by Hussein Ibish
The civil conflict in Syria has been a major concern for many Gulf Arab states since the outbreak of the uprising against the Baathist dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad over four years ago. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait, among others, have been some of Assad’s leading regional opponents and strong proponents of regime change in Damascus. They have therefore reacted strongly to Russia’s escalation in Syria and are among the harshest critics of Moscow’s direct intervention into the conflict by conducting airstrikes against rebel groups and building up Russian ground forces. These developments will likely encourage a deeper engagement by Gulf Arab countries in the Syrian conflict in the coming months.
Saudi Arabia and its allies see Syria, along with Yemen, as the key battlegrounds against rising Iranian hegemony in the Arab world. Moreover there is a powerful moral indignation against the tactics of the Assad regime. His forces are widely blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of displaced Syrian civilians, the large majority of them Sunni Muslim Arabs. This is the overriding context through which the Gulf states view the Syrian conflict and its outcome. These countries have funded both political and paramilitary opposition movements in an effort to promote a change of government in Syria. They have also joined the coalition led by the United States countering the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and Saudi and Emirati warplanes have been involved in bombing attacks against targets in Syria as part of that effort. But the Gulf countries have not introduced any of their own ground forces into the conflict, nor are they likely to do so in the foreseeable future. They readily admit to funding nationalist and some Islamist rebels, but deny supporting the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, al-Nusra Front. On the ground, however, distinctions between rebel groups and their frequently shifting alliances and coalitions are often amorphous, difficult to track, and overlapping.
Read more: http://www.agsiw.org/rushin-to-syria-riyadh-pledges-to-counter-moscows-sudden-escalation/#
YALLA SOURIYA 