PRESIDENT Barack Obama is considering arming Syrian rebels in a bid to end a civil war that is now into its third year.

There are growing concerns that President Bashar al-Assad may be gaining the upper hand in the conflict that has claimed at least 80,000 lives and displaced millions more, as government forces recently captured the strategic key town of Qusair.

Mr Assad’s forces are said to be preparing for an assault on the city of Aleppo.

A decision to approve military aid for Syria’s opposition forces could come within the next few days. US Secretary of State, John Kerry, postponed a Middle East trip to attend a Syrian summit in Washington instead.

Opposition leaders in Syria have warned the White House their rebellion could soon face devastating losses without greater support from the United States.

Syria’s precarious position in the heart of the Middle East makes the conflict extremely unpredictable.

The major stumbling block of supplying arms to rebels remains the fear that Al-Qaeda linked and other extremists fighting alongside anti-Assad militias could end up with the weapons.

Washington is still examining evidence that Assad’s forces may have used chemical weapons against the rebels – something Mr Obama has warned Assad would cross a ‘red line’ in provoking swift US military intervention.

Britain and France claim they already have substantive evidence that Assad’s forces have used low levels of the deadly nerve gas sarin in several attacks on rebels, which they have presented to the UN.

OPINION

The threat to world peace and prosperity posed by the bloody civil war in Syria is impossible to exaggerate. The shock-waves from the conflict between rival Islamic factions are spreading far beyond the country itself. The entire region is on the brink of being destabilised.

In Iraq, for example, supposedly rescued from tyranny by Allied forces in the war that ‘ended’ with American troops being withdrawn in December 2011, some 2,000 violent deaths have been recorded in the past two months alone.

In Turkey, Lebanon and Jordon, tensions are rising as hundreds of thousands of displaced refugees pour across the borders in pursuit of safe haven and refuge. Many thousands are in need of food and medical attention. The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has largely been prevented from attending the sick and dying as Assad has launched wave after wave of attacks on civilians on routes that should have been safeguarded as humanitarian corridors.

On the Golan Heights between Syria and Israel, after a 40-year ceasefire monitored by the United Nations, Austrian peacekeepers are pulling out as the area braces itself in becoming a war zone again.

In Syria, President Assad, far from being defeated, is being supported with Russian arms along with Hezbollah, the fanatically anti-Israeli terrorist group based in Lebanon.

Yet, this is the powder-keg into which President Obama is said to be on the verge of igniting a bigger flame. A decision is imminent on whether to send American arms to the beleaguered opposition forces.

Leaving aside the danger that Iran will retaliate by targeting Israel or US/UK interests in the region, the fact remains that the Syrian rebels (just like their counterparts in Libya two years ago), are riddled with factions hostile to the West – including Al-Qaeda.

Mr Obama, and the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, speak glibly of arming only ‘vetted, moderate rebel units’. The inherent risks of doing so should not be played down with an awareness that these weapons could end up in the hands of the perpetrators of 9/11.

No one can know the way to peace in Syria, the tense geopolitical situation in the region is a cocktail of extremism and hatred. If the United States and Britain have learned anything from the West’s recent past interventions in the Middle East, they must surely realise that ramping up the violence in Syria comes with grave dangers.