The
mystery of the Syria contact
group By Vijay Prashad
In late August, Egypt's new president
Mohammed Morsi proposed the formation of a
regional initiative to stem the conflict in Syria.
Five decades ago, Egypt and Syria were yoked
together to form the United Arab Republic, an
experiment that lasted less than three years.
Since then relations between the two states has
ebbed and flowed, reliant more on the winds of
mutual opportunity
than on ambition or ideology.
Nasser's enormous personality had overshadowed all
those who came after him and the failure of the
Syrian-Iraqi union on Ba'ath lines reined in the
ideologues.
When Mubarak cemented Egypt's
place in the Western ledger, the distance from the
generally Soviet-leaning Syria of Hafez al-Assad
could not have been greater. That Morsi comes from
the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood does not earn
him favors amongst the Syrian Ba'ath, whose fight
against the Brothers goes back to before the
Ikhwan's attack on the Aleppo cadet school in
1979. The brutal assault by the Assad regime on
the Brothers from Hama (1982) to the present must
weigh on Morsi. Nonetheless, Morsi has brought
Syria a gift that it cannot refuse on its face:
the first chance of a non-Western backed
"intervention" to save the country from absolute
destruction.
To ease the Assad regime,
Morsi asked Iran's government to take one of the
four chairs of his Syria Contact Group. Iran
remains close to Damascus for geo-strategic (and
perhaps confessional) reasons. There is credible
evidence that Iran's aircraft have been flying
over a willing Iraq to supply the isolated Assad
government (whether with arms or not is yet to be
established).
When the Arab Spring was in
high gear, Iran sought to take advantage of it for
its own political gain. Tehran's intellectuals
dubbed the Spring an "Islamic Awakening" and
sought to link it to a dynamic opened up by the
Iranian Revolution of 1979. Iran and Egypt broke
relations over the Israel-Egypt peace deal in
1979, and links have only recently begun to be
fixed. Tehran is eager to impress Egypt with its
diplomatic flexibility, as long as this does not
mean that it sells its few remaining allies down
the river. There is considerable motivation in
Iran to break out of its own strangulation by the
West through new ententes with the Arab states.
The other regional actor that sought to
take the measure of the Arab Spring and claim it
to its advantage was the old imperial power,
Turkey. Its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
hastened to Cairo and proposed his Justice and
Development Party as an adequate model for a
modern political Islam, and their hadari version
of Islam as a modern religious sensibility (as
opposed to salafi Islam, exported out of the
Arabian peninsula). Turkey backed the rebellion in
Syria as part of its forward policy, but in time
this has come to be seen by sections of the Ankara
political elite to have been a grave overreach.
The precipitous Balkanization of Syria
might produce a Syrian Kurdistan beside the
already autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. A new front by
the Turkish military against its Kurdish
population in Semdinli showed the price that could
be paid for Erdogan's support for the rebellion.
The implications of Erdogan's policy has come on
Turkey's shoulders, with disarray in the army at
the same time as US President Obama has asked
Turkey to "do more" (the catchphrase from
Washington to its old CENTRO allies, Pakistan on
one side, Turkey on another). Morsi's Contact
Group provides Erdogan's government with an escape
hatch from its excessive commitments. It takes the
third seat on the Contact Group.
Saudi
Arabia is the most eager backer of a section of
the Syrian rebels. Keen to keep rebellion out of
the peninsula, the Saudis are enthusiastic about
the export of that rebellious energy to shores far
and wide. This was the motivation for the creation
of the Rabita al-Alam al-Islami (World Muslim
League) in 1962, and of the substantial bursary
paid to jihadis from Chechnya to Afghanistan.
When Morsi asked the Saudi Arabia to sign
up to the Contact Group, it had little choice but
to join and take the fourth seat. A credible
source from the website Jadaliyya tells me that
the Saudi Arabia and the Iranians "struck a deal"
at the Organization of the Islamic Conference
meeting held in Mecca this August when the Contact
Group idea was mooted. "The Saudis would drop its
steroidal support of the Syrian opposition in
return for the Iranians convincing Saudi Arabia's
Eastern Province Shias to tone down their
opposition against al-Saud, if not altogether
stopping their protests, threats and demands," the
source says.
A source from the Saudi
Arabia Ministry of Foreign Affairs would neither
affirm nor deny this story, but would say that "it
is a likely tale. There were discussions between
the two parties about a 'cease fire' in the
eastern part." If the Saudi Arabia joined the
Contact Group, these sources say, it is more
likely because they were able to get something in
return to help them deal with levels of unrest
inside the Kingdom that they had neither predicted
nor know exactly what to do with absent the use of
massive force. Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohammed
Kamel Amr told al-Jazeera's Rawya Rageh that he
"sensed no exasperation from the Saudis over
Iran's participation in the Contact Group."
Contact in Cairo This week,
foreign ministers from Egypt, Iran and Turkey met
in Cairo to formulate a plan for the Contact
Group. Nothing was made public, because the
principals have agreed to have private talks until
they settle on a firm plan. No sense in raising
expectations when there has been little
accomplished. The Iranian Foreign Minister Ali
Akbar Salehi said, "The things that we agree on
are greater than our differences." What they agree
on is the need for a regional solution, or as the
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu put it,
there is a need for "regional ownership of the
issues of our region."
One of the tasks of
the Contact Group is to provide the new UN envoy,
the Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi with a
mandate and a roadmap. Brahimi came to Cairo from
his meeting with Assad in Damascus. He immediately
met the Arab League's head, Nabil al-Arabi and sat
in with the Contact Group. During his stop off in
Amman, Jordan, Brahimi told al-Jazeera's Jane
Arraf that he was not optimistic, "The point I'm
making as seriously, as strongly as I can is that
the situation is very bad and worsening. It's not
improving. Syrians on both sides say from time to
time we are going to win very soon."
These
maximum positions have collapsed the space for
dialogue. Brahimi knows that it will require
oxygen from outside to allow the Syrian opponents
to breathe, and to then talk to one another. He
cannot do this alone. The West and Russia are
convulsed in their own Cold War interpretation of
events in Syria; nothing will come from Washington
or Moscow to help the Algerian veteran. This is
why it was important that Brahimi came to the
Contact Group's meeting.
Salehi left Cairo
for Damascus, where erroneous press reports
suggesting that he was carrying a nine-point plan
from the Contact Group. In fact, the Contact Group
has no such plan. What Salehi was carrying was the
Iranian proposal to the Group (which includes at
least one non-starter, the addition of Iraq and
Venezuela to Morsi's delicate balancing act). The
nine points include the need for Contact Group
countries to send observers into Syria to replace
the now departed UN observers, to end all arms
delivery into Syria, to maintain a cease fire, and
to create confidence toward some kind of mediated
settlement which will include (it appears) the
departure of Assad from the presidency. The
Iranians have not released their 9 points, so the
actual details of the plan are not known.
Where was Prince Abdulaziz? One
reason this could not have been the Contact
Group's plan is that the Saudi Arabia's Foreign
Minister was not present in Cairo. Initially, the
press was told that he had other "previous
engagements," and then later the message came that
Prince Saud bin Faisal al-Saud (the world's
longest serving Foreign Minister) is unwell. He is
apparently in hospital in Los Angeles, USA. At
previous events, such as the NAM Conference in
Tehran and the GCC meeting in Jeddah in August,
the Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz has
taken his place. Even Prince Abdulaziz did not
come.
Two US-based academics, close
observers of Saudi politics, tell me that the
Saudi Arabia is trying to send a signal that they
are not interested in this process after all.
Princeton's Professor Toby Craig Jones (author of
Desert Kingdom. How Oil and Water Forged Modern
Saudi Arabia, 2010) says, "They don't trust
Tehran and have likely reserved judgment on Cairo
for now." Vermont's Professor Gregory Gause
(author of The International Relations of the
Persian Gulf, 2010) says, "Saudis think that
their side is winning and they don't want to give
the Iranians a seat at this table. They want to
beat the Iranians in Syria."
The
University of London's Professor Madawi al-Rasheed
(author of Kingdom without Borders: Saudi
Arabia's Political, Religious and Media
Frontiers, 2009) agrees, "[Saudi Arabia] sends
an important signal that it will continue to play
the game in Syria according to its own terms,
meaning total exclusion of Iran from the Arab
sphere." Professor al-Rasheed is pessimistic for
the success of the Contact Group. " Saudi Arabia
has a interest in the conflict continuing as this
is currently absorbing Islamist revolutionary zeal
inside Saudi Arabia, promoting the myth about the
Iranian penetration of Arab land and the Shia
conspiracy against Sunni Muslims. Without these
foci, Saudi Arabia may end up suppressing a local
uprising that has the potential to spread beyond
the Shia Eastern province."
It appears
that the foreign policy of Saudi Arabia is driven
by its obsessions with its oil-rich eastern
provinces. Either it has cut a deal with the
Iranians for a quid pro quo on Syria and the
eastern provinces of its kingdom, or it wants to
keep the Syrian bloodletting going as a tourniquet
for its own internal hemorrhaging. Either way,
Saudi Arabia seems the least serious about the
Contact Group and its potential.
As
Turkey's Davutoglu put it, "Consultations with
Saudi Arabia are necessary because the kingdom is
a key player in the attempt to reach a solution to
the Syrian crisis." If the key player skips more
meetings, it will dampen confidence in the Group
and therefore in Brahimi for a regional solution
to the Syrian crisis.
The Contact Group
will meet again at the sidelines of the UN's
General Assembly next week. The Saudi Arabia's
Foreign Ministry will not confirm that its
representatives will be at the Group's meeting.
The Egyptians, Iranians and Turks are
enthusiastic. So is Brahimi. The road to peace in
Syria might go through the Contact Group. But it
requires Saudi Arabia involvement to make it
credible.
Vijay Prashad's latest
book is Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK
Press), whose Turkish edition, Arap Bahari,
Libya Kisi is available from Yordam Kitap.
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