Planning intensifies for Syria
after Assad By Victor Kotsev
While the army of Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad is "liberating Aleppo by destroying it" -
to paraphrase the words of a general in an earlier
civil war, in the former Yugoslavia - even his
closest foreign ally, Iran, is preparing for his
end at the top. "Syrian society is a beautiful
mosaic of ethnicities, faiths and cultures, and it
will be smashed to pieces should President Bashar
al-Assad abruptly fall," wrote an opinion piece by
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi
published by the Washington Post on Wednesday.
The word "abruptly" draws the attention;
the article, which embraced the moribund United
Nation six-point peace plan, was an advertisement
of sorts for a conference on Syria which took
place in Iran on Thursday. Reportedly, diplomats
from 29
countries attended the
meeting, including representatives of Russia,
China, India, Pakistan and Venezuela. Although
little came out of the conference itself, its
symbolic importance is unmistakable: according to
most analysts, the six-point plan (nicknamed "the
Annan plan" after the UN special envoy for Syria
who recently resigned) entails the departure of
Assad from power.
After the defection on
Monday of Syrian prime minister Riyad Hijab, who
Assad replaced on Thursday with another Sunni
Muslim, Wael al-Halki - the standing of the regime
took another serious blow. Syria's other close
foreign ally, Russia, has kept a relatively low
profile for a couple of weeks now, and sources
close to the Russian analyst community say this is
an effective recognition of Assad's increasingly
untenable position.
On the ground, the
rebels were reportedly pushed out of the strategic
Aleppo neighborhood Salaheddin on Thursday, losing
some 40 men to the relentless artillery and air
bombardment of the regime forces. However, the
fight in the rest of the city, the most important
commercial hub and the largest city in Syria, is
expected to drag on, as it has in the capital
Damascus.
Moreover, even if the insurgents
continue to lose ground in Aleppo to the superior
firepower of the regime - which appears likely -
their gains elsewhere seem to be expanding daily.
Most observers have already set their sights on
the next likely major urban battleground: the
northern city of Idlib, not far from Aleppo. The
countryside, meanwhile, is largely lost for Assad:
as a "retired top-ranking officer" advised the
Lebanese journalist Fidaa Itani recently, "all
roads leading to borders would eventually take us
to rebel-held areas." [1]
Battle-hardened
and fairly well-armed foreign jihadists from
places such as Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan are
becoming increasingly visible among the rebels,
something that helps explain the mounting regime
casualties over the last few months. As Reuters
reported, some of the foreigners are causing even
the passionate native Syrian Islamists to worry.
"Wherever you find improvised bombs, you're likely
to find foreign fighters," is an insight Reuters
journalist Erika Solomon learned from an
insurgent. [2]
Different militias - nobody
seems to know exactly how many in total, other
than that the number is large - have unequal
access to funds, training and arms. Journalist
Mary Fitzgerald describes the Liwa al-Ummah
brigade which functions outside the Free Syrian
Army and was organized with the help of a
prominent former Libyan revolutionary. She notes
that they boast of "new and improved" weapons such
as "12.5 mm and 14.5 mm anti-aircraft guns." [3]
Still, no Syrian aircraft (whose
significance in the conflict continues to grow as
well) have been shot down by the rebels so far,
and the regime continues to control vastly
superior firepower as well as a number of trained
irregular militias of its own. Equipped for both
traditional and asymmetrical warfare, Assad might
have been able to cling to the main population
centers indefinitely were it not for a more
trivial and less lethal factor: money.
Jordan's king Abdullah II explained it
quite bluntly in a recent interview with CBS:
How long does he have to govern
greater Syria? … It's costing him about a
billion dollars a month. If I was to look at the
weakness of the regime, I'd look at the
finances. So if he has money coming in,
technically he should be able to hold on
indefinitely. If he runs out of money can't keep
the electricity power stations, can't keep the
water running and can't keep paying his soldiers
- I think that's where the major crack is.
Meanwhile, the economic situation in
Syria continues to deteriorate.
It is
anybody's guess when exactly Assad will run out of
money - or go in some other way, for example
voluntarily, by a foreign-orchestrated coup, or in
an assassination. However, the fate of Libya's
former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who held on to
power for considerably longer than most Western
analysts expected, even in the face of a NATO air
campaign against him, could provide a useful
paradigm. (Gaddafi fought until the bitter end -
he was brutally murdered by the Libyan rebels.)
A similar uncertainty hangs over the
prospective fate of the entire country. In a
recent analysis, the Israeli Institute for
National Security Studies captures this pervasive
uncertainty in a recently published analysis in
which it outlines the following "principal
scenarios" for Syria:
a. The Assad regime falls, and the
governmental system and the structure of the
state disintegrate (cantonization). A civil war
and an uncompromising inter-ethnic struggle
develop. At the same time, there is ethnic
cleansing and populations move to the ethnic
groups' centers of influence. b. There is
partial government control. The regime (Bashar
himself, another leader, or a group of Alawite
leaders) manages to survive, but is weakened and
loses its legitimacy. It keeps tight control
over the central longitudinal axis,
Damascus-Homs-Aleppo and the coastal sector, and
loses effective control over outlying areas.
Nevertheless, Syria continues to function
partially as a state. c. A different state
system emerges within Syria. A different
government comes to power based on unified
opposition forces and succeeds in functioning
effectively, establishing stability while
creating a balance among the various ethnic
groups and forces. d. Chaos and a lack of
control ensue. The Bashar Assad regime falls,
and there is no effective central government.
Syria becomes a battleground for extremist
forces supported by outside actors who are
competing with each other - Iran vs. Saudi
Arabia and the Gulf states, Turkey vs. the
Kurds, the United States vs. Russia, and so on.
At the same time, extremist forces from abroad
continue to be drawn to the country, and a proxy
war develops. e. The international community
launches outside intervention following some
dramatic development. At first, there is a
military operation that brings about the fall of
the Bashar Assad government. Later, a new regime
is established in a prolonged process that
includes domestic reconciliation and democratic
reforms.
As these outcomes
demonstrate, the range of options ahead is
incredibly broad. Many analysts expect that as
Assad's grip on power loosens, the regime will
withdraw to a rump state consisting of the coastal
areas where a large population of his Alawite sect
is located. The long-term viability of such a
state, however, is questionable.
The
confusion evident in many reports coming out of
the country makes it difficult to issue more
accurate analyses and predictions. Numerous
contradictory rumors and accounts circulate at any
given time, and media access to the country is
limited - currently, Syria is believed to be the
most dangerous place in the world for journalists.
Both the regime and the rebels have engaged in an
extensive disinformation campaign with elements
even of cyber warfare - as repeated hacking
attempts of Reuters servers and social media
accounts demonstrate. [5]
To make matters
worse, some of the media outlets which have
reporters on the ground have displayed blatant
bias in their reporting. In a detailed article
published by Foreign Policy Magazine, Sultan
al-Qassemi points a finger specifically at the
main pan-Arab media. "Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera,
the two Gulf-based channels that dominate the
Arabic news business, have moved to counter Syrian
regime propaganda, but have ended up distorting
the news almost as badly as their opponents," he
writes. [6]
In this context, it is hard to
tell whether Syrian Vice President Farouk Shara is
under house arrest and on the verge of defection,
as a Kuwaiti newspaper reported, or if the 48
Iranian "pilgrims" abducted by the Free Syrian
Army last Saturday were in fact from Iranian
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps officers in
disguise (as the rebels insist). In neighboring
Lebanon there is also intrigue: a prominent
politician and ally of the Syrian regime was
arrested on Thursday morning on suspicion of
planning to instigate violence in the country on
behalf of Assad. [7]
What is certain is
that Assad is not gone yet (various rumors to that
effect notwithstanding), even as his control over
the country continues disintegrate by the day. It
is an extremely precarious and explosive situation
in which the bloodletting and the chaos, which
have claimed the lives of at least 20,000 Syrians
so far, are set to continue.
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