Juan Cole writes:
Free Syria exists along Syria’s borders with Turkey and
Iraq. The Free Syrian Army, somewhat to my surprise, is beginning to
take and hold territory, acting more like a conventional army than like a
guerrilla movement. Admittedly, the territory is in the boondocks. But
these boondocks are crucial because they control border areas and roads
between Syria and Turkey on the one side, and Syria and Iraq on the
other.
There is some dispute about the significance of
holding these outposts since the Syrian border was porous and the FSA
had little trouble getting weapons across before the border posts fell.
But the real significance of this development is not what supplies the
FSA has access to but the supplies it can deny the government. Cole
again:
The significance of the FSA taking Abu Kamal, the border
crossing with Iraq along the Euphrates road, is that 70% of the goods
coming into Syria were coming from the Iraq of PM Nouri al-Maliki, who
had refused to join a blockade of Syria because of his new alliance with
Iran. But al-Maliki’s attitude is irrelevant if the revolutionaries
have Abu Kamal.
An insurgency can function very successfully
with a few truckloads of weapons a week. An army needs fuel, parts,
uniforms, food to fight at maximum efficiency. Creating shortages is
also a form of information engagement: A government can lie about the
progress of the war on the front lines but they can't hide a lack of
food in the shops.
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