Syria between Hama 1982 and
Lebanon By Victor Kotsev
Recent talks between the government of
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the rebels
appear to have hit a hard spot. The Egyptian peace
initiative is on the rocks after the failure of
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to
show up; various other efforts continue but the
Emir of Qatar conveyed his pessimism poignantly on
Tuesday by calling for an Arab military
intervention in the country at the United Nations
General Assembly meeting in New York.
Though it is also remotely possible that
this is the proverbial darkest moment before dawn
breaks - the latest developments can also be
interpreted as tough bargaining - what is
happening on the ground is far from encouraging.
Amid a major terror campaign in the
capital, Damascus, and some of the bloodiest
fighting of the conflict so far, the chaos in
the country is growing
by the day. Different militias and warlords are
mushrooming, indicating that a failure to stop the
violence now would result in a protracted conflict
that will end only when all the different sides
are completely exhausted from the bloodshed.
Parallels to the Lebanese civil war -
which the Emir of Qatar invoked in his speech -
are becoming ever more pronounced, as are
similarities with the violence that culminated in
the massacre in the Syrian city of Hama in 1982. A
recently declassified document produced by the
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in May 1982
comes across as eerily up-to-date and demonstrates
the long historic roots of certain patterns that
we see on the ground.
International media
often underestimate the duration of the conflict
in Syria in the early 1980s, focusing most of
their attention only on the uprising in the city
of Hama in 1982; the report demonstrates clearly
how the violence evolved over several years.
Still, it is important to note, the Syrian
conflict back then did not quite develop the
characteristics of an entrenched civil war that
were clearly visible in Lebanon roughly at the
same time. The current episode ranks perhaps
somewhere in-between these two paradigms.
A key point in the DIA report is that
"Political popularity in Syria, however, has never
been a prerequisite for retaining political power.
The ability to control the military and security
apparatus and the willingness to use them when
required have been far more important."
Highlights include the powerful though
inaccurate propaganda campaign in favor of the
opposition in the international media as well as
the growing isolation of the regime, both inside
and outside the country.
"The Muslim
Brotherhood leadership was fully aware that they
had the Assad regime in a 'no win' situation over
Hama," the reports states. "If Assad had not acted
forcefully against Hama, the rebellion might have
spread to other cities which in turn might have
led to a full-scale rebellion. Assad's liberal use
of artillery in breaking the resistance in Hama
served notice to other cities that he has both the
will and the means to retain power. By the same
token, however, the Government's actions have
appalled and sickened a wide spectrum of Syrian
society."
Another key insight is the
importance of Alawite unity or signs of a lack
thereof: the Assad family belongs to the Alawite
religious minority, but so did also the man whom
Assad senior overthrew and imprisoned, Salah Jadid
(later, Assad's own brother was exiled following a
failed coup attempt). Jadid's supporters played an
important role in 1982, while the full backing of
the Alawite segment of the population is
considered a key indicator for the survivability
of Assad Junior now.
Recently, the
American-based intelligence analysis organization
Stratfor reported that efforts were being made to
engineer an Alawite coup against the Syrian
president. It noted that these efforts had so far
been unsuccessful, but assessed that "The Alawites
do not necessarily oppose a negotiated removal of
the al-Assad clan from power, but they do oppose
any deal that would lead to a weakening of their
sect's hold on power."
A Reuters report,
furthermore, documented the extortion of
"protection" money from wealthy Alawites by
pro-government militias - incidentally, a common
modus operandi of warlords who have proliferated
at a mind-numbing rate throughout the country -
and hinted at the unease this is producing among
many Alawites. [1]
That this kind of
discontent will translate into political dissent,
however, is far from certain. In fact, a powerful
trend leading in the opposite direction is
unfolding on the ground, a systematic policy of
molding Syria into more or less homogenous
enclaves by methods that amount to ethnic
cleansing. The goal is to create clearly defined
and more easily defensible bases of support for
the different sectarian militias, as well as to
make it easier for certain minority communities -
especially the Alawites and the Kurds - to secede
in the future under certain conditions.
This process mirrors what happened in
parts of Lebanon and in other long-lasting civil
wars, and also usually leads to the suppression of
dissident views inside the different communities.
It is very difficult to reverse and means that a
conflict is becoming entrenched.
Syrian
activist Ammar Abdulhamid notes in his impressions
from a recent trip that while pro-regime forces
initiated this process, the opposition has started
to repay in kind. He writes,
Ethnic cleansing of Sahel Al-Ghab
area in Hama province and certain parts of rural
Homs is for now a done deal and will not be
easily reversible, if ever. Only loyalist
strongholds remain in the area. The exceptions
are few, and are under constant attack from the
air. ...
In fact, as we write this
report, a battle is raging in the northernmost
parts of Al-Haffeh region, centered on the
village of Burj Kassab and its surroundings,
where rebels are trying to gain access to the
sea and counteract ethnic cleansing by pro-Assad
militias. The move, however, has forced
residents in nearby Alawite villages to leave
their homes, as their villages came under
pounding for the first time since the beginning
of the revolution. So, sooner rather than later,
and barring full-scale international
intervention, Sunni Arabs, driven by a desire
for vengeance, will take the fight to the
Alawites, and what has been seeded in Homs,
Aleppo, Damascus, Daraa, Hama and Deir Ezzor
will be harvested in Lattakia, Jableh and
Tartous. [2]
Tensions between Arabs
and Kurds in the Kurdish areas have also started
to heat up. Aral Kakal's account of his recent
journey there suggests that while currently the
situation there is not as bad as elsewhere in the
country, it can get much worse in the future. He
writes,
Jaoush [a local guide] told us that
the heads of the Arabized villages had come to
the Kurds in the village of Datba, where he's
from, two days ago and asked to stay in the
area. The Arabs said that if they were able to
stay they would even return the property that
had been confiscated from the Kurds by the
al-Assad government.
"The comrades of
Datba decided to allow them to stay," Jaoush
explains. "Because if we expelled them now then,
given the current situation in the rest of
Syria, they'd probably be killed." [3]
An urgent intervention of some sort -
either diplomatic, in the form of a ceasefire and
reconciliation talks, or military - can perhaps
yet arrest this development. Besides the Qatari
initiative, which reportedly gained Tunisian and
other Arab support, there are increasing
indications that secret talks are being conducted
in Eastern European countries such as Bulgaria.
Last month, for example, a scandal between
the Israeli embassy in Bulgaria and an Israeli
government minister, which was blown up in the
Israeli press, revealed that Bulgaria has a
greater involvement with the Syrian opposition
than its government cared to admit. [4] More
recently, Bulgarian President Rosen Plevenliev
accused Israel of making political claims that
Iran and Hezbollah the terror attack in Burgas
airport in July.
Given the general
interest of the Bulgarian authorities to deflect
attention from the lax security at the airport
which contributed to the incident, a Bulgarian
analyst told the Asia Times Online, this behavior
is most likely an indication that Bulgaria is
aiming at something higher - perhaps at being a
mediator between the two main warring camps in the
Middle East. Syria is high up on its agenda, but
whether it - or any of the heavier-weight players
involved - can contribute much to halting the
spiraling violence there is doubtful.
Some
forms of intervention, such as peacekeeping
missions, could combine well with track-two
diplomacy. Such a scenario may, unfortunately, be
a bit of a tall order; the alternative of
protracted chaos and bloodshed is already
unfolding.
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