19 January. Observers believe that Clinton's statements are the first serious step towards making the Syrian crisis an international matter and a clear indication that time is finally running out for the Syrian regime. On 13 January, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil El-Arabi expressed concerns that the struggle to topple the Al-Assad regime could unravel into civil war in Syria, calling on the regime to stop the violence immediately. Al-Arabi also said that the mission by the Arab observers could not continue in the light of the continued killings. On Saturday, US President Barack Obama discussed the situation in the Middle East and particularly the crisis in Syria with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the two leaders agreeing to continue their support for the "legitimate demands of the Syrian people for democracy" and condemning the "brutal acts" carried out by the Syrian regime. At the same time, defectors from the Syrian army now based in Turkey announced the creation of a Syrian Supreme Military Council (SSMC) that would be responsible for planning military operations against the Syrian regime. The SSMC, which will include senior army officers, will plan operations against regime forces and help to organise further defections from the regime. It will coordinate with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), another military group made up of defectors from the Syrian armed forces. According to members of the Syrian opposition, the SSMC is being developed in cooperation with the US and Turkey to run Syrian affairs during an interim phase following the collapse of the Al-Assad regime. Syrian opposition activists outside the country have said that there is little point in the Arab monitors continuing their work in Syria, describing AL efforts to resolve the Syrian crisis as having reached a dead end. Such activists have called for the Syrian issue to be referred to the UN Security Council in the hope that this body will take steps to protect civilians in the country from regime attacks. Some members of the opposition abroad have also argued for the need to accept foreign military intervention against the Syrian regime, in order to end the violence and establish no-military or no-fly zones in the country. Such steps would need to be implemented by military measures, underlining the need to arm the FSA, activists say. However, the internal Syrian opposition has argued that referring the Syrian crisis to the Security Council would fail because of continuing Russian support for the Al-Assad regime and the threat of a Russian veto of any Security Council resolution authorising military intervention in Syria. Russia has argued for the need to mobilise Arab public opinion instead of international intervention, and it does not object to Arab peace-keeping forces being deployed in Syria in order to protect civilians and provide humanitarian aid. Observers believe that foreign military intervention might take place in different ways, for example by creating buffer zones in northern Syria near the country's border with Turkey and protecting these through the deployment of international and regional forces. These zones would act as safe havens for civilians fleeing areas under attack, as well as bases for training defecting soldiers or launching military operations against the Syrian regime. A second option might be to impose a no-fly zone over Syria, along with measures to police Syrian airspace and destroy Syrian airports, planes and missile bases. According to members of the country's opposition, foreign intervention of this sort would cause divisions within the army and would tip the balance in favour of the regime. A third option could be to launch direct military intervention on the ground that would include Arab, regional and international forces as well as Syrian army defectors, estimated by who FSA leader Riyad Al-Asaad at 50,000 fighters. The Syrian opposition remains divided over the wisdom of any foreign military intervention in the country, some supporting it as a patriotic obligation to help topple the regime, and others believing that it would destroy the country as well as overthrow the regime. Although European and Arab states have said in recent months that military intervention in Syria is not under discussion, observers believe that some regional and international interests are pushing for such intervention. Should conditions be judged as favouring intervention, opposition figures have said, it would only take a few days for foreign powers to find a justification for it, notably now that the international community has been emphasising the need to protect the Syrian people from the Al-Assad regime. "Sooner or later the Russians will change their position," a spokesman for the Coordination Committee of Forces for Democratic Change, an internal opposition group, said in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. "The US will likely strike a deal with Russia on some other issue in the Ukraine or Georgia or on the missile shield in Europe, and when it does so the most powerful supporter of the Syrian regime will vanish." "The transformation of the Syrian crisis into an international issue has already begun. The next few days will reveal how and when it will take place." However, for its part the Syrian regime does not believe that any such military intervention is likely, which goes some way towards explaining why it has been continuing its military and security crackdown. But as confrontation between the regime and the protestors escalates, opposition figures insist that foreign military intervention could be just a stone's throw away. "The Syrian regime has stepped up the violence since the arrival of the Arab observers," Nasser Al-Ghazali, director of the Damascus Centre for Theoretical and Civil Rights Studies, told the Weekly. "It is pushing the situation towards foreign military intervention, and the blood-soaked policies of the Syrian regime are heading towards a civil war in the country that could escalate into a larger regional war." Although they have always asserted that their uprising against the Syrian regime is a peaceful one, many protestors believe that the regime cannot be toppled except by force. As a result, many have been calling for foreign military intervention, asserting that the regime must be uprooted by military force. What is important now is the end of the regime, some protestors say, and not the means by which this is brought about, while at the same time warning that any intervention could still transform a peaceful people's revolution into a gruelling civil war
