After three years of campaigning by Syria’s opposition and rebels for no-fly zones, the movement of outside powers for an area in the south of the country is growing.
Earlier this month, the Jordanian regime indicated that it was supporting the measure to protect refugees and displaced Syrians, with King Abdullah discussing the idea with President Obama during a forthcoming trip to Washington.
Last week, former Lebanese Premier Saad Hariri, who is close to the Saudi royal family, told Arab reporters in a closed meeting in Washington that “air cover” for rebels in both southern and northern Syria was inevitable. He continued, “Such action could come regardless of Washington’s position.”
This week, papers in the region extended the report with the claim of a Free Syrian Army officer, “Rebel factions in the area are preparing for large-scale military operations and have received promises of Arab air cover, or at least the provision of anti-aircraft rockets.”
Rebels have made significant advances across southern Syria since January. Earlier this month, they took the historic town of Busra al-Sham and captured the Naseeb crossing, the Assad regime’s last border post with Jordan.
The officer in the FSA’s Yarmouk Army said the rebel Southern Front bloc might not wait longer than a week to renew offensives, even without the air cover.
A Southern Front official, Ayman al-Aasmi supported the claims, “There have been serious signals that the Southern Front will receive Arab support within days.”
Diplomatic sources tell EA that the outside powers are in a position to act quickly if they choose to establish the no-fly zone. Both Saudi and Jordanian reconnaissance jets have been gathering information inside Syria, sharing the intelligence between themselves and with US officials.
While the Obama Administration has been reluctant since 2012 to establish a zone — rejecting the ideas of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former CIA Director David Petraeus and pulling back again after the Assad regime’s chemical weapons attacks in August 2013 — the Americans have been offering satellite intelligence with the staffs of other countries in their joint center in Amman, Jordan.
The diplomatic sources said:
So far the officials have been only collecting the data, but a few have been making plans for air support for months.
President Obama has now upset others in the coalition [with US reluctance to intervene] to the point that they are prepared. to act alone. Equally important, Washington has given permission, even if it will not join the effort.
The sources say the Turkish and UAE militaries are also involved and that the officials in the planning are “experts in the field” who “track each and every aircraft, and even know about every single hard place”.
The claims coincide with reports that Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been increasing their support to Syrian rebels, bolstering both the northern and southern offensive with weapons and supplies, and that the two countries — now moving without the pre-condition of US involvement — have been in high-level discussions over further intervention.
Military sources add the further detail that the Assad regime’s air defenses have been eroded in the south, with rebels destroying “one anti-aircraft asset after the other” since 2012. They claim that the Syrian military only has effective capabilities in Damascus and on the Mediterraean coast, with some defenses still in the areas of Homs and Hama.
One diplomatic official concludes, “All will soon be in place [for the no-fly zone]. I just don’t know when and if [the military planners] get a go.”
