While the world is silently waiting for the White House to “punish” Syria for the alleged usage of the chemical weapons against the civilians, the Syrian rebels are a busy crowd. The “rebels” means a number of at times rivalry groups that are brought together by the only “grand” purpose – to bring down Bashar Assad.
At the first the “opposition” as they like to call themselves, including the National coalition, was supporting the Western claims that it was the Assad regime that used chemical weapons. Later on they’ve become the keen supporters of the Western intervention in Syria. They wanted the air strike to be launched as fast as now.
After the speech delivered by President Obama the head of the National coalition has set out on a trip across Europe, demanding from every country that he has visited to launch an attack against Syria. To make his demands look even more legitimate, the rebels once again engaged in the fights with the regular troops. The leaders of the “opposition” can’t help but wait to see the American missiles and bombs to rain on the innocent heads. They found themselves unable to break the Assad regime, so the last source of hope for them is the Western allies. They believe that the foreign intervention should be that decisive blow that will turn the tides in their favor.
At the same time anyone who advocates the air strikes against its own compatriots is bound to lose any relevance and trust in the eyes of the common Syrian people. For this reason try to save their public image. For this reason the political and the information coordinator of the rebels have been rejecting all blames in him providing the Western allies with a list of the possible targets for them to strike.
The observers are trying to guess what can the foreign air strikes bring to the table, what advantage can it bring to the “free fighters”. One of the Syrian opposition commanders says that he has no information on the possible targets of those strikes, so there’s no cooperation.
As the war goes on even more opposition fighters find themselves bewildered and confused since they don’t know what to except. As the tension rises, the Islamists especially those connected with Al-Qaeda, don’t expect any good from the strikes. Many of those have already been the targets of their “dear allies” before in the different parts of the Middle East. They fear that their vehicles can quite possibly be bugged.
The Syrian crisis is not resolving, it can be suppressed by the usage of brute force, but the inner conflicts is not going anywhere. The West is going to teach Assad a lesson, the one that has already been learned by the citizens of Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq. And the outcome is always the teacher’s responsibility.
Yuri Kirillov, an expert on the Middle East and North Africa, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
