THE ROVING
EYE Syria
through a glass, darkly By Pepe
Escobar
The current Syrian drama is far
from the usual, clear-cut "good guys vs bad guys"
Hollywood shtick. The suspension of the Arab
League observers mission; the double veto by
Russia and China at the UN Security Council; the
increasing violence especially in Homs and some
Damascus suburbs: It is all leading to widespread
fears in the developing world of a Western-backed
armed insurrection trying to replicate the chaos
in Libya - a "liberated" country now run by
heavily weaponized militias. Syria
slipping into civil war would
open the door to an even more horrific regional
conflagration.
Here's an attempt to see
through the fog.
1. Why has the Bashar
al-Assad regime not fallen? Because the
majority of the Syrian population still supports
it (55%, according to a mid-December poll funded
by the Qatar Foundation. See "Arabs want Syria's
President Assad to go - opinion poll" [1], and
note how the headline distorts the result.
Assad can count on the army (no defections
from the top ranks); the business elite and the
middle class in the top cities, Damascus and
Aleppo; secular, well-educated Sunnis; and all the
minorities - from Christians to Kurds and Druze.
Even Syrians in favor of regime change - yet not
hardcore Islamists - refuse Western sanctions and
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-style
humanitarian bombing.
2. Is Assad
"isolated"? As much as US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton may wish it, and the White
House stresses "Assad must halt his campaign of
killing and crimes against his own people now" and
"must step aside" - no. The "international
community" proponents of regime change in Syria
are the NATOGCC (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization-Gulf Cooperation Council) - or, to be
really specific, Washington, London and Paris and
the oil-drenched sheikh puppets of the Persian
Gulf, most of all the House of Saud and Qatar.
Turkey is playing a very ambivalent game;
it hosts a NATO command and control center in
Hatay province, near the Syrian border, and at the
same time offers exile to Assad. Even Israel is at
a loss; they prefer the devil they know to an
unpredictably hostile post-Assad regime led by the
Muslim Brotherhood.
Assad is supported by
Iran; by the government in Baghdad (Iraq has
refused to impose sanctions); by Lebanon (the
same); and most of all by Russia (which does not
want to lose its naval base in Tartus) and trade
partner China. This means Syria's economy will not
be strangled (moreover, the country is used to
life under sanctions and does not have to worry
about a national debt). The BRICS group is
adamant; the Syria crisis has to be solved by
Syrians only.
3. What is the
opposition's game? The Syrian National
Council (SNC), an umbrella group led by Paris
exile Barhoun Galyan, claims to represent all
opposition forces. Inside Syria, its credibility
is dodgy. The SNC is affiliated with the Free
Syrian Army (FSA) - composed of weaponized Sunni
defectors, but mostly fragmented into armed gangs,
some of them directly infiltrated by Gulf
mercenaries. Even the Arab League report had to
acknowledge the FSA is killing civilians and
security forces, and bombing buildings, trains and
pipelines.
The armed opposition does not
have a central command; it is essentially local;
and does not hold heavy weapons. The civilian
opposition is divided - and has no political
program whatsoever, apart from "the people want
the downfall of the regime", taking a leaf from
Tahrir Square.
4. How are Syrians
themselves divided? Those who support the
regime see a foreign Zionist/American conspiracy -
with Turkey and parts of Europe as extras - bent
on breaking up Syria. And they see the armed
"terrorist" gangs - infiltrated by foreigners - as
solely responsible for the worst violence.
Dissidents and the fragmented civilian
opposition were always peaceful and unarmed. Then
they started to receive protection from military
defectors - who brought their light weapons with
them. They all dismiss the government version of
events as pure propaganda. For them, the real
armed "terrorists" are the sabbiha -
murderous paramilitary gangs paid by the
government. Sabbiha (which means "ghosts")
are essentially depicted as Alawis, Christians and
Druze, adults but also teenagers, sporting dark
glasses, white sneakers, colored armbands, and
armed with knives, batons and using fake names
among them; the leaders are bodybuilder-types
driving dark Mercedes.
Even mass rallies
are in conflict. The protest rallies
(muzaharat ) were confronted by the regime with
processions (masirat). It's unclear whether
the people who joined them were constrained civil
servants or moved by spontaneous decision. Syrian
state media depicts the protesters as agent
provocateurs or mercenaries and roundly dismisses
the anger of those who live under a harsh police
state with no political freedom.
An extra
dividing factor is that the UN death toll of over
5,000 people (so far) does not identify pro-regime
and opposition victims, and simply ignores the
over 2,000 dead Syrian army soldiers (their
funerals are on state TV virtually every day).
5. What do Christians think about all
this? The Christian West - who used to love
shopping for bargains in the Damascus souq -
should pay attention to how most Syrian Christians
see the protests. They fear that Sunnis in power
will crackdown on minorities (not only themselves
but also Druze and Alawites). They view the
majority of Sunnis as "ignorant" and "backward"
Islamic fanatics, without the slightest idea about
democracy, human rights or a slow, negotiated path
towards democracy.
This illiterate bunch,
according to them, lives in the periphery, have no
respect (or understanding) for life in the big
city, support the violence caused by armed gangs,
and want an Islamic state (by the way, essentially
what the House of Saud wants for Syria.) Secular
Sunnis for their part criticize Christians,
stressing that most Sunnis are businessmen and
entrepreneurs and sport liberal ideas - and
certainly don't want an Islamic state. It must be
stressed that the opposition is trans-confessional
- it does include Christians and even Alawis.
6. What's the Western strategy on the
ground? Borzou Daragahi from the Financial
Times has just confirmed that militias in Misrata,
in Libya, announced the deaths of three Libyan de
facto mercenaries in Syria. These Libyan
Transitional National Council assets landed in
Syria - alongside weapons stolen from Gaddafi's
warehouses - courtesy of NATO cargo planes.
For months now, as Asia Times Online has
reported, French and British special forces have
been training fighters in Iskenderun, in southern
Turkey. The Central Intelligence Agency is
involved in intel and communications.
The
FSA uses the ultra-porous Syrian-Turkish border at
will. Turkey built several refugee camps; and
Ankara hosts the leaders of both the SNC and FSA.
There's also the Jordanian front - the connection
to the heavy Islamist (and backward) Daraa. But
the Syrian-Jordanian border is infested with mines
and heavily patrolled; that implies a long
200-kilometer detour in the middle of the desert.
Most of all FSA fighters go back and forth
from Lebanon. The privileged smuggling route is
from the northern Bekaa valley in Lebanon toward
the opposition strongholds, the Sunni-majority
cities of Homs and Hama. There's another route
from the central Bekaa valley going south toward
the suburbs of Damascus (that explains how both
strongholds are being supplied). But the whole
thing is very dangerous, because Syrian ally
Hezbollah is very strong in the Bekaa valley.
7. Who's winning? Assad has
promised - once again this Tuesday to Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov - there will be a
new constitution and national elections by summer.
Half-hearted or not, this is an attempt at reform.
Yet the usual, unnamed "government
officials" have already leaked to CNN that the
White House has asked the Pentagon to simulate
game scenarios for a direct US military
intervention in favor of the rebels. So a NATOGCC
intervention bypassing the UN remains a solid
possibility; a false flag operation blamed on the
Assad regime might be the perfect casus belli.
8. And what about the Syria-Iran
connection? Syria is crucial to Iran's
sphere of influence in Southwest Asia/the eastern
flank of the Arab nation. BRICS members Russia and
China want to keep the status quo - because it
implies a regional balance of power that pins down
American hegemony. For China, uninterrupted
Iranian supplies of oil and gas are a matter of
extreme national security. On top of it, if the US
is tied up in the Middle East, so the much-touted
Obama administration/Pentagon "pivot" towards
Asia, and especially the South China Sea, will
take much longer.
The bulk of Washington
elites see regime change in Syria as a crucial way
to hurt Iran. So this goes way beyond Syria. It's
about shattering the Iranian regime, which is not
a Western satrapy; energy flows from the Middle
East to the West; the West's grip on the GCC and
the intersection between the Arab and Persian
worlds; and preserving the role of the
petrodollar. Syria-Iran is a now a titanic match
between NATOGCC and Russia/China - to try to expel
them from the Middle East. The Pentagon's Full
Spectrum Dominance doctrine is never more alive
than when the jackals and hyenas of war are
screaming and kicking.
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