MOSCOW, September 15 (RIA Novosti) - US intervention to eradicate another anti-American regime risks turning Syria into a failed state, with the Middle East being even more destabilized overall, USA Today reported.
"As occurred in Libya, U.S. intervention to remove an anti-US regime could lead to another failed state and more instability in the Middle East," the newspaper said Sunday.
According to USA Today, the strategies the United States employed in Libya in 2011 and continues to employ today in Syria are similar, which could eventually lead Syria to suffer the same fate and become a failed state in the long run.
Namely, back in 2011, the United States worked with Libyan moderate rebels, like it currently does in Syria, in order to overthrow the incumbent anti-American regime. This was decided on in order to avoid hundreds of losses on the part of US ground troops, USA Today reported.
However, these moderate rebels in Libya, now referred to as "radicals," ended up having more power than expected and fighting for the control over the country, leading to deep and increased insecurity to sweep Libya. Libyan radicals have been observed to have ties with al-Qaeda, raising concerns of potentially bigger problems in its neighboring countries as well as across the Middle East in general, the newspaper stated.
"We have concerns about the potential of Libyan militias Ansar al Shariah and others to continue to metastasize and spread to Algeria, Egypt … and spread to Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and other nations and become a serious security issue to the rest of the world," Gerald Feierstein, deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, was quoted by USA Today as saying.
According to the newspaper, the Syrian moderate rebels the United States partners with in trying to oust President Bashar Assad could end up acting against the interests of the United States, forging even bigger and serious problems.
USA Today also notes that while for the United States it is now more important to defeat the Islamic State (IS), the number one objective of the Syrian rebels, however, is to remove Assad. This, according to USA Today, has complicated its strategies in Syria.
The Islamic State was established by militants who were fighting in Syria until recently. They led an offensive on the northern and western parts of Iraq and at the end of June announced the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in the territories of Iraq and Syria over which they had control.
