The unmaking of Syria: beneath the fog
Issa Khalaf <
http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/issa-khalaf> 19 December
2012
One can no longer say that Syria is a moderate, pragmatic, stabilizing and
secular regional centre keeping extremism at bay - a natural function of its
geography, relatively diverse ethno-sectarian make-up, as well as the
political sophistication of its people.
Everything about Syria is steeped in miasma: is this conflict politically
and sociologically definable as a civil war? Has it become a sectarian war?
How strong and widespread is the Salafist (and global Jihadi) presence? Was
militarization wise or did the opposition have no choice in this regard? Are
the armed groups able to defeat the regime's forces or will there be a
perpetual, bloody stalemate whose only certainty is Syria's complete
physical destruction and long-term division? Is a negotiated outcome, that
is, a political solution the only possibility, or is it uninformed to speak
of political solutions at this stage of the conflict?
Despite this fog, there are, in my mind, several certainties. One, Syria is
not a clear-cut case of bad regime versus good society, for that society is
not at one regarding the violent overthrow of the state. This is not a mass,
democratic revolution but a Sunni rebellion. Any spontaneity to its genesis,
including the goal of non-violent resistance, came to a speedy end, provided
with a significant impetus by the flow of foreign arms, money, and
intelligence, including from the US. A substantial 'silent' majority
desperately wishes to avoid Syria's disintegration because they simply love
their country, not the regime or armed rebels, and prefer reform and a
negotiated settlement.
Two, it is false to equate, as the regime portrays it, every Syrian's
opposition to the Ba'athi state with acting on behalf of Zionists and
imperialists, and equally false to suggest that advocating a negotiated
settlement equates to buying into the regime's self-narrative of an
indispensable anti-imperialist frontline.
Three, foreign powers, especially Washington, several of its NATO allies,
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, the latter essentially monarchic police
states, are violating international law in pursuing subversion and violent
regime change, and share primary responsibility for the radicalization,
destabilization, and horrific violence inflicted on the people of Syria.
Washington is interested in regime change, not in ensuring that neither side
prevails to force a settlement.
Four, the fundamental truth is the Syrian people's case for dignity and
freedom, rights brutally denied and violated for so long by fearsome regimes
such as the Syrian Ba'ath. The revolt against the Ba'athist regime, despite
its now tainted nature, is not a conspiracy.
Five, despite Syria's social diversity and divided loyalties, the fact that
the regime has many supporters, and that a majority desires peaceful change,
calls for the Syrian socio-political system to become no less than a civil,
human rights-respecting, citizenship-based state. Still, Syria's internal
complexity and regional role requires special care and objective realism.
Take Aleppo as a microcosm of Syrian complexity, the largest Syrian city
containing some 82% Sunnis. Listening to the western, Qatari, or Saudi
media, one would think that the city erupted into spontaneous rebellion and
from the beginning was fighting a heroic war against the regime's military
and security forces. By objective accounts, however, Aleppo's denizens
supported the Damascus government by a large majority, many of them paying
the price of Free Syrian Army reprisals. Now, since the penetration of armed
groups and the violent zealotry of Salafists and foreign Jihadis, with their
suicide bombings, kidnappings, and beheadings, looting and rape, as well as
heavy, indiscriminate government firepower leading to the slow obliteration
of this great historic and commercial city - one wonders what has happened
to its people and their loyalties.
We only know that government forces and loyalists still hold the city, minus
a couple of districts, as they do most of the country. Countless people have
fled, many of their empty homes looted and ransacked by their would-be
liberators, fearful of returning to rebel reprisals. Aleppo's Islamist
leaning al-Tawhid Division, ostensibly part of the FSA, contains
numerous-armed factions, including many Salafi Islamists, who, themselves,
are varied, ranging from Brotherhood types to al-Qaida-like extremists.
There is also quite noticeable and significant Salafi literalist influence
among the armed rebels generally. The disparate factions that make up the
FSA are largely Islamist-dominated. Its battalions contain thousands of
fighters of the Salafi/Jihadi group, Jabhat al-Nusra, a mainstay of the
al-Tawhid in Aleppo.
In a situation of decentralized and disparate commands, such people are
there at the front lines. All these groups, including the FSA, have an
uneasy, distrustful relationship with the newly minted National Coalition of
Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, as they previously did with the now
discarded Syrian National Council, and as they have with the western powers.
Fortunately, Syria does not have a tradition of extremist political Islam.
On the contrary, given its pluralist diversity, its geostrategic location,
and secular nationalist history, Jihadi-type extremism does not fit in
Syria.
The chaos and physical destruction, the ever-present danger of the
regime-Sunni war transmuting into a sectarian civil war are deeply worrying,
and the Salafists thrive on such an environment. No question, though, in its
militarist, violent manifestations, this is essentially a rebellion of the
Sunni Muslims, at core from the regions of Hama and Homs, and battle-tested
foreigners, including Salafis, supported by the Sunni autocracies and
wealthy donors of the peninsula. It is unlikely that a literalist Salafist
regime will come to power, much less global Jihadis, but likely that a
Sunni-Brotherhood dominated regime, sidelining the National Coalition, will.
The defunct National Council's main obsession was arming without a clear
political programme. The new National Coalition has got itself political
recognition as a sort of provisional government-even as Syria remains a
member state of the UN led by the al-Assad government-from Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, France, Britain, and Turkey, followed by the US, which, however,
consigned one rebel group, the Jabha, to its terrorist blacklist. (This
prompted all the rest of the armed rebel groups to declare their support for
the Jabha.)
Western support is predicated on the promise that the Coalition will unify
the opposition, at least act as an umbrella, and be a better watchdog that
presumes to undertake the impossible, even inane, task of vouching for and
endorsing those groups deserving of armed support, which Washington reckons
amounts to two-thirds of the fighting groups and their commanders. These
parties essentially cajoled through the expansion of the new Coalition's
membership to three times the previous Council's size and which includes
most of the old Council's members. The new body's composition is a safeguard
to dilute Islamist influence.
Washington in particular rejected the Brotherhood-dominated Council because
it could not deliver unity, or control or exclude extremist Islamists, even
though Council members did what the US wanted most of all: they talked about
peace and good relations with Israel.
Whether the US is willing to advocate a negotiated solution is in my view
not an open question. Its apparent caution in providing advanced, or heavy,
weaponry, unlike the reckless monarchic allies it shakily controls, is due
to its fear of uncontrolled, unmanaged violence leading to an incompliant,
even hostile, Islamist regime. The Obama administration's ambivalence stems
from the tension between aggressive regional allies and its recognition of
several realities: the proliferation of extremist groups, the possibility of
a bloody stalemate that will destabilize the region, and the potential that
an armed group will get its hands on chemical weapons.
Thus, Washington's most urgent and immediate goal, when not obstructing UN
peace and dialogue missions, is to pressure the Coalition to construct a
centralized military command and political unity and ferret out the
extremists, supposedly one-third of the armed rebels. Its version of a
negotiated solution is not genuine internal talks between Damascus and the
rebels, but Assad's departure, which Washington defines as a 'transition',
but which is actually a precondition.
This, the US imagines, would avoid the concomitant augmentation of Salafi
extremist power caused by protracted violence and keep international law and
Russia out of the equation, ensuring an obeisant Coalition's rule.
Washington's conception of ending Syrian suffering is not via morally,
legally, diplomatically urgent negotiations between rebels and government.
Instead, it repeatedly stresses Assad's inevitably violent downfall, as only
he is responsible for his people's calamity, thereby absolving it and its
allies of complicity in Syria's torment and prolongation of this horrific
upheaval.
Yet the foreign arming of the rebels - that is, the militarization of this
conflict - has been Syria's worst affliction. For Syria does not need lethal
arms and war, but a coherent, truly representative opposition built without
interference, and ready to find a negotiated political solution to violent
conflict. This requires internal Syrian national agreement on a transitional
regime change through supervised elections. This at least is the ideal,
though not the reality; for everyone, from assorted rebels, hell bent on
acquiring advanced weaponry to Coalition members to Washington to local Gulf
regimes, wants Assad's head. The Alawite core of the regime not surprisingly
sees this as an existential threat.
What prevails in Syria today is maddening ambiguity and galling hypocrisy on
all sides: of the relationship between the Coalition and armed rebels, the
craziness of inter-Arab politics, Gulf and Turkish hatred of the Shi'i
Alawite Syrian regime-which I call the Sunni Syndrome-nation-destroying
French and British actions characterized as advocacy of democracy, and
single-minded US control of Syria couched as constructive, responsible
diplomacy.
With multiple external players violently pursuing their own agendas
supporting multiple factions with their own visions, such as these are, the
chance of Syrians reaching a negotiated political solution, much less a
compromise leading to such, is virtually nil. In reality, the Ba'ath, the
Syrian regime, al-Assad, the socio-political system that prevailed in Syria
for nearly a half century all have ended, or at least will not be restored.
This in itself is extraordinary. Ultimately, the horrific violence and
terrorism from both the state and its opponents is the responsibility of the
regime, for it chose to let the country go to hell, and unwittingly invited
outside intervention, rather than peacefully oversee a democratic transition
in the early phase of the rebellion.
This is an enduring quality of Arab ruling regimes, mostly because they lack
fundamental legitimacy and rule over divided societies. One can no longer
say Syria is what it used to be, a moderate, pragmatic, stabilizing and
secular regional centre keeping extremism at bay. This political role is a
natural function of its geography and relatively diverse ethno-sectarian
make-up, as well as the political sophistication of its people. Under
radically changing circumstances, most importantly, a weakened and fractured
Syria, it may not be able to play that role again for decades to come. The
west and their autocratic Middle Eastern allies are destroying one ruling
group in exchange for another dominated by Brotherhood Islamists. And those
Salafists/Jihadists on the front lines will not only want a share of power,
but some of them may continue post-Assad violence and insurgency, to the
continuing danger of many Syrians
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Received on Wed Dec 19 2012 - 17:46:51 EST
