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The unfolding crisis in Egypt has nudged Syria out of the headlines because a civil war in Egypt will have even greater repercussions for the Arab world and Western interests than any Syrian outcome. The public eating on YouTube of an organ of a dead Syrian soldier by a fundamentalist rebel commander has given the West pause for reflection about the kind of criminal bandits in the rebel movement they are supporting in the name of human rights. There is now a more even-handedness or realistic approach in the West-dominated media; so, mention is made of Russia’s statement that the rebels have used chemical weapons; the residents of Aleppo have castigated the rebels for blocking supplies of essential goods; and a foreign fundamentalist has assassinated a local rebel leader, raising tensions in the opposition ranks. There is a growing understanding that President Bashar al-Assad is not about to be overthrown, and the rebels, who are divided militarily and politically, are in no position to storm Damascus.
Through Assad’s capacity to resist the fundamentalists in the rebel camp, he and the Hezbollah have placed themselves on the right side in the war on terror. Iran must be involved in any settlement, and Russia will not back away from supporting Assad. The Syrian president will take grim satisfaction at his predictions and warnings of regional chaos when he sees the overthrow of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and Prime Minister Erdogan’s problems with civil society in Turkey.
In Syria, the West is paradoxically opposing the very minorities — the Christians, Druze and Alawites — that would otherwise instinctively earn its support. It is wittingly playing into the hands of the anti-Shia, anti-democratic agendas of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and being foolishly dragged into supporting one doctrinal branch of Islam against another, while believing its strategy will strengthen the Israelis by splitting the Shia axis of Iran, Syria and the Hezbollah in Lebanon. The West is unable to grasp the complexity of the region’s forces of religion, ethnicity, sect, tribe and clan, which are the dominant aspects and determinants of the Syrian uprising and the support for Assad.
Ever since its localized beginnings in Deraa in March 2011, the Syrian revolt has been a Sunni manifestation representing the majority community that has borne the brunt of the grievances, exactly the reverse of the situation under Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Given the mismatch between Assad’s organized forces, who have remained by and large solidly behind the government, and the weak rebel capacities, the Sunnis in the region have riposted through the Saudis, Qataris, Turks and Jordanians, who have offered unqualified support to the rebels. Shia Iraq is still suffering the agonizing consequences of George W. Bush’s invasion, but that has not stopped Sunni Islamist fighters crossing into Syria to form the Jabhat al-Nusra fundamentalist vanguard of the rebels. Along with them have come assorted fundamentalist militants from further afield, including the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda.
A region-wide sectarian war between Shia and Sunni is looming, and the century-old borders of the Middle East fashioned as a result of the Sykes-Picot British-French pact of 1916, which cut through families, tribes, sects and ethnicities, are rendered inoperable as both the Assad government and the rebels look for assistance from beyond Syria’s frontiers. The Shia Hezbollah from Lebanon came to the aid of the Syrian government at the end of 2012, when it appeared that Damascus itself might fall. They effectively turned the tide of the conflict, but further deepened the split between the two streams of Islam.
Assad also turned to his other core allies, Iran and Russia, and won commitments that they would never permit a regime change engineered by the West through rebel proxies. Iran’s interventions on Assad’s behalf, though less obvious than the Hezbollah’s, have served to further provoke Sunni militancy and also inspired the West to promise the rebels help with more effective weapons. The present stalemate is because Iran will do whatever is necessary to prevent the fall of Assad, while the West and its supporting Arab states will prevent the rebels from collapsing in defeat.
While all can agree, apart from the Islamist militants, that a political settlement is the only answer, the West will never convene a conference while its rebel protégés are in military and political disarray. For his part, Assad would hardly be inclined to agree to any conference when he is confident of survival. The West’s hope to tilt the balance in favour of the rebels appears fanciful, considering Assad’s support from Iran and the Hezbollah. And it was never all that clear that the West would welcome a rebel take-over of the country, considering the growing strength of the fundamentalists in the rebel movement. The West is only too well aware of the infiltration into the rebel units by Islamist radicals, which causes it acute concern even as it furnishes them lethal and non-lethal aid.
On the other hand, if Assad wishes to re-take the entire country, this would require much more help from Iran and the Hezbollah than he has received thus far, because his regular forces are already greatly over-stretched. The Kurds in the north, for example, clearly aspire to the sort of autonomy enjoyed by their counterparts in Iraq, while some rebel-held areas in the north-east are under the noxious control of al-Qaeda-linked Salafi militants.
This stalemate does not imply that the fighting will diminish or cease. With the induction of a higher quality of weapons, there can only be more killings, destruction and refugees. But the government is cohesive, has clear objectives politically and strategically, has renewed its Baath party leadership with younger elements, and the areas under its control are more stable and coherent than the rest. And Assad’s opposition is in a shambles, fragmented into mutually conflicting military units beyond any central control. Its political leadership consists of outsiders planted by the Turks, Saudis and the West, with little or no influence or credibility inside Syria.
With the de facto fragmentation of Syria, the trans-border connections of its warring components now threaten the political and social fabric in Lebanon and Iraq as the Sunni and Shia face off against each other. Two outcomes could save a united Syria: the complete battlefield victory by one side or the other, which is highly unlikely, or a political settlement, which is equally improbable. There is general agreement on a transition, but not on the final destination. The West seems to have conceded that the security and military apparatus can remain undisturbed, while the Russians and Iranians reject that Assad and his immediate circle must be deposed. Assad and Iran will surely not concede in any conference what they have successfully prevented from happening on the ground. And on the horizon of any Syrian settlement will lurk the ramifications of the other intractable Middle Eastern crisis; the Iran nuclear issue, and the Israel-Palestine two-state solution.
Implied or overt support has been given to the military takeover in Egypt by the United States of America, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Russia, all of whom had no wish to see the Muslim Brotherhood and political Islam as the ultimate beneficiaries of the Arab Spring. It may be too much to expect that in this convergence of opinion might sprout the first green shoots of a possible political settlement in Syria. Besides which, Iran, the perpetual outsider, has first to be brought on board.
