US Officials: FSA’s Weakness Dangerous, Al-Assad Win May be Syria’s Best Option

Local Editor

US War Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday that the US will continue to support the so-called "moderate" opposition in Syria, but non-lethal aid will be suspended until the US can get a clear assessment on the status of warehouses of military equipment that may have been seized by extremist militants.

This comes as the US and Britain suspended the aid after opposition fighters from extremist brigades seized warehouses containing US military gear that was intended for the so-called "Free Syrian Army".

The developments underscored the weakness of the FSA, that Washington and its European allies have tried - at times reluctantly - to mold into an effective partner inside Syria.

"What has occurred here in the last couple of days is a clear reflection on how complicated and dangerous this situation is and how unpredictable it is," Hagel said during a Pentagon news conference.
He further stated: "We continue to support General Idris and the moderate opposition. ... But this is a problem ... and we're going to have to work through it and manage through it with General Idris and the moderate opposition."
Hagel said the ongoing effort to remove and destroy Syria's cache of chemical weapons is on track.

For his part, Michael Hayden, the retired US Air Force general who until 2009 was head of the Central Intelligence Agency, said the "rebels win was not one of the three possible outcomes he foresees for the conflict."
"Option three is al-Assad wins," Hayden told the annual Jamestown Foundation conference of terror experts.

He also claimed: "And I must tell you at the moment, I'm kind of trending toward option three as the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes," he said.

The first possible outcome he cited was "for ongoing conflict between ever more extreme Sunni and Shiite factions."
And the second outcome, which Hayden deemed the most likely, was the "dissolution of Syria" and the end of a single state within the borders defined by a 1916 treaty between the French and British empires.

"It means the end of the Sykes-Picot [Agreement], it sets in motion the dissolution of all the artificial states created after World War I," he said.
A breakdown in the century-old settlement could spread chaos in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, Hayden warned.

"I greatly fear the dissolution of the state. A de facto dissolution of Sykes-Picot," Hayden said.
"And now we have a new ungoverned space, at the crossroads of the civilization.
"The dominant story going on in Syria is a Sunni fundamentalist takeover of a significant part of the Middle East geography, the explosion of the Syrian state and of the Levant as we know it."

Source: News agencies, Edited by website team