As Bashar Assad Shows His Defiance, Syria Nears Its Existential Cliff
By <
http://world.time.com/author/tkaron2010/> Tony KaronJan. 06, 2013
<
http://world.time.com/2013/01/06/as-bashar-assad-shows-his-defiance-syria-n
ears-its-existential-cliff/#comments> 9 Comments
If the geological metaphor fashionable in
<
http://topics.time.com/washington/> Washington these days can be applied in
Damascus, then Syria is moving perilously closer toward an existential
cliff. President <
http://topics.time.com/bashar-assad/> Bashar Assad on
Sunday delivered a dramatic aria of defiance from the stage of the Damascus
<
http://topics.time.com/opera/> Opera House, rallying his base for a fight
to the finish against a 21-month-old rebellion he dismissed as an unholy
alliance between the West and al-Qaeda. The hour-long speech offered little
hope that Assad might be about to end the civil war that has killed
<
http://world.time.com/2013/01/03/syrias-rising-death-toll-the-darkness-befo
re-the-dawn-or-symptom-of-a-grinding-stalemate/> upwards of 60,000 Syrians
by heeding the rebels’ central demand: that he step down. Indeed, Assad
rejected any negotiations with an opposition he branded “enemies of God and
puppets of the West.” He would only negotiate, he vowed, “with the master,
not the servants” — a signal, perhaps, that his real message was directed at
Western and regional powers. Condensed to a tweet, such a message might
read: “Aprés moi, le déluge. Accept my terms, or own the consequences of
Syria’s breakup — which we all know you’re desperate to avoid.”
Assad did, of course,
<
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/06/us-syria-crisis-speech-idUSBRE905
07220130106> offer settlement terms, but those were not much different from
his previous demands: rebels would cease attacks and outsider powers would
stop backing them; state control over border crossings (many now in rebel
hands) would be restored, and the regime would convene a “national dialogue
conference” with those who reject violence in order to negotiate a new
constitution and open the way for a political transition. Unsurprisingly,
his terms were summarily rejected by opposition spokesmen who said the
regime had
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/06/syrian-opposition-bashar-al-ass
ad?intcmp=239> offered no meaningful concessions. The U.S. State Department
<
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2013/01/202504.htm> dismissed Assad’s
proposals as “detached from reality” and as “yet another attempt to cling to
power.” Until now, the opposition has insisted that negotiations are
possible only when Assad agrees to go.
(PHOTOS: <
http://lightbox.time.com/2012/04/12/victims-of-assad/#1> The
Victims of Assad: Photographs by Peter Hapak)
“That was not the speech of a man seeking a compromise,” says Syria expert
Joshua Landis of the University of Oklahoma. “That was the speech of a man
who believes his side can win. He offered no ray of hope that a political
solution might be possible but instead sought to rally the troops and remind
the West of the stakes.” With neither the opposition nor Assad willing to
talk to each other, mediation efforts by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi,
strongly backed by Russia, are going nowhere. “Assad’s speech also
challenges the West to rethink its policy, because the war is nowhere near
an end,” says Landis. “The rebels are not getting nearly the level of
outside support they’d need to destroy the regime’s military. And Assad
seems to be warning that Syria itself could be destroyed in the process of
bringing down his regime.”
While there’s a common perception in Western capitals that the regime is on
its last legs, there are plenty of signs on the ground that it remains very
much intact — and very dangerous. Assad’s security forces have been forced
to relinquish control of many rural areas and have even ceded the
impoverished peripheries of a number of Syrian cities, but the regime has
escalated its attacks on areas under rebel control in recent months,
<
http://world.time.com/2012/12/24/assads-roll-of-the-dice-is-winter-coming-f
or-the-syrian-rebellion/> deliberately imposing a heavier toll in
humanitarian suffering. And rebels in many areas appear
<
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/04/syria-rebels-arms-drying-up?int
cmp=239> desperately short of funds and military resources, despite promises
of expanded support from outside powers.
(PHOTOS: <
http://lightbox.time.com/2011/08/19/syria-decisively-seen/#1>
Syria, Decisively Seen)
Assad may have also been playing on the West’s ambivalence at the prospect
of a rebel military victory by harping on the al-Qaeda theme. Washington
last month
<
http://world.time.com/2012/12/11/why-the-u-s-has-designated-one-anti-assad-
group-as-terrorist/> designated Jabhat al-Nusra, an al-Qaeda-inspired
militia
<
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/01/03/5090680/nusra-front-reportedly-leading.htm
l#storylink=cpy> at the forefront of rebel fighting forces, as an
international terrorist organization — a move that drew howls of protest,
even from the leadership of the U.S.-backed Syrian National Coalition.
Assad has survived, as the New York Times
<
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/05/world/middleeast/undecided-syrians-could-
tip-balance-of-rebellion.html?ref=world&_r=2&> noted last Friday, because
almost two years into the rebellion, “a critical bloc of Syrians remains on
the fence,” skeptical of both the regime and of the rebels. Large numbers of
Alawite and Christians who detest Assad and his regime remain unwilling to
embrace what appears to many of them as a sectarian, Sunni Islamist
rebellion. As
<
http://world.time.com/2012/01/12/is-syrias-bashar-assad-the-next-gaddafi-or
-could-he-be-the-middle-easts-milosevic/> Slobodan Milosevic had done in
Yugoslavia, Assad has created a kill-or-be-killed mind-set among his core
constituencies.
That’s not a reality easily altered by the best efforts of Western powers to
foster
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-a-syrian-way-out-of-t
he-civil-war/2013/01/04/4bd67e20-5619-11e2-bf3e-76c0a789346f_print.html>
reconciliation plans in distant capitals in the hope that these will
convince most of the Alawite and Christian minorities — and even many urban,
wealthier Sunnis — that they have nothing to fear from a rebel victory.
Those closest to the action are often less convinced of the alternative
represented by the armed rebels, even if they’re appalled by the regime’s
brutality. Grotesque scenes of Alawite soldiers being tortured to death by
rebel captors may not have gotten much international-media air play, but
they’ve gone viral on YouTube among the communities that fear for their fate
should Assad be toppled.
Fred C. Hof, who until last September was the U.S. State Department’s
special adviser for the transition in Syria,
<
http://www.acus.org/viewpoint/syria-2013-will-poison-pill-sectarianism-work
> wrote last week of the sectarian danger in Syria:
Some regime opponents insist … that the opposition (armed and not) remains
overwhelmingly committed to a Syria of citizenship, one permitting no civil
distinction among Sunni, Alawite, Christian, Kurd, Ismaili, Turkman, Druze,
and so forth. One hopes they are accurate and truthful, and not merely
trying to appeal to the sensibilities of Americans who perhaps do not
understand how the world really works (at least in Syria). And yet how many
members of Syrian minorities — fully one-third of the country’s population —
accept these proffered reassurances? Probably no more than a handful do. And
why should they? What would weigh heavier on the brain of a non-Sunni Arab
(or a Sunni Arab committed to secular governance): the occasional word about
the primacy of citizenship, or the televised chanting of hirsute warriors
and the exaltation by [Jabhat al-Nusra] in reaction to the fully justified
(if ill-timed) U.S. designation of the group as terrorist?
In sum, the Assad regime has hijacked the Alawite community and large
components of other minorities, holding them hostage to the survival of rule
by clan and clique … If in the end Syria is really akin to Lebanon in terms
of the supremacy of sectarian identification, it is finished.
That may be exactly why Assad has chosen to force what began as a peaceful
protest movement for democracy onto the terrain of a sectarian civil war.
This way, the stakes for millions of Syrians, and for regional stakeholders,
are that much higher.
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Received on Mon Jan 07 2013 - 18:46:42 EST
