“Air strike in Syria does not change anything on the ground”
16 April 2018 | In the Media
“We will not see a military escalation between the United States and Russia, nor will Saturday morning’s air strike change the dynamics on the ground in the conflict in Syria.”
This was stated this morning by Lurdes Vidal, director of the Arab and Mediterranean World departement of the IEMed, in an interview with El Matí on Ràdio 4 in which she analyzed the consequences of the April 14 air attack carried out by the United States, France and the United Kingdom against military research facilities and chemical weapons in Syria.
For the analyst, the reaction of the three countries to the attack on the civilian population in Duma with the use – as has been reported – of chemical weapons, is simply “a show of strength that does not change the dynamics on the ground, as it neither diminishes the regime’s capacity for action, nor has any effect on the support it receives from Russia and Iran, nor does it give more strength to the rebels… “.
For Vidal, the consequences will be more regional in the sense that in the proxy wars in the Middle East we end up seeing “response actions against internal intermediaries, not directly against the US but against actors considered allies or favorable to the US “.
In addition, according to Vidal, any announcement from one side or the other will not change the feeling of vulnerability to a new chemical attack among the civilian population. In this sense, she reminded the Syrian writer Samira Khalil that in her book Diary of the Siege of Duma (2013) portrayed the collective psychosis that generated a possible chemical attack.
Given that the attack will not change the dynamics of the conflict, Vidal has also been very critical with the message that is being given to the regime of al-Assad, “killing, but through regulatory channels.”