Page 2 of
2 Looking into the Syrian
abyss By
Derek Henry Flood
Syria borders a newly friendly
Iraq devoid of US troops, has the rhetorical
backing of Hassan Nasrallah's Hezbollah in Lebanon
and is receiving copious amounts of Iranian
assistance by many accounts.
There are also Shi'ite fears
of what a Sunni-dominated Syria would look like.
Following Hafez al-Assad's 1982 scorched earth
operation smashing the Muslim Brotherhood revolt
in Hama, many Syrians went into exile in Saudi
Arabia and other GCC Wahabbi states working as
teachers and engineers.
The
removal of the Shi'ite-offshoot Alawite government
in Damascus could be a blow to the resurgent
Shi'ites who have consolidated power in Iraq and
Lebanon in the last decade. Maliki has also
expressed concern that a Sunni Syria may stoke
Sunni
nationalism in western Iraq's
al-Anbar governorate along the border with Syria's
Deir ez-Zor governorate, a hotbed of the rebellion
against Assad.
Iraq's Maliki may be
supporting Assad in part to prevent the further
Balkanization of Iraq. Although allowed for in
Iraq's constitution under Article 140, following
the threat of creating a Sunni semi-autonomous
region comprised of al-Anbar, Salahuddin and
Diyala governorates in the autumn of 2011, Maliki
insists that Iraq will not be further split along
sectarian lines.
In a period of renewed
sectarian tensions within Iraq, Maliki likely
views key to his own political survival that
neighboring Syria not disintegrate along sectarian
lines even more complex than Iraq's own when
factoring in the Druze and Alawite minorities.
The
rather swift, NATO-enabled fall of Gaddafi's Libya
will not be repeated in Syria. The ethnic and
religious mosaic of Syria coupled with an entirely
different geopolitical reality means that without
any kind of decisive intervention or overt
"foreign conspiracy" as Assad terms it, Syria may
be more of a long smolder than a powder keg.
The
Arab League monitoring mission was a farce from
the start, quickly falling into disarray.
Unfortunately for those in the Free Syrian Army
who are wishing for a no-fly zone forcing the
implementation of a cordon sanitaire, there are
both American and French presidential elections on
the horizon.
When asked whether it was
inevitable that Syria would descend into a
sectarian war of which Iraq's Maliki along with a
number of Western analysts have warned, the Syrian
dissidents stated that this scenario was not a
foregone conclusion.
They said that a civil war
was sure to come after the eventual fall of the
regime but that a conflict of a purely sectarian
nature could be avoided while there was still
time. The more civilians are killed each day, they
said, the more feelings of vengeance are becoming
entrenched in the national psyche.
The
longer any kind of armed humanitarian intervention
is put off while organizations from the GCC to the
United Nations to NATO debate about just what to
do, the bloodier a Syria after Assad's fall will
be. They cited recent shelling in Homs' Bab
Tadmour neighborhood in which an estimate 62
civilians were killed and an incident in Hama's
Bab Kabli in which another 18 civilians were
killed as to the constant veracity of the regime's
assaults faced by ordinary Syrians each day.
The
sand was running through the hourglass for any
kind of peaceful transition of power in this
light. The longer the fighting drags on where
lightly armed rebels face the regime's heavy
weaponry while civilians take the brunt of the
casualties, the less likely any kind of negotiated
settlement can be reached, according to Asia Times
Online's interviewees.
The
"Libyan model" is starting to look more like a
one-off operation that was politically acceptable
in the West and the GCC but is far too risky in a
much more complex Syria, especially in an election
year.
Asia Times Online asked about
one of Western analysts' justifications for not
rushing to the Free Syrian Army's aid in the way
it had been done in Libya with the fighters of the
National Transitional Council: Syria has no
equivalent to Benghazi. The rebels in the Free
Syrian Army hold pockets of particular second tier
cities and now some smaller towns like Zabadani
northwest of the Syrian capital, but skeptics of a
nationwide rebellion have pointed to the lack of
any kind of sustained uprising in either downtown
Damascus or central Aleppo.
Asia
Times Online was told that a major factor were the
transnational logistics needed to undergird an
armed rebellion. Cities and towns near the borders
with Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Turkey could be
supplied with weapons and materiel. Fighters can
also use these states as temporary sanctuaries to
organize and regroup.
Aleppo and Damascus, the
narrative goes, have been largely free of both
mass people power movements or armed insurrection
because locals know that would be quickly crushed.
The only exception in their view was Hama which
has maintained a sustained uprising against great
odds and paid a correspondingly heavy price. An
example of collective punishment is being set in
Hama today as it was 30 years ago.
Though Iraq and Syria were
furious rivals for decades in the Ba'ath party's
schism regarding whether Baghdad or Damascus was
the true leader of the Arab world. In the view of
the Syrians, the democratization by force of Iraq
was far different than the popular unrest in
Syria.
The overthrow of Saddam
Hussein brought a stifled Shi'ite majority to
power. The overthrow of Assad's Alawite regime
could remove not only an air and land logistical
bridge to arming Hezbollah in Lebanon but would
also bring a Sunni majority to power that could
very well be hostile to Iran's interests in both
Syria and Lebanon.
For Iran to be severed from
Hezbollah would be a disaster for the ideologues
in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps whose
desire to project Iranian power across the region
all the way to the Mediterranean is paramount.
They see the Iranian agenda as countervailing to
broader lurches toward greater freedom across the
Arab world that began at the end of 2010 with the
self-immolation of an emasculated street vendor in
Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia.
In a world where both Iran
and Israel need each other as enemies to
perpetuate their respective foreign policies, the
Syrian uprising turned revolution throws each of
these narratives off the rails. The men
interviewed claimed that Arabic-speaking Iranian
snipers have been helping to train and bolster the
shabiha militiamen who are defending Assad's
interests all along the lengthy Turkish frontier.
Iran portrays itself as first
among equals in the global Palestinian cause and
as the primary state actor that defines itself in
opposition to Zionism.
The
Syrian dissidents also told Asia Times Online that
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's Iran did not want
to see a democratic Syria for entirely domestic
reasons. Tehran does not want a repeat of the
"Green" movement episode in 2009 should ordinary
Iranians witness a full-scale revolution in
Damascus.
Assad's handling of what
began as largely non-violent protests mimicked
Ahmadinejad's handling of the call for reform in
Iran in June and July of 2009. The "Green"
movement in Iran called for reform as the Syrians
had initially with the key difference being that
it occurred in isolation.
Protests in the Arab world are components
in a larger chain reaction of popular resentment
and economic despair. Assad has pledged
significant reforms since coming to power after
the death of his father in 2000 which have never
materialized. His handling of the uprising has
morphed it into what is currently a low intensity
civil war.
For now it appears Assad will
cling to power far longer than some of the other
Arab strongmen in part because of his own internal
and familial sect driven allegiances. Assad,
unlike Gaddafi's weaker African clients, has a
host of nearby allies who can and are duly coming
to his aide.
Derek Henry Flood
is a freelance journalist specializing in the
Middle East and South and Central Asia and is the
editor of the Jamestown Foundation's Militant
Leadership Monitor. He blogs at
the-war-diaries.com. Follow Derek on Twiiter
@DerekHenryFlood
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