Dar al Islam yang bersimbah darah......
'Open-ended' Syrian conflict draws in region
By Matt Smith, CNN
June 1, 2013 -- Updated 1523 GMT (2323 HKT)
Forces loyal to Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad are seen near Qusair on Thursday, May 30. Tensions in
Syria flared in March 2011 during the onset of the Arab Spring,
eventually escalating into a civil war that still rages. This gallery
contains the most compelling images taken since the start of the
conflict.
HIDE CAPTION
Syrian civil war in photos
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Syria's civil war "is no longer an internal struggle," analyst says
* The conflict has jumped across the Turkish, Iraqi and Lebanese borders
* U.N. official warns the fighting "is destabilizing the region as a
whole"
(CNN) -- Rocket attacks in Lebanon. Car bombs in Turkey. Israeli airstrikes in
Syria.
In the two-plus years
since President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on "Arab Spring"
demonstrations, observers say the civil war that grew out of it has now
become a multi-sided conflict that threatens to set the wider Middle
East ablaze.
"The Syrian conflict is
no longer an internal struggle between Assad and the internal
opposition," said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center at
the London School of Economics. "It's an open-ended war by proxy --
Iran, Hezbollah and Syria, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, plus Russia
and the United States."
ANALYSIS: EU ends embargo -- what next?
In the meantime, he said, Syrian society is disintegrating. And after more than
70,000 deaths
inside the country, the conflict is increasingly jumping the borders.
Syria's new ground zero
Syrian rebel: A massacre is coming
Assad plans to seek re-election in 2014
Should Syrian rebels be given weapons?
The past few weeks have
seen a pair of car bombs kill dozens of people in a town that has
welcomed some of the 300,000-plus Syrian refugees who have fled to
Turkey.
Turkish officials said
the bombings were carried out by members of a former Marxist terror
group with ties to Syria's intelligence services; Syria denied
responsibility, but said Turkey ,a NATO ally, had been helping
"terrorists" get weapons and money.
Meanwhile, the Persian
Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar have backed Sunni rebel
factions against al-Assad, a member of the Shiite offshoot Alawite sect. The
European Union is lifting an arms embargo on Syria after Britain
and France refused to agree to an extension.
OPINION: More arms to Syria is a mistake
But on the battlefield,
the momentum that appeared to be on the rebel side earlier this year now seems
to have shifted to al-Assad, said Robin Wright, a Middle East
analyst at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
"That will go back and
forth," Wright told CNN. "The tragedy of this is the inflow of weapons
just means more people are going to be killed, and there doesn't seem to be a
military outcome likely on either side anytime soon."
France says Hezbollah,
the powerful Lebanese Shiite militia backed by Iran and Syria, has
dispatched up to 4,000 fighters to Syria to bolster al-Assad's forces.
Gerges said those fighters have "already produced major results,"
particularly in the ongoing battle for the strategically located border
town of Qusayr.
Rocket attacks have
struck Shiite towns inside Lebanon, where a fragile sectarian and
political balance has held since the end of a civil war that wracked the
country from 1975 to 1990. And three Lebanese soldiers were killed by
unidentified gunmen who opened fire on their checkpoint this week,
Lebanon's national news agency reported.
MORE: American woman killed in Syria
Walid Jumblatt, a
veteran Lebanese political leader and a former Syrian ally, contends the
conflict threatens to reopen Lebanon's old wounds. But he said
confronting Hezbollah over its involvement "will just lead us to the
sectarian warfare that is starting in Iraq, in Syria and might spread to
Lebanon."
"I'm more concerned about the stability of my country," Jumblatt, the leader of
Lebanon's Druze minority, told CNN's "Amanpour."
Fighting has also
spilled over into Iraq, with jihadist groups on both sides of the border
growing in strength, Western counterterrorism officials warned in
March.
Fighters from the
Islamic State of Iraq, the al Qaeda affilliate that has bedeviled
Baghdad for years, said it had killed at least 40 Syrians in an ambush
on a Syrian convoy inside Iraq. The troops were being escorted by Iraqi
forces to the only border post the Syrian government still controlled.
"The increasing number
of foreign fighters crossing Syria's borders to support one side or the
other is further fueling the sectarian violence and the situation is
beginning to show worrying signs of destabilizing the region as a
whole," Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned
Wednesday.
Then there's Israel,
which is believed to have conducted at least two airstrikes inside Syria to
prevent Syrian forces from transferring advanced missiles to
Hezbollah.
Israel braces for the worst with Syria
Who are the Syrian rebels?
What's next in Syria?
American woman killed in Syria
MORE: Russian fighter jets heading to Syria
Israel fought a
month-long war with Hezbollah in 2006 and never signed a peace agreement with
Syria after the 1948, 1967 and 1973 Mideast wars.
Syria said Thursday that Russia, its most powerful ally, will deliver on a 2010
purchase of
advanced anti-aircraft missiles. Moscow has defended the deal, saying it falls
within international law and that the missiles aren't designed
for use against civilians.
Gerges said the deal is a strong Russian signal to the West: "Stay away from
Syria."
"Russia is the backbone
of the Assad regime. It has provided them with arms. It has provided
them with political support. It has used its veto twice in the (U.N.)
Security Council. It has gone to great lengths to prevent any kind of
military intervention in Syria," he said.
The United States has
provided non-lethal aid and political support to the Syrian opposition,
but the Obama administration has resisted calls to provide military aid
to the rebels.
At the same time,
Washington is trying to work with Russia to coax the opposition and the
government to peace talks, concerned about "a region-wide conflict,"
Gerges said.
"That's why they have
intensified their diplomacy to rescue Syria from really all-out
destruction and also rescue the entire region from a region-wide
conflict where American and international peace and security are really
at stake," he said.
But the opposition
Syrian National Coalition said Thursday that it wouldn't take part "when
Syrians are constantly being hammered by the Assad regime with the help of
outside forces," as George Sabra, its acting chairman, put it.
The opposition remains
split along secular and sectarian, military and political lines. Those
divisions have been "a real obstacle" to negotiations, Wright said.
"Both the United States
and Russia have agreed that diplomacy is necessary, and they haven't
been able to agree on that, even, for a long time," she said.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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