Among Syrian Opposition, Mixed Feelings About U.S. Missile Plan

fearless leader

BEIRUT -- As the U.S. continues to ramp up its plans to target the Syrian military with cruise missile strikes, Syrian citizens and opposition figures have voiced a mix of optimism and deep concern about what may happen aftermath of a bombing raid.

The Obama administration has indicated that it is in the final stages of planning a limited strike, using cruise missiles, against a series of Syrian military targets in response to last Wednesday's apparent chemical weapons attack that the U.S. says left more than a thousand civilians dead. On Friday, the administration released an intelligence report that it said pointed to proof that chemical weapons had been deployed, and that the regime was culpable.

It is exactly the sort of intervention that many Syrian opposition groups have called for, but not everyone is so enthusiastic about the consequences. 

Abdulkader al Dhon, a Syrian human rights activist who now lives in Turkey but travels regularly to his home country, said on Friday that many people he speaks with are worried that the U.S. war plan could spiral into a larger conflict.

"They are afraid," he told The Huffington Post by Skype. "They say that if this attack will be just for a few places in Damascus, maybe the big military bases, that's OK. But we don't want to open a new war for the next year. That would be terrible."

It's a view matched by a number of news reports in recent days, including a Tuesday Wall Street Journal article that quoted several skeptical rebel leaders along the Turkey-Syria border.

"The regime might use the attacks and say: 'we are victims,'" Col. Ahmed Hamada, a rebel military leader, said in the report. "They could grow more powerful."

In Beirut, a Syrian activist and analyst who stays in close contact with friends and allies in Damascus and elsewhere told HuffPost Friday that he was "surprised by the attitudes" of some of his friends in light of the U.S. plans. 


"Even some of the ones who are extremely anti-regime, they were still anti-intervention," said the analyst, who asked to remain anonymous. "A lot of them see the whole thing as hypocritical: they feel like the West doesn't start thinking about a serious solution to their problem until it starts to see it as a threat to their own national security."

read it all at---  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30