The past few weeks have seen
a dramatic shift in reports coming out of Syria.
Whereas a month ago the government appeared to be
losing the battle on all fronts, the civil war now
seems to have entered a new stage - that of a race
to the bottom in which victory hinges on endurance
rather than strength.
Both the regime and
the rebels are facing major challenges which
threaten gravely their ability to function, and
this explains in part the vastly divergent
prognoses of different analysts. Meanwhile, as
winter sets in and the death toll climbs (the
latest United Nations report sets it at 60,000),
civilians are paying the heaviest price.
Many observers continue to insist that the
regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is on
its last legs. Jeffrey White of the
Washington Institute for
Near East Policy predicted recently that it
"appears to have only a few weeks left before it
collapses." [1] Others set the time frame for its
demise at several months, pointing out, among
other issues, the deep financial trouble it is in.
"The economy is the basis of everything,"
a Syrian economist in exile told Time Magazine,
estimating that Assad would go broke some time
between three and six months in the future
(previously, Jordan's King Abdullah II offered a
similar estimate). "Without services, boots,
money, you cannot do anything. If the government
cannot finance the army, they [soldiers] will
simply go away." [2]
The rebels have
advanced significantly in the last months, taking
control of, according to different reports,
between 40% and 75% of the country's territory.
They have even captured some of the suburbs
surrounding the capital Damascus and on several
occasions have been able to shut down the county's
main international airports.
The regime's
weakness is no illusion, but all of this amounts
to only half of the story. If Assad is about to go
broke, most of the rebels are already there - and
have been in this state for months. This is hardly
propitious to administering half of Syria -
something which alone costs them, according to the
same Time article, about US$500 million a month.
Moreover, it is not their worst problem.
A
number of reports indicate that the government
forces purposefully surrendered territories with
little to no resistance. They would have done this
in order to shorten their communication lines and
to cut some expenses - but also in order to let
the population taste a nightmare version of
freedom which would conceivably lead many people
to choose Assad's rule as the lesser evil. With
millions homeless in the middle of winter, most of
them in rebel-held areas, and food, running water
and cooking oil sparse, such a scenario is not
altogether out of question.
Even more
importantly, recent reports indicate that the
rebels themselves may actively contribute to such
an outcome. In-fighting, looting and random
abductions have become the order of the day in
many places. Aleppo, an affluent city of merchants
where insurgents from the poorer countryside have
flocked, may be an extreme example, but it is by
far not the only one. Two recent accounts by
Guardian reporter Ghaith Abdul-Ahad provide
graphic details.
In a story dated December
28, the reporter described a brutal rebel
commander, Abu Ali, who, in his own words, faced
"two enemies now - the [rival rebel] battalions
and the government." Abdul-Ahad documented an
attempt by several civilians whose homes had come
under Abu Ali's control to salvage some of their
possessions, as well as the treatment they
received: "'Every single house has been looted,'
shouts Abu Ali. 'And the [government] army has
never been to this area. It is us who looted
them!'" [3]
In a separate article dated
December 27, Abdul-Ahad described more generally
how the unprecedented levels of chaos and
in-fighting - which he considers a recent new
phase in the war - had halted rebel progress in
Aleppo. "The problem is us," a young fighter
exclaimed during a meeting. "We have battalions
sitting in liberated areas who man checkpoints and
detain people … They have become worse than the
regime." [4]
The rebels face a further
challenge which the former US Special Advisor for
Syria Frederic Hof termed "the poison pill of
sectarianism". Hof wrote:
By raising and
unleashing shabiha auxiliaries
(largely poor Alawite youth supplemented by
active duty military personnel), the regime of
Bashar al-Assad injected the poison pill into
the national bloodstream…. Assad and his cohort
are, after all, eager to tell minorities
(especially Alawites and Christians) that the
current regime alone stands between them and a
Sunni Arab successor that might choose among
options ranging from explicit sectarian rule to
the application of Islamic law to expulsion and
slaughter. The eagerness with which
highly visible elements of the opposition have
taken the regime's sectarian bait suggests two
possibilities: either that the 65-year evolution
toward Syrian citizenship and national unity has
been entirely illusory or Syria's revolutionary
leaders have given no thought to immunizing
themselves and their followers against the
inevitable implementation of a crudely
provocative sectarian strategy by the regime.
[5]
Not only has the opposition failed
to break the unity of the Alawites and other
minorities supporting the regime, but it seems
that, despite the sectarian nature of the war and
his savage tactics, Assad has effectively
prevented the full unification of the Sunnis
against him. According to different reports, up to
a third of the Sunni population, particularly in
the large cities, still supports him. While their
precise number and motivation is very difficult to
determine, a Syrian rebel who recently spoke to
Asia Times Online confirmed that he and his
comrades were frequently fighting against other
Sunnis.
Such considerations motivated the
prominent Syria expert at the University of
Oklahoma, Joshua Landis, to predict that "absent
some dramatic increase in external intervention,
Assad could still be there in 2014". He is
not alone: UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has also
recently suggested that 2013 could be extremely
bloody but not decisive.
Only the future
will tell who is right. For now, there is no sign
of the violence abating - and millions of ordinary
Syrians continue to suffer inhumanely.
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