Dreaming of a Syria beyond
Assad By Derek Henry Flood
ISTANBUL - In 1980, at the age of 15, a
Syrian teenager named Khaled Khoja was detained by
Syria's mukhabarat (internal security
services) and held in a Damascus prison for two
years. [1] His alleged misdeed ... That his father
had provided financial support to al-Ikhwan
al-Muslimeen, better known in the West as the
Muslim Brotherhood, which began agitating against
the Ba'athist regime of Hafez al-Assad in the late
1970s.
After his release in 1982, he fled
north to neighboring Turkey, where he has lived
and flourished in exiled ever since. Khoja is a
key member of the Syrian National Council (SNC)
led by political scientist Burhan Ghalioun, a
fellow exile ensconced at the lauded Sorbonne in
Paris.
The SNC was formed in Istanbul in
late August of last year in
opposition to President
Bashar al-Assad. As the violence has shown no sign
of easing in cities across Syria, activists like
Khoja have become increasingly vocal. In his
capacity as part of the SNC's foreign relations
committee, Khoja publicly announced that his SNC
and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) had decided it was
in their mutual interest to unify their disparate
agendas after the SNC's Ghalioun traveled to
southern Turkey's Hatay province to meet the
nominal head of the FSA, Riad al-Asaad and other
high ranking Syrian military defectors.
Khoja told Asia Times Online in an
interview that Ghalioun made a second visit to the
FSA's leadership to reiterate the new-found
solidarity between the two very different groups.
When discussing how much longer Assad will
continue to stay in power, Khoja loosely
speculated that he would be deposed perhaps by the
end of 2012. "Syria is heading toward a military
solution," Khoja tells Asia Times Online.
"Armed clashes are spreading [throughout
different parts of Syria] while "more [army]
defections are inevitable". In previous
discussions with Asia Times Online by commanders
of the FSA in the northwestern Idlib governorate
that they had wrested from regime control, their
primary hope was for the creation of a cordon
sanitaire to contain the Syrian army,
intelligence services and the tens of thousands of
irregular shabiha militiamen so that
refugees could safely exit to neighboring states
while simultaneously enabling further defections
from regime forces to the rebel cause.
In
the somewhat awkward convergence of the SNC's and
the FSA's formerly divergent agendas, the two have
joined up on this specific strategic concept.
Though the FSA's leaders based in Turkish
refugee camps are largely figureheads meant to
give the active rebels in Syria the appearance of
structure, the SNC's position is that the FSA must
manifest some form of genuine hierarchy in Syria
to avoid mass civilian participation in armed
conflict, thereby widening the war.
"We
must try to avoid a militarization of the street,"
Khoja said. The SNC's position on such issues has
evolved considerably in recent months, borne out
of Syrian realpolitik. Though the council was
strictly advocating mass civil disobedience from
its perch in Turkey, Europe and elsewhere, it has
heeded the desires of the indigenous, diffuse
street movement from Homs to Hama, from Deir
ez-Zor to Dera'a, who see the FSA has a
"protective force".
"The United Nation's
General Assembly Resolution 377 A states that a
buffer zone can be created if there is a
two-thirds majority vote. This action could
legitimate a buffer zone for the FSA," Khoja said.
Under the terms of this resolution adopted
on November 3, 1950, during the early period of
the Korean War, known as the "Uniting for Peace"
resolution, member states can circumvent the
decisions of the Security Council's five permanent
members, the "P5". The resolution was created to
work around Soviet obstructionism and abstinence
on the Security Council while the UN was
intervening on the Korean Peninsula.
The
Soviet Union insisted on vetoing any such action
in its role on the Security Council at the time
with its raison d'etre being that China was
rightfully politically embodied by the
revolutionary communist Maoist mainland People's
Republic of China rather than the exiled,
Taiwan-based Republic of China in the name of
fomenting solidarity within the rivalrous echelons
of world communism.
The Chiang Kai-shek
government was recognized as the Chinese seat on
the Security Council until 1971. The Soviets
showed their dissatisfaction with the arrangement
throughout the Korean crisis in 1950 by being
obstinate with their veto power and thus a
mechanism was created for broad-based
interventionist policies.
Though separated
for decades by the Sino-Soviet split before the
Soviet implosion, Moscow's and Beijing's stance is
once again aligned in the context of the ongoing
humanitarian crisis in Syria.
The Kremlin
views the concept of internal affairs and
internecine violence as an inherent right of the
state after being admonished for its military
adventures in Chechnya and the wider insurgency in
the North Caucasus.
Beijing's politburo,
hungry for oil to keep China's unprecedented
economic boom perpetuating and seeking to silence
criticism for its repression in Xinjiang and
Tibet, has sided with Russia, its traditional
Eurasian political rival followed by an array of
far lesser powers decrying neo-imperialism like
Iran and Venezuela.
Khoja told Asia Times
Online that he sees no reason why the UN
resolution cannot be implemented in his homeland
to protect civilians, though his SNC does not seem
to have outlined an exacting plan on just how to
do so in the face of increasing wariness to armed
humanitarian intervention in any form both among a
war-fatigued Western public as well as staunch
anti-interventionists in the US and the European
Union.
The SNC seems to have thus far
failed to precisely articulate its outline for a
post-Assad, post-Ba'athist Syria. It is primarily
focused on coalescing its own internal agenda and
making various announcements pleading for
involvement sans boots-on-the-ground style
military intervention. This has been directed
toward the international community from its
Turkish safe haven.
Though far short of
recognizing the exiles in any formal fashion,
Turkey's activist Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
has allowed the SNC to open an official office
near Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport.
This decision reflects Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan's increasing enmity toward Bashar
al-Assad.
It also may indicate a little
spoken of sectarian feeling among Turkey's ruling
Islamist AK Parti (Justice and Development Party).
At the risk of appearing to create an
oversimplification of the situation, Syria's
uprising is at its core a Sunni revolt against
minority Alawite Shi'ite rule.
Turkey has
both a small Alawite minority of Arabic extraction
in Hatay province that was once a part of French
Mandate Syria and a much more substantial Alevi
minority. The Alevis, whose precise percentage of
Turkey's population remains unknown, have been
traditionally characterized as a mysterious
heterodox sect by Western Orientalists and
apostates by orthodox Sunnis.
Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's founding father, stressed
"Turkishness" over any form of religious identity
after the republic's 1923 founding and
post-Ottoman political evolution in an effort to
consolidate the integrity of the nascent Turkish
polity.
Erdogan's AK Parti, though
Islamist in outlook, needs Alevi support while
making little effort to recognize the Alevis as a
legitimate religious group beyond the veneer of
reforms aimed more at appeasing the European Union
than appeasing Alevi demands.
But
Erdogan's party is a Sunni one in character and
through this lens the position of Turkey's
political rulers is likely to differ sharply from
the country's traditional military elites, whose
more nationalist concerns lead them toward the
Kurdistan Workers' Party and Cyprus - making them
hesitant to involve Turkey in the Syrian conflict
in any manner.
Erdogan may drag Turkey
towards some level of confrontation, whether
political or clandestine, as his rhetoric against
Assad has continually escalated. Though it is
unclear which direction Turkey will take toward
Syria, Erdogan publicly calling for Assad to step
down has set Ankara on a hostile path that may be
irrevocable.
A retired Turkish general
told Asia Times Online that the ruling party's
allowing of the SNC to maintain such an office was
"a mistake". The general's view sounds emblematic
of the divide between Turkey's military
establishment that sees itself as a vanguard of
republican secularism at any cost versus the
conservative political religiosity of AK Parti
voters.
On Thursday, despite an implacable
Russian stance with regard to the sovereignty of
Syria's much-cherished "internal affairs" which
the Kremlin puts far above the human security of
the Syrian people, the General Assembly voted
overwhelmingly for an Arab League framework
enabling the end of Assad's rule with 137 voting
for, 12 against and 17 abstentions. Susan Rice,
the American ambassador to the UN, was quoted by
Reuters as saying, "Bashar al-Assad has never been
more isolated."
Khoja said that a mediator
involved in secret negotiations between the Muslim
Brotherhood and the government of Hafez al-Assad
in the late 1990s painted a picture of a much
younger Bashar - then being integrated into the
Syrian security apparatus by his father after the
death of his heir-apparent brother Basil in a 1994
vehicular accident - as "less clever yet more
spiteful than his father".
Though Bashar
may not have been the elder Assad's first choice,
he ranked above his two younger brothers, the late
Majid who died in 2009 and Maher who commands the
Fourth Armored Division as well as leads the
Republican Guard. Majid led a reportedly troubled
life, living and dying in obscure circumstances.
Khoja described Maher as being viewed as
"too crazy" by Hafez to inherit the supreme
Ba'athist mantle eventually bestowed on Bashar.
Maher, thought of as a corrupt and detestable
figure by several Syrian oppositionists
interviewed by Asia Times Online, has been
Bashar's right-hand man since the uprising began
11 months ago.
As ruthlessly as Hafez had
put down the Muslim Brotherhood revolt in Hama
over a period of weeks in February 1982, many in
the West were under the false assumption that
Bashar, with his brief period cutting his teeth as
an ophthalmologist in London, might therefore
possibly be more lenient than the Assad patriarch
who answered dissent with scorched-earth tactics.
A mediator then approached Bashar early on
in his inherited presidency about the possibility
of a political accommodation with the Sunni
Islamists his father had either killed or sent
into exile. Bashar stated that his mind was closed
to any such idea and implied that he would not
hesitate to employ violence to keep his father's
Ba'athist legacy intact with their Alawite clique
firmly in power for the foreseeable future.
One of the most talked about external
players in the Syrian crisis is that of the
Russian Federation, which is reportedly keeping
the regime afloat with arms shipments while
providing diplomatic cover for Assad within the UN
Security Council.
Khoja said the SNC, too,
was in dealings with Moscow, though he did not go
into great detail regarding specifics. "The
Russians recognize him [Assad] as a dictator,"
according to Khoja, while describing back-channel
talks between the SNC and various Kremlin
diplomats.
He emphasized that the Russians
were genuinely worried about the fate of the Assad
regime, a Russian and Soviet military client since
the mid-Cold War period. Khoja stated, "The
Russians would prefer to see a GCC [Gulf
Cooperation Council]-style compromise as in Yemen
where the leader steps down but key military and
security elements remain in place." The Russians
for their part insist they are simply fulfilling
an arms agreement with Damascus made well before
the revolt began in March of 2011.
When
asked what he sees as the biggest challenges for a
post-Assad Syria, Khoja feared for the future of
the Alawite sect, which would very likely face
violent inter-communal reprisals which he believes
are a certainty after the immense bloodshed and
further entrenching of sectarian identities. Khoja
suggested it may be necessary to form a protective
force for the Alawites after the regime's
downfall.
His other principal concern is
the stoking of separatist sentiments among Syria's
Kurdish minority. The danger would be if Syria's
Kurds made any attempt to emulate Iraq's largely
successful, secure and highly autonomous Kurdistan
region. Unlike Iraq's now powerful Kurds who were
able to consolidate their northern enclave into a
fairly homogenous ethno-geographic arc that
stretches from the Syrian to Iranian borders,
Khoja said the Kurdish heartland in Syrian is in
fact bifurcated in two distinct, non contiguous
regions with the city of Afrin in the far
northwest and Qamishle in the far northeast. In
that respect, Syria's Kurdish question is very
unlike that of Iraq.
Khoja believes that
Kurdish separatism in Syria would be disastrous,
leading to state fracture with deadly results. He
postulates the solution to this problem is a
democratic one whereby all groups - be they
defined by religion, sect, ethnicity or language -
be included in a pluralistic Syria.
The
SNC, initially quite wary of the FSA, came to the
realization that the rebels "are a reality" on the
ground inside Syria - in Khoja's words - and that
an accommodation between the two movements had to
be made to marry the dreams of the exiled
activists with the wish of ordinary Syrians who
continue to rise up against Assadist rule.
Note 1. Khoja was born
in Damascus in 1965 and moved to Libya. He
graduated from Obari High School after being
arrested in Damascus between1980-1982. He studied
at the Political Science Faculty, Istanbul
University from 1985-1986 and then at the Medical
Faculty, 9th of September University from 1987 to
1994. In 2001, he founded and still manages Mertip
Healthcare Group. He has been heading the Damascus
Declaration Turkey branch since March 2011 and is
member of the Syrian National Council (SNC).
(Source: the Syrian National Council website.)
Derek Henry Flood is a freelance
journalist specializing in the Middle East and
South and Central Asia and has covered many of the
world's conflicts since 9/11 as a frontline
reporter. He blogs at the-war-diaries.com. Follow
Derek on Twiiter @DerekHenryFlood
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