Turkish-proposed alliance to transform Syrian opposition

“The group which has been proposed by Turkey and other countries will be the next step for countries which have contributed to putting pressure on Syria,” said Senior Adviser for Middle East Initiatives at the United States Institute of Peace Steven Heydemann in an interview with Sunday's Zaman on Wednesday. “A better-coordinated group will be necessary for exploring different ways to maintain that pressure, diplomatically and increasingly militarily.”

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu suggested a meeting between a “broad group” of nations on Wednesday as he voiced outrage over Russian and Chinese vetoes in the Security Council, and told Reuters that “it is time now to send a strong message to the Syrian people that we are with them.” Yet as Davutoğlu meets leaders in Washington this weekend to discuss a "Friends of Syria” platform, the promise of international solidarity may be little relief for the embattled people of Homs, who find themselves besieged by the heavy weapons of Syrian security forces. In order to take action against ongoing bloodshed, a new alliance of nations may find itself funding the opposition's loosely organized military forces, known collectively as the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

“Any pro-opposition alliance will also help to establish a more powerful Syrian military opposition,” said Oytun Orhan, a Syria expert at the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM). “This is a situation where no one is willing to intervene militarily, but there is also a consensus that something has to be done. This means the next step is likely financing and arming these groups,” Orhan told Sunday's Zaman on Thursday.

The consequences of backing the coalition of military defectors which makes up the Free Syrian Army are far from clear. The inherently murky picture of the Syrian conflict does not suggest whether the FSA -- poorly coordinated and said to have a strength of anything from 1,000 fighters to 40,000 -- could defeat the much larger Syrian military even if it did enjoy foreign backing.

Heydemann was cautiously optimistic about the power of the rebels and explained that the insurgency “did not have to reach parity with Syria's Army” in order to threaten the regime. “In the past, the government would send shabiha [hired gunmen] into a city; they would arrest and torture protesters. But now they sit outside and use missiles. The army may take some suburbs around Damascus, but the rebels will return. The government's authority is definitely eroding in some areas,” he stated.

But while many have cited rebel claims of skyrocketing desertions as a sign the government's authority may be weakening, others have dismissed the idea that the FSA has achieved a “Benghazi moment” of independence from the state, instead referring darkly to the shelling in Homs that erupted after the UN veto as Syria's “Sarajevo moment.”

The possibility of hastening a long-dreaded civil war in Syria also looms over the issue of foreign backing for the FSA. Arming the FSA would certainly carry no guarantee that the group would be able to defeat Assad's forces without a protracted -- and likely sectarian -- conflict.

Yet many claim that after 11 bloody months few other options remain that can be taken against a regime as politically unresponsive as the one in Damascus. This is especially true given continued Russian support, Heydemann stated, emphasizing that “as long as Syria feels it can navigate around international frameworks and law, it will not be inclined to accept a diplomatic solution.”

Indeed, Heydemann argues that some powers may already believe that a political solution is futile and have thrown their chips in with the FSA. “The issue of funding these armed groups is not new -- we have rumors of Qatari funding of certain groups, of Saudi funding, and we know that arms are already flowing across the border from Lebanon," he said.

In turn, the question of a foreign-backed military opposition may now simply be a matter of degree and nature. Given a “process of militarization which is already fairly advanced,” Heydemann believes that an alliance of anti-Assad states may simply help centralize a process that is already under way. Without any coordination, Heydemann said there will be "a fragmentation of the way in which groups acquire military support and equipment. We would be much better off if we had frameworks for coordinating those efforts so that fragmentation didn't occur, and so that the military remained under civilian authority.”

If a new “Friends of Syria” alliance should choose to support the FSA, that it should avoid sporadically funding its colonels and coordinate their efforts through Syria's political opposition is clear. What is less clear, however, is what is to come in a new and increasingly perilous chapter of the Syrian revolution.