U.S. airstrikes mark change in fight against terror
TRUMP PUTS ASSAD ON NOTICE AMERICA NO LONGER JUST A ‘NUISANCE,’ BUT A THREAT
Just a few day ago, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad looked like he had little to fear. After six years of war, his army had penned what remained of Syria’s armed rebellion into shrinking swaths of territory, and European leaders were preparing for a conference that could fund the reconstruction of his war-shattered country.
That sense of security appeared shaken Friday after the U.S. military launched a raft of missile strikes at a Syrian military airfield in retaliation for a chemical attack that killed scores of civilians on Tuesday. The images of lifeless bodies splayed across the ground drew international condemnation and dragged the Syrian army’s tactics back into the spotlight.
“The difference between now and one week ago is that Assad and his backers had reasonably concluded they could fight their war however they wished, with impunity, and that the United States was a nuisance but not a threat,” said Faysal Itani, a senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think-tank based in Washington.
The missile strikes, authorized by President Donald Trump, marked a significant escalation of American engagement in Syria, broadening the U.S. role beyond the fight against the Islamic State group.
The operation contrasted sharply with the Obama administration’s policy toward Syria’s crushing war, which was characterized by strong rhetoric but little political appetite to back words with force.
“Now, we can say that when the United States takes an official position on an issue ... in this conflict, its rivals will have to factor that into their plans,” Itani said.
Forces backed by the Syrian government recaptured the northern city of Aleppo in December, dealing a heavy blow to what remained of the non-jihadist armed opposition and leaving Assad’s troops in control of every major urban centre.
Although international outrage has largely focused on the government’s use of chemical weapons, monitoring groups say that its deadliest weapons are the crudely fashioned barrel bombs that continue to shatter opposition-held areas, despite a notional ceasefire that was meant to have taken hold across the country.
The missiles struck the Shayrat airbase in the western province of Homs around 3:40 a.m., officials said, killing 13 people in the military facility and its surrounding areas. Syrian military aircraft are believed to have flown from the same base on sorties during which they dropped a nerve agent on the opposition-controlled town of Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britainbased monitoring group, said a general was among those killed in the missile strike, which caused extensive damage to more than a dozen hangars and a fuel depot.
Witnesses described ambulances racing toward the airfield, where a huge fire was blazing. Video aired later Friday on Syrian state television showed several large hangars at the base, with their entrances singed by fire.
But by nightfall, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that two jets had left the airbase to bomb Islamic State positions. The Pentagon could not confirm the reports, but said it would have no reason to doubt reporting from the region.
Talal al-Barazi, the governor of Homs province, where the airbase is located, said in a phone interview that the attack would not cause the Syrian government to change course in the war.
In unusually forceful comments, Assad called the U.S. strikes “unjust and arrogant aggression, that would only increase his government’s determination to “crush” militant groups in Syria according to the state news agency.