First pressuring NATO member, Turkey, to discard its nine-year old "zero-problem based relations" with its regional neighbors to what Liam Stack described in the New York Times on October 27 as "hosting an armed opposition group waging an insurgency ... amid a broader Turkish campaign to undermine Mr. Assad's government" in its southern Syrian neighbor, which is the same reason why Turkey has been for years waging military incursions into Iraq and why Ankara was on the brink of war with Syria late in 1990s.
Second, to escalate the militarization of the peaceful protests. On August 14, 2011, Israel 's Debka Intelligence news reported that developments in Syria point to a full-fledged armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist "freedom fighters" covertly supported, trained and equipped by foreign powers. According to Israeli intelligence sources: NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are drawing up plans " to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters " NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers " The delivery of weapons to the rebels is to be implemented "overland, namely through Turkey and under Turkish army protection " According to Israeli sources, which remain to be verified, NATO and the Turkish High command, also contemplate the development of a "jihad" involving the recruitment of thousands of Islamist "freedom fighters", reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA's jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war " Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria!
The editorial board opinion of The Washington Post on September 28, 2011 had a foresight: "The appearance of such forces is not to be welcomed, even by those hoping for an end to the Assad regime."
However, the U.S. and NATO seem now in a race against time in pursuing exactly that goal through those two options to preclude the implementation of the Syrian package of reforms, until the ruling regime is coerced into compliance to trade their support of these reforms for the current Syrian foreign policy agenda.
But because the Syrian foreign policy, like the foreign policy of all countries, serves the internal prerogatives in the first place, which is in the Syrian case the liberation of Syria's Israeli-occupied lands, Syria is not expected to comply. Therefore the Syrian "resistance" continues, and the regional conflict as well.
Nick Cohen wrote in The Jewish Chronicle on August 30 this year: "Syria is a story that cries out for coverage. But it is not receiving the play it deserves." Cohen was and is still right, but he has yet to address Syria from a completely different approach.
* Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
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