BEIRUT: When the uprising against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad took hold in March last year, it was defined initially as a confrontation pitting peaceful democracy-inspired protesters against a corrupt and sclerotic autocracy. Nearly a year later and with more than 5,400 people dead, the struggle is shaping into an Sunni-led insurgency against an entrenched Alawite elite.The rebel Free Syrian Army has claimed responsibility for a growing number of attacks against the regular Syrian army in recent weeks, winning popular support on the ground, stealing the spotlight from a fractious exiled political opposition and helping transform the confrontation into an armed conflict. Today, it is the FSA, not the bickering civilian political opposition, that is defining the direction of the struggle against the Assad regime.

The failure to reach an international concensus at the United Nations Security Council last Saturday has dashed hopes for now of a diplomatic solution to the worsening crisis in Syria. While the U.S., Russia, Europe, Turkey and Arab states scramble to try and revive the diplomatic track, there is growing – albeit cautious – interest in exploring the possibility of a military solution to break the impasse.

A direct Western-led military intervention is being discounted for now. But Western and Arab countries are mulling an option of military support for the FSA in the hope that a campaign of attrition will wear down the regular Syrian forces and eventually undermine the Assad regime. The notion is already winning public support in Washington. U.S. senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain have both called for some level of support to be given the FSA, while Republican presidential nominee Newt Gingrich has recommended “supplying weapons” and providing the necessary backing to the Syrian opposition. It is rumored – but not proven – that Qatar already may be supplying funds and weapons to the FSA. One report suggested that the Qataris are ready to supply Milan anti-tank missiles to the opposition once a reliable channel has been found to smuggle the weapons into Syria.

Still, any Western or Arab military support for the ill-equipped FSA almost guarantees a prolongation and intensification of a conflict that already has killed several thousand people and brought the country close to the brink of a sectarian civil war.

“I understand the moral outrage that has led some to demand military intervention. But few simple military solutions present themselves,” said Andrew Exum, a military analyst at the Washington-based Center for a New American Security and author of the Abu Muqawama counterinsurgency blog.

Still, there is little international appetite to replicate last year’s NATO mission in Libya which helped topple Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

A Western intervention in Syria – even if limited to setting up no-fly zones or safe havens – poses far greater challenges than in Libya. Syria’s population density is almost 30 times greater than that of Libya and is mainly packed into a handful of cities, which increases the risk of civilian casualties. The Syrian army is five times larger than the former Libyan army under Gadhafi and much better equipped. Although most of Syria’s anti-aircraft missile systems are ageing or obsolete, its air defense network is sufficiently large to pose a challenge to Western aircraft seeking to destroy them prior to policing a no-fly zone. The recent transfer from Russia to Syria of supersonic P-800 Yakhont anti-ship missiles would represent a grave threat to an amphibious task force off the Syrian coast.

“The Syrians will almost certainly resist any intrusion into their sovereignty, so to execute either a NFZ [no-fly zone] or safe haven would mean a fairly extensive air war to reduce Syrian air defenses,” Exum said. “We should also note that any such air operations would take place in some of the most militarily and politically sensitive airspace on Earth.”

Syria sits at the nexus of several volatile geopolitical fault lines in the Middle East. The looming fate for Syria is that it could replicate the role played by Lebanon in the 1980s – a country beset by civil wars and subject to regional and international meddling.

“Syria is already an arena for proxy competition between Saudi Arabia and its allies and [rival] Iran and its allies,” said Aram Nerguizian, a military analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and author of a report published in December on the risks of military intervention in Syria. “Anything that would involve direct Western intervention would be deeply destabilizing at the regional level.”

However, backing the Free Syrian Army is seen by some as a more palatable alternative to direct intervention. The FSA is composed of battalion-sized units of deserters from the regular army and civilian volunteers. The FSA’s hit-and-run guerrilla-style tactics have helped it establish a few territorial pockets, mainly in the northern Idlib province, some districts of Homs and in Zabadani near the border with Lebanon. But it is lightly armed, suffers from a shortage of weapons and ammunition and lacks a cohesive command and control structure. Furthermore, a dispute appears to have arisen among senior opposition commanders. On Monday, Gen. Mustafa Ahmad al-Sheikh, the most senior officer to have deserted the Syrian army, announced the creation of the Higher Revolutionary Council to oversee military operations. But Col. Riad al-Assad, who heads the FSA from Turkey, refuses to recognize the new council. Col. Assad founded the FSA in August last year, but is unlikely to cede command just because a more senior officer subsequently chooses to defect. By the same token, a defecting general will not take orders from a lowly colonel simply because the colonel chose to join the opposition ahead of him. Issues such as these would have to be addressed before foreign states would commit to a program of support for the FSA.

Leadership disputes aside, turning the FSA into a coherent military force will require the “coordinated action by the intelligence services of a coalition of the willing,” said Jeffrey White, a military analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The FSA, he said, would need an assured supply of arms and ammunition – especially anti-tank missiles – secured means of communication, advice on how to coordinate operations across different regions of Syria, and intelligence on Syrian army operations and vulnerable military infrastructure.

“The intelligence services of the U.S., the U.K., France, Turkey, Jordan and other states in the region have the know-how and capabilities to do these kinds of things,” White said. “It would be important to have cooperation from one or more of the states bordering Syria, especially Turkey, in order to establish base facilities, training camps, supply routes and infiltration routes.”