The gloves are off, both inside Syria and
at the United Nations Security Council: this is
the overwhelming impression one gets after the
latest restive weekend in the Middle East.
Though reports vary and cannot be verified
(for the same reason, the United Nations stopped
counting the dead last month), hundreds were
allegedly killed by "indiscriminate" army shelling
in the city of Homs on Friday, and dozens more in
the rest of the country. The bloodshed reportedly
continued on Saturday and Sunday.
Meanwhile at the United Nations Security
Council, Russia and China vetoed an Arab
League-sponsored resolution calling on
Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad to step down on Saturday, ending a
diplomatic intrigue that had gone on for days. All
other 13 members of the council, including the
sole Arab representative Morocco (the sponsor of
the resolution), voted in favor.
Whether
the two developments are related - an important
question in and of itself - is closely linked to
the question whether Assad's show of force is a
sign of arrogance or weakness. He may well be
trying to replicate, so far on a smaller scale,
the massacre his father committed in the city of
Hama in 1982 - where between 10,000 and 40,000
people were killed following a Sunni Muslim
rebellion.
An interpretation apologetic to
the regime would point out all the signs of
foreign involvement in funding the rebels and
claim that trying to pass a resolution at the UN
calling for Assad's ouster finally convinced him
that nothing short of his father's brutality would
help him.
Certainly, starting such a
bloody offensive right before a decisive vote at
the UN Security Council would count as a very
defiant act, and very humiliating to the United
States and the Arab League. The same step,
however, could be motivated by desperation. The
Russian and Chinese vetoes did not appear certain
until the last moment, and Assad may well have
felt serious doubts whether or not they would come
through. Even now it is not clear for how long his
allies will have his back. He may well be feeling
that he is running out of time.
Today, a
decision to commit a large-scale massacre is more
fateful even than it was back in 1982. Despite the
frequent blackouts and the intense media
censorship, the technology available to the
average person, even in Syria, makes it impossible
to hide such an atrocity for long. It is a very
risky course to take, and not just because of the
international outcry (and possible intervention
down the road): it could well alienate some of the
last genuine regime supporters.
Graphic
videos, reportedly taken by activists in Homs and
circulated on YouTube and Twitter, show mutilated
children and adult bodies; unconfirmed reports
claim that at least two neighborhoods of the city
were indiscriminately hit with hundreds of shells
by the army. If confirmed, this would certainly
radicalize the population further. Something
similar happened in June 2011, when a bloody
exchange in the particularly sensitive city of
Hama (the site of the 1982 massacre) intensified
the protests and the rebellion. [1]
Besides, though the Syrian army has so far
held together, desertion rates are growing and
numerous reports from different sources claim that
a sense of chaos is growing throughout the
country. A general who defected in November 2011
told The Daily Telegraph that "the Syrian army
combat readiness I would put at 40% for hardware
and 32% for personnel", predicting that "the army
will collapse during February". [2]
As the
Telegraph points out, General al-Sheikh clearly
had a strong interest in manipulating his account,
and "few analysts or diplomats would agree with
his view, believing that the regime, though
weakened, has the resilience to cling on to power
for months, if not years". Still, the Syrian army
is clearly showing signs of stress, as
demonstrated by the very existence of the Free
Syrian Army, a network of army deserters whose
number is estimated at between 10,000 and 25,000
people.
Another sign of the growing
weakness of the Syrian regime is the reported use
of by rebels of smuggling networks originally
cultivated by Assad in Lebanon as a means of
supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon. [3]
Assad's reliance on apparent Cold-War
tactics was similarly replicated by Russia and
China at the UN. Sources close to the Russian
analyst community suggest that a kind of grand
bargain may have taken place under the table at
the UN, with Russia "receiving" Syria from the
United States "in exchange" for Iran.
While this information has been impossible
to verify, it deserves a brief consideration, even
though purely in the realm of speculation. It
would resonate to an extent with the hard line
taken by Moscow and with the presence of the only
Russian aircraft career at the Syrian city of
Tartus (the only Russian naval base in the
Mediterranean).
It would also resonate
with the prognoses of an imminent confrontation
between the United States and Iran, which have
filled the Russian blogosphere in the last months
and which apparently reflect much of Russian
goestrategic thinking.
Despite the loud
protests, the United States may also be less
unhappy than it seems. The intervention in Libya
last year cost billions of dollars, and one could
expect a similar intervention in Syria to cost
even more. The fact that Assad apparently invested
over two billion euros (US$2.52 billion) in air
defenses over the last couple of years [4] further
softens any appetite for overt intervention, as
does his regime's possession of thousands of
missiles, some tipped with chemical weapons.
Notably, a reorientation of Assad would
also redefine the regional strategic equation for
Israel. While currently the Israeli government
seems to be quietly rooting against Assad, it
wasn't always so. As recently as a year ago, many
Israeli politicians and high-ranking security
officials were just-as-quietly rooting for him,
under the assumption that "the devil we know is
better than the devil we don't".
What
changed their minds was reportedly the calculation
that if Assad survives, he would be completely
reliant on Iranian aid, and would be essentially a
conduit of Iranian policy on the Levant, much more
so than before. The Syrian regime's decision to
send hundreds of Palestinians to run the Israeli
border in May, alongside threats by people in
Assad's circle to start a war of Israel if pressed
further by the international community, also
contributed to that outcome.
If, however,
Iran is taken out of the picture and Assad is left
to the mercy of the Russians, this might change
things for the Israelis once again. It could,
theoretically, be a way for the Russians to take
their cut from the dismembering of the Iranian
alliance.
Yet the probability of such a
scenario would depend not only on a hypothetical
deal being discussed at the United Nations, but
also on the Syrian regime's ability to survive,
especially in the long run. Moscow may be in a
position to help the faltering Syrian economy as
well, but regardless of what it says and does now,
if Assad shows signs of fatal weakness, the
Kremlin will dispense with him mercilessly. Rumor
has it that the Russians are simultaneously
negotiating with the rebels a deal to keep the
port of Tartus if Assad falls.
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