America can stop the ‘barrel bombs’ in Syria

Mohammed Alaa Ghanem

"As few as 20 MANPADS distributed to moderate Syrian rebel groups would make Assad regime pilots think twice before agreeing to decimate civilian areas through barrel bombings. And the added risk to civilian airliners would be extremely small, especially if the MANPADS were outfitted with the technological fixes under discussion.
For the sake of the thousands of Syrians killed or injured by barrel bombings — including schoolchildren in Aleppo who believed in the United States — we ask the American people to assume this risk and support the provision of MANPADS to carefully vetted elements of the Syrian opposition."