U. S. attack could boost hard- liners

WASHINGTON Rebels fighting Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria would almost certainly try to capitalize on a Western attack aimed at Assad’s military, potentially giving a boost to radical groups among the opposition, military analysts and rebel officials said.

The Obama administration hopes to limit the objectives of an attack to send a message to Assad without toppling the regime and plunging the country into chaos. Rebel reaction injects a critical element of uncertainty into administration plans.

“Any attack is going to weaken the regime,” said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at the Gulf Research Center based in Geneva.

“The regime is already overstretched,” Alani said. “They are fighting on a hundred fronts.”

Other analysts and rebels point out that a limited attack at high- level military and regime targets would not dramatically affect the balance of power on the ground. Such an attack would probably not hit Syrian military targets in the field but would be limited to highlevel headquarters.

A short attack would have limited benefit, said Khalid Saleh, a spokesman for a coalition of opposition groups.

“Free Syrian Army commanders are trying to study all different possibilities,” he said.

Rebel groups could capitalize on a sustained attack that significantly weakened Syrian military capabilities, Saleh said.

“If Assad’s military defenses are seriously degraded, an opposition breakthrough could follow,” said Aron Lund, a Swedish researcher who recently wrote about the oppo- sition for a journal produced by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. “But right now, President Obama seems to be aiming for a more limited action.”

A danger for the United States is the hard- line groups among the opposition, which would benefit from any U. S. attack.

Recent rebel progress on the battlefield has been the result of rebel forces joining with hard- line Islamists, said Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

Rebels achieved a key victory this month when they captured Mannagh air base near Allepo. The rebel breakthrough happened when opposition forces linked up with a hard- line group and used a Saudi suicide bomber to breach the gate, Landis said.

“This is a lesson in why the U. S. doesn’t want to change the balance of power,” Landis said.