Polls find global opposition to US-led intervention in Syria

Surveys conducted by an American research institution show little international support for US-led meddling in Syria and the bid to send arms to the opposition’s foreign-backed militants in the country.

Neither the American people, nor the Europeans, nor the nations neighboring Syria wholeheartedly back intensifying efforts by the US government and its European and Arab allies to send weapons and even deploy military troops to the key Middle Eastern nation in a declared bid to ‘hasten’ their objective of removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power, says the US-based Pew Research Center, cited in Friday press reports.

According to the latest poll conducted by the center on April 25-28, majority of Americans (54%) opposed a military intervention in Syria even after being reminded of the Israeli-based allegation of chemical weapons use in the country.

Only 45% of the 1,003 Americans participating in the survey favored a military measure in face of the widely discounted “intelligence assessment” by the Israeli regime that chemical agents have been used in Syria, a country that Tel Aviv considers as one of its arch-enemies and backs US-led efforts to overthrow its government by supporting a massive armed insurgency that is widely believed to involved foreign mercenaries and al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.

This is while a similar survey carried out by Pew in March, before the publicity about the chemical weapons use in Syria surfaced, showed that almost two-thirds or 64% of Americans were opposed to even arming the anti-Damascus militant gangs in the nation.

Separate polls conducted in March further shoed even less public support in European countries backing the US-led bid against Syria for sending military assistance to the Syrian insurgents, according to a Friday report by UK-based state sponsored broadcast network, the BBC.

The report notes that 82% of Germans expressed opposition to aiding the Syrian opposition militants, along with over two-thirds of the French (69%) and most of the British (57%).

Furthermore, the report adds, the public opinion in the immediate region neighboring Syria is even less supportive of US-led intervention in the Syrian crisis.

It states that in five of the six regional countries polled in March the public expressed opposition to supplying the Syrian militant gangs with weapons either by the Americans or the European by margins of 80% in Lebanon, 68% in Turkey, 60% in Tunisia, 59% in Egypt and 63% in “the Palestinian territories.”

The report claims, however, that only in Jordan the public opinion narrowly favored Western intervention against the Syrian government by 53%.

The report further notes, citing survey studies, that people of the region, except in Jordan, even opposed the involvement of their own governments in backing the anti-Damascus militant gangs in Syria.

Meanwhile, other surveys recently conducted by American and British polling institution about supporting the US-led intervention in Syria have clearly confirmed major public opposition to the idea by nearly two-thirds of American participants.

Despite the opposition of most American to yet another US military intervention in the Middle East, a number of pro-Israel members of the US congress continue to press the Obama administration to expand its support of militant gangs in Syria by supplying them with lethal weapons and even deploy troops in a declared bid to “hasten” their vision for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The development comes after US-based press reports cited senior Obama administration officials as saying this week that Washington is preparing to deploy troops to Syria and being supplying lethal weapons to foreign-backed militant in the country in an intensifying effort to force the ouster of Syrian president.

According to these reports, the decision to hugely expand American intervention measures against Damascus was prompted by the growing realization in Washington that that the US-sponsored Syrian opposition is unable to gather popular support in the Arab nation.
“We’re clearly on an upward trajectory; we’ve moved over to assistance that has a direct military purpose,” a senior Obama administration official was quoted as saying in a Washington Post report.

Syria has been faced with a foreign-sponsored armed insurgency since 2011. Thousands of people in the country, including a large number of security forces, have been killed in the unrest with many foreign nationals infiltrating the key Arab state in a bid to destabilize the government of President Bashar al-Assad.