Panel sees "enduring" conflict in Syria can only end with political solution

By Ronald Baygents WASHINGTON, June 7 (KUNA) -- A five-member panel of experts discussing the crisis in Syria on Friday presented a pessimistic assessment of the future of the conflict, which one member said will be "enduring" and two predicting that only a political solution will end it.
"A diplomatic approach will ultimately have to be the solution," said Mona Yacoubian, a senior adviser on the Middle East at the Stimson Center.
The conflict has become a "regional spillover," and "Iran has the power to play a real spoiler," she said.
Lebanon is the most volatile and fragile of Syria's neighbors, and the engagement of Hezbollah in the conflict has resulted in "a melting of the Syrian-Lebanon borders," she said.
Iraq also experienced its most violent month in five years in May, she noted, and that conflict, which includes what she considered as "Sunni jihadism," has been fed by the conflict in Syria, she said.
The Austrians recently announced that they will pull their UN monitoring contingent out of the Syrian-Israeli border, and Israel "will not abide" the transfer of strategic weapons from the Assad regime to Hezbollah, Yacoubian said.
Israel "will do what it deems necessary" to lay out "clear red lines" to protect the Israeli people from the Syrian conflict, she said.
In Jordan, the refugee crisis is "becoming untenable," she said.
Turkey has experienced car bombings near its border with Syria as well as errant shells, she said, while panelist David Des Roches, discussing the difficulties of establishing a no-fly zone over Syria, said Turkey might insist on conditions for a no-fly zone base that the United States might reject.
Des Roches, a senior military fellow at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, said establishing a no-fly zone "is a euphemism for war" that will involve "killing people." Geography matters, and Syria is not like Libya, because of its mountains and many more inhabited areas. Any no-fly zone established in Syria would not satisfy critics, because once planes were destroyed, then helicopters would be a problem, and after that, artillery issues would emerge, he said.
Only the removal of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad will solve these issues, Des Roches said.
A recent poll showed that 68 percent of Americans do not support US military intervention in Syria, and unless a major humanitarian disaster happens, the United States is not likely to act militarily in Syria without UN approval -- which Russia and China will continue to block, he said.
For Russia to change its position, it will need a "win-win" in which Assad is allowed to exit gracefully and perhaps go to Moscow or London, where his wife was educated, Des Roches said.
BBC journalist Ian Pannell, who spent much of the past year covering the conflict on the ground in Syria, said he does not believe the breakup of Syria "is a done deal." The situation on the ground is "very complex," and the conflict is not entirely defined by sectarian differences, he said, although it has become more radicalized and increasingly sectarian within the last year.
The Syrian rebels, who will probably move from group to group in the months ahead, are receiving weapons from abroad, but are getting most of their heavy weaponry from Syrian military bases, Pannell said. While the rebels have the most control in northern Syria, they are "probably not capable of advancing" more than they have, to date, he said.
Inside Syria, "dislocated and displaced families are everywhere you travel, " he added.
Panelist Sharon Waxman of the International Rescue Committee, noting that there are more than four million people displaced inside Syria and another 1.5 million who have sought refugee status in neighboring countries, said more international support for these Syrians needs to be increased significantly and quickly.
Food, health care and fuel need to be provided without any political or religious issues attached to such aid, she said.
Waxman said more than 70 percent of Syrian refugees are not in border camps but are spread around the region. The United Nations estimates that one in five people in Lebanon will be refugees by the end of this year, and Lebanon has no refugee camps, she noted.
"It will definitely take a political solution to resolve the situation inside Syria," she predicted.
Dr. Paul Sullivan, the fifth panelist who is a professor of economics at National Defense University, said Syria could be "Obama's Rwanda," referring to US President Barack Obama.
"This could turn into a maelstrom," he said, noting that the number of dead inside Syria has grown from 2,000 a year ago to about 90,000 today.
"This is the shattering of society, the economy and infrastructure," he said. "We have not even started with what needs to be done." Strategic thinking is required to help the people on the ground, and the children of Syria will grow up angry, a situation that "will come back to haunt us," Sullivan said.
The situation is "volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous," he said. "Washington is not good with any of those." (end) rm.bs KUNA 072226 Jun 13NNNN