Perilous US Action in Syria

The occasionally brutal skirmishes that occurred in other countries back in the Iron Curtain days, when the U.S. and Soviet Union were trying to stare one another down, were called shadow wars. Syria is increasingly becoming the stage for such a proxy war — and not just since it became known that President Obama has engaged his CIA to support opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Syria has long been a battlefield for the secret geopolitical struggle, pitting Sunni Saudi-Arabia against Shiite Iran. Up to now, Tehran has given massive support to the Assad regime, which the Saudis want to overthrow in order to create another Sunni state.

Against such a backdrop, CIA intervention is fraught with danger. Obama, to be sure, is facing increasing pressure to take action against Assad’s massacre of his own people. And because of Russia’s and China’s veto of such intervention in the UN Security Council, as well as a general weariness on NATO’s part for such intervention, using the CIA looks more and more like an effective solution. Washington’s spooks will be supporting the Syrian opposition with intelligence services and communications technology. Officially, they are forbidden to engage in combat on the rebel side; nor are they permitted to supply them with weapons.

But the engagement is nonetheless problematical: Can Obama really guarantee his agents won’t become entangled in the complex web of Syrian opposition? In the end it could turn out like the days when the Soviet Union supported the communist regime in Afghanistan and the CIA backed and armed the anti-communist Taliban. Since the 9/11 attacks most recently, the United States needs to seriously consider the options. The Taliban eventually terrorized its own people and supported the al-Qaida international terrorist organization. And al-Qaida has already been long since active in Syria. Additionally, there’s a much more far-reaching question: What will become of the weapons with which the United States armed the Taliban, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Syrian and Libyan rebels? As understandable as the need to stop the continuing bloodbath in Syria may be, intervention by outsiders without international agreement would be absolutely devastating to the region.