Posted on 10/31/2011 7:02:05 AM PDT by jhpigott
It's been eight months of bloody crackdowns, and Bashar Assad is still standing. NATO, the Arab League, and the United Nations would never confront him, whether his men continue to slaughter dozens of civilians every day, or not. He is flanked by Iran and Hezbollah, with Russia and China continuing to back him up diplomatically.
Even the defections from his military and the rebellions within it have yet to endanger Assad's rule, and will continue to fail as long as the Alwai top brass remains loyal to the president. As of now, they have no one else to be loyal to.
But, it appears that Assad has one weak point, one to which his adversaries are aiming for with a pointed dagger. The one man holding Assad's future in his hands is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose soldiers have in the last four months, silently and surely, created a buffer zone between the two countries.
Last week, the Turkish Foreign Ministry invited global media outlets to hold interviews with Colonel Riad al-Assad, the leader of the Free Syrian Army, an organization that has already began targeting Syrian forces along the Turkey-Syria border, and that includes many army defectors.
The Free Syrian Army cannot threaten the Assad regime in any real way, but, with Turkish backing, it has begun to expand a limited enclave along the northern part of the border.
Meanwhile, the bloody confrontations between Assad's military and Syrian protesters – protesters who are gradually morphing into armed rebels – have been concentrated in three cities: Idlib, Hama, and Homs in northwestern Syria.
Notice the map. Those three cities are perpendicular to the border with Turkey in the north, and serve as the axis around which a rebel stronghold may be formed in the coming weeks and months.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
ping
Would Erdogan confront Assad’s allies, the mullahs of Iran? Or would Turkey and Iran reach a compromise? Has Assad outlived his usefulness to the mullahs? That’s the question.
-——if that line stabilizes, it will soon turn into a wedge-——
The concept of the line implies strategic planning at a professional level. The cities are not seats of just random events. The three cities are strategic objectives to sever the country and isolate the interior.
Slowly but surely and with relative low cost, the severing is apparently in process
By destroying the surrogate, the prime surrogate, Turkey is disabling Iran.
Iran apparently has no ability or will to act alone in it’s own behalf. No surrogates, no aggression, no problem
Definitely a chess match going on in the mid-east. Agree that the name of the game is “Isolate Iran”.
Don’t forget Russia. What would Putin do?
In my view, Putin is a toothless old dog. He might try to make mischief but his ability beyond disrupting things in the UN is limited.
His Alcoholic population doesn’t give a damn and his military is but a shadow of what it was
Don’t forget about Russia indeed. The Russian Navy is supposedly going to start using the Syrian port at Tartus in 2012. That’s going to be mighty tough if Assad/Damascus is cut off from their coastal/port cities along the E. Med.
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