We know that the civil war in Syria is
truly horrific when Bosnians fleeing the Levantine
country describe the situation there as worse than
the siege of Sarajevo two decades ago. Dzenana
Abbas, who left the Syrian city of Aleppo with her
husband and children, told CBS that her recent
experiences were "beyond belief".
Last
month was the bloodiest month in the uprising so
far, with United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
estimating that 1,600 people were killed in a
single week. A couple of activist organizations
put the death toll for the month at 5,000,
bringing the total for the conflict to about
25,000. The regime forces are accused of
committing new massacres and using heavy weapons
indiscriminately against civilians, while the
rebels allegedly continued to perpetrate
atrocities of their own.
Meanwhile, the
military tactics on both sides are undergoing
significant
transformations. As the rebels strive to make
themselves look more like a regular army, the
Syrian army is increasingly turning into a
sectarian militia. This development comes amid
increased calls internationally for an urgent
intervention in Syria. The alternative seems to be
a protracted Lebanon-style civil war, with or
without Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the
top of one camp.
Right now, nevertheless,
covert action appears to be taking precedence over
any form of direct intervention, mostly on the
insistence of United States President Barack
Obama. The detractors of Washington's dovish
policies are growing both in number and
significance, even as there is little agreement
between them on specific conflicts. Israel and
Saudi Arabia, which are pushing for military
action in Iran, are symbolically joined by
Britain, France, and Turkey, which have come out
in favor of establishing safe zones in Syria.
Domestic critics of Obama have also become
more vocal. In an article published in Foreign
Policy Magazine, James Traub argues for the
creation of no-fly zone over the country. He
writes:
The war has already escalated to
previously unimaginable levels. The Syrian
regime is now engaging in the strategy of
counterinsurgency-by-atrocity used so
effectively by Sudan against the people of its
south and Darfur - intentionally killing large
numbers of civilians in order to shatter the
opposition's will. Assad has sown the seeds of
sectarian hatred by unleashing largely Alawite
forces against Sunni civilians, in turn making
Syria into a c many of them crossing the border
from Iraq. And he has exported the conflict
beyond Syria's borders, with Sunnis and Alawites
facing off in the streets of Tripoli, Lebanon's
second-largest city. The greatest danger to
Syria and the region now comes from allowing
Syria's civil war to continue unabated …. And if
the United States wants the rebels to win, then
it should be doing everything it can to help
them win - and win in a way that prevents a
post-Assad Syria from degenerating into Iraq.
[1]
Indeed, it looks like Syria's
version of COIN (counterinsurgency strategy) has
taken pages out of Mao Zedong's and Machiavelli's
books. The government has surrendered some
territory and has allowed the borders of the
chunks it controls to remain fluid. Even in the
prized city of Aleppo, Assad's forces have been in
no hurry for over a month to storm rebel-held
positions, relying instead mostly on snipers,
artillery and air power.
Moreover, the
regime has busied itself with creating and
supporting militias of various stripes - Alawite,
Christian, Kurdish, and so on. Even the regular
army, which reportedly keeps the monopoly over the
heavy weapons, is beginning to look more and more
like a militia, as Syria expert at the University
of Oklahoma Joshua Landis told the NPR. According
to Landis,
[The Syrian army] can take a lot [of
damage]. This is the problem, is that the Syrian
army is transforming itself. As the Sunni Arabs
defect from the army, and increasingly, the
Sunni elements in the army are not trusted, the
army has been remaking itself as an Alawite
militia, increasingly. And we're seeing this war
devolve into a civil war between Alawites, the
Shiite heterodox group - 12% of Syrians - and
the Syrian Sunni Arabs who are 70% of the
population roughly. And that's why things are
becoming increasingly more brutal, but it's also
why the Syrian army will not likely give up. [2]
Overall, it looks very much like a
version of Mao's idea of mobile warfare, combining
conventional tactics and positional warfare with
asymmetrical attacks by irregular forces and fluid
borders. This comparison is strengthened by the
increasing reliance by the regime on attrition
tactics, and Assad's strategy bears some
resemblance also to that of former Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi last year.
This strategy
has helped the regime in several ways. The
atrocities have ignited an identity-based
(religious) conflict, which has made an internal
coup against Assad less likely. The surrender of
territory has shortened communication and supply
lines, decreasing the vulnerability of the regime
and making defections more difficult. The
spillover of violence into neighboring countries
has sent a resounding message to Assad’s
international enemies.
Furthermore, the
blurring of lines between soldiers, militiamen and
civilians, while by no means complete, would make
a foreign operation from the air more difficult
and will increase the risk of collateral damage.
The role of Machiavelli's wisdom is rather
more general - "much safer to be feared than
loved" - but it is also quite effective. In modern
Syrian terms, those civilians who shelter the
rebels are much less safe and well-provided for
than those who don't.
Reuters describes
"life in rebel-controlled areas" of Aleppo as
"unbearable":
Piles of uncollected rubbish are
burnt every few days, replacing the stench of
rotting detritus with that of acrid smoke. Food
prices have soared and morning breadlines around
bakeries stretch around entire blocks. Children
play in the pools of burst water pipes and
thousands have lost their homes in the mounting
assaults on rebel-held neighborhoods.
On the other hand, the article
continues, "Several civilians who have moved
around the city spoke of an eerie sense of
normality in Aleppo's government-held districts."
[3]
This strategy, while very far from the
Western idea of winning hearts and minds, seems to
be producing an effect. A growing number of
Syrians are reportedly distancing themselves from
both sides.
The rebels have been
struggling to adapt, to discipline their ranks and
to boost their capability of protecting civilians.
The latter would necessitate some form of
positional warfare and some conventional military
tactics.
According to the London-based
newspaper Asharq Alawsat, a new unified rebel
command called the Syrian National Army was
recently formed after a "Turkish-French agreement
with US support and Arab blessing". In contrast to
other opposition figures, its commander-in-chief,
Major General Muhammad Hussein al-Haj Ali who
defected a month ago, spoke out against the
establishment of a no-fly zone, claiming that this
would be counter-productive. "If we can be
guaranteed the provision of the required arms, we
will make short work of this regime that is a
failure in the eyes of the Syrian people who are
choosing between death and dignity," he told the
newspaper in an interview. [4]
Moreover, a
number of reports mention vaguely that the rebels
are trying to adopt new tactics - apparently this
has to do at least in part with the shooting down
of several aircraft in the last couple of weeks,
as well as with reported attacks on military
airfields. There are even signs of forceful
attempts to consolidate their ranks: according to
other publications in the Arabic press, a jihadist
leader was assassinated by members of the former
Free Syrian Army, marking the most significant
clash to date between different groups of rebels.
Of particularly key significance is the
behavior of neighboring countries and the
international community, but while a sense of
urgency has taken hold, there is little unity or
agreement what to do. The backstage bargaining
reportedly continues with feverish intensity.
Turkey, which has been flooded with refugees and
hit by increasing Kurdish militancy encouraged by
Damascus, is a particularly vocal proponent of
safe zones, but poor relations between the Turkish
government and military prevent it from going it
alone. At the same time, there are currently a
little over 80,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, with
tens of thousands of more waiting to cross the
border. The government claims that it will find it
difficult to host over 100,000.
Iraq has
come under diplomatic fire amid reports that it is
allowing Iran to use its air space to resupply the
Syrian regime, but despite the American and
Western pressure, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri
al-Maliki has reportedly not given way. Maliki, a
Shi'ite, appears to be afraid of the emergence of
a strong Sunni regime in his western neighbor,
which, in the context of the chaos there, could
result in a new spillover of sectarian tensions
into Iraq.
Iran, for its part, has
continued to support Assad, even as it is
reportedly contemplating other options. "Plan A
[for Tehran] is to keep Bashar al-Assad in power,"
a well-placed Iranian activist in exile (an
erstwhile founding member of the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard) told the New York Times. "But
Plan B is that if they can't keep him in power
anymore they will try to make another Iraq or
another Afghanistan - civil war - then you can
create another Hezbollah." [5]
On the
other hand, however, some analysts indicate splits
within the Iranian regime with respect to Syria.
The American-based intelligence analysis
organization Stratfor argues that a political
confrontation between the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard and the clerical regime is being catalyzed
by the weakening of the Syrian regime.
"It
is an imperative for the Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps that it do everything in its power to
keep Syria from reorienting toward regional Sunni
stakeholders," concludes Stratfor. "…Even then,
the group will find it difficult to justify its
special status and vast domestic powers to the
various political constituencies within Iran as
the clerics seek to counter the Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps' future rise."
The United States is too focused on
domestic politics right now, and a war in Syria
would be a great risk for Obama in the run-up to
the November election. For all their
proclamations, the European powers are stuck in an
ever-deepening financial and political crisis.
Russia has issued contradictory signals in
the last weeks. It has reportedly scaled down its
military presence in Syria and frozen arms sales
to the regime, and Russian diplomats have
suggested that they would be O.K. with Assad's
ouster under certain terms. Some speculate that
some sort of a deal was concluded in secret
between the Western powers and the Kremlin as the
latter started to lose faith in the Syrian
president's survivability.
An Eastern
European analyst specializing in Russia suggested
to the Asia Times Online that the terms of such a
deal may have something to do with growing
tensions in the Caucasus, more specifically
between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but this
information has been hard to verify. It is
important to watch also for any developments
around the NATO missile shield in Europe and other
areas of friction between Russia and the West.
In all, while there are several grave
reasons why the Syrian crisis is growing in
urgency - including the increasing atrocities, the
flood of refugees, the regional spillover of
violence and the Syrian chemical weapons - foreign
players are pulling the country in different
directions. On the ground, the pro-regime forces
remain powerful and can likely hold out for a long
time. Meanwhile, more and more bridges are burnt
between Syria's different sects, and powerful
economic interests related to the continued
violence - such as arms smuggling networks - are
taking root all around the country.
Absent
a lopsided outside intervention, therefore, no end
to the bloodshed and horror appears to be in
sight.
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