In
Time this week there is an article on
Syria’s Risky Arms Race,. Simon Shuster concludes with this pessimistic quote.
Part of the reason the West has not been willing to give the rebels
heavy artillery is that if Assad is overthrown, "it's going to be ugly,"
says Joseph Holliday, a Syria expert at the Institute for the Study of
War in Washington. "No one really wants to precipitate a war right now.
For those reasons you'll see a continued proxy conflict — the Gulf
states vs. Russia and Iran, and the U.S. trying to play referee."
So until all sides can agree on a better option, the arms race in Syria
is likely to continue — for this war and, perhaps even more worrying,
for one yet to start. Abu Saddam, the Lebanese arms dealer, says his
clients in Syria are stockpiling weapons not as much to overthrow Assad
as to prepare for the carnage that his downfall would initiate. "That
will be the real battle," he says. "The FSA will want to take control,
the Salafists will want to take control, the Muslim Brotherhood will
want to take control, and the CIA, the Saudis and the KGB will want a
say in what happens. Libya and Iraq? They will be nothing compared to
what will happen in Syria once Bashar falls."
